38 - Class Change

Days passed, and the infusion rate went up by about 2% a day, which relieved me.

I wouldn't have to wait too long.

I hadn't been able to sense mana still.

I had moved away from the corpses. They didn't rot, since I guess demon corpses didn't rot or something, so they just stayed there, smelling of death and blood but not of rot, and making for a gruesome sight.

I didn't want to keep looking at it and smelling it.

I found a little spot nearby and dug a cave into a cliff. It was small, but enough.

There were, interestingly enough, trees nearby, with black bark and blue and purple leaves. Sometimes there was green too.

I cut some down and made a table and some chairs, and a wooden bed frame.

They were a little harder to cut than normal trees, but not much.

Well, I guess here, these were the normal trees.

There were green fruits growing on them, but I didn't know if they were safe to eat. They were no treasure, so Tom couldn't tell me either.

It was weird, that. Tom could see what a thing was, but only if it was something the treasury deemed a treasure.

The compass now showed a [0/1], which was both a good and a bad thing.

I only needed to get one thing, but I didn't know what it was. Going by the previous pattern, it was a higher tier treasure, but what was better than my cloak?

I mean, I'm sure there were things better than my cloak, I'm just saying, like what? Cause I'd really like to know so I can find it...

A reanimated corpse didn't need to eat or sleep. I just felt minor pangs of hunger because, well, I guess it was part of the reanimation spell, but the cloak suppressed those pangs due to its effect of "increasing current tier of healing factor to near the peak".

I guess that allowed my stomach to subside the pain extremely quickly.

Well, it wasn't an actual injury, so it made sense enough.

Just like that, the days passed, and I made a little abode for myself, making it more and more homely.

Eventually, the day came.

I finally sensed mana today. However, it was red mana. That was to be expected.

Beginning absorption, I used a mage's technique instead of a knight's this time.

This was a rare chance to start over, I wasn't going to go magic swordsman again. It was a needless hassle, even if it gave a lot of benefits at times, especially in combat.

I first absorbed the traces of mana in the air, before bringing it to my heart. My heart absorbed the mana into my blood, and when it beat that blood went across my body.

As my body grew used to the red mana, it absorbed it more quickly, but that took time.

Eventually I stopped and rested. It was an undead body, reanimated, but it had blood and was fully functional.

This was how most reanimation worked. Although a reanimated body was technically considered Undead, it wasn't like a skeleton or a zombie. It was like a normal body, with only a few key differences, like not needing to eat or sleep.

However, normally, reanimation was very costly, energy-wise. Who would continuously cast, even while the reanimated person was actively cultivating and training to become stronger?

If they became strong enough, they could even cast reanimation on themselves and break free of the necromancer's control. It was a very unpopular option among necromancers to use reanimation to do anything.

I didn't know any reanimation spells, so I'd have to look into that.

I kept on training over the days and weeks. Reanimated corpses don't age, so I had all the time in the world.

When you absorbed mana with the right technique, be it red or blue mana, your heart would analyze it and start producing mana of its own of the same type.

It didn't do this with void mana.

I had read up on technique manuals for other classes before, and I both remembered plenty and had plenty in the treasury.

The library section had gotten more decently filled.

Of course, what I meant by that is, like, one row of bookshelves were filled, but thats still pretty good.

They weren't all "treasures", some were just books I liked...

Instead of choosing one particular book, I looked through all of the ones I had on class blood techniques and picked the best sets of skills from all of them.

Of course, I didn't just pick without thinking, but rather made sure to take into account the end class I'd be choosing, since my blood would adhere to that class.

There was a Law that made your blood more potent if you stuck to skills that the Law defined as "part of [X] class".

In the end, these were the skills I chose:

I still remembered how overpowered my healing had been, so, although it'd be a hassle, [Basic Healing Factor] and [Advanced Healing Factor] were both necessary.

And by hassle I mean painful. And Ixtra was no longer here to help me with the pain resistance spells...

I sighed again. I sighed everytime I thought of him. Damn it.

Can't believe he just ditched me like that...

Actually, it wasn't Ixtra's fault.

Ixtra had seen what had happened to me from start to finish, while I was unconscious.

A grim reaper came and took my soul, and he had seen, from within the treasury, hidden away, the entire process the grim reaper went through.

He understood that my bloodline should be gone. I mean, its literally a new body, how would I keep the bloodline without the same blood?

He wouldn't have expected something like an infusion from my spirit.

He didn't even know that was a thing.

As far as he knew, I was this weak thing that would never get strong again. And although I had some interesting and powerful things in the treasury, they would mean nothing if I couldn't raise my base strength.

However, he was wrong. I had a bloodline infusion happening, for whatever reason, and I would soom regain my previous strength.

Ok, well, maybe not soon...

But eventually.

I didn't plan to make things hard for him at that point. I understood.

Although the contract was valid in Hell, the summoning conditions weren't. He would really die if he died here. And he didn't want to die protecting some weakling with no future. Yet, he couldn't undo the contract without my permission, so he had hurriedly done so before I could process what was happening.

I understood all that now after having thought it through, really I did....but understanding it didn't make me feel that much better.

I wasn't angry, I just missed him.

He had been with me for over 150 years.

"Hey Tom?"

"What is it?"

"You won't leave that easily, right?"

"Hah! What do you think I am, a demon?"

"...that was not a good joke."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. No, I won't leave, relax. Anyways, I doubt anyone can do anything to me in this treasury of yours, so I don't care what happens, I'm sticking right here."

Tom was a treasure spirit. He felt at home in the treasury. Meanwhile, Ixtra understood that there was a type of suppression in there. It made him uncomfortable. He wouldn't stick around just for the supposed "safety" of the treasury.

Actually, Ixtra could have just stayed until danger arrived, and then promptly ran and left me to die, but I guess he had rathered just leave outright.

Shaking my head and stopping my reminiscence, I focused on the skills I'd be learning.

Besides the healing, void mana absorption would require [Basic] and [Advanced Chaotic Mana Absorption].

Then later I could get [Void Mana Absorption] too, since I knew the method.

[Killing Intent Resistance] would need a helper, and Ixtra was gone. [Fire Resistance] was unnecessary since my cloak gave [Fire Immunity].

The two blood burst resistance skills, [Lesser] and [Greater Blood Burst Resistance], would be good too. They were necessary to even train the chaotic mana absorption skills.

The aura skills were all meaningless to me, and my cloak gave a stronger version of [Stealth] anyways, so those were all unneeded.

Then, [Mana Flow], [Mana Proclivity] 1 and 2, [Multicast Proclivity] and [Adrenal Moment] were all essential.

My cloak let me travel stupid fast, so [Swift] was also not really needed.

By the way, the cloak still had the trillion year long lasting void mana arrays on. It was really a too good item. Legendary grade indeed.

Besides these that I had before, about 1/3rd to 1/2 of which I was not reattaining, I was also getting the following to replace them:

[Elementalism] - Casting different elemental spells in high enough frequency, precision, control, power, and for a long enough time grants you this skill, which enhances all of those aspects by making your body remember the feeling of casting them at that level. With that as your new default, subsequent casts of elemental spells are strengthened beyond normal.

Although it says elemental spells in the books, that was essentially all spells. Actually, now that I thought about it, that was all spells. Why would it say it as if it wasn't?

Who knows. Maybe I hadn't come across the right spells yet. Anyways, all the spells I'd be casting would be strengthened by this skill.

Wait, no. I guess summoning magic isn't elemental.

Anyways.

I couldn't get it previously because my blood refused to learn it after I was already on the path of a magic swordman.

There was also:

[Mana Pooling] - Drinking more mana potions than you can store the maan of, over and over, allows the cells to sublimate in a dense, unabsorbed, neutral mana solution that stays inside the body. After enough time, this sublimation process results in enhanced mana reserves.

Mana reserves were one of those things where they didn't matter most of the time, but only because you weren't in need of that much mana most of the time. Still, it was nice to have, particularly because of its advanced version:

[Mana Pooling II] - Repeat the process of obtaining [Mana Pooling] after obtaining it, but concentrate the mana potions by about 1 million times.

And then:

[Mana Pooling III] - use a series of arrays to hyper compress mana by 1 billion times, and repeat the previous steps after o taining the 1st and 2nd skills.

In total, [Mana Pooling] increased mana reserves by 2x, [II] by 4x (so another 2x), and [III] by 10x (another 2.5x).

A simple and easy process, and you could get 10x mana reserves. It was limited to only mages, though.

Good luck trying to get these as any other class.

Mages had a lot of overpowered skills to make up for the fact that other classes use spells sooner or later.

Spells are all mages have, they have to be good at them.

Especially this one. This was the main reason I wanted to be a mage class instead:

[Abyss Mana - syphon mana out of oneself and into the abyss, on command.]

Although it had little combat utility, it was stupidly overpowered for training purposes. Moreover, invading my body with mana would no longer work as an attack.

This was very significant. Back then, if I had had this, I wouldn't have almost died due to intaking too much raw mana. If the water dragon I killed had this, I wouldn't have been able to kill it without the help of a bunch of arrays.

It was a make or break essential skill that only mages could learn.

It really annoyed me, before, so I was immensely glad I could switch to mage now.

The skill was actually a spell at first, but after using the spell, 10th circle [Abyss Mana], enough times, it became a skill in your body.

Of course, if I could cast the 10th circle [Abyss Mana], by that time I wouldn't really need it for training anymore.

That's why I needed a way to get it earlier. Thankfully the person who discovered this skill also thought of this, and came up with a workaround.

"If you create lower circle versions of [Abyss Mana], you can still learn it. It'll be less potent, but after learning it, you can increase the skill potency without needing to worry about casting a higher circle spell."

It was perfect. I'd use a 1st circle [Abyss Mana] variant spell a whole bunch, obtain the skill, [Abyss Mana], and then raise the skill potency up to the original amount, equal to the 10th circle spell.

It'd be like having a 10th circle spell constantly active on my body. And I already, actually had one, no 3, of those due to the cloak (Fire Immunity, the stealth effect, and the speed).

Finally, there was one last skill I also had to learn, [Spell Mastery].

It'd essentially let me learn any spell below the 10th circle at a glance. Well, I could already do so in a matter of minutes, but at a literal glance would be even nicer.

To get it, it was very simple, yet also time consuming. I'd just have to learn a whole lot of spells. Actually, I had already done that. I just couldn't get the skill since it was locked to mages.

Most stronger mages automatically got this skill once they lived long enough and got powerful enough, since they would learn enough spells to unlock it anyhow.

How does learning spells, a mental thing, help with learning spells, still a mental thing, when it was the body learning the skill?

Well, its pretty complicated, so we won't get into it here.

Making a training regimen to learn all of these as fast as possible, I started training.

And of course, since the basis of everything was my raw output, I made sure to prioritize training my mana absorption and production.

I needed to get to solid crystal mana as soon as possible.