Chapter 31: Sage

After helping Asia settle down and helping her place her things as well as making sure that if anything happened to Asia it would be on their ass to the fallen angels. I went down to my basement aka. My man cave and thought about what I should do next.

I could keep grinding cursed tool creation and curtain but as I was writing down my current avenues I had to gain more power I was suddenly struck by a bolt of inspiration.

Quickly, I went up and informed Mittelt and Kalawarner that I would be gone for around several hours before setting up a secondary chameleon curtain to ensure anonymity and using ID Create: Cursed Forest.

I appeared back at the cursed forest ready to do an absolutely devious lick.

I brought out my tome and summoned my brigade of the undead. Just these guys alone would be enough to exterminate most spirits here including the weaker minibosses like Curse of Oni but that simply isn't enough for me.

Sitting down I deployed a simple domain before having one of my wights float above me and scream hell while most of my undead went out to hunt curses in groups.

Attracted by the scream of the wight the cursed spirits started heading toward me while I still looked undisturbed. And inside I wasnt, I was confident in my plan working. After all, if one principle can be applied to a technique then why can't it be applied to others?

Soon enough, a large humanoid cursed spirit charged at me ahead of the others. But the moment the spirit set foot inside the simple domain I erected...

*Stab!*

A large bone spear erupted from the ground the moment the spirit had stepped inside. And with accuracy pierced its skull before it could respond. The spirit died almost instantly and the stake dissipated.

I did it! I was right!

I remembered the basically sure hit mechanism of the simple domain quick draw technique. Since that technique's almost sure hit relies on the mechanisms of the simple domain then why couldn't that same concept be applied to other avenues?

It is almost impossible to avoid Batto(Quick Draw) while inside the simple domain due to the fact the technique can sense how you are moving in the domain and intercepts it. After all, you are already inside the technique.

The moment you step inside the range it activates. So why not apply the automatic hit effect of a simple domain to grave buster?

Even better is that with a simple domain, the accuracy is massively enhanced to the point where it could even be considered a sure hit if your agility was below 100. The reason being that just like with Batto the technique is already cast beforehand, it just gets released the moment you step inside.

I used level 30 of the skill as a baseline so I spent 300 Ce with every kill. A bit expensive and the flaw was that the prepared technique cant be done in a horde situation so I just made do with the technique being cast every time somebody stepped inside instead.

If I had the cheaty six eyes I could even automatically calculate the strength of whatever stepped inside the domain and release a grave buster of exact strength to conserve CE but I did not have that option.

Yet.

Currently, I will call this barrier of mine the auto impaler. Due to me being in an early part of the dungeon, there were no mobs that could actually hurt me at the moment as long as I do not forget to take my mana potions. This method gave me a ridiculous boost in Simple Domain and Grave Buster proficiency.

I was leveling up necromancer FAST thanks to both my undead hunting throughout the dungeon as well as my spike domain. While my undead cleared spirits and my domain did the same I decided to do some alchemy crafting while I was already grinding.

As I was mixing random ingredients I found a juicy, juicy jiggly piece of luscious meat of a potion that is Mana Regeneration.

[Intermediate Potion of Magic Regenaration]

-Increases MP regeneration rate by 40% for 30 minutes

Now that alone might not be that impressive before you realize that it is applied after all of my effects. So instead of turning my CE regen of 1.2 to 1.6 it instead makes it 1.68. And thanks to the fact that I had leveled a whopping 17 times by the time I had reached level 37 alchemy my current my CE regen was...

411 per minute. Or nearly 7 per second.

Damn, I thought it would be higher than that. At least I can mitigate my lacking recovery with my intermediate mana potions which gives me 1000CE.

As I was grinding I also noticed that I had completed the promotion quest for my necromancy skill which required me to get my army total level to 1000.

[ Necromancy(Intermediate) ]

Allows the user to perform Intermediate levels of {Necromancy}.

+20% Damage to all Necromancy spells

Reduces the cost of all Necromancy spells by 10%

The next level of it required me to master 5 necromancy spells, and for my army level to reach 10,000. Honestly, this was a reachable goal. Unlike the cursed energy control one which I had no idea how to achieve.

_____________________________

[Cursed Energy Control - Adept]

The line that separates an average sorcerer and an awakened one. The difference between them could be compared to the difference between heaven and earth. Are you capable of going beyond that line?

Condition: Land a {Black Flash}

Reward: [Cursed Energy Control (Adept)], [Perk: Awakened], [Skill: Black Flash], +50 Int, 50 Wis

_____________________________

The rewards for the quest were insane, but so were the conditions.

A black flash. The conditions for pulling it off are that cursed energy must be applied at nearly the exact same instant as landing a blow. Doing so distorts the cursed energy and the space around itself amplifying the blow by 2.5 times.

When it says nearly the exact same instant it doesn't exaggerate. The window of time you have is 0.000001 of a second. Or a millionth of a second. A single microsecond.

It won't work if you do it within 0.000002 of a second. I don't think that is achievable even with absolute concentration. Unless you are talented in the art of Black Flash it is complete luck.

Not even someone with Six Eyes of all things could do it at will.

Well, at least until I get to that I had gathered around 200 low-rank souls in my grimoire so I decided to splurge a bit.

I spent 100 souls on the spell: Soul Trap. This allowed me to trap souls in inanimate objects also adding the option of creating soul flasks and containers to cursed tool creation. The book stated this to be the backbone of any necromancer so I had to get it sooner or later.

I also spent 100 on the spell Speak with the Dead. Which allowed me to temporarily restore intelligence to a corpse to gather information from it. At higher levels of necromancy, I could also summon spirits to converse and learn from them.

As I was sifting through my other loot I started to feel like something was wrong. Like a nagging feeling at the back of my mind that gave me a vague sense of discomfort.

Suddenly that feeling fo vague discomfort turned into a full shiver that went down my spine as I felt my connection with several of my undead get cut. I closed my eyes and used sense cursed energy.

Big mistake.

Massive.

Fucking Massive.

I could sense a titanic presence that nearly overwhelmed my senses approach me. Rapidly.

'ID: Esc-' As I was casting ID escape to leave here I suddenly felt my instincts flare up, I raised my arms just in time to block the projectile thrown at me that shattered on contact. A skeleton.

*Crash!*

[-180 HP]

One of my skeleton rangers.

Ignoring my bruised arm I waved the cloud of dust in front of me away and saw a sight that sent ice straight down my spine.

*Tap.* *Tap.* *Tap.*

Something was calmly walking toward me.

A large tan cursed spirit with black lines running across its entire body. It had a helmet-like head that didn't cover his teeth, It had branches for where the eyes are supposed to be, and two black lines that zig-zag down his face. It had a muscular body that looked like it was almost covered in armor and it had a giant sash over where its left arm would be.

In its right arm, it held one of my skeleton warriors that struggled feebly to escape the grasp it had on its skull.

*Crack*

[Skeleton soldier Lv. 52 has died]

It simply squeezed its hand and crushed the skull in its hand like it was made of eggshells. Suddenly a large blanket of thorny branches burst out of the ground and surrounded the spirit as it addressed me. I could barely move my body.

"『 Stop it, foolish Child. 』"

I couldn't understand the language yet it felt like the meaning of the words was shoved into my brain.

"『 I merely desire to protect this dimension. It is impossible for me to allow your existence any longer. 』"

It spread its arm out as the branches formed an almost lotus-like shape around it. Just the mere presence it emitted felt like a weight crushing my body. This was truly something that I held no candle to.

As if with its words the world around it grew sinister. I felt the suffocating murderous intent assault my body, I couldn't control my breathing. My eyes shook and I held barely any control over my own body.

"『 Please die and become a Sage. 』"

[ Hanami Lv. 300 - Special Boss ]

A/N: What did you think about this chapter? Comment down below! I am motivated by your interactions!

Authors note: Your comments and interactions helps motivate me so please write what you thought about the chapter in the comments. I am open to suggestions to help improve my fics.

Also, if anyone has interesting ideas for the random gatcha I will be glad to include those ideas if I like them. You can also recommend characters for the occasional companion card mc may pull from the gatcha. Though I would prefer if they were appropriate for Mc's level.

-------------------------------------

❗You can read up to 10 chapters ahead on this fic and the other ones I write on my p*treon at:

p*treon.com/BronzDeck

Just replace the * with an a