16 ADVANCING
"Haaaaaaaaaa~"
Stroking with his pen in his left hand, Ivan sighed as he rested his back against the rough stone wall behind him.
He had no idea how long he had been adventuring for as there were no day or night cycles in Orcus but the exhaustion and stiffness in his bones were enough to tell him he would need to rest up for the day.
Despite having a skill that made him require less sleep, the exertion of his body and mana used to defend against the onslaught of monsters drained him quite a bit. Though a night's rest should be all it takes to recover the lost mana. As for his sore body, well he'd have to get used to it.
Ivan was by no means a melee user, even if he just had to jab at monsters with a spear or dodge whenever they attacked it was still quite taxing on the poor shut in.
As for the stamina potions, well they would give him more energy but do nothing to negate the pain of his body. His Moderate Healing + potions would take care of the pain, but he'd rather use them on more substantial injuries rather than ones that could be fixed in a short period of time.
Since the moment he entered the dungeon he had taken no moments to rest as he was worried some adventuring party or maybe even the knights would venture on into the dungeon and spot him.
But just because he was in a rush didn't mean he wouldn't document the events and progress of his delving. In fact he had been keeping track of the amount of times he had to descend a flight of stairs, those very stairs signifying the descent into another level of the dungeon.
After all, his bundle of maps would become useless if he didn't even know what level he was on. In the month gap between his agreement with the King and his 'death' Ivan had been getting updates from Hajime about the progress the class made in the dungeon.
It seemed losing some members of the class slowed down their progress but that didn't stop them from making world record pace to the last documented floor. In fact it was this pace that only made Ivan hurry his steps.
The last he heard from Hajime their progress finally slowed down when they reached the 30s. As for what particular floor they were on, last Ivan remembered he was told they made it to the 35th floor before Captain Meld directed them back to the surface.
So for now Ivan's goal was to make it to the 40th floor, once he was there he'd have at least a few days to rest before the others caught up.
Ivan patted the stone wall behind him before backing up. Rather than sleeping out in the open where he could get killed before he could even notice, he thought it'd be a much better idea to use his transmutation skills to hide within the walls. So long as he poked a few tiny holes he shouldn't have a problem with breathing.
Now, why did he back up despite needing to be in contact with whatever he wanted to transmute? Well firstly he wanted to try out an idea of his.
He closed his eyes and released a gray tendril from his body, it collided with the stone wall and stood there momentarily.
No reaction.
Deciding to up the power a bit, Ivan retrieved the tendril and focused more on its shape. Rather than a tip akin to a spear what he needed was something that conducted his mana well into whatever it touched.
So, with a few minutes of fine tuning and thinking, what was produced was a long arm with a gray hand made of mana at the end of it. The hope was that it'd behave as if it were his real hand and allow him to transmute whatever it touched.
He sent it to the wall again and waited once more for something to happen.
No reaction.
Silently he retrieved the mana hand once more. He wasn't frustrated by the result at all, in fact it was something he had expected. While having his mana keep the shape of a hand was difficult, he theorized he would need two different conductors of mana to form a mana circle. In other words he just needs another hand.
He stood silently once more, this time thinking and molding his mana tendrils into two hands instead of one. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead, if his concentration were to break the shape of the hands would become deformed and unusable for transmuting.
DOKI DOKI DOKI
His heart thumped louly as his mana reserves that were already low were beginning to thin out.
And then, voila. Out from his body expelled two tendrils of gray mana, each adorning a palm made of mana on each end
They silently made their way to the stone wall and rested there for a moment. Ivan, who had his eyes closed for the duration of the process, opened them softly.
ZING
The palms grew bright as the magic circle formed between them started sparking currents of gray electricity. And in the next moment the very same wall the hands touched started to transform into a beautiful arch made of stone, leaving room in the middle for a door to be inserted.
From that gap Ivan watched amazed as a room decorated with ornate crown moldings made of stone decorated the ceiling. If there had been some logs nearby to make a wooden floor, Ivan would have been more ecstatic, but for now he'd settle with the smooth and reflective material that currently made the floor.
As for the walls, he grazed his hands over them as he marveled at the texture of them, not failing to notice the indents perfect for shelving his stuff.
This little whole in the world was by far his most sophisticated creation he's made using his transmutation ability. Done at a speed that would have taken him way longer and would have required way more thinking.
He formed the hands of mana again and this time focused on making a solid door to close it off from the world, of course in a way that'd leave him air to breathe.
All this was by far a process that was not instant, in fact it took a whole five minutes for the room and door to form. Not only that but Ivan felt even more lethargic as his mana reserves reached an all time low.
But compared to the estimated 30 minutes it would take to replicate this craft despite requiring the same amount of energy, Ivan was quite satisfied with the results.
While the hands of mana extended his range of transmutation by quite a bit, it took a distracting amount of concentration just to make sure they didn't break their form. As for the range, he believed that just the same as his normal tendrils of mana, the hands of mana would only reach 10 meters.
This was a great relief to Ivan, who was worried about being unable to transmute while using his spear. Sure he could be the one transmuting while his tendrils did the offensive stuff but so long as it wasn't a target he could see with his own eyes he wasn't confident in hitting them with his tendrils.
Unfolding the sleeping bag he kept attached to his backpack, Ivan snuggled in and made plans for tomorrow.
As of now he was currently located on the 25th floor. Since the class had to return to the surface at the 35th floor he guessed they must've expended a lot of energy just to reach it.
This is where Ivan held the advantage. Rather than having to return to the surface to recuperate all he had to do was make a little hidey hole to crawl in until he was in tip top shape.
Call it overconfidence but Ivan had faith he'd be able to make it to the 45th floor by the time he had to take another rest. That's not including if his clear time would increase should he improve his control with his hands of mana.
For now what he wanted to focus on was getting a better weapon. Sooner or later his spear would fail to penetrate the skin or hide of more powerful monsters. In fact he was quite surprised by it's durability so far seeing as how he made it out of some random material he found when first entering the dungeon.
Preferably he wants to find some sort of mineral that wouldn't lose its effectiveness even when doused in his potions and elixirs.
Aside from deciding what kind of stick he was going to stab his opponents with, Ivan had no doubts that his method of big sticking his foe with his pure mana would one day lose its effectiveness.
Rather than using such a brutish way of fighting it would be more beneficial for him to develop his Alchemy to be more lethal and offensive rather than what is created by it. He dreaded the thought of being in a situation where he couldn't even make any elixirs or potions to fight off a foe, as such rather than creating weapons or tools what he needed the most before reaching the end of this dungeon was to become a weapon himself
So that even if he were put in a situation where the clothes on his back were stripped from him, he could resist. And if that didn't work then he at least wanted to make his foe as miserable as he was before he went down.
'Ways of making my alchemy more offensive huh…'
If he was going to make any progress then he was going to have to think out of the box. 'Ars Magna' was going to be his way of weaponizing his class but seeing as how that would take too long he needed to make something for now.
The only reason he hasn't picked up any magic spells was because of their limitations. One limitation being a chant always being required and the other being that unless one had an affinity with the type of magic they were casting the price of consumption and time to cast would increase.
These were two things Ivan was unwilling to sacrifice. All it would take is for some swordsman or beast to close the gap in between casting to finish him off.
As such he needed something that strayed from the conventional power of this world. Something only his Alchemist class would be capable of doing, or at using his class in a way others wouldn't even think of.
And so Ivan went to bed peacefully, dreaming of ways to increase his survivability.
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Sorry for the shorter than usual chapter but I felt this was a good place to end. Now, it's on to the 200 floors of Orcus! I hope you guys don't mind me doing a few time skips here and there as if I detailed all 200 floors there'd be about 150 chapters before we've even seen Yue.
Anyways, thanks to all of you for stopping by! You better have a great day/night!
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