39 - We are so back

Before it had taken me decades to reach plasmic crystal mana, but I had mediocre techniques for half of it and no experience.

Now, I was more than qualified to combine all my experiences and even make my own technique, which I did.

With it, plus my experience, I progressed relatively rapidly, compared to the first time. I also gained all the skills I needed along the way.

After 9 years, I had once again reached plasmic crystal mana. I might've gone insane but thankfully Tom was still around.

Well, I don't know how much he helped...

So, I also summoned a little pet.

That's right, a pet. Not to fight, but literally just for emotional support.

Cause I really needed it these few years.

There was no winter here, but there was the equivalent of a year, and at the few months before, during and after the new year, there would be these awful screeches you could hear from all over Hell.

I didn't know if it really was all over Hell, but at least anywhere I had tried going they were still there.

I cast magic to block out the sound, but it straight up didn't work.

They weren't the screams of tortured men. They were the screeches of inhuman monsters.

I didn't know what monsters, but the screeches alone let me know I didn't ever wanna meet them.

The pet I summoned was a little black slime, called a demon slime.

They were pretty strong, requiring 6th circle magic, [Summon Demon Slime], to summon them, and were as strong as a peak liquid mana knight.

That wasn't much, but for a slime, that was crazy. At least, it was crazy to me.

After summoning, the magic didn't have to be recast unless it died, and if it got hurt I could use healing magic on it instead of recasting the summoning.

From then on, the little guy, who was slightly larger than my head, was always around, and I made sure to keep it close at hand.

It had little 2 dimensional eyes that looked like someone drew then, and I didn't know how that was possible, but I didn't question it.

It looked very silly sometimes, and made me laugh. It was smarter than I thought it would be.

I knew I really shouldn't l, but I decided to name it.

That day, looking at its black, opaque physique, I simply settled on blackie...

No, I'm kidding. That'd be a bit much.

I settled on the name of a lesser demon I had once read the summoning spell for, Noctarax.

Noctarax was summoned 7 years in, so he had been there for only the last 2 years.

I'm not entirely sure how I managed to get past the first 7 years of screeching winters without him.

I decided. He was gonna be part of the team. Forever.

Or was it a she? A she would probably be better for if she ever evolves into a human form. Don't wanna end up cuddling another guy...

Whatever.

I'd come to that when I had to.

How did slimes breed anyway? Did they even breed?

Whatever. These were not meaningful questions to add onto the growing list of actually important questions.

I had tested out a theory I had had, to open up skill slots before reaching plasmic mana, but it hadn't worked. Maybe if I had to recultivate a 3rd time, I'd figure it out. Haha, just kidding, that won't happen. Right?...

So now I had to spend another few years opening up my blood for these skills.

Let me make this clear again, in case you forgot. Skills were the body and blood learning a technique. Skill infusion into the blood is purely to help my bloodline, and provides no additional functionality to the skills themselves. There are only 2 benefits to skill infusion into the blood.

One was to bless your descendents. Something I could not care less about right now.

The other was to allow the blood to fulfill the conditions for a certain Law.

This law judged if a given bloodline fulfilled the conditions for ascension in the original species that the classes in the class blood system are named after.

In my case, that'd be a mage.

I didn't know when this ascension would happen, how many tiers or stages of power away it was, but it was important to my growth, or so I thought, and the main condition for this ascension was infusing skills into the openings in the blood.

I had another idea for opening up my blood faster, but I wasn't sure it would work.

If I tried to forcefully pry open my skill slots, it'd cause a backlash, but it would work, barely. This barely noticeable progress was many times faster than normal, which was abysmally slow, but the backlash was even more severe.

However, I had regeneration skills for that exact situation.

The problem was that I'd have to use mana to pry open the skill slot, but after the backlash, my mana control wouldn't be good enough to stop the mana from rampaging inside the small opening I pried, enlarging it forcefully without my intent and causing significantly more damage, till potentially death.

However, I now had [Abyss Mana], as a skill, to drain that mana away. And such a skill required no precision if I just let it drain all my mana.

So, today, I was going to test out this theory.

I could still survive the backlack if it was just once.

I pried open the micro-pocket dimensions in my blood, allowing mana to flood in.

Immediately, I felt my blood come close to bursting, but I had already, painstakingly, reobtained [Greater Blood Burst Resistance], so it barely held together. It rushed to my lungs and I coughed up blood from a severe internal injury.

Activating [Abyss Mana], I drained all my mana into portals to the abyss created at various points in my body.

Actually, I didn't know too much about this "abyss", but the book for the skill had mentioned that's where the mana goes.

As I activated the skill, the mana rushed out of me in droves, and I was emptied of it in mere moments.

This fatigued me, but it also allowed me to heal.

Since I had stopped the rampage in time, I only suffered the initial backlash and none of the subsequent ones, which was fully recovered from in just the next 24 hours.

I repeated this process for 6 months, which equated to one skill slot pried open per 10 days. This was many times faster than the first time I had infused skills into my blood.

Now, just 2 months away from turning 200, this was my status screen:

Name: Merca Godrich

Sex: Male

Age: 199

Lv. 99

Stats:

Strength: 20

Speed: 20 (+40)

Stamina: 20

IQ: 122

Health: Undead (Re-animated Body), Soul-Spirit-Avatar Mismatch, Curse:Forsaken

Cultivation:

Class Blood Stage (Peak)

11th circle Array Master

Bloodline: Arachne's Direct Descendent

Effects:

[-Complete Co...]

Techniques:

(Unusable) [Void Severance Technique] - [Void Severance Slash]

Skills:

(C) [Multicast Proclivity]

(B) [Adrenal Moment]

(D) [Mana Proclivity]

(C) [Mana Proclivity II]

(C) [Mana Flow]

(C) [Basic Healing Factor]

(B) [Advanced Healing Factor]

(B) [Basic Chaotic Mana Absorption]

(A) [Advanced Chaotic Mana Absorption]

(C) [Lesser Blood Burst Resistance]

(B) [Greater Blood Burst Resistance]

(B) [Elementalism]

(C) [Mana Pooling]

(C) [Mana Pooling II]

(B) [Mana Pooling III]

(F-SSS) [Abyss Mana]

(B) [Spell Mastery]

Equipment:

[Cloak of the Deep]

Rarity: Legendary

Description:

[A legendary cloak resembl...]

Looks like level 60 is equivalent to class blood stage, level 100 to void magic stage.

I had been level 200 when I died before. That clearly didn't correlate to twice as strong though.

I had been surprised to see the (F-SSS) grade for [Abyss Mana]. I suppose that means its ability to drain mana can be enhanced up to SSS grade level, which I found somewhat ridiculous.

I still couldn't use [Void Severance Slash].

It was originally a technique for magic swordsmen, so I shouldn't be able to use it. The whole technique relied on compressing aura after all.

However, with my experience in the void magic stage, I was going to try and come up with a similar technique for a mage. The absorption method could still remain the same.

First steps first, arrays.

Arrays, arrays, arrays, oh my old friend.

I could only cast one 10th circle spell at a time, but with arrays with precast spells, I could cast multiple.

Setting up a large multi-part array, I positioned myself in the center of the platform I had set up and cast a spell in front of me.

It was a spell to blast out all my mana at once. Normally this would kill you since you couldn't control it all, even with good skills, but the arrays helped me move tye large mass of mana to my hands, where there was a large magic circle, which was actually 10 magic circles overlapped, in front of me.

With my hands stretched forward, I communicated with the array to move all the mana into the 10 overlapped circles and continuously compressed it in the center until it was the size of my palm.

Then, I stepped far away and let all the mana burst at that spot all at once.

The array was far enough below it that it didn't break. Hence why a platform was necessary.

Thus, the array automatically began absorbing void mana and placing it into certain dragon bones laying by the side.

I still had plenty of dragon parts.

It was truly a blessing to hunt one. An innocent one...

Whatever, that was in the past. I already settled in with my identity as a murderer, now I had to focus on the task at hand.

Although it really didn't sound good to say it like that...

Just like this, I managed to create a new method to gain void mana, and it was even more efficient than ever before.

However, since I was using the arrays to help, it didn't register as a technique in the compass status tab.

I don't know why, since my weapons also had arrays on them, but nonetheless.

I spent years trying to obtain enough mana to do the training method to obtain [Void Mana Absorption], and 5 years later I had it.

Other than the raw quantity of void mana I had, I was back at my peak strength. No, maybe higher.

Along the way, my mythril plates had almost run out, so I had had to go out to get more. I couldn't find any, so I cherished what I had left, but I found a replacement material that was only slightly weaker, called darkgold.

It was sold in a "city" nearby, if you wanted to call it that.

It'd be more accurate to call it a nightmare.

The strong demons worked their subordinates to the bone, and noone dared utter a word of complaint. Even if the head demons wantonly slaughtered in the streets before returning home as if nothing happened, noone said anything against them.

At least, not out in the open.

I also got targeted, but the moment I ruthlessly killed one of the greater demons in charge in one attack, noone else dared to try their hand.

The enslaved, essentially is what they were, lesser demons were put to the mines, and strictly monitored. However, the monitoring was by other demons, not magic. Sometimes, demons ran away.

However, the greater demons didn't care.

If they needed new slaves, they could always go get them. They had a few loyal ones anyhow. That was enough. They could ask the loyal ones to keep the others in check and make sure the majority didn't run off.

How could there be loyal demons, you ask?

Because this wasn't a lower circle.

This was only the 4th circle, less than halfway down. There was still a semblance of gang brotherhood here, although any large group always became a tyranny like this.

Higher up, there was more civility, while lower down, even gangs became less common, and eventually died out.

It could be said I was placed at a decent spot by whoever brought me here.

They gave me darkgold like crazy, since I could pay, and I could kill them at any time.

By the way, I was paying in red mana crystals.

I regularly went out and hunted all sorts of demons in the vicinity for their mana crystals, and let's just say I was pretty rich.

Of course, the greater demons could do this too, but not only with less efficiency and more difficulty and risk than me, but most importantly, that didn't make the crystals any less valuable. There were few enough greater demons at this circle that such large mana crystals were still a bargain.

After all, to hunt demons this strong, you need to be a greater demon, while to mine darkgold, you can just be a normal lesser demon.

It was clear to see which was more valuable.

In conclusion, I got plenty of darkgold, and it was more than enough for my efforts.

I was strong and able again, and it was time I ventured out to explore this place.

In any case, I was as strong as an archdemon. I'd also like to see which idiot wanted to mess with me.

And if, if I can find this Ixtra fellow, ooooh, the look on his face, its gonna be so good.

I couldn't wait.