Ch. 8 New Ability

Throwing himself to the side, John just barely dodged the fireball.

'This fucker has the slightly weaker physical body of a boss troll, but has an intelligent mind that is as smart as a human and can utilize spells!'

John instinctively wanted to just rush in and behead the Troll as his memories told him that even the strongest Troll that could wipe out a country were far beneath him, but he had to control his ego and remember that he wasn't the godlike swordsman from his past life that could take on the strongest beings with relative ease.

Instead John delved deep into his past lifes memories back to when he was just a normal swordsman and remembered how to fight an enemy that was on a similar level. John realized he had to bait out all of the Trolls magic spells before he'd commit to performing a fatal strike!

Dashing forward John used Roel and slashed at the troll, who used his staff in an attempt to block it. The millisecond before they made contact, John conjured Aura onto Roel, allowing it to slice through the bottom third of the staff.

John attempted to stab the unguarded Troll, only for a glassy blue wall to magically appear Infront of him. Roel slammed into the wall and it lasted only half a second before it broke, but it was enough time for the Troll Scholar to run away.

'The two spells that he knows are fireball and barrier, the wiki said Troll scholars almost away know only two spells. Time to end this!'

Before doing any dungeon, John researched everything about it from the times of monsters to the bosses and each of their variants.

Springing forth, John sliced through a barrier blocking his way and charged forth towards the Troll.

Using it's half cut staff as a spear, the troll attempt to stab John only for it to be perried away as another barrier appeared Infront if John.

Standing just a few feet away, John saw a look if fear across the monsters face through the blue barrier, and knew that it was over.

With his Roel in the air, John sliced through the blue barrier with easy and was about to decapitate the monster, when he suddenly.....slipped.

Falling face first into the ground, John tried to get up once again, only to slip again. Looking at the ground, he saw a faint shimmer of magic carpeting the entire boss room.

'Grease magic?! Fuck!' For a C Class magic variant monster to use a third spell was incredibly rare, and knowing a fourth spell wasn't possible for C rank.

Looking up, John saw the Trolls face shifted from his frightened look, into a sneer of arrogance knowing that it had just tricked it's opponent with it's acting and planning.

It lifted the heavy staff up into the air, the Troll slammed it down with all of its might.

Stabbing his Roel into the ground, John used it as leverage to slide away from the boss in an attempt to dodge the Bosses staff, only for his left arm to get smashed and sent him gliding across the room.

"H-heal!" A bright light wrapped around John's arm as he was sliding away.

'Not only am I facing a variant boss, the variant has reached the peak of it's abilities! Am I truly that unlucky, or is something else at play here?!'

John was begining to feel suspicious that every Dungeon that John entered, was stronger than the average dungeon. Even when he cleared those three D ranked Dungeon by himself, they were definitely stronger than the D rank dungeons he went into with a party.

Putting those thoughts to the side, John tried to take a step forward and nearly slips once again.

'Fuck! How do I fight in these conditions! Im going to d-' coming to a stop, John looked at the harden dirt wall and realize that unlike the floors, it was free of grease magic.

After a full minute of healing, John felt his arm was nowhere near combat read but it was usable for his plan. Thankfully the overcoat did it job and protects John's arm from shattering completely, although if it was a sword instead of a staff, then john would've been missing his arm right now.

Taking out his cheap harvesting dagger with his shaky injured hand, John coated it and Roel in aura and stabbed it horizontally into the wall!

Like a hot knife going through butter, Johns knife easily pierced through the wall and lifted himself up.

Stabbing the wall with Roel, John started climbing up the wall until he reached the ceiling. Looking down, John saw the Giant troll heavily breathing from mana expenditure and not taking a single step.

'The grease spell also affects him, meaning he is just waiting to replenish his mana for fireball!'

looking at the ceiling, John realized that with how sharp his aura makes his blades, he'd immediately cut through the ceiling

Closing his eyes, John toned out the pain in his body and the dread that filled him as he began to focus on controlling his aura, making the back half of the blade lose the aura and leaving only the front edges coated it it.

Stabbing into the ceiling at angle, John started to make his way over to the Troll only for him to began to fill heat eminating from below him as he was half way to the troll.

Looking down John saw a fireball beginning to manifest from the haggard and fatigued troll, forcing John to do the only thing possible.

"Fuck it!"

Lifting his legs up to the ceiling, John launched himself downward towards the Troll the very moment it finished manipulating it's mana and full conjured the fireball, launching it.

As fireball and john inched closer, he could feel the magic power flame begin to fringe his hair but despite that, he couldn't contain his smile "Magic shield!"

The moment before impact, a blue shield that was 6 feet tall appeared Infront of John and pushed through the fireball. Smelling the burnt hair and feeling the overwhelming heat, John engulfed his sword with Aura and sliced through his own shield and bisected the Troll in half.

-Verifying assault, measurement complete. C-rank dungeon, clear.

– Verifying the existence of a new item.

The measuring tool reacted.

Collapsing to the floor, John was panting heavily and realize that the grease had disappeared when the troll died.

"Heal!" Using the remaining hits of his mana, John healed his body back to decent shape and laid on the floor for ten minutes, eating all three of his crushed up protein bar before getting up.

Pulling out his measurement tool, John placed it next to the trolls cloak which thankfully hadn't been cut.

C rank item

-Grease Magic

-Decreased spell cost (2%)

'thank his cloak is good, too bad you can't overlap enchanted items as my overcoat is way more useful for my fighting style. Beside Id need to buy some special shoes to walk around on grease magic, not worth it.'

Taking out his harvesting knife, John began cutting the crystal out of the trolls chests.

"Soloing a C-rank dungeon is my limit, even if this one was on the harder end of C ranks"

From what John knew, the average C ranked bosses were much weaker than the Troll Scholar. He was sure that he might be able to solo a very weak B ranked dungeon, but he wouldn't be taking that risk

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Arriving at the tear in reality in the underground corridor, John exited the dungeon and felt the familiar sensation of moving out of this dimension.

With the sensation still fresh in mind, he stepped out of the gate and saw the bright sunlight beading down on him, forcing him to covered his eyes as this situation conjured up memories that dweller within the deepest parts of his mind

As John removed his hand away from his face, he immediately realized couldn't control his body! Looking around, he saw a battlefield of knights and monsters clashing and sending shockwaves everywhere!

Despite seeing such a dangerous and chaotic scene, John calmed down as he realizee why he couldn't move.

'This must be one of Roukels memories, I need to focus on learning!'

John quieted his mind and watched as Roukel lead a charge with only a dozen of knights behind him and was facing tens of thousands of enemies.

John watched in awe as he swung his sword and in a single blow, swept over a hundred orcs surrounding him.

"Watch closely, disciples! I will show you the technique you will need to reach the position of a master." Roukel paid no attention to the monsters surrounding him as he spoke to his Knights surrounding hum

Roukel raised his hand and like a vacuum, a thin blue line of mana began to rise from the dead corpses of the monsters he had just slain and flew into roukel.

"This is the technique to absorb mana that you've already been taught. Killing monsters will grant you a fraction of their mana, but on a battlefield with thousands of monsters to be slain, I expect you all to raise your Limits!"

"Understood, sir Roukel!"

The moment he finished speaking, John felt his head ache in pain as he suddenly gained a new muscle memory and immediately realize how this spell works and how to use it! Of

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The appraised amount he had received from selling the magic stones from the C-rank dungeon was $67,000 and the cloak was worth $34,000.

With nothing else needed at the moment, John sent over $50,000 to his seperate bank account for his brother's hospital bills.

Deciding to request up for another solo C ranked raid, he figured that if he defeat one of the hardest C ranked dungeon, then sure a normal ones would be a breeze.

Leaving the bureau, John walked over to the training grounds and brought Roel with him. John had quickly realized that the more he practiced his sword techniques, the clearer his memories became.

When he thought he had mastered one movement from the memories he knew, another one would suddenly be remember and made his technique better and better.

Following that logic, John knew that as he followed his memories, he's inevitably going to remember more and hopefully more techniques like mana absorption will eventually be remembered.

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Twister his waist and swing his sword, John followed the memory of when Roukel defeated a Vampire's thrall.

Unlike normal memories that eventually fade away and become more blurry, the memories of his past life were crystal clear and could recall every single detail from his memories.

This greatly helped train John as he was gaining experience fighting without having to endanger himself at all.

Lifting up his sword with both hand, a deadly serious look appeared in John's eye as he was greatly immersed in the memory and could almost his enemy appearing into reality.

A blurry and shadow humanoid figure started to shifted into John's eyes as he prepared to finish off the vampire leader once and for all.

Tensing all of the muscles in his thigh, John was about to dash forward and decapitate the vampire when he was suddenly interrupted.

*Ring Ring Ring*

The ringing of his phone broke John's attention as the vampire disappeared and left John standing alone.

'Right, I was just shadow boxing.' picking up a towel and drying his sweat off, John answered his phone.

"Hello Mr. Jackson, this is the Dungeon Bureau."

"Ah, Is this about my Dungeon request?"

"Yes, you see there have been a lot of people applying for solo the D and C-rank Dungeons. Therefore, we are experiencing unexpected delays in the waiting line."

Normally, there weren't a lot of solo players out there. However, the rumor that the weakest hunter in existence had cleared a D-rank dungeon by himself had spread on the Hunter website and naive Hunters started to apply for solo play in mass.

'It seems I've indirectly killed hunters by setting an example. Well, it's not like I told them to do it.' John didn't feel any guilt that others tried to replicate him and died.

"If it's an E-rank dungeon, you could even go right now."

John thought for a moment and made his decision.

"Then let's do that. If you tell me the location, I'll go immediately."

"Thank you for understanding, Hunter. We will send you the address via text message, goodbye."

To other it would seem that John was desperately for money as E-rank dungeons weren't profitable but John only wanted to test the Mana Absorption technique that he'd just learned.

Eventually, he got a message of the location and went to the location in the message. Biking over to the dungeon, he quickly gave hid ID to the Bureau worker on standby and proceeded to the dungeon.

Walking into the dirt dungeon, John activated his night vision as he didn't need to conserve his mana and needed to waste his mana. With his night vision, he saw a relatively cramped underground tunnel and if he got on his tippy toey, he could easily touch the ceiling.

Appearing within his sense, John felt a pack of 5 incredible weak killing intents approaching him and saw a pack of Rats appear before him and tried to bite him.

Needless to say John wiped them all out with ease, using only harvesting knife as he refused to draw Roel on rats.

Raising his hands up above the corpse of the rats, John followed his memories and sent out a thin string of mana that connected John and the dead rat. After a moment of silence, a small swirl of blue light started flowing out of the rat and followed John's mana back into his hand!

"I've truly recovered my mana!" John was so excited he couldn't contain his words, as he knew what this ability ment for him.

Absorbing four of the rat, John had fully recovered his mana back to full as he felt the overwhelming sense of excitement flowing through him as he absorbed the last rat.

Sending out a string of mana to connect them, John felt the rats mana flowing into him but not being able to fit as he was already at capacity. With a smile on his face, John forced the rats mana into him as he felt his mana grow very minutely from the E ranked rat!

John stood in complete shock as he realized this technique would allow him to grow his Mana larger and larger, making him the only human that could grow his Mana besides additional awakenings!

'I must conceal this ability at all cost! If the world finds out that not only can I restore my mana but also increase it, they might eliminate for the sole reason that I'll potentially surpass even the strongest Snrank Hunters and becoming an untouchable being!'