Over the next half hour, the soldiers began to catch up to him, and Jonathan started to flag. He was too close to them to repeat his performance with the runes, and he knew that it would eventually come down to a fight, unless he played this smart. He could see a large pack of Ash Prowlers in the distance, about 25 strong, led by a group of elites. Smiling, Jonathan picked up his pace, running straight for them.
Holding out his left hand, he imbued his gauntlet with Divinity, sending out a pulse of beckoning energy towards the monsters. He was met with a series of rabid howls, and the pack began to lope towards him.
As they reached him a few minutes later, Jonathan leaped over their heads, trusting that they would notice the better target behind him. The sight of the horses sent the dog like beasts into a frenzy, and they attacked instantly, tearing into flesh and bones. The soldiers quickly dealt with the monsters, but they had lost valuable ground, ground that Jonathan was not going to give up anytime soon.
Spotting another group of monsters, Jonathan quickly changed his trajectory, heading directly for them. This time it was a group of Fetid Ooze elites, each of which responded eagerly to his call. They lumbered towards the rune, moving too slowly for them to be a threat to Jonathan. To the large group of soldiers behind him however, without any easy way to move out of the way, they were deadly.
Jonathan leaped over their heads once more, letting them crash into the enemy ranks behind him a few minutes later. Hearing screams as men and horses were devoured made him smile. Eventually, after another three similar encounters, he saw the soldiers turn tail and flee, heading back towards the safety of the road. There was a trail of corpses leading back there, and Jonathan smiled grimly after them.
He kept on going for another few miles, and upon feeling satisfied that he wasn't being followed,he pulled out the map and opened it. It was made out of some sort of aged vellum, with a dark yellow color. Still, it was quite well made, with clear demarcations between the various regions.
In the center was a stylized city, with large towers and an imposing wall. Jonathan assumed that it was not to scale, because if it was, then that city was hundreds of miles wide. Then again, it could very well be so, seeing as it was the capital of this world.
Eight roads led out of the capital heading off through the ash towards the far reaches of the world, where they connected in a circle around the habitable zone of the Ash Heaps. Past that, there was nothing, save for a large red line, and a message that said to never go past the edge of the roads. It seemed like the roads acted as a natural barrier to anyone trying to leave, not that they would want to in any case.
Hundreds of cities and towns dotted the ash, and a few ruins were mentioned too, mainly ones that were much larger than normal. For example, there was something called a dungeon located a few hundred miles away from Jonathan, assuming that he was reading the map correctly.
The soldier had marked it up with a small dot where the road that he was stationed on was, and the dungeons were halfway in between that one and another.
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Jonathan was about halfway through the habitable zone, still quite far away from the Ashen Citadel, where he would eventually have to go to find Granath. He had nowhere to go other than this dungeon anyway, and if it was what he thought it was, then it would be a useful place to gain power.
In his experience with fantasy worlds, dungeons were places that were not for imprisonment, as they were in the real world, but places filled with monsters and magical items, where an adventurer could become rich and powerful, or die an ignominious death. Jonathan was not planning to do the latter either.
A small smile graced his face as he thought about dungeons. He had never expected that he would one day be delving into one himself. However, he suspected that it would not be at all like in the books or video games. Knowing the Infinite Hells, it would be some place of bloodshed and butchery, rather than a place of challenges and rewards. However, the levels would be enough for Jonathan, if that was all he ended up getting out of it. Jonathan furled up the map, and set off in the general direction of the dungeon, starting to cycle his mana as he did so.
Over the next few days, he covered about two hundred miles, and in that time, he had been training his pathway skills nonstop. His mana manipulation skill was hovering on the cusp of ranking up, at Student Rank 9, and his martial arts skill was not far behind either, at Student Rank 8. His martial style was also coming close to ranking up too, as he had been practicing on every monster that he could find. There were no further levels, and he had not been seeking any out, but he was satisfied with his other gains in any case.
His Divinity related abilities had ranked up somewhat too, bringing Runecrafting to Student Rank 6, and Truesight to Student Rank 4. Their progress was slower than the others, but that was because Jonathan had little time to practice. He had been able to draw runes on his skin and armor to practice with, but because neither of his runes were being made to last, and he simply flooded them with Divinity to break them after creation, his progress was slower than if he had been using them the entire time.
Jonathan came to a stop some time later, finally feeling as if he was ready to upgrade his mana manipulation abilities. He was almost flying through the ranks at this point, but he knew that it would get far harder as he progressed further.
Jonathan sat down, and meditated on his core, trying to look for anything that he had missed so far. He had discovered the way of compression, which had prompted his ascension into the Student Ranks, but now he needed a deep insight to rank up once more. He suspected that it would be something that built upon what he already knew, but other than simply compressing his core more than before, he had no idea what he was supposed to do.
Sighing, he decided to start with that idea. He gripped his mana core firmly within his mind’s eyes, and began to compress it, leveraging every point of his Intelligence in the process. Seeing as he was a lot more powerful this time than the last time, he was able to compress it further than ever before.
Jonathan eventually was forced to stop, but this time, he was able to see why. There was a smaller ball of pure mana in the very center of his core, one that could not be compressed any further, no matter how much he tried. As he reached that ball of energy, he sensed that he had almost broken through to the next rank. His core began to leak mana however, and he watched as it began to move outwards. Pain lanced through his body as his mana suddenly began to ripple through him, gaining power from his body and soul before rushing back towards the center. With that, he was finished. Exiting his core and entering the real world once more, Jonathan smiled as he read the notification waiting for him.
You have reached Apprentice Rank 1 with Mana Manipulation!
In compressing your core as far as you could go, you found the hidden kernel of power that dwells within all living beings. It is a conduit to the very energy of the universe itself, and is the most important part of your mana manipulation abilities.
+10 to Intelligence, +5 to Wisdom