“How the hell did that wretch manage to get so many points so fast?” Victor said to Nicholas, glaring at the scoreboard where Lucas’ name had jumped to the top ten.
“He must have cheated. It’s the only way,” another of Nicholas’ men replied, and the others around him nodded in agreement.
“It doesn’t matter how he did it. He should be exiting at any moment now. Top ten is his limit,” Nicholas said calmly, though he was raging inside.
He never thought that bastard would be able to reach the top fifty, much less the top ten. To do so in such a short period of time was extremely shocking to him, but he couldn’t let others notice his unease. He was their leader, after all.
In the past, they had depended on his leadership to reach the city safely, and now that they had, they were enjoying the privileges that came with being a part of Zoria’s dominant group. If Nicholas were to lose the top spot, things would undoubtedly change for everyone.
Despite his concerns, he really believed Lucas had cheated, simply because it would be too hard to go through three floors so fast, and he clearly needed to in order to reach that amount of points.
Nicholas had gone through both floors, and the second especially took a great amount of time for him to be able to beat it. During his run, he even managed to kill Sultan’s arms with the assistance of some local forces. Unfortunately, he was unable to kill Sultan even with his two helpers fighting alongside him, partially because they were already injured due to the previous fight and also simply because Sultan was too strong, forcing them to flee in the end.
However, after he completed the floor, he received a nice 2,000 bonus points for his deeds on Sultan’s lair, so he wasn’t too dejected by his failure. He simply accepted that no one would be able to beat the man, so there was no point in feeling bad about it.
But now, looking at Lucas’ points, he experienced some doubt. Despite how high Lucas had reached on the scoreboard, a big part of him doubted his performance had been better than his. It was simply impossible. But somehow, in the depths of his mind, a question kept pestering him: What if he actually managed to kill Sultan?
…
According to Faruk’s journal, necromancers used mostly two sorts of magic: dark magic and soul magic. Lucas could form his army of undead using only dark magic, according to Faruk’s technique, but if he wanted to learn how to be a complete necromancer, he would have to learn soul magic as well.
The reason he agreed to Faruk’s contract, however, was because having an army of undead honestly seemed like the perfect idea for someone like him, and not because of any particular interest in the necromancer class. Once he managed to form a few undead bodyguards like Faruk and became somewhat skilled in controlling them, he would be able to go to places he wouldn’t dare go otherwise, among other things.
However, his interest in the field stopped there, and for that reason, he saw no point in pursuing the soul magic part of the necromancer’s set of skills, and he wouldn’t do so unless something made him change his mind later on.
Whatever the case, learning only dark magic was already a plate full, and Lucas avidly read everything he could find about it in the necromancer’s journal and books, which wasn’t much.
The necromancer talked about a few uses of dark magic in his journal, but he didn’t talk about the most important thing: how to evoke and use it. Lucas was already expecting that; the necromancer had told him this himself. He never needed to discover how to use it, because once he chose the necromancer class, the whole process was automatic.
Still, Lucas was hopeful of finding some sort of information that told him what he needed to look for in one of his books, if nothing else. But after an hour without any progress, he decided to take a more practical approach to the matter.
He moved back to the training room and took out his staff. Faruk had told him that he needed the staff if he wanted to use dark magic, and he also told him that his death aura might help him in his search for the dark mana, so he started his tests.
…
Lucas thought that his death aura would be a huge help in his attempt to evoke dark mana and indeed it was. But it was his experience with dark magic—back in the dark forest—that helped him the most. It was all there for him to see; he only needed to remember how he felt during his time in the fog.
It took him nearly three hours to reach this conclusion, however, as he had been solely focused on his death aura and the staff. It wasn’t that he was stupid to not have realized this earlier, it was just that the death aura and the staff seemed to have a connection he wasn’t expecting, and that led him to try to create something out of it without success for a long time.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Once Lucas realized what he should be looking for, his progress was faster than expected, and about thirty minutes later, a mana he assumed, by its color and general feel that it was dark mana, was formed.
Faruk was right in assuming the death aura and dark mana had different consistencies and qualities, despite them being the product of the same thing. It was like water and steam in that regard; the aura was the steam, more ethereal, while the mana was more fluid and easy to grasp.
He was exultant to have succeeded in such a short amount of time, he believed not even Faruk expected him to take only three hours to accomplish this goal. However, all the excitement died down when he reached his next objective: splitting the mana.
Theoretically, this seemed simple enough, but in practice, it proved nearly impossible. He could transform the mana into fire, water, earth and wind to some extent, now he could even transform it into dark mana. But he still had no idea what he had to do to split his own mana, and after a bunch of tests involving imagining a scissor, saw, knife, or anything really that would help him visualize the breaking of the mana in two, he made no progress whatsoever, even after hours spent on the task.
Lucas was already wondering if he would only be able to achieve the feat with more perception and considering if he should go make more when he remembered Faruk’s words. If he wasn’t mistaken, the necromancer had said that to be able to split his mana in two, it would require him to have great control over his own mana, and Lucas, as he was now, was merely a beginner.
“Maybe I should stop focusing so much on the technique, since I’m already able to use dark magic and won’t be able to make use of it here,” Lucas murmured to himself.
The technique Faruk had taught him was strictly for raising the undead, and since he doubted that he could create an army of undead while in the tower, there was no point in insisting on the technique for the time being. Instead, his time would be better spent on mana control so that once he leaves the tower, he would have a way better shot at splitting his mana.
After deciding on his next course of action, Lucas went back to his experiments.
…
The time in the waiting room passed faster than ever as Lucas did his best to hone his mana manipulation skills. During this period, he was able to marginally increase the power from his Fire Shot and also managed to reduce the damage done to his body when he used the Fire Blast. However, the damages were still not on a negligible level, and after his last attempt, he decided to shift his focus to other sorts of training.
He also worked to try and replicate the water wall after his previous failed attempts. Despite now being much better at controlling the water, he still fell short when it came to transforming the consistency of the water to become more heavy and mud-like to slow down his opponent’s attacks. He still believed he was getting closer, so he didn’t feel too discouraged by his failure this time around.
However, while he did spend some time on those things, most of his time was spent making sculptures. It started out as an aimless attempt to make something out of the dirt that popped out of his hand when he was randomly reassessing what he could do magic-wise, and pretty soon it turned into his main focus.
In his first attempt, the pile of dirt didn’t amount to much, as he managed to make something vaguely similar to a pyramid. At first, the exercise was only meant to distract his mind before he started throwing Fire Shots again, but after a couple of efforts, Lucas realized how great of a training this was.
While magic was the end product of mana, both were strictly related to each other, and so it was the logical outcome that when he trained his magic, he was also training his mana control, and shaping things with it was a great exercise with a fairly low cost compared to his Fire Shots.
After discovering this fantastic training, Lucas went on to shape about a hundred things, using mainly the earth and water elements. The experience was pretty similar to a kid playing on the beach, which made him feel a little absurd, but the truth was that deep down, Lucas had an artistic vein he had long buried under the pile of books and studies high school brought to him.
In the past, sheltered as he was due to his condition, he used to spend every little bit of free time when he wasn’t studying, or playing videogames, drawing in his notebooks. Due to how often he did it, he became fairly good at it, but since he never took it as seriously as his studies and only did it as a hobby, he was never concerned about improving in the artistic field.
Now, however, as Lucas practically pierced the wet dirt with his eyes, he nearly cursed himself with the result. He had been attempting to make a snowman—but with dirt, so a… dirtman. But his torso and head had glaring deformities, making the whole thing look like anything but what he was aiming for.
He was fairly satisfied with his progress, however, and having more fun than he expected with the task—he had even thought about making a glass sculpture, in homage to his unique class, but despite him believing he could produce the sand required and also the fire, he had no idea about the specifics on how to actually make glass, so he ultimately decided to drop it.
It was with a surprisingly great amount of sadness that he stopped his practice. His previously neglected artistic vein had been thirsty for too long, and even hours weren’t enough to satisfy it, but responsibility forced him to stop.
He had decided it would be wise to make two elixirs to take with him to the next floor before his time in the waiting room was up, so he was forced to stop playing with—practicing mana.
The agility elixir he had taken with him to Sultan’s lair had been a great help, and maybe if it wasn’t for that, he would have failed to defeat him in the end. That showed Lucas the importance of being prepared for all possible scenarios, so this time, he decided to take with him one for agility and one for strength. The crafting of the strength elixir took a little more time than he expected, but he managed to pull it off just a few minutes before the waiting room closed for him.
Feeling ready, Lucas left the waiting room for the second time and stepped onto the elevator. A second later, he sensed the familiar feeling of the elevator moving upwards, and then all went black again.