22 - Next is Void Magic

Over the next 5 years, I used the methods in [Sphinx Cutter] to quickly amass and infuse the remaining skills recorded in it.

It got harder as I went. By the end, it took 10 months to learn the last skill. Of course, the actual infusion only took a day once I had the a new skill slot open in my blood.

The skills also got harder to learn as I went.

The last 3, in particular, were very hard.

After [Aura Boost], the book had the following:

[Mana Flow] - By constantly staying in a state of almost no mana, the body becomes adapted to surviving off of little mana when it has already surpassed the limits of a manaless being. It does this by increasing efficiency in the usage and flow of mana. Much like how running every day can improve blood flow, the body learns to improve mana flow.

[Basic Healing Factor] - By constantly injuring oneself in ways that would normally heal with time, and casting healing magic to speed up the healing, the body learns how to apply its own mana in place of the spell to perform the same function. Healing of basic wounds is significantly enhanced. Minor cuts heal in seconds. Major wounds also heal somewhat faster.

[Improved Aura Blade Beam] - After learning aura blade beam and making it into a skill, constant usage of it allows the body to get uses to the circulation pathway for making aura blade beams. Aura blade beams can be created more quickly, and each one maximally optimizes mana and aura for power in the attack.

[Killing Intent Resistance] - Some stronger creatures that had killed a lot could manifest a kind of "killing intent", which was a kind of energy. The book said to fight random beasts in purposefully prolonged fights to get this, but I just used Ixtra instead.

His killing intent would have been way stronger than it was, which was already stronger than described in the book, but he wasn't actually intending on killing me. Now, the common effect of freezing up in fear upon feeling an immense amount of killing intent would no longer happen, unless it was truly an absurd amount.

[Multicast Proclivity] - continuously multicast spells day in and day out to gain a significant enhancement in multicasting. This includes speed, mana cost, ease of casting, and more.

Besides these, the last 3 were incredibly difficult:

[Advanced Healing Factor] - exactly what it sounds like. I had to have Ixtra give me continuous severe and critical slashes for this. Thankfully he could use healing magic too, he had learned alongside me, so at least I didn't have to heal myself when I was gritting my teeth in pain and barely staying still.

I had to do this torturous training for 9 months. 9 whole months. A baby somewhere had gone from being sperm to being born in the time I had spent doing this shit. Well, at least it was worth it. Even severe wounds would now heal in under a minute, so long as I had mana.

And the really nice thing was that the skill worked a lot better than a healing spell, didn't need me to cast a healing spell, used less mana than a healing spell, almost none in fact, and used further still less mana since it healed faster than the spell would heal.

One of the last 2 skills was actually a movement technique. It was a series of spells, some multicast and some cast in quick succession, that allowed for a particular form of fast movement with little energy expenditure.

However, the magic circles weren't cast outside the body. They were cast inside the body, in a very particular way. The end result was your body learning the mana circulation inside itself. There were even little mini magic circles created inside the blood vessels in the process.

The reason this was difficult was that those very same little mini magic circles in the bloodstream caused the blood to burst in the process.

So, alongside ingraining the movement technique, [Swift], I also obtained the 9th skill of the manual, besides the movement technique, called [Lesser Blood Burst Resistance].

Although that would be of help, I was sure, hell it let me learn [Swift], but goddamn did it hurt. I had to endure that for 10 months.

Ten fucking months of constant minor blood bursting followed by immediate rapid healing due to the healing factor skill learned before.

Thank the gods there were spells to reduce pain.

Literally, thank the gods, since the spells worked on their magic systems.

With that, I was 42 years old, but I didn't look that old. I only looked like I was barely 30, maybe late 20s. Class blood gave longer lifespans.

My lifespan now was probably over 150 years old.

Given how I was concerned about it previously, seeing a way to increase it now felt wonderful.

It also felt very weird to open and use a new skill slot and suddenly de-age rapidly.

And of course, Ixtra's lifespan was something ridiculous and Tom didn't age, so they were fine.

Speaking of, Ixtra had a lot more demonic energy than I had mana, now, but that was also all he had. He was considerably weaker than me.

This was also why I hadn't summoned a legion of Ixtra-like demon subordinates when I got all the mythril bricks in Jackal's lab.

Besides A) having grown a bond with Ixtra, and B) not wanting to go through the hassle of ordering around and especially feeding a whole squadron of demons, there was also C) they would become weaker than me, much weaker, in due time. And I really didn't need them then, now to mention now, with my newfound level.

Speaking of level, I knew it was 60 when I just entered plasmic mana because of the screen that appeared in the treasury for its first upgrade, but now I had no idea what "level" I would be at.

As a reference, with these skills together, plus my previous ones, I was about 25x stronger when launching a blade beam than a version of me with no skills.

It had to be known that a plasmic mana knight could already cleave a small palace in two, casually.

Now, not only could I slice in half a large palace, I could even do so to one made entirely of steel.

Casually.

Although I don't know how you could make a palace out of steel, or why.

But you know what was about as large as a large palace, and had an exterior as hard as steel?

A sphinx.

Of course, that was just the exterior. The flesh and especially the bones were stronger than steel, the bones in particular were as strong as mythril, so it would take perhaps my full force attack to cut through all the flesh, and multiple full force attacks to cut through the bones.

A full force attack meaning one that uses 10% of all my mana, by the way. So I could launch about 10 of them before bottoming out.

Just enough to take down 2 sphinxes, barely.

This was almost the limit of [Sphinx Cutter], but there was a detail mentioned right at the end.

If you wanted to advance to a true "class", meaning your children also inherited some percent of your class blood and skills infused in it, for a mage this meant becoming an archmage, for me it meant becoming a true magic swordsman, then you would have to learn one last skill.

A 10th skill in the [Sphinx Cutter] manual, which I hadn't mentioned until now.

Go out, kill a sphinx, and eat its mana crystal.

No, not melted and alchemized and turned into a mana potion.

Raw.

You had it eat it raw.

For small mana crystals, this didn't matter much, but for larger ones, especially one as large as the one inside a sphinx, the raw mana in the crystal would rampage in your stomach and rupture it, killing you from the inside.

If you somehow managed to absorb it, it would wreck havoc on your blood and body.

Just like raw liquid mana couldn't be directly consumed and needed to be turned into a mana potion first, a raw mana crystal, which was solid, was also inedible.

However, this time, that was the point. Due to the [Advanced Healing Factor], even major wounds didnt matter. Moreover, once I managed to absorb it, [Lesser Blood Burst Resistance] would help suppress it in my blood.

Thus, for someone with my "build", so to say, this was barely doable, albeit it would be extremely painful.

At the end, I would obtain [Basic Chaotic Mana Absorption], and be able to intake chaotic mana at this level with almost no such issues in the future. What it would also do is force my body to evolve to a new level, forming the basis for a final breakthrough.

I would have to repeat this process multiple times to gain the skill, and once I had, my body would transform into something new, something that could just barely handle the next level of technique.

The class blood stage could help with a lot of things, as the skills learned and infused could be varied and unique, but the main thing one needed to focus on in the class blood stage was the body.

You had to get the body to a level where it could support what would come next.

After the class blood stage was the void magic stage.

You had to take in mana from the void, generally titled "void mana", and collect it using your particular class and technique. This void mana wasn't just chaotic, and it wasn't just mana from the void. It was also a unique form of mana, different and stronger.

It was what was used for higher level magic, and it was also at the void magic stage that one could use spells and skills that allowed traversion through realms. Indeed, realm hopping, something Jackal had half succeeded at doing while still in the class blood stage, using runes.

Speaking of, Jackal Wilneth had been stuck at the 7th circle till his death, because he could not get the right skills to progress.

This was not to say he had no means, no technique. No, it was rather that he merely failed to learn the skills in time.

He was learning them, for sure, but at a snail's pace.

Moreover, the older he got, the harder it got to learn new skills. Once his hair was all white, it was already over for him.

The reason I could do it all so fast was that I had a bloodline from the mystical fruit that gave me supreme talent.

It had to be known that leveling up in these ways mentioned mainly depends on technique. With no technique, almost no level of talent will do anything.

In Nyla, the peak talents just barely got to the plasmic mana realm, but that was with techniques that only went up to the plasmic mana realm anyhow. Looking at it another way, they got to the peak. It was not that they were only so talented to reach plasmic mana, but rather that they could not progress more regardless of talent due to lack of techniques.

In reality, they were far more talented on an individual level than someone like Jackal, who had a better technique, an upbringing in a stronger magic culture, the help of all sorts of things like mana potions, runecraft, and so on, and of course his tremendous wealth to back it all up.

Despite this, he was only able to barely become a 7th circle mage, it was really quite a weak showing. And the reality was, this was how it was for most people.

After all, learning skills relied solely on comprehension, unlike plasmic mana, which you could argue required a mix of talent and a good technique manual, and there was even the fact that the talent for accumulating mana was not comprehension, but proclivity to store mana well, which was completely unrelated.

This was the reality of most people in this realm, most could not cultivate to plasmic mana, while most of those that could couldn't gain enough skills and infuse then in time, and died before ever making it out of the class blood stage.

The ratios for this thing called "talent" were about the same here and in Nyla, meaning about one out of every hundred million people made it to the peak power level in the realm. In Nyla, that meant plasmic blood and 7th circle mage, but here, it meant the void magic stage.

Moreover, after breaking through to the void magic stage, it was rumored you could live upwards of a thousand years from just the entry level.

Ixtra was punching the air at how I was slowly getting rid of anything he had on me.

Demonic healing factor? Check.

Demonic lifespan? About to be check.

Strength? Been checked for a while.

Well, my healing factor was still a little beneath his, and 1000 years was still less than his lifespan, but not by much.

Ixtra could even survive a stab straight to the heart and regrow limbs. I was still a little bit away from that level of healing.

As long as he wasn't made to exhaust all demonic energy or obliterated down to the last cell, he could heal and recover. He could even regrow his head, since his consciousness...wasn't stored in his brain? What?

Yeah, he didn't exactly get it either, but that was how it was. All he was able to explain was, "If I had to say how it feels, it feels as though my consciousness is stored in my demonic energy, so as long as I don't run out completely or lose my vessel for demonic energy, aka my cells, then a morsel of energy and one cell is all I need to recover."

Hearing that, I shivered and thought I still had a long way to go.

Of course, it wasn't that hard to destroy every cell of a person. Magic could do wonders, eh?

Speaking of magic, my talent in it. The fruit seemed to have given me a bloodline that was bound to stay talented in any technique I practiced. I didn't know when I would hit the limit, but I certainly hadn't yet.

If this trend kept up, I would just keep traversing to new realms and getting to the peak power levek in each with a new technique I learn in each place.

I got excited and somewhat complacent thinkijg it might be easy goings for me for a while, but I quickly caught myself and became serious.

'I can't let myself become too relaxed and have it lead to me doing something stupid.'

Although I said that, years later, that was exactly what happened...

With the other 9 skills all learned, I cultivated the technique written in [Sphinx Cutter] until I opened up a new skill slot, and decided to head out to do some sphinx hunting.

Thinking about the description of what I would have to do to get the last skill, I got goosebumps as I had but one thought.

'This is going to hurt. It's going to hurt a lot.'