Growth

A day has passed since Magnus met Amini.

He was staring at a Scroll unfurled in front of him.

[[ One-Time Blessing Enhancement Scroll ]]

[[ Tear this Scroll to enhance your Blessing by a certain margin. ]]

It was a simple sentence, but it was a powerful one. Especially for Magnus whose training progress was slow given his constant need to spend Spirit Energy.

So many things kept happening that Magnus had no time to just sit still in Tyrm and let his Spirit Energy flow. He had to keep fighting, stealing, or something of the sort. Even with Restiel helping regenerate his Spirit Energy whenever possible, it was still a difficult endeavour to fill up his 15-line Curses' worth of energy reserves.

Thus, with a satisfied sigh, Magnus tore apart the Scroll. He instantly experienced an exhilarating power flow through him. It coursed around all of his Spirit Energy pathways before pouring into his right wrist where his Blessing was written.

Magnus then tried his best to direct this power towards Master of the Hivemind that was hidden deep within.

After losing a bit of power to Catastrophic Planetary Architect, it was successfully directed towards Master of the Hivemind.

Magnus instantly felt a soul-deep ecstasy.

"Ah," He let out a moan.

Magnus felt something change within his Blessing as it was nourished. A new level was reached. That certain margin was added to its powers.

He felt around his soul and tried to see what those changes were.

Quickly, he discovered that his member limit had increased.

"From three to four." Magnus grinned, "How convenient!"

He didn't have to leave either Restiel or Javelin somewhere when had to go out.

But there was nothing else aside from that. It was rather anticlimactic.

Magnus was barely satisfied when he thought about things more, "Couldn't it have been five or six?"

Nothing could be done about it. Master of the Hivemind was a four-line Blessing already. Such a margin of growth made sense.

Perhaps if it became a five-line Blessing, things would be as Magnus envisioned it.

Now, there was another scroll that Magnus had yet to tear.

[[ Spirit Energy Supplement Scroll ]]

Magnus wanted to try it on himself despite not reaching a bottleneck.

Rrrip!

The sound of tearing echoed out in the small hotel room.

Magnus closed his eyes, and this time, a violent rush of energy seemed to emerge from the void to come to him. It rushed forward like a tide, instantly filling up his reserves. An aura of Spirit Energy then began lingering around him as his body rapidly consumed the Spirit Energy.

"Oh no..." Magnus couldn't help but swear, "So that's how it works. I need a Spirit Technique to absorb all of this... This overflow."

"No wonder I could feel Restiel gradually approach a bottleneck while my route seemed vague. The enhancement this Scroll is talking about is the natural energy reserves of a human being,"

Just as Magnus was about to summon Klaris to use Mirror World Thief to at least avoid any wastage, the Half-Night Tome suddenly phased into existence with a flash of light.

"Hm?"

Magnus watched as its pages flipped automatically. It skipped over the thin garlic-skin-like pages and went to the jet black pages of the dark side of Tyrm's night.

There, there was a text that could be seen for the first time.

Magnus read through it, and as he did, his eyes sparkled. A Spirit Technique was written down.

[[ Soul Devourer Art ]]

[[ You are he who consumes, body and soul. Devour and allow yourself to draw nutrients from the fundamental particles of their beings. ]]

It was a technique that required Magnus to consume souls in order to train. It was a complicated topic, but Magnus got the gist of it.

It was basically turning souls into large amounts of Spirit Energy. It was similar to how Restiel could kill things and gain Divine Energy from them.

Magnus could also kill things and draw Spirit Energy from them.

He just had to devour their souls.

"There should be more to this technique," Magnus muttered, "But it seems like those parts are still locked."

The rest of the black pages were still blank. No more white text appeared with the tome's mysterious activity.

For now though, he didn't need to devour souls. There was a very large amount of special Spirit Energy surrounding him, waiting to be absorbed.

"Haaaaa," Magnus breathed and assimilated the energy as he sat down by his desk with one hand supporting his head.

His eyes were closed as he put his focus into properly executing the circulation demanded by the Soul Devourer Art. He moved his energy in a set pattern, mimicking that of what the Half-Night Tome instructed.

He moved it in a ghostly manner, bringing his Spirit Energy deep within him and into his soul instead of his body. Everything proceeded inwards and into the depths of what made a being, a being.

It took several hours, but eventually, Magnus fully absorbed all the extra power that surrounded him. He felt himself grow much stronger.

He could also feel something barring his pathway to power.

"A bottleneck!" Magnus was more happy than depressed.

This meant that he was on the right track.

Furthermore, more of the black pages had revealed their contents. It seemed like, as Magnus grew, so did the book.

In the new pages, there were topics like the applications of the Soul Devourer Art.

From reading memories at the cost of killing the target to the passive devouring made possible by consuming roaming souls.

But these were all advanced parts of the technique that Magnus did not have the ability to execute just yet. Perhaps in the future, yes, but not now.

On top of those new pages, Magnus felt his body was indeed much more different than before.

He had found himself on the floor of the hotel when he was previously sitting down on a chair. He had phased through the chair, as its seat was now inside his chest.

"What the fuck?" Magnus yelped as he commanded gravity to make him float.

"I'm... becoming a spirit?" Magnus thought to himself as he looked at his body.

It was slightly transparent.

"What if I..."

Magnus stopped circulating the Soul Devourer Art.

He was then delighted to see that he returned to his previous physical state.

"Jeez... that scared me... So becoming ethereal is a power that came from initially taking the Half-Night Tome? Wasn't I supposed to be a lich? What happened to that?"

He made this assumption based on the requirements needed to practice the Soul Devouring Art. He needed a spirit body to do so, as only spirits can come into contact with spirits. That was why he was undergoing some kind of transformation as he grew.

It was weird how that skeleton priest celebrated the coming of a new lich when he was becoming a ghost.

It was a mystery to Magnus as to why everything was turning out differently from what he had been thinking.

Anyways, Magnus had finally broken the 1.9-star threat rating. That meant that he could reach the 2-star level eventually as long as he plays his cards right.

"I need to find souls to devour..." Magnus thought to himself as he pondered on what he could kill, "Should I try looking for ghosts to eat?"

Poof!

A new scroll suddenly popped into existence.

Magnus remembered that it had been more than 24 hours since the last Trial. It seems like a new one was coming.

[[ Hi guys... So many people died in the last Trial. I, too, almost lost my life. Fighting ancient monsters was harder than I thought. It hurts my heart to see everyone just displayed as numbers on my end. ]]

[[ Now the problem is... this next Trial will be the same, but much longer. ]]

[[ Objective: To find, hunt, and retrieve the main body parts of ten different Tharean Monsters. ]]

[[ Description: Tear this scroll to get transported into a different version of Thare. You will be transported to a time long passed. When the Otherworld Trials had yet to begin. Find your targets, hunt them down despite the chaos of the Warring Era, and triumph over adversity. You have one month. ]]

[[ I hope that the death toll won't be so high this time... Please survive, everyone. For Earth. ]]

[[ -The Jester ]]

"It seems like The Jester is depressed," Magnus sighed as he shrugged, "Indeed, the high death rate was pretty clear. The bare minimum one needed to be was 1-star in strength. It seems like many of the Earthlings had yet to reach such a level despite the tutorial's length."

Rrrrrip!

He then tore apart the Scroll as he dove into the world of the next Trial.

.

.

.

Magnus found himself within a human city.

"Oh, damn,"

With a mega-sized beast attacking its walls.

"Oh damn indeed,"

A person echoed out from beside him.

Magnus looked around and spotted the familiar bearings of Earthlings all around him.

Everyone was staring at the mega-sized dinosaurs that stood several metres in height. They were charging forward like a tsunami of reptilian flesh.

Buildings were being flattened as warriors rallied together and drew as much blood as they could. Chaos prevailed in the area as civilians screamed and warriors cried their battlecries.

Dust was everywhere and debris kept falling from the sky. Magnus' hair was instantly dirtied by a brick that landed near his feet and kicked up a pillar of soil.

In the next moment, a tower was falling towards him.

"Run!"

Screamed one of the Earthlings beside him.

Everyone scattered while Magnus circulated the Soul Devourer Art.

"So many deaths," He muttered to himself, "So many souls to devour..."

The building then consumed him, but he was more or less unharmed. There was only a small wound that he sustained from god only knows where.

"Ow," He thought to himself as blood oozed out of some part of his body, "It seems like my transformation is not yet complete."

He then looked at the sun above his head, "I also get burned when exposed to direct sunlight... How inconvenient."

Magnus stopped circulating his Soul Devourer Art for the moment. He would only use it when he was close to someone who just died to perhaps take their soul as his.

He then floated towards the dinosaurs where chaos was the greatest.

"Mmmm,"

Magnus licked his lips as a person was killed right beside him. His body flickered from corporeal to ethereal in the blink of an eye.

"Her soul tasted good,"