[SS] Chapter 14: Magic!

I hate melting and absorbing things, so, so much. It feels exactly like gnawing on something till it finally breaks away. Oh sure, grass is easy and fine. A plant? Bah, no problem. Bark or something wooden? Annoying, like eating something really really chewy. A stone? It’s like eating a fucking stone.

It also feels obscene to do stuff while eating. Like chewing with your mouth wide open while talking. But still, I don’t want to just sit here for hours while I digest a stone. Magic practice is more important than that. Another day has passed and I don’t feel like I’ve exactly made a ton of progress on my magic. The problem is I don’t understand it. My mana isn’t dark aligned or anything. If I had a fire skill, I could use my fire and dark skill just fine. So that rules out “mana types” theory. But it also isn’t the “taking mana and turning it into x mana” either. At least I’m guessing. I’m sure there’s scholars out there about this. But for the purposes of practicality, I can’t seem to detect my mana changing into something else. I don’t understand and I feel like I’m going to hit a natural wall until I do. Not now, but in the future. My guess right now is that mana is all the same thing. Which says weird things about the multiverse as a whole but I think it makes the most sense. Mana is supposedly in most worlds, and the same races are in most worlds, while earth was the odd one out. So, mana is probably the same, not just everywhere, but also everywhere. As in, Fire mana and Dark mana are the same thing. So what makes it Dark? That’s the question I can’t answer.

I feel like I’m isaac newton asking “why?” to gravity. Gravity isn’t going to tell you.

Instead, I’ve been casting dark bolt and then unequipping my cuffs and doing it again, over and over, to try and spot the differences. At first, this was absolutely useless. All it did was show that a higher Tier makes literally everything easier. At Tier 4 and some practice I can make shapes with my mana, like a triangle of darkness or a sphere of darkness. At Tier 2, trying to do the same thing is like trying to grab a balloon covered in vaseline while your arms are rapidly getting more tired. You just, can’t. You can, but it’s so much more infinitely harder and it doesn’t feel like a skill issue. It doesn’t feel like “ah, if I just did these steps instead, I could have done that.” It feels like it’s just objectively harder. Which is probably true. Having a higher skill, obviously, makes everything easier. But I remembered one of the things Knowledge said about skills when were going over them.

“You can learn any skill by simply doing an action associated with that skill. Like crafting clothes to get the Craft Skill (Sewing).”

What would that do? You already knew how to sew, so what would the sewing skill do? Well, the simple answer is that it would you make better at sewing. But what does that mean? A steadier hand? A faster sew speed? Better muscle memory? I knew that you could do something called “mana activation” where you spent mana to activate a skill, even if it didn’t usually need it. For craft skills, it put your body on autopilot, which sounded horrifying but useful. But I still didn’t know what the absolute basic effects it did on a passive level. I looked at my own skills for answers but honestly, I realized I almost didn’t have any skills like that. A lot of my skills were active or passive, but they were things I couldn’t do without them. I didn’t have a skill that just straight improved what I could’ve already done. Or so I thought. I tried casting without casting or using any skills.

It didn’t work, at all. But I wasn’t deterred.

Eventually, a tiny flicker of dark magic appeared and bottomed out my MP. But to me, it felt like a eureka moment. I could cast skills without skills. Some of them, at least. And that meant, magic was, already a part of me? The skill was just the skill of doing it. Maybe it would take a million years before I could cast Tier 20 magic skill less, but I could.

[Magic Skill (Dark) Level up!]

I looked at the notification in shock and quickly checked my skill.

[Magic Skill (Dark) Tier 3]

That was, that way too fast. I had only been training for a little while! But then I remembered. The Black Mage Cuffs I was using were even more expensive than the ring that literally brought me back to life once a week and could help regenerate lost limbs. There was a reason for that. It basically guaranteed you to learn magic and magic all the way up to Tier 4. It guaranteed it for anyone.

I didn’t know how hard it was to go up to Tier 4 without it, but I knew that magic was most certainly not a universal constant just anyone could do. It wasn’t anything specific Knowledge or Order had said. It was just from context clues but I was fairly sure that usually, it was practically a talent. You either had the ‘gift’ or you didn’t. Meaning learning magic would be very, very hard for you. That barrier to entry and something that broke that, was probably significant. I sometimes forgot but, my Magic Skill had been based off the time I had died. Meaning that I could have gotten a completely different magic skill and this still would have allowed me to learn and use Dark magic. I didn’t regret it, even after getting to Tier 4 myself, I felt like the cuffs would still have more to teach me.

The stone I had been absorbing finally completed and I sighed in relief. So far, that made 17 Unique items I had eaten. All random tiny things. It was getting a little harder to find stuff I considered unique enough to eat but not that difficult. I had tried to see how expensive Adamantite was, based off how much mana it would have taken me to make.

1,000,000,000 mana.

A Billion mana.

I’m gonna have to steal some, there’s no other way about it. My dungeon is never, ever, going to make enough mana to produce that. If I somehow had 1000 mana and abused the Infinite Mana trick 15 times a day, it would take me nearly 500 years. That was for 5 oz of the stuff. That material was truly cream of the crop. I was actually getting worried. I had to transform into a Generation 3, to be able to go back down the evolutionary line. And I couldn’t turn back into something I had been before. Meaning I needed to become an [Acid Metal Slime] if I wanted to become a [Core Slime] after I evolved to an [Acid Slime]. Which meant I needed at least a tiny amount of Adamantite. It could even be one ounce because then I could just make more with my Sustenance Authority.

[Sustenance Authority:

Time consumption: 45 minutes per 2 pounds of food or drink.

Duration: Instant.

You are able to create any food or drink that you have eaten or drank before.]

Once I got even a small amount of Adamanatite, because everything counts as food for a slime, I could make more of it and eat it. Which definitely wasn’t going to be happening while I was in this forest for a year.

It was stressful. It was like wanting to become a welder but first you had to get a full doctorates degree. Theft was the only option. I couldn’t think of any other way to get it. I couldn’t exactly become rich enough to just buy it and even if I could, and somehow avoided the one million and one problems with that idea, I was a slime. People would sooner hunt me down for my wealth than let me buy something unless I was strong enough to defend myself and if I was strong enough, I sure wouldn’t need wealth to take the Adamantite. We could come to some kinda deal. Hmm. It says 2 pounds right? If I find some gold…

But right now, I started eating a, drum roll please, walnut. Or close enough. It was a seed that looked like a walnut. I used a ghostly hand to drop on top of my slimy head and then began looking at my hands.

They were ghostly and spiritual, looking kinda spooky and wisp like. Almost like they were waving in a wind that didn’t exist. They were truly [Spirit Hands] as they could go right through objects or things as long as those things weren’t “warded, enchanted, or made of a special material” according to the skill. Apparently whatever my Dungeon Core did to the cave did exactly that though so I couldn’t just send it through my door or walls.

I made two in front of me and looked at them. They were my hands. Yes. But like a man realizing he could juggle, I forced myself to really acknowledge them, innate soulness stuff or not. I had made ten of these before. I remember that almost too well and almost not at all. Ignoring that bit of horrible trauma, two hands were not my limit. They were just what I was used to.

I made a third and fourth. And my brain felt like it came to a grinding halt.

I hadn’t been thinking back then, at all, but now I was and it felt like I had four hands. Which was natural, because they were natural, but also incredibly disorienting because I don’t have four hands. They felt like me while my brain was screaming they were not like me. It was an entire lifetime of moving two hands, and only two hands, that was throwing me off. The only reason this, and much much worse, hadn’t happened when I became a slime was because I have a skill to specifically prevent me from going insane over becoming a slime. Or at least disoriented in the extreme. Besides the many benefits that provides, it also probably saved my life from that first wolf. That combined with everything else.

Ugh. I was getting a headache. I kept the four hands going though, using them, moving them around, going through the ground, throwing punches. My head felt like it was splitting in half. They may have been innate but it was still a lot to control. It would take more time than two days for my non-existent brain to accept and recognize the change to my body and life. I’d have to keep it up. Three hands would be worse, I’d have to battle the loss of symmetry on top of everything else. Still, it was more the equivalent of suddenly being able to use hands that had been in casts for years, rather than suddenly having extra appendages. After all, I could still use them just fine, all four at once even. It just gave me a splitting migraine.

I unsummoned my hands. Next was time to do something that might prove even harder. My True Sight skill.

[True Sight - see without restriction.]

My skills had changed and modified since coming here. Maybe not in any actual way, but the descriptions at least were bit a different. Because I still remembered the one from the Godly realm.

[True Sight - You become able to see even if the race or circumstances does not permit you to see. You see from the point of view you subconsciously believe to be where your eyes are at. With enough practice you will be to move your vision, in order to look up that cute girl’s skirt for example.]

I figure these are the skill descriptions without the god's influence. I had always been seeing forward, exactly as I would as a human, despite my body sploshing all over the place and even rolling in a complete circle sometimes. Because I was “looking” forward. And True Sight reacts to however I subconsciously view things. The problem is changing that. True Sight can do far, far more than that. When it becomes dark, my eyesight dims as well. That’s because I don’t think I can see in the dark. I can’t view myself from a mile in the sky, because I don’t think of myself as being able to view from that far away. I’m not able to send my eyes roaming across my land, because I don’t think I can move my vision like that.

But I can now. I just have to convince myself I can. Which is a giant, massive, pain in the ass.

I spent the next few hours staring at a wall and willing my view to get closer. Zero progress. Well not everything can happen instantly. I’ll become all seeing with a million eyes another day. But I’ll keep up the daily practice. Once I break some restrictions and start ingraining the idea into my head that “I can see, whatever I say I can see” the next few breaks should be easier. I’m starting with being able to move my eyes away from my body, because the description I got from a God straight up said I could do that. It’s a point of evidence that my subconscious can work off of.

Next on my to do list, I smiled a wide smile, or whatever the slime equivalent was.

It was time to start exploring Astra.