The beauty of the desert laid in its emptiness. This emptiness which let me to scavenge corpses without worry for my safety. First came the camel’s baggage. Although I originally wanted to take two camels with me to carry my loot, they had all been cut to shreds by the grizzos. Thankfully, the insects had no use for the merchandise nor the magic bag capable of containing fifty litres of water. Although this wasn’t much. It could fit something important in it, silver. I made certain to tell the young master that the value of silver in my chiefdom was twice that in his village. This way if anything were to go astray and I couldn’t take the spices and wool I would at least have silver.

Thankfully, the young master had brought enough silver to fill a bag with a carry capacity of 25 litres. Plus, I could also quickly estimate the number of coins I had gained. Twenty-five litres converted to cm3 is about 25 000 cm3. Since silver seemed to be as dense on this world as on earth, I pulled up their periodic table in my brain implant. With some quick maths 25 000 cm3 of silver made for about 262 500 grams of silver or about 8 750 silver coins if each silver coin weighs 30 grams. In gold coins with a 50:1 conversion, it meant 175 gold. This was a solid amount of wealth, enough to start a small mercenary company.

I emptied the magic bag of its watery contents and in went the silver. It didn’t fill it completely, only halfway. Unfortunately, it could only carry one type of item at a time. For said reason I would have to let the spices, dyes, and cotton go to waste.

Next came the bodies. I decided to take the guard leaders scouts bow and quiver. Although I didn’t have a skill for it, I had learned how to use it in another type-m/22 world. To restock my quiver, I took Fersia’s arrows. Next, I went to the most promising candidate, the young master. I took off his shirt and found a leather pouch slung over his chest. I put my hand inside and pulled out five gold coins. Since the pouch with the gold coins on the young master was a dimensional storage, I went to the oasis and filled it with 5 litres of water. I transferred the gold into one of my own pouches without the dimensional storage. Finally, I went up to the guard leader’s corpse and tried to pick up his sword; however, I could barely lift it. If I were to take a blow from it head on; my blade would have snapped like dried mud. Finally, I collected the coins from everyone’s pocket which came up to a little less than two gold coins.

For tonight I would spend the night in the oasis. Now that the grizzos had been massacred all that could be heard at night was the rustling wind passing through the palm trees and the dates falling from their branches into my mouth. Personally, I didn’t mind staying here for a bit. I had enough dried meat, hard bread, fruits, and water to last me a few months and I wasn’t in any hurry to go back to the chiefdom. Since it didn’t sound like the invaders had yet to land ashore, the institutions were probably still up and running. A random unidentified guy with grade four skills without any name or identification would raise some suspicions. Who knows, with how desperate they were for manpower they might draft me into the military. However, giving my life to some random chiefdom wasn’t my goal. I needed to find a mercenary group and steal a few of their men.

As such, I decided to stay in the oasis for a week while I got used to my lightning magic.

#

As I understood from experience and what Yoruze told me “Bless his soul” in this world, there were skills which were intrinsic abilities. They simply cost mana to activate like quick step. But also magic which one created with the use of mana manipulation and the element you controlled, in my case lightning. First came mana manipulation which I gained when I advanced to the second grade. Thankfully, I didn’t have to waste time with this since I had already learned how to use mana twice before. I could make the invisible particles dance around me in double helixes or engulf me in a giant mana bubble without worry.

Next came the creation of lightning. This step would be slightly harder since I had never controlled this kind of magic in my previous jobs in type-M/22 worlds. I had once been an earth mage, a water mage, and a fire archer and swordsmen, so lightning wasn’t well known to me.

First off, I tried to create lightning without controlling mana. When I did so electricity flickered in the air, as well as inside my body giving me jolts of pain. With this I had already consumed 20 mana points. Next, I loosely gathered mana in front of my chest. This time the lighting only formed in this confined space and consumed 5 mana points.

Next, I gathered as much mana as possible in a very mana dense sphere, this time imagining it to be half of all my mana reserve. When I did so mini lightning bolts started to streak from one side of the sphere to the other in a manner not too dissimilar to a shoddy plasmasphere.

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It seems that the creation of lighting wasn’t the important bit in this formula but the control of mana. This time I did something more complicated with my mana and formed three balls of loosely gathered mana. When I created lightning, tiny lighting bolts started to jump from one mana gathering spot to another. However, even with so few loosely gathered mana balls all my mana was drained away in a few seconds. I would either need to increase my intelligence to gain more mana or get a job which reduced my mana consumption.

For the next week, I spent my day exhausting my mana and practising different utilization of mana in peace. However, on the eighth day I heard the buzzing of dung beetles. I ran to the edge of the oasis and saw three insects flying in the sky carrying balls of sand. They were probably returning home after heading out to hunt. I took my bow, notched an arrow, and released it in the direction of the beetles. Although I didn’t hit any of them, I did catch their attention. They dropped their food balls and charged at me with their scythes ready to strike. Instead of preparing my sword or releasing more arrows, I created two vertical sticks of mana parallel to each other, three metres apart in front of me. When the grizzos thought they had me, I created lightning and an electrical current was formed between the two mana poles frying the grizzos in the process. With this I had completely exhausted my mana.

Level 3 --> Level 4

Exp (250/1400)

Intelligence

Endurance

Strength

Agility

Perception

Charisma

Mana

43 (+2)

50

31

38

37 (+2)

50

209 (+6)

Do you want the job: Mage

Yes/No

This was a hard choice. Although I needed to find a way to increase my mana efficiency. There might be other, more niche jobs better suited for my style of combat like magic swordsmen. However, since I was going to fight soon, I wasn’t in the place to be picky, so I chose to accept the job. That’s when a new notification popped up.

Do you want to combine the jobs assassin and mage? The new job will reset at level 1, and you will lose all skills related to your old job.

Yes/ No

Now I could easily accept this offer. For non-heroes this was a hard choice as you rarely gained job points, however, that wasn’t an issue for me, so I said “Yes” mentally. If I had known that jobs merged I would have taken the warrior job when I first arrived.

You have gained the job assassin mage and the following skills:

* Muffled step (this skill makes your steps produce less noise)

* Muffled mana (this skill makes your mana harder to detect for scouts)

* Muffled magic (this skill makes your magic produce less sound)

* Mana efficiency (spells cost 25% less, not skills)

Now if I could get two new jobs and combine them, I might be able to get a level three jobs. With this kind of system, a person could get one level three, a level two, and a level one job. If I keep it up, I might only fulfill my mission’s basic objective faster than anticipated. Anyhow, I needed to find a library sooner than later to increase my intelligence and learn of the job combinations.

Perhaps I should leave the oasis now. I walked back into the foliage and took off my clothes before jumping into the water. No there’s no need to rush. Although I might want to work faster, the world wouldn’t move at my pace. It was better to keep practising lightning magic for now.

#

A week had passed, and I had killed eleven more grizzos.

Level 4 --> Level 7

Grade 3 --> Grade 3.5

* Gain 1 job point (Total 3)

Exp (750/1700)

Intelligence

Endurance

Strength

Agility

Perception

Charisma

Mana

48 (+5)

52 (+2)

31

38

42 (+5)

50

226 (+17)

With this not only did I almost fully understand what I can achieve at my grade with lightning magic, but I had nearly reached the fourth grade. If I were lucky enough, I might reach it on my way back, and from what I’ve seen a grade 4 mage might be worth a grade 6 warriors.

As such, on my ninth day, I left the oasis. And then on my way back I passed the skeletons of my old companions This is when I remembered that I had yet to change my skin colour. I told my brain implant to start modifying my melanin levels to the average skin tone of the people in the village. As soon as it received the order, my skin tone started to lighten. I was now truly ready to leave, and so I followed the path to the merchant village laid out to me by my internal gps.