[Mana]: 109FU + 53/hour -> 109FU + 54/hour

“Usurp.”

[Usurp successful! Increased void and psionic affinity.]

“And with this kill,” Albert proclaimed. “The quest is complete.”

He waited a few seconds for the prompt to appear. “Right?”

Quest: Daily Challenge – Single Skill Mastery Complete!

· For each offensive skill you have, kill 10 voidlings using only that skill.

· Reward: 1000-FU Stable Mana Crystal.

The reward appeared in Albert’s hand. It was a hefty piece of crystal, roughly as large as a bowling ball. This time, Albert decided to try and catch the system by surprise, activating Bullet Time to max before the quest prompt disappeared. It didn’t help, however, because the reward materialized so quickly it was basically instantaneous.

“I’ll get you next time.” He said, and sat down with the crystal on the floor in front of him.

Wasting no time, he began to scan it and studied it with his magic sight while munching on a snack. Then, when he was done eating, he activated Analysis Mode and went to work.

Skill level up!

MANA CRYSTALLIZATION 3

· Coalesce mana into crystals with a max capacity of 4FU. The crystals will decay after 10 hours.

It was a total of two hours work, but Albert managed to increase the maximum amount of mana stored in a single crystal twofold by copying the stabilizing structures that he saw in the much stabler crystal the system had given him. He didn’t feel like he learned all he could from the large crystal however, but it was enough for a session.

Even though his extensive voidling hunting had reduced the number of enemies in the area, and made them particularly aware of his tendency to kill them, he did not want to spend too much time sitting in the same spot while in unknown hostile territory.

Besides, there was another thing on his mind now. He put the crystal away and got up, stretching his legs.

“Void Armor.”

The sleek, scaly manifestation of the void wrapped itself around him like a second skin in a matter of seconds. It was dismissed soon after, revealing a perplexed Albert.

“Yeah,” he muttered, “definitely much less backlash than before.”

It was still uncomfortable to the point of being almost unbearable for more than a couple of seconds, but it was definitely much better than before, when even just manifesting the armor was enough to almost make Albert puke his guts.

“The only thing that changed is that I usurped a bunch of affinity.”

He narrowed his eyes. By now, he had gotten used to talking to himself in the deafening silence of the caves, where not even his teleportation map was able to track his position beyond a generic patch of black, indicating stone all around.

“Well, considering that you mention affinities yourself, dear system, it would be nice for me to be able to—”

New Quest: Daily Challenge – He says he wants to see Affinities.

· Reach the outside.

· Reward: Affinity Status Screen. Usurp upgrade: Usurp will now always steal a small amount of affinity.

“Oh.”

So, there was an outside! This meant that he was not buried underground with no way to escape! Now very motivated, not wanting to spend another second too many inside the caves, Albert immediately sat down to find the edge of the explored area in his teleportation map and went there.

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The labyrinthic structure was gigantic. Even just the explored parts spanned kilometers underground, snaking around and twisting and turning, with tunnels intersecting each other or overlapping at different height levels, making them look like a block of dry noodles.

There were, among the mass of tangled tunnels, some that lead away from the center of the network. Albert decided to follow the more promising tunnels: those that, other than leading away from the center, also sloped up, under the assumption that he was underground.

It was after a long time spent ascending, killing voidlings that only gave him diminishing returns when he killed and usurped them, that he finally began to think that maybe his assumption was not correct. He was either several kilometers deep underground, which was certainly possible, or perhaps it was not up that he needed to go.

Eventually he decided to change strategy and follow a tunnel that was perfectly horizontal but led straight out of the network he explored so far. It was along the tunnel that he began to notice the magical density of the psionic and void energies was increasing, and along with it the plants of the walls were becoming denser, thicker and much brighter.

Soon each step began to feel like a hurdle. It was like trying to swim upriver through rapids and treacherous currents, with the added problem that the energies attacking Albert were psionic and void, both very dangerous and with unpleasant side effects.

The ring had protected him at first, but soon its charge was depleted, leaving Albert to wander around unprotected.

Barely a few hundred meters further than the point where it begun to be uncomfortable, the energies were already strong enough to make Albert’s nose bleed.

And with the appearance of the first, mildest of symptoms, he finally stopped to ask.

“Am I even going the right way?”

There was nobody to reply to the question, and his guess good was as good as coin toss. Sure, the energies were getting denser, but the fact was not enough by itself to justify a masochistic walk towards assured pain. Nor was there a way to shield himself from the constant attacks. He tried all he could think of, but nothing seemed to work.

The choice was between going back, hoping to find another way, or soldier on, using Healing Touch every couple of minutes to stave off the onset of the symptoms. At this point, Albert had a considerable amount of crystals in his storage, amounting to something like 600FU on top of his normal mana pool and regeneration, meaning that he could go on quite some distance before he needed to turn back. And it wasn’t like the energies interfered with his teleportation, which meant that as long as he was conscious, he could always dip out and return later to explore more.

With his mind set, Albert continued onwards.

***

The wall was thin. Albert would have never been able to tell with his own two eyes, not even with the fiery glow of all the plants on the walls illuminating the cave to day. But with his mana sight, he spotted the cracks that ran along the length of the stone, through which magic seeped into the cave like water behind a dam about to burst.

Albert stared at the wall for a long moment. A thin smile appeared on his face, casting a shadow on his left cheek. “I’ve always wanted to do this.” He said. “If I get hurt, it’s my own fault and nobody else’s.”

He activated Strengthening, charged a punch, making sure he did it right as not to injure his wrist, and punched the wall with all his might. To his great delight, the stone was too weak and thin to be able to resist the force of the punch and shattered, letting the arm pass through and carve a hole in the wall. Despite this, he made a mental note to add a conditioning routine for his hands to his daily training (which he regularly skipped).

A rush of void and psionic energies like he had never seen before hit Albert all at once. The energy was so thick to almost be solid, concentrated to the point it was literally toxic. But before teleporting back to safety, Albert took a peek through the hole.

That’s when he saw it. The outside. From his vantage point up some sort of mountain, he saw desolate slopes of stone and smooth dirt, lit in a purple light by a bright and ominous sky of swirling energies and pure psionic lightning.

Then he was away, barely in the nick of time.

“And the system wants me to go out there?” Albert blinked slowly, confused. “Something isn’t right. Wait. Can I… usurp the energies? What did the skill say?”

USURP 1

· You can steal skills from incapacitated or recently deceased entities. Activating the skill will initiate a destructive scan, leaving nothing behind.

Entities… was magic, or attuned magic, an entity? Anything could be considered an entity, after all. Just look at the way they do it in Minecraft: anything that isn’t a block is an entity. If the system was any similar, then magic had to be an entity. Right?

There was only one way to find out.

As soon as he was able to, Albert teleported back to the hole. He reached with his hand outside, straining as the pain was like being burned alive but without the relief of a brain shutting down all sense of pain and distress. Gritting his teeth, he gathered the magic and cast the skill.

[Usurp failed: invalid target.]

The hand was retracted with record speed, and Albert disappeared in a hurry.

“Damn. Too bad. But it was worth a try.”

Speaking of which, Albert thought to himself, he was becoming quite liberal with his willingness to suffer pain in hopes of gaining even just a shred of power. Was he becoming a power-hungry lunatic? No way, right?

“Okay, gather stock. The mission requires me to reach the outside. It doesn’t mention how long I need to be there. If I extrapolate how much energy is there, and how much charge the ring has, I should be able to last around…” He did the math in his head. It was very inaccurate, of course, but not to the point it was totally unreliable. He had, over the weeks, developed his own system of gauging the power level of things, be it magic or his own items.

“Let’s say I have thirty seconds. I should be able to last more, but let’s make it thirty.”

All he needed to do now was to wait until the ring was once again charged, set a timer on his phone, and teleport back to the hole. From there, he would have half a minute to enlarge the hole until he could pass through, go as far outside as the quest needed him to, and return before he passed out.

No biggie.