Quintessence of Arcana

Skill Absorption?

Hours passed, and Erald still continued to consume the wolf's meat. It smelled disgusting, but food relieve his excruciating hunger pangs. Compared to those, such minor inconveniences were nothing. He had never even imagined that eating meat could be such a euphoric experience.

However, around the time he was finally starting to feel full, Erald began to notice a change occurring within his body.

“Ah? Gah!? Agaaaah!”

Searing pain shot through him. It felt as if something were eating away at him from within. As time passed, the pain only grew worse.

“Guaaaaaaaah!!! Wh-What’s— Gaaaaaaah!!!”

It was unendurable agony. The pain was trying to eat him from the inside out. Erald writhed on the ground, screaming in terror. This pain was far, far worse than the hunger pangs he had been feeling previously.

Along with the pain, Erald began to feel his body throb. It began to pulse, like one big organism. In fact, he could hear his body creaking too.

However, a certain phenomena within his body kicked in and began repairing his body. Once the healing finished, the pain returned. It continued again and again as though he was in a some sort of cycle.

Thanks to this, he couldn’t even faint. His recovery ability had backfired on him.

Erald screamed incoherently, smacking his head against the wall over and over, but the pain showed no signs of ending. He begged for someone to end his pain, but of course no one granted his wish.

Eventually, Erald’s body began to morph.

He was unsure whether it was from the pain or for some other reason entirely, but his muscles and bones began to grow slightly, giving him a toned appearance. Blue veins ran down the inside of his body, though he wasn’t aware of that at the time.

There existed a phenomenon known as overcompensation. When one attempted muscle training, their muscles actually tore, and the body simply regrew them a bit stronger to overcompensate. And that same thing was happening to Erald right now.

In fact, a dungeon monster’s meat was poison to humans. Because of the mana distilled into their blood, a monster’s specialized organs allowed them to directly interface with magic, and give them superior physical strength. The mana that circulated through monsters affected even their bones and muscles.

This transformed mana allowed this type monsters to use 'magical abilities' without incantations, though no one knew exactly how. Regardless of the particulars, a dungeon monster’s mana was poison to humans, and it can kill anyone who tried to ingest it. It would eat a person away from the inside, destroying their very cells.

There were individuals who had tried to eat these kinds of monsters in the past and they had all, without exception, died. Erald was completely unaware of this.

Since Erald had just eaten the creature’s flesh, he would have died an agonizing, but swift death. But there had been something that prevented that. And that is his unique body constitution.

It healed him every time his body was destroyed. As a result, his body was forced to evolve at an unnaturally rapid pace. It was broken, then repaired. Broken, then repaired. With each cycle, his body slowly changed. Almost like a reincarnation of sorts. His frail human body was forcibly transformed into something stronger, and he went through a ritual of rebirth. It could be said Erald's screams were akin to the cries of a newborn.

Finally the pain receded, and Erald slumped to the ground. The hair on his head had grown longer, and underneath his clothes, black-colored strands ran down his body. Eventually, it gathered around his left chest, forming a black-colored lotus, resembling a tattoo.

Erald’s right hand twitched. He slowly opened his eyes, then groggily looked down at his right hand, and finally clawed at the ground, slowly curling his fingers into a fist. He clenched and unclenched his hand multiple times, confirming that he was indeed still alive, and that his body still listened to him, before slowly getting up.

His hunger had faded, and the specter of pain no longer struck him either. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, his body felt surprisingly light, and power was overflowing from within him.

Despite how much the constant pain had exhausted him mentally, he still felt better than he ever had in his life. He looked over at his arm, then down at his stomach, and saw very prominent muscles. His body his totally toned and firm. He had grown a little taller too. He had originally been a mere 169 centimeters tall, but he had grown a full ten centimeters.

“What happened to my body? I feel different somehow...”

And it wasn’t just the outside. The inside of Erald’s body somehow felt different as well. It was at once both hot and cold, an indescribably strange feeling. If he focused, he could make blue veins float up to the top of his arm.

“Is this.... Mana?”

He felt an inexplicable sensation of mana moving throughout his body. Then, suddenly, his mana transformed into something subconsciously. Surprised, Erald attempted to wave his hand. A faint strand of bluish energy akin to electricity bolted out.

“This power.... does that mean I absorbed the monster’s special abilities after eating it?”

That was indeed the case. Erald had acquired the power of the wolves. He then moved to try out this skill.

“But how am I supposed to activate this? I did it subconsciously earlier...”

He tried various things, but none of them seemed to do anything. Unlike Mana Manipulation, he couldn’t physically feel the skill inside him, so he wasn’t exactly sure how to go about activating it.

While pondering to himself, he remembered what Shea had said to him. According to her, when an individual casts magic, that person always needed a mental image of the effect he was trying to produce. The less one relied on a magic sigil to define the characteristics of a spell, the more they needed a mental image to guide its creation.

Erald formed an image of crackling static electricity in his mind. Suddenly, blue lightning started trailing down his fingertips.

“I see. So I need a good mental image of its properties.”

He continued practicing making electrical discharges over and over. However, unlike the Twin-tailed Wolves, he was unable to fire off the electricity he could generate. Erald surmised that he could only wrap himself in lightning, and transfer it via direct contact. So he practiced adjusting the flow of the current, as well as the voltage of the electricity he could produce.

Erald most certainly didn’t want to suffer that hellish pain of eating monster meat ever again. However, there didn’t appear to be any other source of food in the dungeon either. Which would have meant that he would be forced to choose between starvation and agonizing pain.

He took another strip of wolf flesh and seared it with his electricity. Since he was no longer half-mad with hunger, he realized there was no need to eat the meat raw. He tried to ignore the pungent odor of burning flesh as he cooked the meat. Then he steeled himself, taking a bite of the meat.

A few seconds passed... a minute... ten minutes... and still nothing happened. Erald grilled some more meat and ate it. And still there was no pain. He wasn’t sure if it was due to the ability he acquired from the wolf, or if his body had just adapted to monster flesh. He also didn’t care too much. He was just glad he could eat again, without having to suffer every time he did.

After he had eaten his fill, Erald returned to his base. He decided to spend some time training his new skills first, though.

Erald grabbed the wolves’ corpses and cut their meat into strips. He had a much easier time peeling their fur off this time. He piled as much meat as he could hold, and carefully took it back to his base.

Once safe in his base with a supply of food, Erald spent the next few days diligently training his skills.

All of his skills grew at a fast pace. His mana manipulation underwent a change as well. It appeared that he had mastered it to the point where derivative skills began to pop up.

Speaking of derivative skills, Shea once mentioned to Erald the skill 'Appraisal'—a unique derivative skill that was rare even among high-level magic practitioners.

Appraisal magic was generally far more complex than offensive magic, and therefore required suitably large magic aigils to activate. For that reason, only certain academic facilities and large institutions had appraisal magic sigils. However, individuals that mastered Mana Manipulation could appraise anything within their domain of analysis with just their mana, as long as they were touching their target. It was a derivative skill, so it was by definition impossible to innately possess. Only through long years of training could one obtain the skill. But somehow, Erald managed to acquire it in only a short amount of time.

Using this skill, Erald made sure to appraise every single ore and mineral he could find. He started to appraised the blue glowing crystals around the area. He discovered that these crystals can absorb mana. When it is saturated with mana, it emits a faint blue light. If one could break a saturated crystal, the light it had contained within explodes out all at once in a brilliant flash.

Thinking of this, Erald grinned wickedly as a plan came to mind. He wandered around, looking for other stones to appraise, and ran into a certain mineral that gave him the idea for a weapon that would soon become his trump card.

He didn't know it's name but it's appearance is similar to a stalactite—but longer, thinner and much more sturdier. It also had metallic properties similar to iron, making it a suitable weapon akin to a sword. Furthermore, it is a great conductor of mana.

Erald stared at the mineral excitedly. It would take a great deal of trial and error to get things the way he wanted them, but he was still overjoyed. Using the weapon engineering skills he acquired from the memories of Evan, he began zealously working on his project.

He was totally focused that he didn’t eat nor sleep for days. After thousands of failed attempts, Erald finally completed it.

Although he didn't have any blacksmithing skills or tools, he still successfully crafted a two feet long single-edged blade. Using his mana manipulation skill with the aid of his lightning ability, Erald managed to forged the weapon purely by mana alone, giving the weapon a great affinity in mana.

He decided to name it 'Shardslicer'. Although it looked quite shabby, it was going to be his partner moving forward, so he reasoned that it needed a name.

“With this, both those monsters... and the exit... are in my sights!”