‘Oh..’ Michael stared at the notification with widened eyes. He didn’t expect to receive a passive skill from something like this.
He took in the cold for a longer period of time, yet he didn’t get anything, so he thought that it just might not be possible.
Yet, here it is, a skill that can reduce his suffering by a whopping 15%, it is definitely good.
And if he could also get one related to the cold, he would feel at ease.
However, as he was enjoying his little victory, the system’s voice rang out.
Why are you so happy? I will just increase the intensity by 15%.
‘Come on… aren’t I suffering enough already?’ Michael asked with slight frustration, it really was getting tough to bear.
His skin was still steaming, the burn marks hadn’t gone away either.
While you might be suffering the same amount, your mana sensitivity increases by an extra 15%, it’s good, the only downside is that you will feel a bit more pain than usual.
‘A bit more pain? You said 15% though?’ Michael asked in confusion.
Well… It’s a trial and error process, let’s just see how long you can endure shall we?
‘What bullshi-‘ As Michael was about to cuss out the system, his senses were once again enhanced and his skin began to sizzle immediately.
Oh, that might be a little too much.
At the system’s words, his skin stopped sizzling, instead, it gradually began getting hotter, similar to how he first started.
‘You did that on fucking purpose!’ Michael exclaimed in frustration as he was beginning to feel the effects of both his passive skill and the increase in heat.
The passive skill made it so a certain threshold of heat gets converted into a cooling sensation, which made it a little more bearable.
However, as he was at the 50 second mark, he began seeing his skin melting, it happened way too fast for him to process.
He glared at seemingly nothing, however, his gaze was directed at the system, he knew it saw him.
Whoops.
‘…’ Michael ignored it and saw his skin being enveloped by a golden light, but just as he was about to relax for a couple of minutes, the heat came back again.
‘Hey! Timeout!’
Why? You still have a decent amount of mana left.
‘No shit, but can’t you see that I am literally dying here?’ Michael referred to his breathing, he was not able to catch his breath ever since the 30 second mark.
And after his skin began melting, his breath exhausted further.
Yet he did not scream, for some reason, while it did hurt, the most he would let out was a groan.
But he could not say that it felt pleasant; It was many times worse than the coldness and it definitely was something he would rather not do.
However, it was the perfect time to get stronger, he had no worries and no obligations, only free time.
And from what he saw while looking at the map, this world was massive, even bigger than his own.
The training continued until he finally ran out of mana, finally plopping down onto the ground behind him, sweat covering his entire body.
He stood up and noticed something concerning, it was his clothes, which looked like they were glued and burned on the ground from the heat he emitted.
It seemed like he subconsciously took them off while he was undergoing his training.
He quickly checked the map to make sure no one was around, he saw Astraea and Orin a few kilometers away from the cave.
Michael heaved a sigh of relief and pondered his choices, he certainly couldn’t wear these clothes, yet making clothes out of rocks didn’t exactly sound exciting either.
‘System, is it possible to make some kind of armor out of light?’
Well, yes, but just so you know, you currently have only 2% of your mana remaining.
Michael’s brow twitched as he had to check for himself and it appeared like it was the truth, he really was out of mana.
However, he was not discouraged, he still had some ideas he came up with.
‘Is it really not possible to solidify the mana like I do with Swords of Light? Can’t I just create a thin layer of mana around myself and make it solid?’
It could work if you knew what you were doing, I wish you luck though.
‘Aren’t you going to help me?’
Why should I? You are the one standing naked here, deal with it yourself.
Michael was left speechless, the system was being as unreasonable as always, he just hoped it would come through for him this one time.
However, he made sure not to panic, he still had a bit of time before the two came back and he could think of something in that time.
Or so he hoped, though putting his earlier idea into practice looked to be a bit more difficult than he had anticipated.
Just weaving the mana around while having it connected to his body did not drain it, he used that as leverage to surround his whole body with it.
Yet even then, some of the mana came back into his body, refusing to stay outside of it.
He was at a loss, the little bit of progress he thought he had made was proving to not be sufficient.
‘What can I do…’ Michael tried envisioning his armor similar to how he did the swords.
It was easy to form them, it almost felt natural to him, therefore he never questioned the process.
He summoned a singular Sword of Light, trying to figure out the process of how he molded the mana to solidify.
It took him a few tries, but he eventually narrowed it down, it was an interesting process.
The mana started out like a thick fog, similar to how it was floating around his body.
However, the foggy mana quickly got injected with a denser amount of mana, it felt like a large amount, yet it never left his body, it only ignited the already existing mana, causing the fog to shape and turn into his most used skill, Sword of Light.
The dense mana appeared to be coming from the single Mana Thread he had, while he thought he was already using it to its full extent, it seemed he was slightly wrong.
There was an outer layer and an inner layer of the thread, the mana he was trying to use appeared to be coming from the outer part.
And the denser mana, from the inner part.
The output seemed stronger while the capacity seemed lesser, it was a fair trade off, yet it seemed like it was a necessity to fuel his skills.
Without it, they would not form.
Michael tried tinkering around with it and noticed that it was fairly easy, however, due to him being relatively inexperienced at controlling it, he became dizzy immediately.
He calmed himself down and tried again, covering himself in a thin layer of mana before injecting a very small amount of the denser mana into it.
And the moment he did, a thin yet visible layer of mana appeared around him shaped into the form of clothing, hiding his entire body.
It seemed elastic enough to be mistaken for actual clothing, well besides the fact that it looked like a golden colored suit.
He could admit that while it did look strange, it was certainly better than not having any clothes at all.
Now that he was able to utilize this part of his mana, it seemed like his repertoire increased significantly. Over the coming days, he would try making a healing skill.
‘Why does this not count as a skill?’ Michael asked the system as he did find it a little odd.
If you infused more mana, and I mean, much more mana, you would have gotten it, as your current clothing stands, if you get attacked even once, those clothes are dispersing, be careful.
‘Oh..’ Michael looked himself up and down and nodded with a satisfied look.
The day is still young, regain some of your mana and we can continue, after all, you wouldn’t want to waste time doing nothing, would you?
‘Aha..’ Michael let out an exhausted breath and went back to the front of the cave, noticing Astraea and Orin in the distance.
She seemed to be carrying a pig monster in one hand while holding Orin’s hand with the other.
‘Guess I won’t have to look for food..’
