Chapter 44

Nick spent a week teaching Ariana various basic techniques of the Phantom Sword. Her progress in this was decent, she managed to master one movement technique and one quick sword strike technique. In Nick's opinion, this was really great. He was able to see that her physique easily adapted to the techniques of his clan.

Over the course of a week, he had accumulated a decent amount of mana, the additional stats he had gained from the second-class level he had poured into mana regeneration again. So now he had 1790 MP available to him. It was still catastrophically low, but he could not devote more time to meditation. He spent about five hours a day in meditation, and the rest of the time was spent sleeping, studying with Ariana, and having fun with Linela.

On the morning of the eighth day, Nick was eating meat and rice with the rest of his classmates. Even such food still tasted divine. He thought about how hard it was without mana potions, if he had them, he wouldn't have stalled his progress in magic, especially in the skill [Casting Spells] [Uncommon] Lvl 199. The fact that he couldn't waste his will and mana on experimenting with spell designs made him very sad.

After finishing their food, many people went about their business, some went to train, some to get food, and so on. Today, everyone was busy, just like him. Nick went to meet Ariana and finally go hunting. On the way, the prince stopped him and called him along. Nick was worried that something alarming might have happened.

"Is something wrong Evander?" The prince nodded and answered.

"You could say that Green is leaving our camp."

Nick quickly realized what this would lead to. When the troll was with them in the camp, they silently enjoyed his protection and all sorts of services that he provided them of his own free will. If he left, they would first of all open the camp to attack by all sorts of creatures and completely lose the illusion of security.

"Damn, this looks really bad." Nick said, shaking his head in frustration.

"Yes, I agree, I tried to convince the troll to stay, or to leave Mreu with us, but he refused. He needs to do something at home, and he can't ask the cat to do something she doesn't want to do."

"Well, that was to be expected. We're lucky that the whole story with him ended like this."

"I agree, Green has most likely already left, but he said that we can visit him in a couple of days."

"I see, so you want something from me?"

The prince looked him over from head to toe, his face grew more firm and he spoke.

"Yes, I know that you are bad at choosing your opponents, so I seriously ask you not to engage in combat with anyone who might find our camp."

"But we know very well that orcs and goblins live not far from us. If they see us, we have no choice but to kill them. Of course, they will still start looking for their brothers, but at least this will buy us more time.

"I know, that's why I'm asking you not to go into their territory. We're really lucky that the orcs haven't found us yet."

"Okay, I won't go more than 20 kilometers from the camp."

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry but I'm worried about it." The prince said with a slight smile.

"It's okay, well I'll go then."

"Yes, good luck in the hunt!"

Nick waved goodbye to the prince and went to pick up Arina. When he arrived, she was sitting near her hut, sorting through Alistair's poisons.

Arina wore leather armor over simple clothes that covered her entire body except for her hands and face, and she had thrown knives and pouches of Alistair's poisons attached to her. She had a 160 cm long bow over her shoulder and a quiver with 40 arrows on her back, most of them completely wooden, but some still had metal tips. Most noticeable thing about her equipment was the black wooden sword in a black wooden scabbard. It was the cursed sword that Alistair had made. When unfolded, it looked like black wood carved into a normal meter-long sword, with a black cursed core embedded in the guard. Alistair had managed to graft the Ent's main ability onto the sword: if enough cursed mana was in the sword, he could destroy the life force of an opponent by pouring cursed mana into them upon touching the blade.

In Nick's opinion, this was the main nuance, no one knew how to replenish the cursed mana in the weapon, except to pump it with ordinary mana and wait until it eventually becomes such. The Cursed Ent's Core made cursed mana out of ordinary mana, but to achieve the necessary "concentration" of cursed mana, it really took a lot of time. Now the sword was charged for a maximum of three hits, which was not much, but the strength of the sword's ability fully justified it, in addition to the enchantment, which made the sword almost as durable as mana steel.

"Hello, are you ready to use techniques in battle?"

"Of course, and thank you so much again for teaching me them." Ariana said with a slight bow, to which Nick waved his hand.

"It doesn't matter, let's go. The prince asked us not to go far from the camp, so we will be 20 kilometers at most."

"Fine."

Ariana readily agreed and they set out into the forest. They both used stealth-giving skills, Nick used [Ghost Sword Mastery] and Ariana used [Hunter's Steps][Uncommon], it was not a magic skill and did not use any other energy. It simply increased her movement skill and balance, focusing on suppressing sound when walking.

During the week of training, Nick asked Ariana about many of her skills and shared his own.

Ariana's known skills:

Meditation [Uncommon]

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Sense of Mana [Uncommon]

Mana Manipulation [Uncommon]

Stamina Manipulation [Uncommon]

High Pain Resistance [Uncommon]

Recovery [Uncommon+]

Art of Unpredictable Shot [Rare+]

Unpredictable Shooting [Rare+]

Advanced Hunter's Mark [Uncommon+]

Hunter's Steps [Uncommon]

Hunter's Gaze [Uncommon]

Sword Mastery [Uncommon]

Advanced Identification [Rare]

These were the skills that Arina talked about, it was a surprisingly large number for their age. What he focused on most were a few skills:

[Recovery][Uncommon] as far as Nick understood, this skill is worse than his skill [Quick Recovery][Rare] by one step. It accelerated the recovery of stamina and vitality by 25%.

Then the [Art of Unpredictable Shot] [Rare+] skill and the [Unpredictable Shooting] [Rare+] skill. The first skill increased her mastery archery, and the second increased her strength, agility, constitution, perception, and intelligence stats.

But what he found most interesting was the skill [Advanced Hunter's Mark] [Uncommon+], which was the same skill she used in the fight against Ent. When her arrow hits, a flash of orange energy is released from the tip, (it's a mixture of mana and stamina.) The skill uses this orange flash to prevent the enemy from using mana and stamina, putting a "mark" on them, making them very hard to lose. Roughly speaking, the mark increases the sensitivity of one's own mana that is in the enemy.

In Nick's opinion, this was a very strong build, really, really strong. Under the right circumstances, she would be able to defeat him and even do it very easily. After all, he didn't have the [Danger Sense][Rare] skill, so it was unlikely that he would be able to sense the arrow with Aura and dodge it in an instant, and in the case of a non-fatal hit, he would have to fight her binding technique.

In their hypothetical fight, he would only win by using techniques at the maximum of his constitution. This was confirmed by his skill [Reincarnator's Madness]. He used it every day when he learned something new about her abilities and strategy. It was always decided by whether he could get to her before she hit him with an arrow. He could fight well against her [Hunter's Mark], but every time an arrow hit, his body was pierced through, and when the technique took effect, it slowed him down significantly, not allowing him to heal and use stamina for further skills and techniques. Each time, in order to break the binding technique, he had to spend about 5 seconds on it, it all depended on where the arrow hit, if the arrow hit the stomach, he spent more time on it, if not, then less. In fact, such an injury slowed him down greatly, which is why he could not dodge the next arrows and always died.

Nick had not yet gotten used to the possibility of dying in the vision of the Reincarnator's Madness, it was very painful and unpleasant. After many imaginary deaths, his [Rare Pain Resistance] skill increased by one level, as did his [Mental Resistance] skill. Nick began to think that the skills considered his deaths as a form of mental attack. Of course, he did not mind this at all.

There were several winning strategies against Ariana. The first was to cover the distance to her very quickly and attack with magic, and then engage in close combat. The second was to hide at a long distance and try to dodge arrows, sensing them with Aura, until Ariana's resources ran out. Both strategies had about the same success, but Nick was very sorry that Ariana defeated him more often.

Nick snapped out of his thoughts and started looking for new tracks, roughly tracking the direction of the camp. They spent about half an hour in the forest and didn't find a real enemy. There were many low-level [Common] and [Uncommon] animals, but they didn't attack them. After several hours of unsuccessful searching, they went to the territory of the iron wolves. There they met a pack of 10 wolves up to about Lvl 35. No matter how high they thought of themselves, victory would only be possible if they spent mana, which none of them wanted to do. Having bypassed the wolves, they traveled further through the forest and met a really strong creature. Ariana noticed it first and signaled with her hand to stop and be silent. She pointed her finger at it, Nick tried to take a closer look and only after a few seconds saw something further. Of course, he immediately appreciated it.

Name: Pinky

Status: Witch's Familiar

Race: Poison Helizar [Rare] Lvl 121

Damn, this looks bad.

Nick got a better look at it and it was a thin purple lizard, about 2.5 meters long. Nick gently put his hand on Ariana's shoulder and gestured that they were leaving. Ariana stopped looking at the lizard and nodded to him. After that, they quickly and quietly left. After 10 minutes, Nick spoke.

"What did Identification tell you?"

"Poisonous Helizar [Rare] Lvl 121, so what?"

Nick didn't think long and decided to say that he had [Great Identification] [Special].

"I have the acquired skill [Great Identification] [Special] and it tells me that this is the Witch's Familiar."

Ariana turned pale at his words, [Witch] or [Witcher] were almost forbidden classes in the Holy Kingdom.

"Bitch! If there's a witch coven nearby, we're dead." Arina said with great panic.

"I know, but I doubt there's a coven here. They would have gotten rid of the Troll if that were the case, or things could be different." Nick said and thought about that black spot in the [Reincarnator's Madness] precognition.

He began to structure the information he learned from his magic lessons and different classes.

[Witches] when they received the stock class were only [Uncommon] level. To unlock the class, they need to perform a witch ritual. Most of their abilities are based on [Karmic Magic], but have different forms. It all depends on the witches. They can have any magic in their arsenal and often resort to using black, or any other forbidden school of magic. [Witches][Uncommon] level in direct combat are very weak, without rituals, their magic is mediocre, due to the lack of characteristics.

But this only applies if the witch is not in a coven. When she goes through the ritual and joins a coven, she gains class evolution to [Rare] level, but most importantly, she gains the ability to take power from other witches in the coven.

This ability depends on the ritual, but basically they can increase willpower and mental control by borrowing them from other witches. In this way, a witch can easily increase her stats by 2 or more times, again depending on the ritual. If a witch takes more power than she can handle, her stats may temporarily drop after using it. In the case where she uses even more power, she will begin to lose vitality, years of life, stats, etc., without the possibility of recovery. The price often depends on the ritual.

This is what makes [Witches] so dangerous. One witch can use the power of the coven and defeat many mages, paying for it with her life. And the head witch of the coven will be incomparably stronger than the rest and can use even more power, the limitations depend on the ritual.

But this becomes their weakness, if a witch uses power, the rest of the witches at this moment have it fall, the fewer witches in the coven, the less power they can draw. The main ritual binds witches together, which makes them vulnerable to some schools of magic.

Nick thought quickly, remembering the main information. Now that he could think about it calmly, he decided that the black spot in his vision was indeed a witch, but clearly an unusual one.

It can't be the witch who sent this familiar. Maybe there was a stronger witch here, right when I used the skill? That sounds plausible.

"Okay, we need to go to camp and tell the prince about this."

"That's right." Ariana said.