Five of the books Shen had memorized contained general-purpose techniques. One such technique was the Lion's Roar he had used to talk to Mark Williams in the first stage. Now he would use another.

The Blind Man's Wisdom was an ability meant to train the senses other than sight. It could, however, be repurposed to protecting the eyes in bright environments, as the user could control how much they limited their vision.

He had other such situation-specific techniques, like the Whale's Lungs that let him stay underwater for a long time, the Chameleon's Defeat that helped see past camouflage, and so on. The issue was that while he had them memorized, he had never used them, and he couldn't use them at an instant's notice. Therefore, he had had to run. Though actually, even if he had used them before, he should still take a few moments to recall them unless he practiced them enough in battle.

That, he realized, was a mistake he had to fix.

Five books; exactly seventy-two techniques. Shen had just found out why so many random abilities were part of the Foundational Knowledge and bowed once more to his ancestors' wisdom. He would start practicing them after he dealt with the Techmages.

He had already trained the technique while he listened to Alicia. Now, it took him only a moment to activate it by moving his qi in a set pattern around his eyes.

His vision darkened a bit. The vast room, which was lit by—

Shen frowned.

There was no light source in the room that he could detect, yet it was perfectly illuminated as if he were inside a room with open windows on a bright day. Something to think about later.

Now, he changed the pattern slightly until his sight became about thirty to forty percent darker. It should be enough to easily see incoming fireballs, have no trouble with the ice shards, and not get blinded by the focused light. Only the rocks would be an issue, but he would likely see their shadows thanks to the fireballs and lights around.

His eyesight protected, Shen rushed at the werewolves.

As before, seventy F-ranks took to the skies while twenty remained on the ground and raised their shields. Shen thrust his spear at one of them, but it was a feint. As soon as their smaller floating shields moved to intercept his attack, he Backstepped.

The triangle shield moved as fast as him and ended up still between Shen and his target. The smaller ones and even the werewolf itself were slower though. He thrust his spear against the werewolf's back, and the triangle shield shattered like glass. Then his weapon pierced his foe's throat, and he ran sideways, rotating his spear. It half-decapitated the beast, and that was enough.

The Techmage turned into light together with its bracelets.

The flying werewolves were attacking in the meanwhile. Shen looked at the attacks, and though his eyes hurt a little at the bright lights, he wasn't further affected. That's when he realized another reason he had survived: the spells were slow.

Well, slow might be the wrong word, but they were definitely not as fast as the F-rank Rockthrowers' projectiles. It was still a challenge to predict and dodge or deflect them though. Two hundred and ten spells were thrown from the bracelets every few seconds, much more than Shen had dealt with until now. If it wasn't for his improvements against the Rockthrowers, he would've gotten overwhelmed.

Here, moving fast wasn't necessary. The werewolves on the ground didn't flee from Shen as he approached. That let him get close to them slowly while focusing entirely on the incoming attacks.

The fight suddenly became the perfect training ground.

Shen moved slowly, then ran, then jumped, twisted, dodged, deflected, and cut spells with his spear. He trained trajectory prediction and threat assessment—the ice spikes were just thrown projectiles, while the fireballs would explode when they got close enough; which should he dodge or deflect, and how?

That pushed his newly created Whispering Transformation to new heights.

One thing he didn't train was environmental awareness. The spells dissipated into light as soon as they hit the floor—or exploded in the fireballs' case. He was glad for that, as he didn't know if he could also dodge ground obstacles.

Shen could physically feel his improvement. He got slightly faster, slightly more effective, little by little until he had only half his qi remaining.

That's when he decided this experience was more important than extra AP. He had already bought everything he wanted but the E-rank upgrade, and this was even more crucial than that.

Shen kept going until only a couple minutes of qi remained, then retreated. Before, he had felt ashamed by his retreat. Now that it was done out of a desire to fight longer and better, he felt elated for being given such a great training ground.

'Thanks, Multiverse Alliance,' he thought as he approached Alicia.

She was looking at a fireball of hers floating in front of her. Her eyebrows were furrowed, and she was in deep concentration.

He sat to meditate and recover his qi. When he was ready for more, Alicia was still concentrating intensely. He just went back to his training ground.

That repeated three times, and he expected it to go for longer...

...but right then, Shen met his first bottleneck.

His stats were capped at F+, and he was taking everything he could out of them; any improvements on that front were over. His movement skill were as best as he could make them by just dodging, yet he hadn't leveled up his footwork. His spear art found only unskilled enemies or projectiles, so he had no room to test new things.

He needed strong enemies now, not more projectile dodge practice.

So Shen rested one last time, then annihilated the ground enemies. He was at a loss about how to kill the flying enemies though. He could throw his spear, but he needed it to deflect some attacks. Looking around, he had a great idea when he saw the piles of rocks the Rockthrowers had left behind.

He grabbed the rocks and metal balls—from the E-ranks—and started throwing them at the flying werewolves.

They dodged, but they used no spell to protect themselves. Shen also had to keep evading their attacks while throwing stuff at them. It was only a matter of time, but eventually, he started hitting them. When there were only a few remaining, Alicia helped too. And finally, the last one fell.

| Enhanced Werewolf Techmage (F) | 6,636 → 6,644 AP

When the E-ranks acted, he understood the limitations of his power like never before.

Ten enemies meant sixty bracelets. All sixty flew above and around Shen, creating a dome about a hundred yards wide surrounding him. The E-ranks stayed outside of the dome.

Then the runes in the bracelets started shining blue, and spells came from them. That wouldn't be such an issue if it weren't for five factors.

The first Shen noticed at a glance. The attacks he had gotten used to now packed a meaner punch. The fireballs were bigger, and he bet they exploded stronger; the ice spikes were larger and sharper; instead of fist-sized rocks, they threw head-sized metal balls; and the light was brighter.

The second factor he noticed as soon as he started dodging. The spells this time were at least as fast as the E-rank Rockthrowers' balls. Without qi, he would've died instantly.

The third and fourth factors were nasty surprises that made everything much more complex: two new spells.

One was steam. Alone, it would've been bad enough for limiting his vision even more, but it got worse when paired with the lights. The mist diffused the light and made everything much harder to see.

The other new spell was gravity manipulation. Shen's body felt heavier, and his movements became slightly slower.

That would've been enough to hit Shen even if it weren't for the fifth factor: the spells followed him to a point. There was a limit of about fifteen degrees of total turn angle, but that was enough to make dodging much harder.

The first spell to hit Shen was an ice shard to the shoulder. His Whispering Transformation let him almost dodge it in time and avoid the sharp end, but the sheer weight and speed of the thing still hit hard enough to crack his shoulder bone. At least it didn't completely shatter.

| Health points: 91 / 100 | -9

Shen tried to run away at once. He dodged the best he could, but halfway to the dome's edge, a fireball exploded close to him and took him from his balance. That opened him to get struck by another fireball on the back that exploded on contact.

| Health points: 88 / 100 | -3

| Health points: 57 / 100 | -31

The pain was enormous, but the explosion, fortunately, pushed him out of other spells' ways and closer to the dome's edge. He kept running the short distance to his destination as soon as he got his footing back. The closest bracelets on his path shone blue then, and an energy wall appeared in front of him. He thrust his spear with his full might.

All the dome's bracelets shone blue then. Spiderweb-like cracks appeared on the energy shield, but it held.

He pulled quickly and thrust again at the same spot.

The cracks widened, but one of the werewolves approached the other side of the wall. It touched one of the bracelets, and the cracks instantly disappeared.

Still, Shen attacked again and again. If anything, the dome's focused protection gave him a respite from its attacks, and he needed the time to think.

What the hell could he do?

The first idea that came to mind was quickly getting to another edge of the dome and striking it so fast a werewolf wouldn't reach him in time. He tried just that, getting there scot-free, but it was for naught. He managed to hit the energy wall three times before a werewolf arrived to fix the spiderwebs, but it still held.

The second idea was to ask Alicia for help, but if they threw her in here or expanded the dome to include her, she would just die uselessly.

By then, it was obvious he was out of any good idea.

The third idea was to do his best to overwhelm the werewolves' dome-regenerating ability. If Shen hit the same place for long enough, it might eventually give in. That became impossible moments later when the dome adapted to his strategy of striking it to stay safe. Only half the bracelets kept strengthening the wall while the other half threw spells at him.

While dodging, Shen had the fourth idea, which wasn't an idea at all.

He would just endure and wait for an epiphany.

Shen kept to the walls so only half the dome would attack him. Fortunately, at least for now, only the opposite half was trying to murder him. That meant he had extra time to predict the attacks and extra space to dodge. It also meant the spells he avoided hit the dome and forced half the bracelets to keep working on maintaining the energy wall.

He had a stamina crystal and a health one on his belt to instantly recover the related pools. If needed, he also six thousand AP to buy new crystals—stamina for 500 AP, health for 1,000 AP. He could resist for a while in that front.

The biggest issue would be his qi though. His body couldn't take more than twenty minutes of it. He better be good enough to dodge the projectiles without qi soon, or he would die.

While doing his best to survive and still getting brushed by spells here and there, he recalled his previous thoughts.

Shen had complained about dodge training being useless to the current him. Now, he'd better find a way to change that.

So he fought spells and frustration with a spear in his hand and hope in his heart.