I woke up the next morning, got ready, and just as planned, I started heading towards the dungeon again. I needed to restart my training to grow even stronger. Whatever large catastrophe was coming, I could sense the changes it was causing already taking place, the biggest proof being me.

[Do you wish to enter the second floor of the dungeon? Y/N]

“Yes”

A flash of darkness surrounded me, and the next moment, I was back in that seemingly endless desert surrounding me from all directions. I made sure to bring plenty of food and water in my inventory because I wasn’t certain if I'd find the “spawn” again. I started heading in a direction while making sure to keep in mind my map. A lot of footprints were left in the sand, but they didn’t stop anytime soon because I hadn’t found a landmark yet.

RUMBLEEEEE

As I was wondering what my next plan of action would be, a sinister rumbling was felt beneath where I was standing. Even without my predictive passive {Laplace Authority} I was able to tell that standing here wouldn’t do me any good.

I launched myself backwards, making sure to land properly. As I landed, a wide pit formed in the sand. A split second later, I felt as if my eyes were deceiving me-

What lay before my eyes was a horrific sight, its teeth were all protruding outwards, there were no eyes on its preposterously long body that was still coming out from the sand. Killing intent seeped out of it, all aimed at me, as if I was the prey. I used my analysis as fast as I could while activating parallel thinking to dodge in the meantime.

[Analysis Activated]

{Sand Drago-Worm Lv 14

Strength: 19

Stamina: 13

Agility: 14

Endurance: 15

A sub-race of the dragon family, lives in deserts waiting to attack unsuspecting prey unfortunate enough to tread over their territory. Due to living a subterraneous life, they have very poor eyesight making them depend mostly on their sense of smell.

Weakness: Magic, Slashing Attacks, Neck Joint

}

“Crap Crap Crap Crap ahhhhhh”

I ran as fast as I could while trying to push my navigation skill to the limit, I was currently at a complete disadvantage in this fight. I needed to regroup and think of a different plan of action. My navigation skill was able to show the worm whenever it was above the sand (as helpful as that was), but every time it went under I could only depend on my heightened senses to guess where it was. Eventually, another giant worm showed up and helped in the chase. I almost got caught when the worms attempted to surround me, but I managed to use berserk to get out of there.

I wasn’t going to risk the side effects at the end of the skill but luckily, I found what appeared to be a shelter nearby. I sprinted as fast as I could with the remaining 3 minutes in the berserk timer. After about another 2 kilometres the giant worms stopped chasing me, I could no longer sense that familiar rumble that followed with them.

Seemed like I managed to get out of their hunting territory, but now I had to look for any other monsters that lived here which might get in between me and that shelter. I wanted to use this chance for training my skills in different ways when I reached the shelter.

This dungeon might not just take a few hours………

*******

After I took a break to eat and drink outside of the shelter, I pushed my senses to the limit to check for enemies. I didn’t really feel like getting attacked while my guard was down in the shelter.

After 10 seconds, what my navigation skill couldn’t find was revealed by my own senses. I found an unassuming skeleton of a body in the corner. No one would think that the skeleton was actually an undead but I managed to sense the invisible miasma coming from it. The situation would’ve been dangerous had I been unaware of it, but a mere skeleton wasn’t going to be enough when I knew of its existence. I quickly eliminated the skeleton with an arrow to the skull and made sure no other enemies were there.

I looked around the shelter, and inside of it, there was an old antique looking table. On said table, I found an ancient looking tome surrounded by pieces of paper in a language that wasn’t of Earthen origin. The characters on the paper were close to the hieroglyphics of Ancient Egypt but they also had a modern feeling to them-artistic even-like character based languages such as Mandarin and Japanese. I decided not to touch the papers in case they had important information on them. On the other hand, when I opened the ancient looking book I was given quite the shock….since I could actually read it!

When I flipped through the pages, I could feel the shocked expression overcoming my face. This book….it was about MAGIC! I couldn’t believe my luck, I finally got a chance to learn a man’s romance, magic. On the first page following the cover a message was written.

~~~~~~~~

-Hello young adventurers, if you are reading this, then that means I have met my demise. I didn’t want to part with this world without leaving anything behind to mark my accomplishments. In this book, I have written my entire life’s worth of knowledge.

“What’s this knowledge?” you may ask.

My entire life I had dedicated myself to the study of the mysteries of this world and how they worked, what the masses called “Sorcery.” In this book I have laid out everything from the basics to the advanced to the master level. If you manage to make it to the level of masters then I have also included the stage beyond that, my stage, the arch magus. I wish for those who read my life’s work to soar down the path of Sorcery and even succeed me eventually.

With all due luck,

Archmage Henrick the Fifth

~~~~~~~~

I could feel the excitement coursing through me just imagining the possibilities of increasing my strength. I felt truly thankful to this unknown “archmage” for writing this book. The only thing that felt “off” to me was how this book ended up in this shelter, existing in the middle of an unknown desert, but then again, when has this system ever made sense? It was ironic really.

I flipped to the section titled beginners and started reading. Thanks to the speed processing skill I was able to read through it very quickly. In the beginner’s section I learned the basic laws of sorcery. They were as listed below:

The only limit to sorcery was the creation of life and the revival of the dead Sorcery is in essence a way of interpreting the world Sorcery requires the connection to the world’s energy, you have to be able to feel said energy around you. All the abilities gained through sorcery follow a basic structure that’s built upon more and more as you advance through the stages of study.

While there are main “studies” in the world this book came from, it also mentions that there are many different studies that are exclusive to individual races, such as “draconic words” which are exclusive to dragons and “spirit tongue” that’s limited to the elven people. This revealed that I might meet individuals of different races such as elves in this dungeon as unlikely as that might seem.

✶✶✶

As the sun started to set I opened my eyes from the deep trance I was in. I learned that for about a 100 metre radius, no monsters dared to approach the area around the shelter. This was the perfect place to start practising my “connection with the world’s energy” which was listed in the basics chapter.

In the book, Henrick described that connection as a string that is created through moving particles in the air to create it. Said particles are actually what powers the study and abilities of sorcery, kind of like the “mana” in novels but these particles were called “auracules”, sort of like the building blocks of a sorcerer.

To move these particles I had to first learn to sense them, that’s where I was currently stuck. In the book the process for sensing auracules was through repeated meditation and blending into nature.

That way, the auracules would be able to pass through me leaving a sort of print on my being, allowing me to use said print to sense other auracules. My only problem was that this process didn’t actually have a time frame, it could take as short as minutes to as long as years depending on the individual.

I have been meditating for 3 hours to no avail so I wanted to get in some movement for my body. I stood up and went down to the next goal of my agenda. I wanted to learn how to better utilise my skills, so first up was Stealth. I looked at the analysis for the skill again:

{Stealth Lv3: The user can now assimilate with the darkness to completely hide, if outside of the darkness the user’s scent, sound, and aura are suppressed}

I wondered, how DID the skill actually suppress my presence, and could I utilise it in a different way? I decided to activate stealth, but this time I’d activate berserk as well to push my senses to the limit. Coupled with parallel thinking and speed processing, I could feel my brain throbbing from all the strain I was putting on it, almost reaching the limit of my processing capacity.

Luckily it didn’t take long for me to find something using this heightened state. As my stealth was activated I could sense and faintly “see” the movement of some form of energy coming in to coat my body. When the energy finished coating my body I was notified the skill ended. This entire process only took a tenth of a second but I managed to expand that to tens of seconds and carefully observe.

After a brief rest for the side effects of berserk to go away, I tried activating stealth again, but this time I observed how the energy connected and activated. At the start of the skill, the energy didn’t just show up but actually got COLLECTED from the atmosphere. When stealth was about to activate the energy coated the surface of my body forming not a bubble but more of a skin-tight suit covering me from head to toe. The energy settled down and the skill activated, but it didn't stop moving, at least not fully. Whenever I moved my body I saw that the energy shifted itself slightly.

I think I finally understood what was happening. To summarise the steps of the activation there are two parts. The first part was the “collection” of the energy. The energy that was being collected from the surroundings was how I actually blended in with them, kind of like collecting grass and mud for a ghillie suit.

The second step was like wearing the ghillie suit, the energy shaped itself to act like said suit and instead of “hiding” me it just allowed me to blend into the surroundings, making me harder to spot. So, hypothetically speaking, if I was able to control the shape of that energy I could hide more than just myself….

✶✶✶

“Finally, some progress”

I spent half my time in the brain boosted state while the other half was spent giving my head a break so that it didn’t short-circuit. As the sun began to set, I went over my accomplishments.

I finally managed to partially sense that energy without having the brain boost, making practice slightly easier for myself. While in the brain boost however, I managed to interrupt the formation of the energy using forms from the martial arts book I read. Instead of covering my entire body, only my arms were hidden. I gained even more motivation and started to practice even harder, now I was able to collect and spread the energy around any part of my body. Now that I mastered that in the brain boosted state, I tried applying it in my normal state with some success. While slightly slower, I still managed to collect and spread the energy. As I finished my last round of practice I heard a sound-

[Congratulations, Stealth is now Level 4]

“YES, IT WORKED!”

While much harder than just levelling up through eliminating monsters, I now know that improving my understanding of a skill will also level it up. I checked over the description for the new level up.

[Stealth Lv4: Not only can the user manipulate mana to better control their stealth, they can also apply it at range]

….I didn’t even think of that! I quickly tried to surround the table with what I now knew was mana. Although it did take some getting used to, I managed to speed up the collection to the tenths of seconds, making it almost instantaneous in the eyes of normal people. Now I also knew why stealth didn’t use MP, it was because the mana was collected from the surroundings instead. This answered many of my questions about how skills worked. I might not return home today….

I finally had a path I could tread on, is this what a protagonist felt like?