Maxwell let himself fall to the ground as he heard the notifications. This was by far the hardest fight they had. They had no advantages throughout the fight beyond outnumbering the beast.

  I should be a lot more careful fighting against higher-level beasts. He looked at Bob and saw the boy still standing. The boy had almost no place unharmed as even now; fresh blood flowed to the ground from his wounds. A couple of seconds later, the boy toppled to the ground, finally running out of energy.

  He got up to check on the boy. The boy he thought was retarded had more than exceeded his expectations in this battle. He fought like a beast and managed to protect him for multiple minutes against a higher-level enemy.

  What would it say about me if I let you die?

  He knelt beside the boy, and he could see that his breathing was already getting shallow. He also had many wounds still bleeding, making him lose even more blood. He closed his eyes and imagined.

  Countless particles coalesced in his imagination as they flew inside the boy’s circulation. He used Soul’s Voice as he beckoned the blood affinity mana to come.

  He imagined Bob’s injuries improving in real time as he kept pushing whatever mana he got to the task. He concentrated on the visualization and sent this thought to the mana around him. When he opened his eyes, he saw a torrent of red particles around the boy, eager to do what he asked of them.

  Blood Infusion Used On Target

  Target’s Vitality increased by 73 for 1 minute.

  Well, my efficiency got certainly higher. He smiled as he felt the last vestiges of his strength leave him. He fell beside the boy, letting his body relax, and his world once again went dark. Whatever help he managed to give would need to be enough.

  When he awoke from his nap a couple of minutes later, he could hear Bob snoring loudly beside him. The extra vitality had apparently been enough for the boy to pull through. He could see that his wounds were already scabbed over.

  He chuckled before pushing himself up from the ground. He felt fine as he could feel his mana replenishing in real-time thanks to his soul stat. Thanks to Bob, he didn’t lose any health to begin with.

  The fact that their bodies were connected to stats made battle fatigue a weird phenomenon. When their HP and MP regenerated, it simply went away. At least, that was the case for him. He didn’t really know how stamina worked as he didn’t strain himself much.

  He also realized when healing Bob that mana regeneration would slow down as you regenerated more and more mana in a single instance.

  He was regenerating 1.5 for every Soul point in the battle like he always did. This changed when trying to keep Bob alive, as he was down to 1.3 then. It made sense to him. I guess mana has to come from somewhere too.

  He grabbed Bob from one of his ankles and started walking towards their cave , pulling the boy along with him. It was a miracle nothing killed them when they were sleeping. He didn’t want to wait some more to test their luck further.

  “Chirp?” he heard a sound as he felt the familiar weight settle on his head.

  “Yeah, you found something strong all right. We nearly died…” he mumbled as he kept walking.

  “Chirp?” The bird seemed to not understand why he was being grumpy. It quickly got back to trimming its feathers.

  Maxwell sighed. Of course, even my bird is weird. Suddenly, a thought came to him as he imagined how the bird looked. It was small, round, and blue. He smiled as he declared:

  “I will call you Blueberry.”

  Bird stopped trimming for a second, trying to understand him. He quickly sent the same message mentally, earning a peck on the head as a reward.

  It didn’t take him too long to reach the cave. He sat on the ground and prepared to check what he gained from the battle. They would need to find something soft for the ground, though, as his ass was less than happy with their accommodations.

  Bob was still snoring loudly. The hiking didn’t seem to have interrupted his sleep much. Maxwell took a deep breath and opened the system interface.

  Myriad Mana Bolts Skill Changes Detected.

  Proceeding Skill Readjustment.

  Myriad Mana Bolts(21)→ Myriad Mana Projectiles(14)

  Myriad Mana Projectiles: Create projectiles of different shapes from mana and fire them at your enemies. The number of constructs created is connected to how much mana you can control. Created mana constructs absorb the ambient mana after creation, making them stronger. User can choose to infuse the bolts with different mana types by charging the skill.

  Slightly stronger became just stronger. Bolts became projectiles. It seems simple enough. Maxwell thought. No other skill seemed to change as he continued to his level ups.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Guide Mana Leveled Up Lvl-42→50

  Prima Sense Leveled Up Lvl-32→40

  Magic Theory Leveled Up Lvl-21→28

  Myriad Mana Projectiles Leveled Up Lvl-14→28

  Soul’s Voice Leveled Up Lvl-32→41

  Mana Infusion Leveled Up Lvl-23→35

  Meditation Leveled Up Lvl-36→40

  Parallel Thoughts Leveled Up Lvl-5→10

  Visualization Leveled Up Lvl-1→22

  His skills were leveling up like there was no tomorrow. Maxwell found this not so surprising, as it couldn’t be said he was having the most normal life. Most of the skills were also connected to each other in some way or form, but some of the increases were really crazy.

  Myriad Mana Projectile’s level just doubled immediately after its downgrade in level. Skills seemed to go down in level when they transitioned into something encompassing more diverse topics, but this skill immediately surpassed its previous level.

  Visualization was another thing that leveled up extremely fast, but some of those levels probably came from geometry practice that his other mind was busy with. He quickly moved on to the most important notifications, the kill notification.

  Berserker Mole - Lvl-27 Killed

  Level Up. Stat Points Distributed. (4x)

  Maxwell felt these levels working on his body on the way to the cave but now that he could see them they looked even more satisfying. Just without the free points, his soul increased by 52. He immediately added the rest of his points into the soul attribute as he watched it go up by another 20, making the attribute reach 179.

  He realized for a while now that more HP did not necessarily meant that you were more durable. In the fight before, he was sure he wouldn’t be able to take the same punishment as Bob, even if he had similar health.

  Even when the kid didn’t have his buffs, that seemed to be the case. He suspected the strength stat was responsible for this difference. Strength gave you the ability to inflict force, but for you to inflict force, you needed to resist its backlash too. Maxwell theorized that attribute gave someone some robustness along with pure power.

  Probably, other attributes had something similar too, as the main thing they granted wouldn’t be able to exist without a couple different aspects.

  For agility, one wouldn’t be able to run fast if they couldn’t gain enough acceleration by applying force.

  For dexterity, if you didn’t have enough motor neuron function to control your limbs you wouldn’t be able to become better at controlling them.

  The system most likely just simplified everything for clear progression, he thought. Maxwell, for example was not sure where the advancements for the ability to perceive came from. As his soul increased he could perceive the world a lot clearer but there was no stat for it in the system interface.

  These were all questions that he would slowly find out about as he progressed. For now, everything seemed to figure itself out in one way or another.

  “Chirp?” Blueberry asked from the entrance of the cave.

  “No, we won’t fight again this soon.” Maxwell answered. He glanced at the bird wondering what it would turn to with it’s tier advancement.

  “Chirp” bird said sadly before flying outside to do who knows what.

  Maxwell got up and followed the bird outside. He was done with the notifications for now and he wanted to do something different.

  He decided to set a workout routine for himself near the cave. He had an athletics skill he could improve, and he definitely didn’t like moving clumsily in the battlefield.

  If it hadn’t been for Bob in the previous battle, he would have gotten hit by that rock, and he didn’t want to know how much damage that would have dealt him. They probably had around 2 weeks until Gendor came, and he didn’t want to completely waste their time here.

  Of course he would like to continue hunting more beasts, but he doubted the forest around them had many more high leveled animals to kill. He would wait for Blueberry to find some instead of searching for them blindly.

  In his life before, he didn’t have any time to just sit back and relax. He was now feeling quite weird not having anything to rush for. Yeah, they needed to level up and protect themselves from Radam’s forces but that honestly didn’t bother him that much.

  He started cleaning an area by pulling the mana out from any obstacles like he did with the cave. He planned to create a smooth surface around 20 meters wide in every direction.

  It didn’t take much time for him too finish the task as he was now standing on a flat area covered with soil, looking proudly at the area. He also received an unexpected system notification.

  Skill Acquired: Magic Carving

  Magic Carving: There are many ways of carving by magic. You use a way so unrelated to the practice that it barely could be called carving.

  Use this skill to pull out its fundamental mana from matter, making it crumble. The detail of carving is connected to how intricately you can manipulate mana.

  Well, that’s something. Maxwell thought. He could see the disadvantages of a carving skill like this as he couldn’t use the skill in anything alive, but he doubted any carvers would carve anything alive in the first place. At worst, he wouldn’t be able to carve trees.

  This skill made his ambitions a lot easier to achieve. After recieving a proper skill for it he would find shaping things much more easier by this method. This time, he wouldn’t use a makeshift shovel, though.

  He summoned some mana to see if he could create a thin strip of mana he could throw at the things he made brittle enough. He would need them to be quite weak as he didn’t want the parts he wanted damaged. He managed to create a weak enough construct soon.

  Myriad Mana Projectiles Leveled Up Lvl-28→29

  I can’t seem to stop gaining levels… The mana he shaped looked like a small knife without a grip. Now that he knew he could create something like this he started to use Magic carving on a lot of rocks.

  He shaped different tools inside a massive rock he found, making the parts he didn’t need brittle as he went. He was using the rock like a mold in a way.

  Soon, he had a set of weights along with a couple of chairs and tables. He also infused the mana he pulled out from the rest of the rock into these making them a bit more resistant to wear.

  When he was satisfied with the things he shaped inside the rock, he started to bombard the rock with his mana projectiles, stripping away the brittle rock from his creations.

  After an hour, he was done breaking them out, and he now had three different pairs of dumbbells, four chairs, and a table. He felt a bit weird being able to do something like this. He stared at the out-of-place chairs and table, which sat in the middle of the wilderness. Maybe I should be something like a stonemason?

  “What the fuck?” He heard Bob behind him. He turned to see the boy looking at the area, looking completely dumbfounded. There was no hint that he was close to dying an hour ago, apart from his barely intact rags.

  “How are you?” he asked, as if everything was normal. He still wanted to avenge the the last time boy returned covered with blood. He walked towards another rock to create some other things.

  “I’m fine, but what are you doing? How are you doing this?” The boy asked as he lifted one of the dumbbells as if it weighed nothing. “Well they could be a bit heavier I suppose.” He added as he threw the thing up and down.

  Maxwell silently looked at the boy before he kept working on creating more dumbbells expressionlessly.

  I can barely lift those, he thought.