Dark Impact

Michael sprints out of the city, with hundreds of people doing the same in order to preserve their lives. Just as he leaves, however, he hears a magical message from Loutiel detailing where he should go now, which was helpful, if he hadn't tacked on the last bit... "- Good luck! And, remember your debts."

"Yeah, yeah. No chance of me forgetting... Douchebag." he mutters while slowing his pace as he reaches the treeline. With Loutiel's information, at least now he had a vague idea of where to go. He'd travel across the coast until he entered Gallia and found La Rochelle.

To be honest, he could vaguely remember the name 'La Rochelle'. It was the second time Saito encounters Fouquet, and where Louise and Wardes ditch everyone on an Airship to give Henrietta's letter to Prince Wales.

Hopefully, he wouldn't run into as much trouble as Saito did, but he wasn't all that against it in the end... More trouble meant more exp after all.

Michael lets out a sigh and kicks a pebble on the road, wondering if he should have stolen a horse while he was at it. Sure, his passive walking speed was pretty ridiculous when Shadow Dance passively activating, but that didn't mean it was any less boring.

In the end, Michael decides to disregard the warning of not 'Texting and walking', and pulls out the Book of Commoners to converse with Rhasta. He'd try to read the Magical Theory book as well, but doing so while walking on this bumpy dirt path was more difficult than he'd anticipated.

He opens the book and begins conversing with Rhasta, the old shaman cheerfully teaching him the basics of mana manipulation. Most of which required Michael to actually sit down and meditate, but as this wasn't really an option, they'd worked out a compromise.

Michael would cast Ether Shocks and attempt to feel the magic flowing through him. This turned out to be way more effective than simply meditating, but the method wasn't really applicable to any who didn't possess this 'Dota System'. After all, you couldn't cast spells unless you were proficient in basic mana manipulation.

After that, it was just trial and error. It takes around half a day of walking for Michael to finally reduce the chant for Ether Shock down to just 'Shock'. While it might not look much, it'd drastically increase his rate of casting, simply because he didn't have to fully shout the spell name.

Not only that, but now he had a basic understanding of how to direct his Ether Shock... Previously, it would just strike any living thing he mentally regarded as 'hostile'. If there were no applicable targets in its range, it'd instead just strike other random things in the area.

Now however, he had limited control on where the threads actually went. He could even have multiple threads target the same person. And unlike with what he did against that Spearman, he wouldn't have to be point blank to have that work.

Michael considered this attack more of a 'Bird shot' than anything else. It lacked penetrating power but made up for it with it's range, as well as its Fire and Lightning elemental effects. In the end, his efforts earned him a new ability! :

[Basic Mana Manipulation] : Allows user more control over his magic, spells, and some abilities. Mana efficiency and control of power is inceased.

It was a great boon that'd enhance everything mana related, but it came with a few caveats... For one, some abilities didn't actually seem to use mana. When he tried to find the mana flow of Slark's abilities, such as Pounce, Essence Shift, and Shadow Dance, he was completely unable to.

The only one of Slark's abilities that actually used mana was Dark Pact. But after using it once, Michael decided that it was a 'last chance' spell... He shivers at the memory of when he'd actually cast it.

Flashback :

"Dark Pact!" he exclaims while cutting his thumb to finalize the spell. Michael feels his blood literally pulled from his body, but there's no indication that he'd actually lost any... The wound on his thumb immediately heals himself as a dark circle forms around him, following his movements as he continues to walk along the road.

Then, after a moment... It explodes! Causing a dark cloud of some acidic substance to envelope him. It burns away at his skin and flesh, making Michael feel as if he were on fire. "Arrgh!" he groans at the incredibly painful experience, but just as soon as it came, the cloud disappeared. Leaving him just standing on the road with a blank look on his face.

"Y-yeah... I'm not doing that again." he mutters while tentatively touching his face to check if it'd been melted off or not.

Flashback end :

He shakes his head, "Yeah, definitely a last chance spell. In the game it looked incredibly broken, allowing Slark to evade everything from Stuns, Silences, Roots, etc. It was likely the most powerful ability he had. But, in real life Michael would be forced to experience ungodly pain whenever he used it. How Slark endured using it hundreds of times within an hour? He had no idea.

Whatever the case, Michael was happy with his new gains, even if he'd found some negatives. Instead of continuing to dwell on whether or not picking Slark was the right idea, he decides to just listen to Rhasta's teaching and keep walking. Hopefully, he'd find a village at some point, while Shadow Dance did increase the time he could stay awake, it didn't mean his mental fatigue would fade with it.

"So Master Rhasta, why does your polymorph turn people into chickens? I know of another that uses frogs and pigs, so, is it an important distinction?"

Rhasta laughs, "Haha-he-he-ha! You see, there's actually an important reason for this!-" he starts and begins to explain that the results of a Polymorph are more based on the personality of the caster, than the victim... But, that's a story for another time, a story on how Rhasta developed the Polymorph spell.