Chapter 13: New Skills (Part 2)
Evan continued to absorb the cores using his monarch core. When he absorbed his 12th core, which came from a wind-type monster, a notification appeared before him.
[You have learned the skill Haste.]
"I didn't expect to learn a skill so soon," Evan said with a delighted voice as he looked at the details of his new skill.
---) Haste: While using the skill your agility will be increased by 20%.
Although Evan had hoped to acquire an attack-type skill, he wasn't disappointed with Haste. It was a simple yet excellent skill for enhancing his agility. And there were still many cores left for him to absorb.
After learning the skill, Evan continued to absorb more cores. Just as he absorbed two more cores after acquiring Haste, he felt his monarch core start to rotate faster and faster.
Suddenly, the mana from the surroundings began to flow towards him and enter his body.
A whirlpool of mana appeared above Evan's head as the surrounding mana moved towards him. After entering his body, the mana moved towards his heart and was absorbed by his monarch core.
Evan felt a slight pain in his heart, but he easily endured it.
The mana whirlpool above his head continued to gather mana near his body. After a minute, Evan felt his monarch core stop rotating.
Suddenly, his monarch core released a burst of energy, refining his body. Evan felt his body being strengthened to another level, and his mana capacity greatly increased.
Name: Evan
Rank: F
Monarch Core Rank: E
Strength: F
Agility: F
Mana: F
Stamina: F+
Intelligence: F
Luck: E+
Charm: D+
Skills: Shadow Walk, Haste
Physique: Shadow Monarch Physique
Title: ???
Job: None
"My monarch core directly advanced to E rank instead of F+ rank," Evan said when he saw his status window.
"But why haven't my stats changed? I can clearly feel that my strength, agility, and other attributes have greatly improved after my monarch core advanced to E rank."
Evan was confused when he saw that his stats hadn't changed, even after his monarch core advanced.
After thinking about it for some time, he reasoned that his stats will only change when his prime core advance.
It made sense to him because even before his monarch core formed inside his heart, his status window showed the level of his prime core. Since it was still F rank, it wasn't surprising that his stats hadn't changed.
"Even if my status window doesn't show it, I can clearly feel that my body is much stronger now, and my mana capacity has increased significantly," Evan said, not dwelling too much on it since it didn't negatively affect him.
Evan glanced at his status window once again and his mouth twitched a little when he saw that his charm had increased to D+ after his monarch core advanced.
"I wonder what those useless male students would do if they saw that I've become even more handsome," he mused.
Evan had often been bullied by both male and female students due to his handsome face.
For some reason, his charm was too high, even as an F ranker, causing many male students to be jealous. Being weak, he was often bullied because of it.
"Well, I don't think anyone will be able to do anything to me now, since I can also improve my power," Evan said confidently. He closed his status window and continued absorbing more cores to further enhance his monarch core to D rank.
Suddenly, when Evan finished absorbing a core, a notification appeared before him. His eyes lit up with excitement as he saw he got another skill.
This time he got skill after absorbing a shadow core.
You have learned the skill Shadow Bullet.]
---) Shadow Bullet: You can shoot a bullet made of shadow using mana. The power of the bullet depends on how much mana you use to cast it. There is a 5% chance that the target will become blind for two seconds after being hit by Shadow Bullet.
Evan's eyes instantly lit up when he saw the details of the skill.
"Awesome!" he exclaimed after reading the details of the skill.
He had been hoping to acquire a skill that could help him with long-range attacks, and Shadow Bullet was just perfect for that.
Evan didn't stop after obtaining the skill. He continued absorbing more cores, and suddenly, when he had only eight cores left, he once again felt a slight pain in his heart.
A mana whirlpool which was larger than the previous whirlpool formed above his head, and mana started moving towards his body, being absorbed by his monarch core once again. The monarch core rotated faster and absorbed the mana from the whirlpool.
After some time, the monarch core stopped absorbing mana and released a burst of energy.
Evan felt his body being strengthened to a new level, and his mana capacity increased greatly. But it didn't end there. As his monarch core advanced to D rank, another notification appeared before him.
[Monarch core advanced to D rank. You have received the skill Shadow Storage.]
---) Shadow Storage: A special shadow space where you can store anything that is not alive. The size of the shadow storage depends on your core rank.
"I can even acquire skills by advancing my monarch core level," Evan said in disbelief.
Obtaining a skill is very difficult, and only a few people had more than one skill. Yet here he was, having acquired three skills simply by absorbing some cores.
Evan looked at the remaining eight cores and, after careful consideration, decided to absorb them through his monarch core.
However, when he tried to absorb the core, he felt severe pain in his chest. The energy of the core approached his monarch core, but this time, his monarch core didn't absorb it.
When his monarch core did not absorbed the energy, the energy of the core moved towards his prime core and was absorbed by it.
And to Evan's horror, just as his prime core absorbed the energy, he noticed cracks started to appear all over his prime core, and he felt intense pain in his chest area.
Chapter 14: Testing New Skills (Part 1)
Evan's prime core absorbed all the energy that he wanted to refine through his monarch core. When his prime core absorbed all the energy, it became filled with many cracks, and Evan started panting heavily due to the pain in his chest area.
"What the hell was that?" Evan said after some time, when the pain in his chest area lessened a bit.
Evan checked his prime core and was horrified to see many cracks all over it. Quickly, he took out another core from his storage ring, refined it using his mana, and used the energy of the core to heal his prime core.
As the refined energy approached his prime core, it started to heal the cracks. When he absorbed all the energy of the core, all the cracks on his prime core disappeared, and it also advanced to F+ rank.
Evan let out a sigh of relief when the cracks on his core were healed, and his prime core advanced to F+ rank. His prime core had almost shattered because it couldn't handle the unrefined energy that Evan had absorbed directly.
"Why did my monarch core stop absorbing more energy?" Evan was confused by this sudden turn of events. He opened his status window and looked at his progress.
Name: Evan
Rank: F+
Monarch core rank: D
Strength: F+
Agility: F+
Mana: F+
Stamina: F+
Intelligence: F+
Luck: E+
Charm: C
Skill: Shadow Walk, Haste, Shadow Bullet
Physique: Shadow Monarch Physique
Title: ???
Job: None
After seeing his status window and how his monarch core directed the energy towards his prime core, Evan concluded that to increase the rank of his monarch core, he first had to increase the rank of his prime core.
"I still have some cores left in my storage ring. These cores should be enough to advance my prime core to E rank," Evan decided to improve the rank of his prime core since he was unable to absorb energy using his monarch core.
At first, Evan thought that his monarch core would advance easily since it could absorb 100% of the energy from a core. But when he started absorbing, he found out that even though his monarch core could absorb 100% of the energy, it still required more cores than his prime core.
However, Evan was not bothered by this because he could feel that every time his monarch core advanced, he received a great boost in power that his prime core could never provide.
Evan absorbed his remaining cores, and as he expected, his prime core advanced to E rank when he finished absorbing all the cores he had received after sacrificing his shadow physique.
When his prime core advanced to E rank, Evan felt his body being strengthened to another degree, and he couldn't help but let out a sigh of satisfaction as he felt the boundless power coursing through his body.
Name: Evan
Rank: E
Monarch core rank: D
Strength: E
Agility: E
Mana: E
Stamina: E
Intelligence: E
Luck: D
Charm: C
Evan checked his stats and was surprised to see that his charm had not increased after his prime core advanced to E rank.
He closed his status window and finally stood up after finishing absorbing all the cores.
Evan felt a little odd when he stood up because his height, which was previously 180cm, had now increased to 185cm. But he quickly adjusted to it and looked at the crumbled wall from which he had fallen into the odd hall room.
Evan examined the hall room but found nothing other than a small mountain of dust that had formed after the statue and the platform had turned into dust because of the black aura that erupted from his monarch core when it was formed.
Not finding any trace of the person who had spoken to him, Evan started walking outside the hall room.
However, Evan had to close his eyes for some time after coming out because the hallway was too bright, and he felt like he was looking directly at the sun.
After a while, his eyes adjusted to the light, and when he looked back at the hall room behind the crumbled wall, he was surprised to find that the entire room was completely dark. Yet, he could still see everything clearly.
"I also gained night vision," Evan thought when he realized he could see even in complete darkness.
As he emerged from the hall room through the crumbled wall, he saw the corpse of the bat that had almost killed him with its last attack.
Once his eyes were fully adjusted to the light, Evan approached the bat's corpse. His sword was stuck in its head, indicating that the bat had died from the sword attack Evan had delivered at the last moment.
Evan went near the bat's corpse and pulled out his sword.
To his surprise when he looked for the core, he found a core inside the bat's body.
Happily, he put the core away in his storage ring along with the other three cores he had obtained earlier by killing monsters.
He hadn't absorbed these cores because, although he now had enough strength to enter the dungeon without the invisibility potion, he still wanted to sell some cores to earn a little money. His bank account had almost emptied when he purchased the invisibility potion to enter the dungeon.
"I think my days of living on cup noodles are over now," Evan said with an emotional tone. For the past two years, he had been forced to eat cup noodles every day while saving money.
"After selling the cores, I will definitely go to the most famous restaurant to eat something," Evan said, starting to walk towards the exit of the dungeon.
When Evan was just 700 meters away from the exit portal, he saw a lion-like monster, two meters tall, blocking his way. However, instead of feeling the fear he had felt when he saw the bat, this time Evan didn't even flinch and continued to walk towards the lion with steady steps. For some reason, when he saw the shadow lion monster, he didn't feel an ounce of threat from it.
Evan also wanted to test his current power, so he calmly walked towards the lion. When the lion sensed Evan's presence, it looked in his direction. As its deep yellow eyes met Evan's pitch black eyes, for some reason, the lion felt the shadow power inside its body tremble, as if it had been affected by those deep black eyes.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
200+ Power
Ranking 
14 Power
stone 
Paragraph comment