Chapter 6: Training.
As I was practising my energy magic alone in one place, I felt some stares and whispers at me.
"That's the guy who got first place in the written exams..."
"Yeah, and he seems like an Energy Mage, too..."
"Yeah... an energy mage who beat Sophia in the written exam, and no one has ever heard of him before?"
"Yeah, he's weird no matter how you look at it..."
'Mind your own business, fuckin' slackers!', I wanted to shout out, but I controlled my anger.
I was repeatedly casting 'Reinforcement' on a training dummy in front of me, and shooting it with a Magic arrow right afterwards. That way, the efficiency of training would be higher.
Also, I have gravity magic activated too, increasing the weight of my body to about 2 times its original weight since I want to train my stamina too.
After about 3 hours of constant training, I was too exhausted. I had almost run out of mana and my body was aching like hell from its own increased weight.
I slowly walked over to a resting spot where I could sit down and take a break. I could see many other students practising in the huge football field-sized room. The ceilings were massive too. But even though the room was so big and completely covered, there was not a single dark spot in the room, thanks to the high-tech lights embedded in the ceiling and walls.
As I was resting, I heard some footsteps walk up to me.
"Hello there, Samuel Francis. Having a rest?", it was William.
"Ah, yes sir. I have almost completely run out of Mana, and my body also aches a lot...", I replied.
"Hmm. About you running out of mana, I think I have a solution you can use to combat that. Care to hear my advice?"
'Wow, I guess I'm pretty lucky.'
"Yes, that would be great!"
"Hmm. Your mana circuits aren't meant to be used this way... try altering your spell structure in this...", he started to explain to me how I could improve my mana efficiency.
Unsurprisingly, it worked.
"Thank you for your time, sir."
"It's fine, It's my job anyways.", he replied and started to walk away.
'He might be a member of the Black Market, but he IS still a hero and a teacher at Nexus Academy.', I thought.
This reminded me, the original novel's academy starting arc was very chill, without any actual action or story. It was more about how Julian was coping with the world after returning from the otherworld after so long. How he had become introverted and had difficulty talking to people, and how his friends, especially Sophia, had helped him out of that. It was all very wholesome, really.
'Well, I don't have time for that, though...'
'When the Main cast will be going through 'cHaRaCtEr dEvElOpmEnT', I'll be GRINDING dungeons, and getting stronger.'
That's right, I planned to visit some important dungeons I knew from the novel and loot them. I know there are hidden stuff inside some dungeons, and I will get them.
I don't really care much about the main story... as long as I can get strong, it's all good.
...
I got up from resting and refilling my mana and started training again.
'Today's Wednesday... I'll go to the dungeon on Saturday...', I thought to myself.
...
The next two days of classes went smoothly. People had tried to ask questions about how I could beat Sophia in the written exams, but I only gave them vague answers. I didn't want anyone to know about my skill 'Concentration'. It's quite an OP skill, considering the fact that it's still at level 1, even after using it so much.
it was now Saturday. I took the purple robes I had found from the skeleton from which I got the gravity magic from and headed out.
This dungeon was originally found by the government, who then donated it to the school for 'Training Purposes.'. Julian and his gang were selected to be the ones to clear the E-rank dungeon.
Inside it, Julian had found a very useful artifact that he would use till the end of the novel. It was called the 'Meteor Ring', and it boosted all physical attacks done to enemies by 15%. I needed that because my Gravity Magic deals mostly physical damage.
I reached the destination, which took me like, 3 hours to get to by Skyrail. The dungeon was located underground, in an abandoned mine. The mine was created to extract magic crystals that had been generated there, but once the magic crystals had been completely extracted, it strangely became toxic and the place became uninhabitable.
Well, it wasn't really radiation that made the place toxic, it was Miasma, which was radiated by the dungeon gate deep inside the mine.
The dungeon's main type of enemy was the Undead. Scientists still couldn't fully understand what created the undead, but they knew that it had something to do with Miasma.
Well, no one in the world but me knows that information yet.
The mine's name was 'Withering Mana Vien No.1296'. It was located 50 kilometres southwest of the city 'Vierent', which is mostly occupied by French-speaking people.
The city wasn't anything special, just a place for humans to live in, so I didn't pay any attention to anything inside the city and went straight towards the mine.
I rented a car by showing my Nexus Student ID, which actually gave me a good discount on the price, and drove to the place.
Apparently, Nexus students don't need a driver's license to drive a car...
I reached the mine within 20 minutes of driving. The roads were mostly empty, and I drove the car at very high speeds because I knew that if something went wrong, I could just use my gravity magic to lift the car up in the air and slowly reduce my speed.
...
It was a strip mine. There was dust and rust-coloured boulders everywhere. The place looked like it was nuked or something. Straight out of an Apocalyptic movie...
'Not a single soul in sight...', I thought as I scanned the surroundings of the massive place. It had craters created by TNT, and the earth had scars on it, presumably because of heavy mining equipment.
I cast an 'Energy Coat' around myself that will defend me against the miasma.
Energy Coat was a spell that covered the caster in a thin layer of mana. It was effective against miasma, poison and radiation. Yet another spell that was quite useful. No wonder Energy mages are sought after so much, even though they aren't that strong in combat.
I slid down one of the slopes that lead towards the centre of the mine. After walking around aimlessly for about 10 minutes, I finally found the entrance to the lava tube that leads to the dungeon's entrance. I walked around aimlessly because the novel didn't really specify where the lava tube was.
It was dark inside, but that didn't matter to me, since I had a spell for that, 'Dark Vision'. Another Energy magic spell.
'I fucking love supporting classes so much...', I thought.
If I wasn't an Energy mage, I would have had to buy so many hardware and gadgets and had to work much harder to achieve the same result...
After walking through the lava tube for a good 30 minutes, I finally found it. The dungeon entrance.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Xeanos
Xeanos Give me advice on how to improve my writing!
Chapter 7: The Undead.
The dungeon entrance looked exactly like a portal. Purplish-black smoke was being emitted from the dark purple vortex.
'Fuckin' Cool!', was what I thought as soon as I saw the portal.
I opened my backpack, and changed into the purple robes. I called them 'Weight Robes', since they were gravity-oriented equipment.
I took a deep breath, shut my eyes and walked into the portal.
*WHOOOOSSHHH*
A cold wind assaulted me and sent shivers down my spine. I slowly opened my eyes and saw the horrifying sight in front of me.
I was standing in a cemetery. It was in the middle of the night, and the sky had 2 blue-colored moons, one bigger than the other.
There was no end to the graves and the dead trees. The place wasn't plain either. There were many mounds and imperfections on the ground.
And speaking of ground, it was littered with dry leaves, withered fruits and lastly bones. Bones of both animals and humans.
I could even see some skulls lying around.
But most importantly, I could see enemies in the distance.
'Skeletons...', I thought as I slowly approached them.
The skeletons instantly became aware of me and charged at me. They were wearing some kind of rusty and broken armor, and holding rusty swords in their bony hands.
*KHAAAAAA* *KHOOOOO*
*CLATTER* *CLATTER*
They made hollow noises from their jaws and the clatter of their bones were so loud!
I immediately pointed my right arm at them and casted, 'Force Smash'. A purple magic circle appeared on my right palm, and released a powerful invisible force that hit the skeletons like a truck, disbalancing them and breaking some of their bones in the process.
{*NOTE: Gravity magic also includes Antigravity magic, as they are both two sides of the same coin.}
I didn't let this chance go to waste and casted 'Stone Barrage'. another purple magic circle appeared, but this time, it was on the ground half a meter behind me. The magic circle glowed and lifted up soil and rocks from the ground, crushed them together into four rocks, making the rocks much more durable and heavier in the process. Before the condensed rocks could be launched, I cast 'Reinforcement' on the condensed rocks, which made them even harder and stronger.
Then, the 4 rocks that I had created were flung towards the skeletons who had just broken out of their staggered state.
*CRACKK* *BREAK* *CLATTER*
The rocks absolutely destroyed the skeletons. Their bones shattered like glass.
As I watched the bones and armor of the skeletons fall lifelessly to the ground, I sighed in relief.
'Phew... that went smoothly...', I thought.
This combo of 'Force Smash', 'Stone Barrage' and 'Reinforcement' worked very well, but it was also quite mana inefficient. I had a few ideas on how I could improve it, but for that, I would either need more knowledge about spell formations and magic circles, or I could ask for help from someone who IS good at that stuff.
Anyways, that combo was for when there were more than one enemy and they were too close to me for comfort.
A close-combat strategy, you could say.
For long range, I had a different strategy, which was much more mana efficient, as it consisted of only one spell.
As I was thinking for ways to improve my combos, I heard some more clattering noises from the distance.
I turned my attention towards the sound and continued the hunt.
It was more skeletons wearing rusty armor.
I casted 'Gravity Bullet' after raising my left arm to aim at the skeletons. A purple magic circle appeared on my left palm and it gathered some kind of dark purplish smoke into a ball, and shot it towards one of the skeletons.
The ball travelled at a speed not visible to the naked eye, but not as fast as a real bullet, which wasn't really 'Extremely Fast', but fast enough to damage the skeletons.
The little ball landed on the ground between the 3 skeletons and suddenly, the skeletons got violently pulled towards the ball, making them collide into each other and shattering their bones in the process.
'Its still not as strong as a spell like 'Implosion', but it will get there eventually...', I thought as a slight smirk of satisfaction crept on face.
Implosion is a high level Gravity spell. It was the spell which almost killed the protagonist.
And so, I continued to hunt down skeletons and taking small breaks in between to replenish my mana.
I knew that after I had killed around 100 of them, the main boss would spawn, a Skeleton Revenant, which was basically an inferior version of the Death Knight. That boss will have the Meteor Ring on him.
By the way, I realized that many of the gravity spells are like the earth spells, but better.
I continued hunting more skeletons.
While I was doing so, I found out that there were different types of skeletons. Soldiers, who wielded swords and wore armor, Archers, who wore light leather armor and used bows or crossbows, and Stalkers, who were faster than normal skeletons and used knives.
I hadn't seen a single Skeleton Mage, though, which was actually a very good thing. A skeleton mage is much stronger than any other type of low level undead. And if given enough time, a skeleton mage can evolve into an Undead Sorcerer, which can then again evolve into either a Lich or a Skeleton Archmage. Liches and Skeleton Archmages are disaster-level monsters, which can overwhelm even the strongest hunters of humanity.
By the way, the difference between Liches and Skeleton Archmages is that Liches have a phylactery, which makes them semi-immortal. As long as their phylactery is intact, they can respawn no matter what. Also, a Lich specializes in Necromancy. It can perform other spells, but it mostly only uses Necromancy. A Skeleton Archmage on the other hand, doesn't have a phylactery, and specializes in Destruction Magic. Both are equally as powerful.
As I was thinking about the undead, I realized something. 'Aren't the Undead, like, super overpowered?'
I mean, yeah, they have their weaknesses, like Holy Magic, and Fire, and Blunt Weapons. But their strengths actually outweigh their weaknesses. Infinite Stamina, Total immunity to Mental attacks, emotions, pain, poison, fatigue, and most importantly, they don't age!
While thinking, I had already killed 100 skeletons, and The boss had started spawning, which kicked me back into focused mode.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS
Xeanos
Xeanos
I always love the undead in any fantasy novel! They are just so facinating and cool! if you agree, comment what you like about the Undead.
I like the undead so much, I might actually give Samuel some kind of artifact or some thing that allows him to temporarily become an Undead, with all of their strengths and weaknesses.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
200+ Power
Ranking 
0 Power
stone 
Paragraph comment