To Aki’s ultimate surprise, his grinding plan failed miserably before he could even make the fifth spell.

Well, not really, he kind of wanted to try and make another skill of Yellow grade by himself after seeing that the blazing spear he’d made up was already at Orange, so he made one corresponding to the other three basic elements. That turned out to be a harder undertaking than he’d expected, but he got kind of distracted and didn’t really hear all the level ups.

Still, the now open paths were pretty good and he would certainly be working towards them. But he was rather curious what getting to a hundred of a stat would do for him.

[Congratulations! You have completed the Battle mage path (60/60)! +5 Physical stats and Mental stats. You have learned the skill Mana bulwark (O) Lv 1.

Sinergy detected! Do you wish to...

Mana bulwark (O), Iron skin and mana skin fuse to become Powerful arcane body (Y) Lv 1]

“Ok, I'd have liked to level those individually, but this one is a passive skill and so much better. Next please.” He grinned.

[Congratulations! You have completed the Young spellweaver path (100/100)! +10 Control. Due to existing sinergies, you have learned the skill Advance mana weaving (Y). Skill levels are maintained.

Congratulations! You have completed the Fire mage path (50/50)! +5 Intelligence and Focus. Fire affinity becomes Improved fire affinity (O). Skill levels retained.

Congratulations! You have completed the Wind mage path (50/50)! +5 Intelligence and Control. Wind affinity becomes Improved Wind affinity (O). Skill levels retained.

Congratulations! You have completed the Water mage (50/50)! +5 Intelligence and Wisdom. Water affinity becomes Improved water affinity (O). Skill levels retained.

Congratulations! You have completed the Scholar (20/20)! +4 Mental stats. +1 free stat point. +10% Learning rate.]

And that made a 100 intelligence, which opened up a new path needing 250 points to complete. In turn, that meant he now needed around five hundred and twenty points to complete the paths he wanted, plus some more in case something new opened up.

Having not stood up from his place in the pond, Aki casted the new spear spell towards the wall, noting that it cost a whole hundred mana despite any cost reduction from his new shaping skill.

When the metallic lance was propelled forward by a fire blast and reached an ungodly speed before exploding moments after impact, he understood then that he did not actually fully understand how this had come out of his four elemental spear. Something to study and develop then.

Not like he lacked more spell ideas or mana either though, so this was just fine.

….

[Lance of the four elements (Y) is now Lv 12.]

So it really was made out of four lances interacting in harmony, explaining the cost and the power. That made sense really, so it was a bit surprising he took so long to see it.

More importantly, he could make it better.

*BOOM*

As he removed his arms from his face, Aki had to admit it was obviously not going to be something immediate. That was fine too, of course, but it was still a bit dissapointing to not be able to simply act like a supreme master that could understand everything.

Failure is the mother of success however. That might not have been the best anecdote for him at the moment, but that was fine t... *BOOM*

….

[Lance of the four elements (Y) is now Lv 72.]

Looking at the hole made on the walk, he could not help but question how big the damage actually was on the other side for it to cause such fractures. It was hard not to wonder what’d happen if he hit a giant with a barrage of these.

Instead of a simple blast launching a fast but simple exploding spear, now his spell had a concentrated explosion launch a spinning projectile coated by a wave of wind suited to cause just the needed breach for it’s head piece to ignore resistance, and after the impact penetrated then the interior of said head would explode forward in a much smaller cone thanks to the frozen filling galvanizing as it absorbed all the friction and heat.

These changes, while directly impacting the level and power of the spell, had also made it cost five times as much despite it’s description pointing to a reduction per level instead.

While messing around with tiny details and designs though, he ended up fusing yet more skills together, but in this case he had fused all the skills he'd been using to mess around with stone and water when he started playing with the gases and the temperature of everything by using his mana. Completely unintentional, he hadn't even gained the skills for the latter activities.

On the other hand, it had somehow become his first Green grade skill.

Perhaps someone else would have the self control to not immediately fuse the damned skills, but he was kind of not so able minded that he could actually finish reading what the notifications said after innately understanding what they were asking anyway.

A rather strange function of the system in his opinion, but he was working on dealing with things more wisely the whole week now, a slip up was bound to happen. More importantly though, he had a ton of skill points to spend, and hoarding them was only so effective considering the action was mostly for his own anxiety.

[Congratulations! You have completed the Intelligent path (250/250)! +10 to Intelligence. +1 to intelligence per level. Mana multiplied by 1.1x. A tenth of the intelligence score now also contributes to mana regeneration.]

That was… different. There had not been any other cascate effects through the paths before this, but the flavor text indicated that this was something of a dedicated path, the ones taking it expected to focus solely on the one stat in question.

Technically that was indeed the case, but he also didn't plan to just leave his other stats hanging for long either.

The reason he'd gone with Intelligence first was exactly that it helped his mental stats, spell power, control… it was the base for the other stats much like vitality to the physical stats.

Were he unsure of his ability to heal himself then he'd have gone with the physical side of things first, but as it was, he had a shit ton of healing and nothing capable of one-shotting him. With his new green skill he had several more spells to make and refine, nevermind that he was half sure that the monsters around the area had already repopulated most of what he had killed since coming here despite their lack of a broad mother, so there were plenty of targets to practice against in real combat.

If he managed to create a detection method despite his lackluster perception then there was very little even the higher leveled spiders would even be able to do against several spears coming for their behinds.

He didn’t really know how he wanted to fight yet, besides furiously hitting stuff at all ranges, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to be some guy with paper thin defense, he was far from nimble or dexterous enough to even consider that really.

Really, he hadn’t even created proper grenades…

[You have developed the skill Shards of pain (O) Lv 1]

Or figured out how to create alcohols and propellants…

[You have developed the skill Boom juice (O) Lv 1

You have developed the skill Disinfecting field (O) Lv 1]

To be fair he wasn’t sure those were actually ethanol and isopropyl. But he still didn’t have anything for trapping...

[You have developed the skill Infernal blisters (O) Lv 1

You have developed the skill Chasm Lv 1

You have developed the skill Frozen chains Lv 1

You have developed the skill Screaming tundra (Y) Lv 1

You have developed the skill Crying tempest (Y) Lv 1

You have developed the skill Bleeding core (Y) Lv 1

You have developed the skill Specter’s breath (Y) Lv 1

You have developed the skill Dark blood (O) Lv 1

You have developed the skill Unending falls (O) Lv 1

You have developed the skill Blood carriers (O) Lv 1

You have developed the skill Carriers of suffering (Y) L1]

Ok, to be honest he didn’t much know how he’d gotten that last one. It was a literal swarm of mosquitos made of blood, which could transmit the respective debuffs he’d made, he just needed enough blood to summon them.

Theoretically he could even upgrade the spell if he managed to make some kind of commanding summon that would keep spawning them, but he honestly didn’t much understand what he’d done correctly to cast it in the first place. He’d been trying to make projectiles of blood from some spheres that were holding what was supposed to be his enemies’ blood, though it was all his own since he couldn’t bother to get a guinea pig, unsure if that would mess something up with the safe zone.

Either way, they were exactly what he’d been trying to create, just better in that they seemed capable of some level of adjustment in their flight paths.

Either way…

[Congratulations! You have completed the Blood mage (100/100)! +5 Focus and Control. Due to detected sinergy, you have earned the skill Grand blood core (G) Lv1.

Grand blood core (G) Lv1- Increased efficiency of all biological, blood and curse magic. Developing skills of the biological, blood and/or curse tipe is easier. Slight increase in efficiency with skill level. Slight increase in development capability with skill level.]

[You have reached a branching path!]

“Ok, that’s also new.” Noted Aki as he tried to immediately complete the Lord of violence path, being stopped midway through as suddenly his surroundings changed.

He was still in his armor, and pretty sure this was a representation so he could better express himself and his choice, a notion that came from seemingly nowhere, but now he stood in the middle of a crossroad in a plain of red grass and under a black sky.

“Charming” He snorted as he took in the surroundings. There was only a black wall behind him, cutting off the road from where he supposedly came from. Redemption, he guessed. Futile really, he wasn’t going there.

To his left stood a black mountain, several roars and tremors coming from it. looking at it however, he grew to envision a skeletal, three-toed claw somewhere in a cave filled with groaning corpses that could be dust at any moment. To the right there was a village, or a town, hard to determine at this distance, but it was easy enough to see the smoke from several buildings on fire, and looking at it made him see a strange sword with eye patterns in its body, what looked like an actual eye in the cross guard, being wielding by a laughing maniac with far too many spikes in his own armor.

No notifications told him what to do, but he already had a plan.

The walk to the flaming landscape was fast, little really registering to him, but when he got there, he could see people dying or dead in the streets, shades coming to life as people were cut down under the maniac’s blade.

Immediately, he lashed out at the man, five spears forming in small intervals from each other as he drank in the mana of the surroundings and dematerialised the shades for their essence. When his mana was nearing bottom despite his efforts, the sword was separated from the man and he finally fell, seeming to only now realise the holes and metal shards in his body.

Picking the thing up, he made sure to stab the man in the face and eat the influence of the cursed object, putting it into one random scabbard laying around corpses and putting it in an intact belt.

[You have cho....]

“Not done.” He interrupted the notification, something only possible due to the lack of the usually ever present knowledge of what would be explained in it he noticed. “If you are injured and can walk then come to me! If possible carry someone that can’t walk, but don’t force it, i will get to you! The enemy is down, so start moving, the battle is only done after everything is dealt with and there’s plenty of people to save yet!” He shouted, starting to heal those around him so they would at least not immediately die.

This time there was no such thing as a fast track, he had to heal everyone by himself and manage his mana, taking from his patients and the cursed sword, recovering the most he could as he walked from one person to the next. Eventually, people started to organize themselves around him, more being brought to him instead of needing him to move, allowing him to set up a perimeter to cast buffs and taking from everywhere available, the blade becoming overwhelmed with transferring mana from one target to another as he used it several times as a medical instrument and to help absorb more energy and eventually losing its ability to attack his mind as it was infected with his focus and determination.

It took what had likely been more than a day, but he finished healing the last person while performing several magical resurrections with the medical procedures he did know.

[As you have proven…]

“I will tell you when I am done, so just watch.” Why would he stop before gathering the other available treasure? It needed to be conquered after all.

Leaving the town behind, he could tell that again he was walking on what wasn’t actually space as much as a representation of a journey, as to his perception, he quickly reached the black mountain, now much quieter and with more craters.

Making hand holds, he made a beeline towards the altitude where he remembered the claw to be. Several undead birds tried to peck him, but he just decomposed their wings and used their blood to summon some mosquitos even as they fell to their deaths.

By the time he'd reached a path he could walk at instead of climb, he was pretty much just swatting things with his cursed sword for the mana as the swarm of birds fought against his swarm of mosquitoes.

He just kept casting and summoning more. The sheer amount was leveling even his debuffs, though that was partly because the undead had quite the thick rotten blood, so it needed to be thinned if he wanted to properly use it.

Then again, he was wasting a lot of healing with not using his own blood, but he was using a stone armour here, so unless something actually damaged that he'd be quite hard pressed to actually bleed himself as he wasn't simply going to be stopping and spending fifteen minutes taking a gauntlet off or something.