Michael has been killing rats for the last 3 hours, every time it seemed like he was close to doing something, the mana cut off.
‘This is so fucking frustrating’ He exclaimed as he kicked a rat, making it splatter against the wall.
‘No EXP, No progress.. this is something else.’ Michael could use Shield of Nourishment on the rats, however, due to the sheer number of them, he decided against it.
He will have his time to level it up eventually.
The only skill he was currently using, Blessing of Stats, didn’t take much mana and he was able to upkeep it for the entire day.
Since the skill was constantly active, he could feel it enveloping his heart, even after the mana had been used.
He wasn’t quite sure which path he was supposed to follow, so he tried both, however, neither earned him any success.
A rat jumped at Michael and he began trying to channel the mana, sending a kick right at the rat.
Once again, just a simple kick.
‘I don’t understand..what am I missing?’ He got closer to figuring it out, but yet was still fairly far away.
‘System?’
Don’t even think about it.
Michael clicked his tongue and continued fighting the rats until finally, something odd happened.
As he was trying to control the mana flow around his heart, it suddenly cut off a small chunk, enveloping his leg in a colorless wave of mana.
The kick connected with a few rats and they immediately popped, their innards splattering all around, some even nearly landing on Michael.
However, he instinctively dodged them, he was not planning on stinking of rat guts.
Michael looked a bit startled, the amount of mana he used was not a lot, however, the damage he dealt was something else.
It was as if he shot them with his sniper, except it was his leg, just with mana around it.
He tried to recreate the process and succeeded, enveloping both his legs in the colorless mana.
Walking around he noticed his speed increased, same going for power, his kicks could easily kill anyone below his level and most definitely inflict damage to those above him.
‘This is still not enough though..’ Michael recomposed himself, he knew this little bit of progress was not enough to prove himself to Amanda.
The amount of mana it drained while he only had it enveloped around his legs was negligent, the only time he felt some kind of an actual drain happened during his kicks.
It was not anything major, however, with enough kicks, it could definitely run out.
Michael kept going around and killing rats, he found it oddly satisfying.
He tried enveloping his arms, then right after his entire body in the colorless mana and it actually worked.
His entire body was incredibly fast now, even his thinking was much faster, making the rats surrounding him look much slower than they actually were.
However, it was much easier to process the information than he thought, all thanks to his INT stat if he were to guess.
He kept going until he eventually got tired, his mana was still above 40% but his stamina seemed a bit more drained than usual.
Michael concluded that this spike in power came with all sorts of energy drains, not only mana.
‘So? Going to talk to me now?’
Sure, you did achieve something so I can now tell you a bit about it.
The system did a dramatic pause which as per usual, pissed Michael off.
What you did is called Physical Enhancement, it is one of the applications of mana.
‘Physical Enhancement huh..then what is the thing Claire did called?’
Mana Projection, however, as you might have seen, you both have no attributes in your mana. Skills allow you to use attributes. While you don’t have a mana core, you can only use the colorless and attributeless mana.
However don’t be discouraged, attributeless mana has the property of Form, meaning you can shape it however you want.
‘So I can’t do any light magic or something attacks then?’
Once you learn to use Mana Projection you will be able to use the colorless mana to attack, while it may not be as strong as its attribute counterpart, it is still much stronger than you think.
Michael looked in deep thought before widening his eyes in a sudden realization.
‘I know you might not answer me but, are classes and skills really what they are said to be? Or are they attributes hidden behind fancy words?’ He asked, his heartbeat rapidly increasing.
And just as he thought, the system’s reply never came.
Michael’s thoughts spiraled ‘What are the rarities for then? Why did I have a hidden Unique skill? Are the skills even going to exist after I reach level 200?’
He kept obliterating the rats as he finally stopped ‘Hey system.’
Looking into the air at seemingly nothing ‘Are my healing capabilities really because of the system?’
Yet once again, he was met with complete silence.
Michael took a deep breath and walked towards the rat boss monster, it would respawn anyway so he could kill it as much as he wanted to.
The fight was not hard, the rat was massive and fast, though not fast enough for Michael as he could easily dodge and splatter it in a single hit.
However he did not do so, he used it as a punching bag to get his thoughts which were in turmoil, back into shape.
He still had many questions, such as, if the levels and other things didn’t matter, how were they calculated?
They were obviously able to track them, but ever since he found out the system might not always be truthful, he was beginning to have some doubts.
As he was slightly lost in thought, the rat boss suddenly exploded, getting all sorts of disgusting things on Michael’s robe.
‘Fuck off..’ Cleaning it was such a pain. Equipment requires someone to have the skills to clean it, thankfully he had someone in his villa for that.
Most clothing equipment have some sort of a cleaning function and so does Michael’s, however, he was pretty positive the rat guts wouldn’t just magically disappear from his body.
He wrapped it up, killing the remaining rats on his way out. It will take a week for the dungeon to reset, in that time he will have to somehow learn to use Mana Projection.
Walking out of the dungeon he noticed the guards on standby waving at him, as he thought, his reputation as the Saint worked only on the adults…
Suddenly one of the guards walked up to him and handed him a phone and not saying anything else.
“Hello?”
“Your Saintly duties are calling, get to the government headquarters fast” Amanda’s voice rang out and afterwards she immediately hung up.
‘Sure, yes I am on my way’ Michael sighed and got into his car and took off his robe, he did not want to be seen in public wearing rat guts.
Amanda always did this, she just called, told him what to do and hung up. He couldn’t complain either because she was the head of the city, better yet, she was the daughter of that strong dragon.
Michael did not want to get burnt to a crisp by a dragon’s breath or something, he watched way too many movies in his previous world about it.
Arriving in front of the government headquarters, Michael saw Amanda and some other dude he didn’t know, though he looked like some sort of a swordsman.
Walking up to them Michael put on his Saintly smile, more so to annoy Amanda than act the part “Hello, I am Saint Michael, it is a pleasure to meet you.”
Amanda’s brow twitched “Cut the bullshit, there are no cameras here.”
“Sure” Michael straightened his posture and looked on with his bored expression “So what’s up?”
She pointed at the man beside her “This is Shingen, a swordsman from the mountains.”
Michael nodded at him and received a nod back.
Amanda continued “Since we are trying to form some bonds, you will go into a dungeon with Shingen, there will be cameras so try not to do something stupid.”
It seemed she was planning to use the Saint and Goddess Sophia as some sort of a bridge to form bonds, but Michael could agree that it was pretty clever.
Amanda looked him up and down “Where is your robe?”
“In the car. A big rat exploded and got its guts all over me” Michael replied, shedding a single tear dramatically.
“Right..” She quickly dialed a number and called someone down from headquarters.
Some kind of a woman dressed in a lab coat came out of the elevator and walked up to Amanda, then right after to the car.
A few minutes later she brought out the robe that previously had rat guts all over it, however, now it was sparkling clean.
She placed it on top of the car and headed back inside.
“Alright get dressed, you will be going in the next hour, get along..or something” Amanda explained and walked away.
Michael looked at Shingen “Hello?” However, he merely received a nod in response.
‘Not much of a talker are you..’
