Soren weakly opened his eyes and saw nothing but darkness around him. His whole body was in pain. He also felt like someone had gouged out a part of his soul. He could not even describe what kind of pain he was feeling right now.

He tried to remember what had happened but suddenly his head ached like it would split apart.

Ugh…My head...AHH!

He held his head in his hands tried to cope with the pain.

………

After a while, he slowly started getting used to the pain.

He then started remembering what had happened and soon, foreign memories flooded his mind like water from a broken dam: It contained memories of what had happened after he had lost consciousness.

He was startled at first but then calmly analyzed everything.

Isaac! Isaac! ISAAC!!!

He remembered how Isaac had received heavy damage and went into hibernation but still tried to call him, hoping for the best.

After not hearing back from Isaac, he knew the issue was serious and might take a long time.

He looked around to see that he was lying on a big branch of a tree, hidden by leaves. He was completely alone right now as the Rotten Zombie had already ‘died’ a while ago.

He was still in a lot of pain so he just lay there completely immobile. He did not understand the details of what Isaac had done but knew it was something very drastic.

He also knew that the process had damaged his soul and his Mana Source. He opened his status with a heavy heart to check what had changed.

Status: Heavily Wounded [Moderate Soul Damage]

Rank 0: Layer 4 [0%]

Name: Soren Farrow

Species: Human

Attribute: Darkness & Ice

Health: 13%

Stamina: 9%

Mana: 3%

Strength: 0.76

Agility: 1.12

Vitality: 3.11

Intelligence: 3.86

Spirit: 3.47

Resistance: 1.03

Spells:

Spell Vessels: 5/5

Innate Spells/Skills:

Ice Arrow [1/7] – Level 4/10. Mana Cost – Low.

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Cold Touch [3/4] – Level 2/10. Mana Cost – Average.

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Acid Splash [6/6] – Level 3/10. Mana Cost – Low.

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Shadow Chain [4/4] – Level 3/10. Mana Cost – Average.

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Create Undead – Low Tier [2/3] – Level 2/15. Mana Cost – High.

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Mana Manipulation – Level 1/15.

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“Spell Mastery increased. Ice Arrow – Level 4/10.”

Soren was completely shocked when he saw the changes that had happened to his bodies.

W-What is this….FUCK!!!

Even though he knew what had happened but seeing everything with his own eyes made him curse out in frustration.

Soon, many thoughts started crossing his mind—

Maybe he should have done something different during the fight. Maybe he shouldn’t have come out to hunt. Maybe he shouldn’t have come out to the jungle itself.

Multiple thoughts crossed his mind but he forcefully suppressed them all. He had no time to whine about the possibilities that could have happened.

He was going to play with the cards he had been dealt already.

No Regrets!!

Basing his mindset on that thought, he again analyzed his changes.

My Strength, Agility, and Resistance have all decreased drastically. Especially my Strength—it went even lower than what I had in the beginning.

Comparatively, my main stats are somewhat safe. Seems like Isaac made a decision to take the Quintessence from my Mana Source and add it all into my Vitality. That’s what saved me…. So my Stygian Grimoire had this kind of function but…. it was just not ready for this yet.

Soren touched the black book floating in front of him—small cracks had appeared on it. He ran his fingers on those cracks, slowly and gently touching them.

Although it was not a big achievement, his spell mastery at least had increased from the fight.

……..

Soren lay there silently, just trying to recover. He knew the risks that night possessed in a jungle. He had experienced it first-hand.

He slowly moved his hand and touched the wounds on his chest and back.

The wounds hadn’t completely closed yet. As Soren touched it, a wincing pain ran through his body and made him shiver.

As he checked his body out, he also found that he had become quite thin and weak. His body seemed like it was starved for days. Soren weakly moved his hands and grabbed his backpack; It was slightly damaged when he was attacked from behind.

He slowly opened it and took out some dried meat and water. He slowly sat up and supported himself on the tree trunk.

He sat there in the dark and ate his food silently. After that, he drank some water and put everything back in the backpack. He had melted ice arrows before to fill his water bottle so he was not running low on water yet.

He then took out the first-aid kit.

He slowly and weakly took off his shirt, applied some medicine on the wounds and then wrapped his chest and back wounds with the bandage—albeit in a clumsy manner.

Although he had multiple wounds on his body that was formed by ice arrow explosion, they were not life-threatening—so he ignored them for now.

He again put on his clothes and just sat there; He was feeling extremely weak right now. He would most certainly die if he was attacked right now.

But there was nothing he could do. He had almost no mana left in his body and his health was below the danger line. So, he just sat there, hoping to recover faster. He seemed extremely lonely just sitting there in the darkness.

He closed his eyes and tried to sleep for a while. Slowly, his mana also started recovering.

……….

He sat there in the dark but he was unable to sleep. The eerie silence of the night had kept him awake.

He was just waiting for his mana to recover completely before doing anything. After around 2 hours, his mana recovered completely.

Now, he had to make a decision: Should he stay or should he move? He knew the risks of the night and, if possible, didn’t want to move at night when he was heavily injured.

So, he decided to stay right there and wait for the sun to arrive. At least now he could defend himself.

But, soon he noticed a problem—

His mana had recovered but his health was not improving at all.

Seems like, that amount of Vitality is just enough to keep my health from degrading much further. There is only one way I can think of, that would heal me faster but…

Would he be able to do it?

Initiators generally learned some methods from their cultivation technique that allowed them to change the priority for development of their stats.

But Soren had never learned any cultivation technique. Although his ‘Devour’ skill was notches above those techniques, it was still just a bloodline talent. Before, Soren left all of this to Isaac but now….

Now, Soren had to find a way himself to change the priorities.

Isaac—I miss you!!

But he had no choice here.

He could not wait for Isaac to come out of hibernation as he had no idea how long that would take. He decided on his course of action and started working. He had a feeling that those cracks on the Grimoire were the cracks in his soul. If he recovered, the Grimoire would recover too.

He slowly started using ‘Devour ‘.

Devour!!

Again, the black mist came out of the black book and started permeating in his body.

But this time, the speed was much slower and his head started hurting as soon as he started the process. Even then, he held on, ignoring the warm blood dripping from his nose.

Slowly but steadily, his Cultivation Percentage increased. But soon, Soren had to stop as the pain became unbearable: The counter had stopped at 16%.

Soren rested for a while, letting the pain subside and then started again.

He kept repeating the process throughout the night.

Maybe because he was hidden well or maybe he was just lucky, he wasn’t attacked even once through the night.

Slowly his cultivation percentage kept increasing and soon it reached 47%.

Black mist kept permeated in his body slowly.

He just stopped to rest in between because of the pain and to feed himself.

After a while, his cultivation percentage reached 76%.

He was close to his next breakthrough and it didn’t take long for the counter to reach 98%.

Now, the only thing he had to do was somehow try to find a way to change the priorities for the stats development.

He thought hard about all the information he had. He kept rejecting ideas as they came into his mind.

Then suddenly, he remembered something—something he had read in one of the books in the library.

“Mana Source: When anyone starts cultivating, they first open up their Soul Space which is the nucleus of their brain. Then, a Core is created in the central area of the Soul Space—that core is completely made up of mana and there is a complex rune in the center called the Core Matrix. After someone makes a breakthrough in their cultivation, their Core releases something which is called Quintessence.”

“This Quintessence is the one that is used to improve the host’s stats; that Quintessence though is like an untamed horse. The Core Matrix in the center of the Core is then used by the host to control that untamed Quintessence and focus it on the aspects they want to develop. The status and the system also exist because of that Core Matrix. The Core together with the Core Matrix is called Mana Source. A Mana Source is sometimes also called Mana Core.”

Soren analyzed the information about the Mana Source and decided to understand the basic structure of it first. He closed his eyes and focused his mind on the Core inside his Soul Space.

He slowly explored the Core Matrix, trying to figure out the complex rune. Soon, he found six small runes in that Matrix which were connected to the six aspects of his body.

Now all he had to do was, figure out which rune belonged to which stat.

He then started studying those small runes.

………

It took him a while but after exploring those small runes for many times, he had formed a general idea about which rune belonged to which stat.

He was not completely sure though, as his thoughts were based on the information he had gathered from the library.

But he had no choice but to take the risk for now. Deciding firmly, he again started using ‘Devour’—and the time to breakthrough came soon.

Soren then used his ‘Mana Manipulation’ skill and tried to control the Quintessence released by the Core; this was also a gamble as he didn’t know he could control the Quintessence by this skill.

But, he won this gamble as he soon found out that it worked just fine.

He started to focus the Quintessence on the runes he had decided on previously. As he controlled it towards the runes of his choice, some of them got dispersed and entered the other runes.

He gritted his teeth and strained his mind in order to control the Quintessence properly.

Finally, he gained success.

His hair and face had become wet from the sweat and his breathing had become rough as he finished the process.

Now he just had to check if the runes he chose were the right ones or not.

Status!

Status: Heavily Wounded [Moderate Soul Damage]

Rank 0: Layer 5 [0%]

Name: Soren Farrow

Species: Human

Attribute: Darkness & Ice

Health: 13%

Stamina: 43%

Mana: 100%

Strength: 0.82

Agility: 1.16

Vitality: 3.35

Intelligence: 4.59

Spirit: 4.08

Resistance: 1.20

Spells:

Spell Vessels: 5/5

Innate Spells/Skills:

Ice Arrow [1/7] – Level 4/10. Mana Cost – Low.

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Cold Touch [3/4] – Level 2/10. Mana Cost – Average.

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Acid Splash [6/6] – Level 3/10. Mana Cost – Low.

------------

Shadow Chain [4/4] – Level 3/10. Mana Cost – Average.

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Create Undead – Low Tier [2/3] – Level 2/15. Mana Cost – High.

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Mana Manipulation – Level 1/15.

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He had made the right choice. He didn’t choose the ‘Vitality’ stat as his main priority this time.

His Vitality was just enough to keep his health from degrading much further and so, even if he added just a little bit to it, he would start recovering.

The first priority he chose was still the stats that were essential for Spell Casters. His stats had become a little spiked and unbalanced though, due to this decision.

His other stats were pretty low for his cultivation level but his main stats were a notch above those of the same level even though they had decreased at one point and even missed one level up.

As soon as he made the breakthrough and focused the Quintessence, he felt his body start recovering—slow but surely; recovering.

As he sat there recovering, he first decided to repair his Spell Vessels.

As he had nothing else to do, he used ‘Create Undead’ to create a ‘Rotten Zombie’ for protection, as he was quite vulnerable and soon started his practice.

He kept practicing his ‘Mana Manipulation’ skill while he recovered. He also started practicing his other spells after a while and kept doing this rotation.

Soon, the sky turned gray signifying the arrival of the morning.

Soren stopped his practice and looked up at the somber gray sky. He had managed to survive yet another day in this world.