Vol. 6 - Captivity - Chapter 7 (Patreon)

Thomas spent three hours bashing his way through the first floor of the dungeon. During that time he went through thirty-four rooms that contained anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five goblins. He kept count of how many he killed and the total came out to six hundred and eighty goblins, not including the ones he blasted in the first room. He had the wild dungeon all to himself and it took a while for him to find the entrance to the next floor culminating in a large experience point gain. During his slaughter, he spent more time picking up the tiny mana crystals that they dropped than actually killing them.

For the slaughterfest he randomly used magic and his Spell Cannon to blow them away in entire groups. He even took the time to dig out his old metal ball and use Magnetic magic to smash and bash some goblins to death. His favorite had to be using lightning magic though. Seeing the goblins jerking around and twitching as the electricity wreaked havoc on their nervous system and muscles made them look like they were dancing an odd little jig. With his new Mana Mastery, his magic had grown noticeably stronger. The sparks of lightning had become thick rope-like bolts of power.

Before heading to the second floor, Thomas opened his character sheet to check his gains from the first level and smiled broadly. Each goblin was worth very little experience but the sheer number of them that he'd killed left him with a total of 20,167 experience to spend on his attributes. His main goal was to ramp up his Magic attribute so he could work longer without breaks but seeing them sitting at 129 bugged him so his first step was bringing them all up to 130. The remaining 14,967 experience all went into his Magic attribute to bring it up to 141.

Name: Thomas Darkrose
Race: Nephilim (Lord Class)
Experience Gained: 355,157 Experience Spent: 355,150 Experience Remaining: 7
Power: 130(+) 1,310 Exp
Endurance: 130(+) 1,310 Exp
Agility: 130(+) 1,310 Exp
Magic: 141(+) 1,420 Exp

Innate Abilities:

• Transmutation ( A ) // Rank 75 // 640/760 Exp
• Quick Learner ( C ) // Rank 94 // 392/950 Exp
• All Seeing Eyes ( S ) // Rank 118 // 755/1190 Exp
• Spark of Divinity ( - ) // Rank - // -/- Exp

Skills:

• Magitech Engineering // Rank 113 // 679/1140 Exp
• ----------------------------------------------------------
• Serenity // Rank 64 // 274/650 Exp
• Skinning // Rank 6 // 12/70 Exp
• Tanning // Rank 5 // 10/60 Exp
• Cooking // Rank 17 // 167/180 Exp
• Flying // Rank 8 // 50/90 Exp
• Fishing // Rank 16 // 7/170 Exp
• Dismantling // Rank 16 // 6/170 Exp
• Metallurgy // Rank 12 // 118/130 Exp

Abilities:

• Weapon Mastery (Small Blades) // Rank 29 // 77/300 Exp
• Weapon Mastery (Heavy Weapons) // Rank 18 // 95/190 Exp
• Weapon Mastery (Body) // Rank 16 // 162/170 Exp
• Weapon Mastery (Swords) // Rank 44 // 51/450 Exp
• ----------------------------------------------------------
• Mana Mastery // Rank 36 // 34/370 Exp
• Throwing // Rank 15 // 105/160 Exp
• Shooting // Rank 39 // 42/400 Exp
• Mana Field // Rank 38 // 273/390 Exp
• Mana Pressure // Rank 33 // 153/340 Exp

Magic:

• Elemental Magic [Life] // Rank 125 // 167/1260 Exp
• ----------------------------------------------------------
• Heat Magic // Rank 13 // 74/140 Exp
• Ice Magic // Rank 24 // 49/250 Exp
• Lightning Magic // Rank 27 // 34/280 Exp
• Metal Magic // Rank 48 // 332/490 Exp
• Wood Magic // Rank 27 // 153/280 Exp
• Magnetic Magic // Rank 36 // 14/370 Exp
• Light Magic // Rank 22 // 35/230 Exp
• Gravity Magic // Rank 2 // 21/30 Exp
• ----------------------------------------------------------
• Unholy Magic // Rank 8 // 42/90 Exp
• ----------------------------------------------------------
• Inventory // Rank 10 // -/- Exp

Titles:

• Uncommon Crafter
• Inventor
• Inheritor
• I Stand Alone
• Unchecked Evolution
• First Soul Companion

Seeing the increase in his power always brought a smile to his face. He was especially happy to see that his 'Quick Learner' innate ability was closing in on rank one hundred. 'All Seeing Eyes' had passed rank one hundred a while back and hadn't gone through any changes. However, 'Quick Learner' was only a rank C innate ability so he had hope that it could change and be more interesting. After all this time he had a fair idea of what it did and he hoped that breaching rank one hundred would make it more interesting.

Thomas made his way down to the second floor of the dungeon and took a break in the safe room at the bottom of the stairs. He wanted to top off his Spell Cannon shells and his mana pool. Once the shells were topped off he relaxed and used Serenity to recover his mana completely. With all of his prep done he picked a pathway and made his way down it. The second floor's construction was the same as the first, just a simple plain cave that led into a large room filled with large piggy orcs.

Unlike the time on the plains, the dungeon room only contained half a dozen orcs so there was no need to use a big spell to blow them away. Thomas held his hands out to his sides, palms up, as a massive amount of mana gathered and started to send off bolts of electricity that struck the ground around him. As the bolts went wild a few struck him and revealed a thin membrane of mana coating his entire body. He'd figured out a simple way to protect himself from the wild bolts of energy. His entire body was coated in a thin layer of lightning element mana. It protected him from his own magic, there was no telling if it would protect him from other people's spells. Either way...

He grinned madly as he pumped more power into his magic causing the bolts to strike the ground buring it and leaving small trenches. The orcs squealed in anger and fear as they watched the light-show surrounding their supposed prey. Thomas threw his hands forward and sent out a fan-shaped wave of lightning that crashed into the orcs and began to cook them alive. The orcs squealed in pain until the lightning fried their brains and killed them. The energy from the lightning turned the normal disintegration of their bodies into a burst of dust that blasted out and faded in the air.

Once his mana was cut off the lightning faded leaving only a room filled with burn marks and a few mana crystals. After collecting the crystals he picked a random path and made his way down it. The only reason to come down here was to grind for experience and make himself stronger. When he arrived at the next room filled with orcs he wasted no time in using Lightning magic again. The bolts grew even thicker as he pumped even more mana into it. The thicker bolts killed the orcs in the current room even faster than in the previous room.

As he picked up the newest batch of mana crystals he thought about the damage he was dealing to the monsters. His Power attribute hadn't increased much but he felt like he was dealing far more damage. He wondered what the cause might be so he moved to the next room and repeated the process while pumping more mana into the Lightning bolts. The orcs died even faster. In the following room he used more mana but the orcs didn't die faster.

"Interesting."

He went through five rooms but no matter how much mana he used the time it took to kill the orcs didn't decrease. The damage he dealt with his Lightning bolts didn't increase past a certain threshold. That threshold would have to be his Power attribute. To see if he was correct he lowered his mana output in stages for the next few rooms. The less mana he used the longer it took for the orcs to die.

"So that's how it is."

The amount of mana he was using was gating the amount of damage he could deal. Knowing this it would be possible for him to control the amount of mana he was using to get the perfect ratio of mana to damage. In that case, he would never waste a drop of mana while maximizing his damage output at the same time. Smiling to himself, he made his way to the next room and let off another blast of Lightning magic while modulating his mana output. The orcs danced a jig before exploding into a cloud of dust on their deaths.

Feeling confident in his control he switched to the Metal element in the next room and blasted out a ton of small pieces of shrapnel to decimate the fat pigs. He moved through the rooms blasting out various elements of magic while paying close attention to his mana output. He took breaks to recover when needed and pushed through rooms at a rapid pace when he didn't need to. After twelve hours and dozens of rooms he decided to take a short break to spend his experience points.

Having a dungeon all to himself was very conducive to gaining experience. Add to that the fact that the orcs were worth at least ten times the experience of goblins and the gains were extraordinary. He was sitting on a massive pile of experience and it made him smile from ear to ear. Several hundred orcs had given him almost 150,000 experience points to spend. He found a comfortable spot to sit down and started to spend his experience to crank up his Magic attribute as much as he could. When he was done it had topped out at 221, nearly a hundred points higher than it had been.

The moment he confirmed the change it felt like the floodgates had opened inside of his body. A massive surge of mana washed through every vein and filled him to the brim with raging power. His whole body shuddered as wave after wave of mana flooded into him. It felt great but at the same time felt like his veins were expanding to the point of exploding. It took several minutes for the mana to calm down and leave him with the warm fuzzies. He relaxed against the cave wall and let out a soft sigh. Yeah, this was good.

While he relaxed he removed some food from his inventory and began to eat it. He hadn't had anything to eat in almost fifteen hours and now that he'd stopped his stomach was complaining about being empty. He chowed down for a bit then returned to the mass slaughter of orcs while looking for the stairs to the third floor. He'd never fought trolls before so he thought it might be a bit fun. And if they gave even more experience...

Thomas made his way through the orcs like a farmer reaping wheat. With the huge increase to his mana pool, he had to stop less often and moved much more quickly. Within two hours he found the stairs leading down to the third floor. He made his way down the stairs and to the safe room with the teleportation circle in it. At this point, he'd been inside of the dungeon for seventeen hours straight. It was time for a break. Before that though, he dumped all of his gathered experience into his Magic attribute to raise it to 253 points. In a day he'd raised his magic attribute over a hundred points and it felt amazing.

Thomas took a look at the teleportation circle, "In a minute..."

He picked a path and walked down it. He wanted to fight a troll before calling it a night. Trolls had always been a mid-grade bad guy. They should be a good monster to test his new larger mana pool on. He lifted his right hand and flexed his fingers while little bolts of electricity danced on his palm. With everything that's changed he felt like his control over his magic had grown by leaps and bounds. Now he could play with it like a toy. He cut off his power and looked into the room he'd just entered. Inside stood just two trolls.

The trolls were extremely large monsters that stood at least three meters tall. Their green-skinned bodies were covered in thick masses of muscle that bulged. Their muscle packed torsos were completely uncovered. In fact, the only clothing they wore were loincloths that just did the job of keeping their 'modesty'. Their faces looked like a combination of an extremely ugly goblin with the large tusks of an orc. Their beady little black eyes stared at Thomas as they lifted their thick wooden clubs threateningly.

The trolls roared simultaneously and charged at him while lifting their clubs up in both hands. Despite their size, they moved rather quickly and covered the distance rapidly. Thomas crouched slightly and as they closed in he dashed to the right and dodged their incoming clubs. The thick masses of wood slammed into the ground hard enough for Thomas to feel the ground shake. Their strength was no joke. Even the ground cracked a little from the impact. Thomas dashed past them to get behind them. He clenched his hands into fists and surrounded them with mana that quickly turned red and burst into raging flames.

His whole body tensed then dashed foreword to the troll on the left. His right fist shot out and slammed into the troll's spine before it could turn around. The impact from the blow barely caused the troll's body to move while the flames did a little more damage but not much more. The troll didn't even seem to care as it spun around and swiped at Thomas with its huge club. Thomas ducked low to let the club pass over his head then leaped backward to make some distance between them. Clearly fire damage didn't really hurt them all that much it just countered their regeneration.

Thomas retrieved his Gravity Hammer from his inventory with a smile. If the trolls thought they had the exclusive use of sheer power then they were mistaken. Without mana infused into it, the Gravity Hammer was just a regular hammer weighing just under twenty kilograms but once he put in some mana... Thomas dashed foreword and swung the hammer at the troll's chest. Just as the hammer hit the troll he dumped mana into its handle at a prodigious rate. The hammer instantly increased in weight by a massive amount. The impact was as loud as a thunderclap. When Thomas felt the hammer trying to pull him off of his feet he simply let go of it.

The mana inside of the hammer's enchantment lasted long enough after he released it. The impact from the hammer decimated the troll's chest. The troll's chest caved in as the hammer's momentum continued to push it. The sheer force lifted the huge monster off of its feet and sent it flying across the cave until it slammed into a wall. The troll stopped but the hammer kept going crushing its way into and then through the troll's chest until it hit the wall and drove into it for nearly a meter. The first troll stuck to the wall with a massive gaping wound bashed completely through its chest while the second troll stared in shock.

Thomas didn't pause to examine his handy work. Despite the traumatic wound the troll just suffered it was already visibly regenerating from the wound. He threw his right hand out and sent a stream of nearly liquid fire to torch the wound and stop it from healing. The troll hadn't let out more than a grunt when the hammer had crushed his chest but the moment the fire hit the open wound it let out a deep roar of pain. It dropped its club and covered its chest with its hands. Originally the wound had barely bled despite being so large but not blood was pouring out of it like a fountain.

Seeing its companion bleeding to death the other troll roared and charged at Thomas while brandishing its club threateningly. Thomas ran away from the perfectly healthy troll toward the dying one. He stretched out his hand and used gravity magic on the now lightweight Gravity Hammer. The Gravity Hammer was yanked out of the wall and flew directly to him. Thomas grabbed it out of the air and spun around while pouring mana into it once again. When its weight instantly hit tens of thousands of kilograms he let go of it and let it fly at the troll charging at him.

The troll had just enough time for its eyes to widen before the hammer plowed straight through its chest and slammed into the wall behind it. Thomas's left hand came up and blasted out more fire to cauterize the wound and stop its regeneration. The troll fell to its knees while covering the wound in its chest just like its partner had. Thomas glanced over where the first roll had been and only saw a mana crystal on the ground. He smiled and turned to look at the still dying second troll, "I'll need to think of a different way to fight you guys."

The troll glared at Thomas until the light faded from its eyes and it turned into dust leaving behind a mana crystal and a second smaller clear crystal. Thomas collected his rewards. Two decent sized mana crystals and his third skill crystal fragment. He still needed several more of them before he would be able to find out what they did. It'd been so long since he collected the last one that he'd straight-up forgotten about them until now. With his prizes collected and his inventory once more flooded with mana crystals, he left the dungeon via the teleportation circle.