Tom's body exploded in pain.

The energy that entered his body through the handle of his spear was just too powerful.

Tom's first reaction to the pain was to fully tense his body all over. Or rather, it's hard to call it a reaction if it was something that his body did completely on his own.

But why is that important?

Because Tom's fingers tightened around the spear as if he would lose his life by dropping it, while it was the very reason behind the torture that nearly melted his brain.

'GOSH,' Tom's head inevitably moved to the back, as if making him look and pry to the skies... Which were hidden behind the ceiling of the corridor.

Tom's body was burning. Every inch of his skin turned black. Every smallest threat of his muscles tensed up in convulsion before burning up.

The energy that he invited into his body was just too potent. Or rather, it was already an energy-oriented at-fire attribute, which made him suffer through this inferno of pain.

"TOM!" Claudia shouted, noticing the peculiar situation. Looking at it from her eye, she could see Tom standing up in a strange position as if he was posing for some kind of act. And then he froze, with a demonic aura rushing all over his surroundings. "ARE YOU OKAY?!" The girl attempted to ask the question, even though there was no noise hindering her voice whatsoever.

But Tom didn't react.

'I need to rein this power in,' the young man thought, feeling how the fiery energy continued to consume his body from inside. Fighting off the greatest strenght he ever encountered in his life, Tom managed to lower his chin before resting it on top of his chest. 'Calm down...' he thought, trying to rein all that wild energy in.

Then, all at once, the torture stopped.

The strange, magnetic force that kept his fingers clasped on the Mythril's spear disappeared at the same second as the torture was no longer.

In reality, the entire event didn't last longer than half a minute. But with his mind stretched by the immense torture, Tom couldn't perceive it as anything less than a Millenium of suffering.

"Tom, what happened?!" Claudia rushed to her partner with worry all over her face.

"Never again," Tom muttered weakly, feeling as if his body was actually burned by some kind of fire. 'Wait,' a sudden thought emerged in his head, forcing Tom to desperately lower his face. 'Thank god,' he thought when he noticed that his skin was all back to normal, without a single injury from this strange experiment.

"What did you do?" Claudia asked, touching Tom all over in search of an injury that could be the reason behind his earlier state.

"Never again," Tom muttered once again, slowly forcing the remnants of the pain out of his mind. "Never again," he said once again as if these simple two words turned into a magical mantra for him.

"TOM!" Claudia shouted. Her fingers tightened over Tom's shoulders. "Snap out of it!" she added before moving her hand and slapping the young man's cheek.

"Huh?" Tom's head shook after the attack, proving that he wasn't paying any attention to what was going on with him. But as he managed to stabilize its movement and look straight, there was no longer this absent look in his eyes. "Dang, that was pretty painful," he said in his normal voice before shaking his head again.

"Uh..." Claudia moaned in surprise before casting a quick glance at her hand. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..." she attempted to apologize, only for Tom to shake his head.

"No, that's not what I meant," he said, placing his hand on the top of Claudia's head. "Thanks for helping me to snap out of it," he added, pulling on her head and hugging the girl for a moment.

There was no longer any sign of the anxiety and stress the two of them experienced when seeing each other naked for the first time. Even though they took a quick stop to replenish their love meter whenever Tom concluded that they were ahead of schedule, they remained rational with it.

Thanks to this, now that Tom hugged almost naked Claudia like that, he could restrain his own lust pretty easily.

After all, those were just the instincts of his body, something that he was free from following ever since his long ancestors developed their brains below what the animal kingdom allowed.

"Are you going to tell me what happened?" Claudia asked after a moment when Tom managed to calm himself down by wrapping himself in the girl's softness.

"A small but pretty painful mistake," Tom smiled in response, already willing to laugh at what he did.

While they didn't have enough knowledge to judge the inner workings of the abilities or how they were related to the obvious appearance of magic, there was a degree to which Tom could understand his abilities.

After all, understanding one's skill was the key to unlocking their latent potential. As such, with every bit of proficiency that Tom would harness in any of his skills, his ability to comprehend their power grew stronger and wider.

"Basically, I was training to limit the output of my power while comboing all of my spells," Tom explained, sitting down on the ground and cuddling Claudia to his side. "In short words, I used my newly gained power to cast an incinerate spell through my spear while reinforcing that attack with another skill of mine," Tom said, once again stretching his head to the ceiling.

As he stared at the mundane shape of rocks that made up the wall above them, Tom gulped down his saliva.

'Up to this point, I never really considered how I would act after returning home,' he thought, suddenly puzzled by this problem. 'Will I be able to live like before? Will my appearance spark a war with the online hub? Or will revealing the truth about the dungeons change the world that I know?' he asked himself many questions, trying to see how his actions would affect his own future.

"Hello?" A voice entered his head. Startled by its sudden appearance, Tom almost jumped to his feet before realizing who did that voice belong to. "You turned silent for a long while already. Did something happen?" Claudia asked, looking at Tom with renewed worry.

"Ah, don't worry about it," Tom said, waving his hand away. "I just got too deep into my own thoughts. But, back to the topic," Tom explained himself before putting a wide smile on his lips. "With all my offensive spells channeled through the spear, I retracted them all and attempted to suck all the energy out of the monster. In this way, I could deprive my own attacks the energy necessary for them to go out of control," Tom explained, shrugging his shoulders at his own idiocy.

'I still don't really understand the underlying rules and laws of the skills, yet I still dared to do something pretty risky,' Tom thought, looking down at his hands. He stretched and closed his fingers a few times.

There was a strange feeling in his body that he just couldn't picture or locate.

"So basically..." Claudia put the finger on her lips as if hoping that it would help her concentrate. "You sucked a powerful and additionally reinforced fire spell right into yourself, right?" she asked, leaning her head to the side in a cute manner.

"Well, it sounds dumb when you put it in this way," Tom nodded his head, admitting to his own fault with a shy smile.

"Gosh," Claudia moaned with slight annoyance mixing with helplessness in her eyes. "You really need to take better care of yourself," she said, looking Tom directly in the eyes. "Even if you don't care about yourself, I believe you care about me a fair bit," she said before putting a wide, lovely smile on her arousing lips. "Then, if you can't care about yourself, can you take care of your own well-being just so that you will be capable of protecting me?" Claudia asked with small fires of mischief igniting in her eyes. "After all, who knows what would happen to a lone girl in this kind of dark, wet dungeon..."

"Dang you," Tom cursed the girl before breaking down in chuckles. "You really know how to turn a tense atmosphere into a relaxed one," he admitted before patting the girl's head.

'Huh?' Tom suddenly shrugged. 'Why did I just do that?' he asked himself, trying to find a reason why his hand moved on his own.

'Well, whatever,' he ended up dismissing the thought. 'Now that I sucked all this magic, I cannot wait to see if I broke through any levels,' Tom added in his thoughts. But no matter how much he focused, no system message came, nor any new skill just happened to surface.

"Could it be that wasn't enough?" Tom asked himself one more question, failing to realize that he spelled his thoughts out loud. "In that case..." he whispered as his eyes moved over the small stash where they held all the unused mana stones.