Chapter 217 - Sarinam, son of Sarinus

The shere cognitive ability that came with creating a power of his own, could make him the most powerful stingray that ever strode the seas! He was very happy about it, but in a sense, he also became a bit demotivated every time he tried to create a new power.

The more he twiddled with the knotty, mazy channels of mana within an essence, the more he understood how difficult, and limitless this craft was! This demotivated him, because he was smart enough to understand that although he was becoming skilled in this craft, he still knew nothing in a wide-scale of things!

There were thousands of powers in existence, a fraction of them belonging to experts, and he was far from learning the mana channels within those advanced powers! Sure his cognitive abilities would give him an edge against his current, common enemies, but as far as simple examples would go, he was simply an unremarkable scientist. Smart, but with no great discoveries!

“Looks like I will remain as Timothy Testicles for a while,” He joked, as to push away the crushing weights of his own demotivation.

Anyway, Timothy wanted to get into work on these other types of dark powers, but before he could get into them, something distracted him. Having decent senses overall, he could hear a bunch of creatures swimming around in the close distance, and once he focused more on them, he realized that they were Hunched Humans, rather than a bunch of average fish!

“Where did these bastards come from?! I thought I killed them all…” He panicked, though quietly because he didn’t want to blow his cover. “Good thing I didn't forget to pick up my armor, cause I do not want to fight anyone naked again!”

Timothy spotted fifty more Hunched Humans! Initially he wasn't too scared of this new group, but as he stalked them further, he noticed that more than half of them were far more powerful in comparison to the prior group! Although he couldn’t put a finger on it regarding what realm of mana quality they were in, he was anxious over the fact that they were stronger than him! He was in the third realm, and they were in the fourth or above, so he decided to label them as experts!

“There’s no messing around with these bastards,” He mumbled, though he found that he didn't want to follow his own words. “It would be great if I killed them, though, cause who knows what kind of powers they’re hiding under their robes!”

It took everything in his power to stop himself from attacking this new group, because even though he was aware of what kind of rewards he would get, he was aware of the risks, it was dangerous to attack them! His stomach was in knots, as he desperately tried to find a solution as to how to approach them.

The situation then escalated for the worst, when he suddenly locked eyes with one of the Hunched Humans! This absolutely terrified him, because not only was he hidden, but the group was still over thirty meters away from him! It was virtually impossible for him to get spotted, and yet he was spotted anyway!

“What the fuck…” He cussed, and quick as a flash, he stood up, and unleashed two, obnoxiously large bolts against this particular dark mage that spotted him!

[-80,000 blue mana points,] The system beeped.

Timothy overcharged the bolts, without a doubt, but even though he was tossed five meters backwards during the departure of the bolts, he still delivered the message! Most mages would be scared of five-foot wide lighting bolts, regardless of what scale of mana quality they had, this was a no brainer. He scared the living senses out of most mages, but his target, the one man he wanted to kill, defended himself against the attack!

A vast, dark forcefield suddenly surrounded the mages, thus, protecting the entire group. Timothy couldn’t manage to kill a single one of them!

“Ah shit…” He panicked.

In response to his failure, he decided to shapeshift now before the battle escalated, because as it happens, he couldn’t kill this overly powerful man that he locked eyes with. A sneak attack may have done the trick, sure, but he was in no position to perform sneak attacks right now, on the count that he was already spotted by his enemies! He had to flee, and he wanted to turn into a plankton in order to flee, but suddenly, his plan was put to a halt!

The enemy grabbed Timothy by the soul, in the most literal sense possible, so now, he was officially captured. He was at the mercy of the dark mages, and considering their common practices, they were anything but merciful! He was aware of this, so he almost defecated himself to the thought of what was about to happen next!

The group approached him, and the strongest mage of the bunch, who appeared to be a leader of sorts, stepped forward calmly, and introduced himself in the worst way possible!

The mage pulled Timothy's soul through his mouth, only to flash its blue features in front of his eyes! This was a way to intimidate Timothy, from the looks of it, because the middle-aged mage didn't take the soul with him, but rather, he put it back in Timothy's body after a minute!

“I am Sarinam, son of Sarinus! You've disturbed our operation, and you shall suffer the consequences!” He exclaimed.

Timothy was beyond intimidated. It was weird to have one's own soul flicker in front of them, so he was naturally terrified.

However, he was not hopeless. As soon as his soul went back in his body, he decided to attack, and he was given a very good idea of what sort of attack he could use! He did not want to stand idly by.

Despite his bodily movements being limited almost entirely, the attack he initiated didn't require any movement. Timothy just opened his mouth, and summoned one of those expert abilities which allowed him to steal one's soul!

Timothy only bore a fraction of this power, and he wasn't supposed to use it to begin with, considering that he was far from being an expert, but his choices were very limited, so he decided to depend on it as a last resort! This ability was called the Soul Eater ability, and once he summoned it, he snatched this overpowered enemy’s soul, right out of their body, and then he consumed it!

[The entirety of your dark mana has been consumed,] The system beeped, and this was only fair. It was an expert ability after all.

The enemy was left for dead. Sarinam's eyes turned black, and he started floating around much like a dead fish, thus, leaving his associates at a loss for words!

Sarinam's soul went right into Timothy's Phantomized Mana Pool, which was a soul-based version of mana that each creature possessed, assuming they knew how to unlock it. On the occasion where he harvested souls while in a physical form, the harvested souls would go in that phantomized pool, rather than anywhere else. Sarinam’s soul was very weak from the looks of it, despite his mana quality being at a scale of an Expert’s - Tim's phantomized mana pool only had one flash upgrade during the exchange!

“Fuck you, and your father, haha!” He then yelled, once he realized that he had gotten the upper hand.

The Adept Mages within the group tried to fight him back, but they gave up any advantage they had, from the very moment they got close to him. Timothy abused his advantage to the very maximum!