Chapter 41: Digesting the Gains

“We’ll meet again! We must return.” Leah said while trying to make it simple so that we can understand.

The two girls bid us farewell after Cathie recovered her depleted MP. Compared to when welcoming them, where only me and Logier came, during their departure, a few orcs were present to see them off. This group of orcs was among the ones who fought together with her against that hobgoblin. After going through a life and death battle, they were already seeing the two humans in a positive light.

One should know that monsters and humans were enemies, through and through. It was in their very DNA to oppose humans and kill them. It was also one of their purpose of existence. After being a monster for many days, I could vaguely detect the inherent hatred I had for humans. No, more accurately speaking, it was hatred towards everything that wasn’t a monster. Even non-living things like rocks couldn’t escape from this mindless hatred.

From what I observed, monsters were no different than any animal species roaming across the world. They live their own life, have their own natural habitat, etc. If not for this unique inherent hatred that made them unusually aggressive and destructive, monster species wouldn’t be this abhorred. This plague-like hatred would gradually transform them from their infant stage. Forget about those less intelligent monsters, even someone like me who had the memories of a human couldn’t control the impulse sometime.

However, as a monster’s level of strength rises and it undergoes Enhancements, the effect of this hatred gradually lessens. Compared to when I was an Infant Imp, as an Adult Dream Weaver, I feel less impulsive towards many things. The same was true for the orcs as well.

“Why didn’t you tell them about your human identity?” After they went out through the iron doors, Logier asked me the question that was bugging him for the whole day. Initially, he thought after seeing the humans, I would reveal everything to them, but my silence on this matter was a complete surprise to him.

“Tell her? for what?” I gave him a smile before going in. I have seen and learned many things in today’s fight. It will take some time for me to digest them all. Research, that’s the right word to describe what I was going to do from now on. The way Cathie used her magic gave me a lot of ideas to explore.

I have decided to change my rigid way of thinking.

After returning to the goblin lord’s residence, I sat on the stone bed, holding a piece of animal-skin paper and a writing quill. One by one, I listed everything I learned after observing Cathie the whole time. With the help of Infrared Vision that was able to see even the flow of magic, I already knew the finer details. So, I jotted them down on the animal skin paper as well.

After I had finished writing, I gave the list a once over. Unconsciously, a sigh escaped from my lips. I generalized everything I saw and divided them into three main points.

Control, Materialization, and Picturization.

Control was quite easy to understand and undertake. All I have to do was to monitor the flow of magic when I use a skill manually instead of letting the system do it. Although I didn’t know what good would it do, I was eager to find out. However, the problem was the other two steps.

Picturization and materialization!

These two may sound easy on the paper, but I knew it wouldn’t be a walk in the park for me. Everything depends on how versatile my mind was. Cathie was able to use her fireball skill in many different ways. Some became powerful, and some worked as diversions. Compressing it to increase its heat and damage power, then inflating it to make an AoE, she was able to do all these with just a simple fireball.

I had to do the same with my illusion skills as well. While illusions were more versatile than fire, due to my shallow knowledge in magic handling, I was not sure how to even take the first step. I was stuck at the first step, let alone materialization, which comes later.

Taking another animal skin paper, I started to write down the various ways to use Cast Illusion. No matter how outlandish and impossible it sounded, I wrote them down. The point is, I wanted to get a general idea first before attempting it. Looking at the paper filled with my messy handwriting of English words, I sighed in my heart once. Out of the fifty ideas listed, even I was not sure how some of them came to my mind. If someone from Earth has to read this piece of paper, they would think I was suffering from some delusional syndrome.

Until now, Cast Illusion was all about affecting a target. Then a question arose in my mind, what if there were no targets? Can this skill still be activated? If this was really possible, then together with my passive ability, it will be much easier to mess with my future opponents. As a monster whose main form of attack was casting illusions, I have to be as devious as possible. The more obscure I become, the deadlier I would be.

Second, I decided to do something about that thin film that blocked my Nightmare Seed from affecting the goblin lord. Though I wasn’t sure how to deal with that barrier, the goblin lord’s last words gave me a direction to follow. If I remembered correctly, he said I was using a stick to beat a tiger. Aside from the literal meaning, it can also be translated to me using less force to deal with a strong opponent.

In conclusion, if my INT and WIS is lesser or equal to my opponent, Cast Illusion and Nightmare Seed would fail to activate. However, Nightmare Manifest had no such limitations. This skill could easily affect humans even. By now, I had already understood the unwritten rule of this world. The higher the cost of MP to cast a skill, the stronger it would be. Back on Earth, it was also the same. Buying an expensive product would last for years, whereas cheaper ones would break down in days.

Nightmare Manifest cost me around 40 MP for a single cast, which was why it was able to affect that human bandit. In conclusion, only the skills with a higher MP consumption rate could affect humans and other higher intelligent beings. I noted that on the paper as well.

…

The crystal sun on the roof gradually dimmed, indicating that night has arrived at the outside. I came to know this after Leah’s casual remark when she visited this morning. This crystal sun on the roof seems to light and dim according to the sun’s movement outside the dungeon. Due to this, it had become quite convenient for me to calculate days and time.

Cathie brought us some food from the outside world, so I declined the orcs to send me dinner. It was some kind of meat dish and bread, from the looks of it. I stopped the research after feeling my head aching from excess use of brain cells and decided to retire for the night. Tentatively, I broke a piece of bread, dipped in the gravy of the meat dish, and took a bite.

It tasted like braised chicken. I felt like crying at the familiar taste in my mouth, even though I didn’t have a tear gland on my eyes. How long had it been since I tasted something like this? All of a sudden, I started to miss Earth, my apartment, and Coco. In my lonely bachelor life, Coco was my only family.

My parents were divorced when I was young. Later they found their respective other halves and started a new family. As for me, I became a stick in the mud. A constant reminder of their unhappy marriage. Neither my mom or my dad was willing to accept me into their new lives. I was sent to a boarding school later. Remembering those days, I felt both anger and sadness. I repeatedly wanted to question them why did they even bother to give birth to me? However, I never dared in the end.

When their divorce was yet to happen, and we were living together, my mom would often make this dish. As I ate this familiar dish in this unfamiliar world, the memories that locked in the deepest corner of my heart gushed out like the water from a fountain. The stifling feeling in my heart only increased as I ate the dish brought by Cathie.

Not long after, I finished the dish and disposed of the plate. Laying in the stone bed with a head full of thoughts about my past, I completely forgot about the troubles I was facing in this new world.

And like that, I slowly closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.