Apostle of Izrath

Felix stood before Caleb, holding his spear firmly. Seeing his sparring partner nod, Felix suddenly leaped at him, his spear stabbing towards Caleb's kidneys.

Caleb made a quick step to the left, dodging the blow, and performed a horizontal slash. Caleb no longer used the spear, but his real weapon of expertise, the sword.

Seeing the quick blade coming for his throat, Felix did not panic and slammed the tip of his spear into ground, before using it as support to duck under the blade, and kick Caleb across the face at the same time.

The move looked almost impossible, yet Felix did it with a surprising ease as Caleb was forced to take a step back. He tried to take some more distance, but he did not even see the butt of Felix's spear come as it strongly slammed into his gut.

Was Felix as strong as him, this would have stunned him for a moment, but Caleb easily tanked it as he parried the next strike with his blade, trying to get back into position.

Felix was relentless though as he unleashed a flurry of attacks that forced a constant pressure on Caleb, until he found Felix's spear blade right at his throat.

Caleb did not even see where it came from, so he raised his hands and said, "You got me."

Felix smiled and took his spear back, saying, "Nice fight."

Caleb scowled, "No it was not, you freak."

Felix continued smiling, as Caleb didn't mean it in a bad way.

On the side, a guy who had been watching clapped his hands strongly as he said, "Another victory for the great Odin!"

Caleb rolled his eyes at that, while Felix said, "Why don't you come, Pedro?"

The man waved his hands in dismissal as he replied, "I don't want to get my butt kicked on stream! Have mercy!"

[Pedro, Level 11, Swordsman]

Pedro had stumbled upon Felix and Caleb training together a few days ago, and since then he came to every training to watch them. He wasn't only a player, but also a streamer, meaning that Pedro was sharing his game on the internet in real time.

He wasn't very famous, but according to him, his audience had multiplied since he started filming Felix's training.

Felix himself had somewhat of a reputation, because of his odd behavior, but it wasn't all positive, so he didn't bother himself with it.

Twirling his spear around, Felix asked, "Again?"

Caleb shook his head and replied, "You aren't getting anything out of these fights anyway, you might as well return to Chris'."

Felix shrugged, strapping the spear on his back as he waved to Caleb and left. Pedro, knowing the show was over, went to do his own thing.

As he arrived in the forge, Felix spotted Chris in his workshop, where he usually did his enchants. Right now, he was carefully engraving a bow, so Felix did not bother him, sitting down in his corner as he entered meditation.

[Deep Meditation]

[Rating: C]

[Effect: Allows the user to fully immerse themselves into their Inner World. Slightly increases Mana Regeneration.]

It was now twenty days into the game, and Felix's meditation had gotten one more level, reaching C Grade. It was quite something, as Chris himself only had the same skill.

Compared to the normal Meditation, Deep Meditation made Mana Manipulation even easier while in his Inner World, and even better, slightly changed his perception of time, allowing him to train for what seemed to be longer. Of course, there was also the part about the increased Mana Regeneration, which was a plus.

Felix was curious about the B rank version of the skill, but he hadn't managed to unlock it yet, nor did he know how to.

On the subject of progress though, Felix had mastered the entire Runic Alphabet, as well as its variations. It hadn't actually taken him too long, only a week. However, he truly had spent all the time in that week learning them, as even offline he would be studying them through screenshots.

Usually, Felix faced fatigue rather quickly, but inside the game, this problem was completely solved. His need for sleep had also drastically lessened since he started playing, as his body effectively went into sleeping mode while he played.

Anyway, within his Inner World, Felix had separated a very small part of his Mana, about the equivalent of 1 point of Mana, so three hundredths of his Mana.

A week ago, merely separating such a small part of his Mana from the rest would have been impossible, but now, Felix was repeatedly giving it the shape of different runes.

This was an exercise Felix had come up by himself, and what he did was to go through every Rune he knew.

It was a long a highly demanding exercise on his spirit, but it was exactly what made it so good. When he first started it, it took Felix more than 24 hours in total to go through every rune, and that was without counting the breaks he had to get because of exhaustion.

Now though, Felix actually managed to complete the entire exercise in under an hour. For reference, Felix knew 102432 Runes. In other words, he was capable of transforming his mana about 28 times per second, and that with only a very small portion of his mana.

This went beyond anything Felix thought to be possible for a human, simply memorizing all of these runes and being able to go through each of them without forgetting a single one was insane, not to mention at this kind of speed.

But Felix had reached 30 in both Spirit and Intelligence, the peak for Level 1 humans. To Felix, this might very well mean that his mind had reached the absolute peak a human on Earth could get to, so maybe it was only natural.

In any case, once he was done with his exercise, Felix came back to his senses. Taking a deep breath, Felix goaded for his mana to move, and being as fast as possible, he sent it out of his body.

An ethereal blue light appeared in front of Felix, taking the form of something similar to the Omega symbol. However, a small part of it took too long to be formed, and the rest got distorted before Felix could finish it.

Felix didn't let the failure get to him though as he tried forming another rune, at which he failed again.

Felix failed repeatedly, burning through his Mana quickly. By the time he spent all of his mana, he still hadn't succeeded, but it was fine. He was used to it. He had started trying to manifest his Runes into the physical world for five days now, and although he repeated failure after failure, he had made great progress.

He had gone from not even being able to control how much mana he used with every test to drawing faulty runes. Now, all he needed was enough repetition.

Unfortunately, although Felix should be able to make 300 attempts before expending all of his mana, his Curse lowered that number to 30, as every time he used 1 MP for his testing, another 9 would disappear.

So once he was bereft of mana, Felix moved to the forge.

Were he back on Earth, it would take Felix most of the day, if not days, to make a single weapon, but magic made everything so much easier.

The fire Felix used was better than any fire he could get on Earth, as it wasn't only hot, it also had the magical property of making Smithing easier. The hammer, the anvil, and pretty much every tool Felix was using had been enchanted so as to make Enchantment easier.

Added to the specially made techniques of this world, Felix was able to finish his sword in only an hour. Of course, it was a very basic sword in appearance, but as long as it cut well, Felix considered it a success.

[Steel Shortsword, Uncommon, Level 10]

[Attack: +21]

[Requirements: 5 Strength]

Something Felix learned from Chris was that numbers were more of a reference than anything. This blade having 21 of attack didn't mean every attack would take 21 HP from the enemy hit. The number of HP taken would depend on the kind of attack dealt, against the type of enemy, where it hit, how much strength there was…

Even if he used a weapon with only 10 of attack, Felix would be able to one shot any normal human with 100 HP by cutting off their head, for example.

Of course, the numbers weren't to be dismissed either, but when it comes to attack and defense, they should only be seen as indicators.

Putting down the new sword in a small box, where a few other of his creations were, Felix went back to his meditation, as a substantial amount of his Mana had been recovered.

His Deep Meditation increasing his Mana Regeneration, Felix only had to sit down for a quarter of an hour before all of his mana had been recovered, and so he went back to his trial and testing.

The constant strain on both his body and spirit was tiring, but the hours passed quickly for Felix. Before he knew it, it was already night, and Chris had left. But Felix did not stop, making circles that lasted an hour and a half each. With each circle, Felix would craft one weapon, meditate, and expend all his mana on trying to form a rune.

--

The Murky Woods that bordered Red Dawn Town had recently been occupied by a den of bandits. They were among the harder enemies in the surroundings as they were capable of proper thought, and thus did not hesitate to use all kinds of tactics to win.

And if they saw they were in danger, they would even flee. As a result, most people avoided the Murky Woods, as the bandits weren't even the only danger, with dangerous animals roaming the woods too.

However, tonight, the woods were unusually quiet. Eerily so, even.

The reason for this came from the old fortress in the woods. It was from another time, and had long been abandoned by soldiers. But it still remained a good place to make a base, as it was easy to defend, and sustenance usually wasn't a problem with the animals roaming the woods around.

But tonight, the ramparts of the old fortress were unusually bare. The reason for that was that all the bandits were in the main yard.

The problem was, they all laid still, as despite any clear sign of injury, they had died.

In the entire fortress, a single figure was left standing. And it wasn't the Chieftain Ranked Bandit Leader, nor was it any of his Elite lieutenants.

Instead, it was a player.

[Euron, Level 25, Apostle of Izrath]

His arms wide open, Euron was chanting in the Dark Language, a tongue only used by the Dark Dwellers from Hell, as well as the believers of Izrath.

The darkness of the night seemed to churn along with the chant as it slowly took the form of long tendrils of darkness, which penetrated the corpses of the bandits.

Unknown to all, far from the eye of people, a dark ritual of utmost blasphemy was taking place.

"Rise, in the name of your father, Ocumini!"

Euron finished his chant with the Common Tongue, finalizing the rituals as the monsters arose.