A Rattling Monster

The road toward my armory was exceptionally calm. Nothing happened, the roads suddenly cleared themselves at my appearance. Before they were just getting out of my sight, now I presume they even put some real distance between me and them. Doors were closed, windows were shut down immediately. The scarce merchants were even abandoning their stalls, more worried about me than a thief. And the latter was not bothered by that sudden free meal, he is fleeing too. Some can say that in a single day, my reputation across the slums has changed from a bloodthirsty foreigner to a group that none shall hurt. And while it allows me to travel more quickly, it prevents me to kill those that are slow to move. Before sometimes, they were just lagging a little bit and I could kill them. Now, everyone run away without a second thought.

Finally, I arrive at my favorite tomb. I really wonder who is buried in, I mean, I have used his last residence as I wish. But I was too quick to come back, I will need to wait for some hours. Well, that way, I can safely and slowly train my skills. Especially [Nightfall] and my aura, those are really important. I need to be able to control them to the best of my ability, like be capable to create more than just one shadow and maybe improve the range of my aura. I have not seen the full capacity of those two abilities, and I really want to the see the result.

But first, what did I gained during those battles. First, I have gained three levels. I am now level 8/30. That makes sense, first, it had been a long time since I have gained a level, so I was certainly pretty close after killing all those humans on my way to the base of Shadow. And since I have killed at least 150 humans, counting both the men of the gang and the beggars in the plaza, it is quite good. But I should have barely gained the three levels, more like 2.2 levels. But that's not the most important, what is good is now the fact that I can cast my [Raise Undead] and still have enough mana for more than just one spell. On the other hand, my magical abilities are really slow to be improved. But except casting something, I have no idea how to really do something about it. Or maybe create another new spell?

Now that I think about it, each time I created a spell, I gained at least one level. But the cooldown, I still don't know what is it. And it only has been two, maybe three weeks since the capture of Daryl MaimedFoot. Is it his name? Maybe I got it wrong. Well, let's try, and if the System says no, so be it. But what should I do now? I have a spell that is really useful, [Nightfall]. It can block the vision of the enemy at a good range, prevent light from leaking, and most importantly, baffled everyone. Nobody truly understands how this is working, me neither, so I always have a little advantage.

The next spell is my hope to kill the ratmen, [Raise Undead]. And even my hope to survive for a very long time. If I can reach the point where I can just create some lich, I will be invincible. And even before that, thanks to my skeleton warriors, I don't have to personally fight or even to be near a battle. Since for the moment they are still quite weak, I have to travel with them, but in the future, they will probably be able to stand their ground against enemies bigger, stronger and a lot more powerful. So in the end, I have one of the best ability and a very useful disrupting spell. What should I need now?

The good old escape spell. But just thinking back to what I did in the first oasis, that was a shameful memory. Well, I can still try again. Think about moving your body to this tree, you are now disrupting the laws of space and time, you are near that tree. Your body is not here, it is near that tree, you are moving at a great speed. MOVE!

…

Nothing. Well, I had to try. Honestly, I have no idea how to create that spell or something similar. Back on Earth, we hadn't even managed to reach that point, so if even the greatest minds didn't create that, how am I supposed to do it? I am a lot smarter than before but that's just thinking process and risk evaluation. I will probably be unable to solve any impossible equations and win that sweet reward. I am talking about the Millennium Prize Problems, I am far from being near that level. That's what I noticed, those intelligence and wisdom are just attributes, they are not improving me at all. Or maybe my human mind is still better than those? Am I better than forty times the mind of a rat? I hope, but that's still a lot of rat minds.

So, the teleportation is a failure again. What's next? The magic shield. Now that I think, that's what I am lacking, a way to defend myself, because only relying on my aura to destroy incoming projectiles is not very safe. If I get ambushed, I won't have the time to think about my aura. I need a small shield, like the weird glowing halo that the barbarian had. Something that I can permanently activate and is capable of stopping something.

Ok, so think about a barrier between you and the air, nothing can go through, nothing, except the oxygen, wait, do I need to breathe? I will say yes, but I think more of a no, I am truly like a character of an MMO, no need to sleep, eat maybe even breathe. Let's think nothing can go through, not even the air, the shield is perfect, covering my entire body, even under my foot. When something touches my shield, it is destroyed, but it still follows my movements, it is not rigid. It is a dark shield surrounding me, preventing any harm. No create the SHIELD!

"Not enough mana"

Are you kidding me? I have 278/406 MP, that's enough for a lot of things. Let's try again, I say a shield that is surrounding me, create my SHIELD.

"Not enough mana"

The good thing is, he hasn't talked about a cooldown, so I just have to wait. Maybe the creation of a spell needs a full MP pool. All the previous time, it was like that. So let's wait a bit. After some hours, I finally have all my mana. Let's think again, a shield, a dark shield, surrounding me, a dark shield protecting me, create the SHIELD!

"User has created a spell not long ago, please wait."

Ok, shut up System. Seriously, do I really have to wait for another evolution to.. oh wait, there is a cooldown. I didn't see it; it is really small. Let's see, I need to wait … 24 days 13 hours 24 minutes and 49 seconds. Ok, that definitely means that an evolution reset that cooldown. But the other thing is, it is REALLY LONG. That's potentially two months between two creations. Yes, I don't remember exactly how many days have passed since I created [Raise Undead]. So let's wait another month for my beautiful dark shield.

Since I have nothing else to do, and I resurrect number two, keeping number four as he is. I don't want to disturb them more, and since the night is near, I can use that time to create number three and number five. I will only enter the slums tomorrow, during the day. But during that time, I will train my [Nightfall].

First of all, I create a shadow of my size and wait. To see the duration of my spell. Because I never saw when the spell is canceled. I mean, getting hit by a fireball and be destroyed doesn't count. After nearly thirty minutes, I see the spell getting a little weaker. In the following seconds, the shadow is crumbling and disappear. So that's still a good duration. Because during the assault, I kept reapplying the spell every five minutes, wasting quite a lot of mana. But it was safer to do that, than hoping that the spell will last long enough.

After seeing the duration, now I want to see the quantity and the size. I try to create the biggest pillar of darkness that I can. In the end, I manage to create a weird thing, with a height of five meters, a length of fifty centimeters and a width of the same size. That's good, I can cover a lot of ground with that, especially if I reduce the width. I try it one more time and I manage to create a large wall, but with a width of barely a centimeter. So I can manipulate the form of my spell quite easily.

After that, I do the same experience with the number of shadows. I always use my body as a model, to see how many doppelgangers I can create. The number is seven. Thinking about something, I try to compare the size of the seven shadows combined and the size of my pillar. They are more or less the same. So I can only use a fixed amount of darkness. And I suppose that with every level of [Nightfall], that amount is increased. Now it is time to train my aura.