Chapter 342 Volume V - Chapter 60: A Different Way to Get Stronger
What can I do?
I thought about this question again, just as I have been doing since the moment I arrived in this dungeon.
But... I hit the same wall again, there was nothing I could do.
I looked at Adrian, his eyes closed, lying unconscious on the hard floor. It had barely been half an hour since the duel he had won and he hadn't woken up yet.
The events of the duel were still fresh in my mind. I had not only seen but directly felt how bad Adrian was, despite his pretense of being fine. And being aware of this made me feel even more helpless, powerless.
So I fell back into my thoughts.
If Adrian doesn't wake up in the next hours, the wolves won't come for another duel. Yes, they take advantage of his weakened state, but they don't try to attack him when he's unconscious. That's how Sue and I were able to survive two nights without him.
He'd better not wake up, he mustn't regain consciousness for the next eleven hours.
But what if he wakes up? What if he opens his eyes before nightfall or in the middle of the night and the wolves are right there with us again? That's what I'm afraid of.
He said trust me, I know, but... if he keeps fighting every time he wakes up when it's a miracle he's still alive, he'll never recover. He's just... walking toward his own death at this point. The wolves will never wait for him to recover. It's a miracle that we even had this opportunity in the first place.
But this miracle is not one without end.
I narrowed my eyes, this time looking away as I tore them away from Adrian. Lost in my thoughts, I soon did something I hadn't done in a long time, I opened my statistics window.
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--Personal Information--
Name: Lucia
Last Name: Quie
Race: Human
Age: 18
--Statistics--
General Level: D
Strength: D-
Agility: D+
Vitality: D+
Endurance: D
Luck: C+
Magic Power: D+
Mana Efficiency: D
Charm: S-
--Masteries--
[Swordsmanship(D+)] -- [Mana Expert(D)] -- [Flame Elementalist(D+)] -- [Quie Family Slender Swordsmanship(C-)]
--Active Skills--
[Accumulated Speed(C)] -- [Mana Barrier(E)]
--Passive Abilities--
[Temperature Stabilization(B+)] -- [Initial Damage Protection(C)] -- [Regeneration(S-)]
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That's all I have...
I might be able to take out one of those wolves by taking advantage of Initial Damage Protection, but I can't do much more than that with this skill. Although it has saved my life many times, its main purpose is to largely neutralize the initial damage I take. It gives me no advantage in subsequent attacks.
Using my family's swordsmanship, I might be able to take down one more wolf, even if barely. Two, maybe, if I'm really lucky... But that's where my mastery ends. And... I will once again be defenseless in the midst of the dozens of wolves that will attack me.
With a deep sigh, I closed the system window and turned my eyes to the sky. No matter how hard it was to accept, no matter how uncomfortable the situation made me feel... I just wished Adrian wouldn't wake up for a while longer.
I wanted him to at least get some rest. And the hours... began to pass quickly again.
Sue and I were both very nervous, but we waited. We had no choice.
Time just kept ticking away.
Fortunately... Adrian didn't wake up. And when night fell, the wolves did not come to visit us, as if they were watching from afar. There were only occasional echoing howls. They were hunting other creatures we had not yet had a chance to see. At the same time, they were protecting us in a way.
Sue was so sleep deprived that she couldn't help herself, and after a while, she involuntarily fell asleep. She didn't have time to rest because she was busy with the food and checking on Adrian all the time. She was always busy with something. So I let her sleep quietly, I didn't disturb her.
But, on the contrary, I stayed awake all night, deliberately keeping my eyes open in case Adrian woke up. Sue had fallen asleep in the first hour of the night, so I had three hours ahead of me. Three hours in which I had to do nothing but wait.
What can I do in these three hours except wait? I shouldn't be idle, I should at least try something...
I turned my eyes to the sky again, this time, not the lush green of before, but the dark sky, covered with stars and the blue glow of the river.
I hesitated for a moment, just stood there for a few seconds, and then... I found something I could do.
The mana awakened by the night was being drawn to my body, as it always is. And I was trying to protect it from myself, it was becoming like a reflex at this point. I was doing this by directing the mana that was being drawn into my body inside myself. And also by creating a thin filtering layer just above my skin.
So... what happens if I try to familiarize myself with this even more? Awakened mana, I mean. Can't I use my charm statistic to my advantage instead of just trying to protect myself from it? The constant redirection of the mana that is gradually being drawn to me is already training in itself... but what if I take it a step further?
I closed my eyes, focused.
I could feel a great deal of the mana around me. The mana that had been awakened from its dormant state by force was quite fierce. It was also... pure. And because my charm statistic was extremely high, every particle of mana that reached close to me was drawn to me.
The first thing I did with this knowledge was to slowly begin to remove the layer that surrounded my body and acted as a filter.
As soon as one of the barriers between me and the awakened mana began to lift slightly, I felt its effect. My body trembled, I felt the wild mana seeping into me.
But I didn't stop. After a while, I stopped further thinning the filter that wrapped around my skin and tried to control the mana that was constantly entering my body.
I first tried to incorporate it into my own mana flow, but... it was much more difficult than I thought.
The minimal amount of mana that I couldn't filter was easy to control, yes, and that's how I had survived until this moment, but the amount of awakened mana entering my body was too much. On top of that, I didn't have a mana heart and veins, so there was no regular flow in my body from the beginning.
Still, I didn't give up. I used the mana that was mine, I incorporated it into the awakened mana. It was already drawn to me because of my unnatural charm, it literally wanted to be under my... control.
The trembling in my body intensified. I felt a warmth in my nose, it wasn't hard to guess that it was bleeding. But I didn't care.
Little by little, step by step, I imagined all the mana that was entering my body as a helper that would come into my being, rather than as a foreign thing that would harm me. What it wanted was me, or my charm stat... That's why I stopped resisting it. On the contrary, I helped it.
Because I was constantly protecting myself from external mana, my mana reserves were depleted every night. So, for a long time, I hadn't been able to replenish my mana reserves completely.
But now with what I did... I began to regain the lost mana at a much greater rate. The trembling in my body subsided slightly, but it didn't disappear. The slight pain was still there. I was still doing something that didn't make much sense.
But I didn't stop, on the contrary, I did even more.
The awakened mana would soon fill my reserves. And when it did, it would begin to overflow from my body.
And I began to channel it before my reserves were full. Over and over and over, never stopping. I put it into my body, into my muscles. Again and again, I strengthened my body, while doing different things with the remaining awakened mana.
With some of it, I tried to make the flow in my body more balanced, with some of it I used skills for no reason, with some of it... I simply let it out of my body because it was simply too much.
A comfort I hadn't felt in a long time enveloped my body.
Yes, I was in pain now. Yes, my body was shaking all the time. I was doing something that was actually harmful to me, something I shouldn't be doing...
But I was also getting stronger. My body, which had been weak all the time, which hadn't been in its normal shape for days, was slowly regaining its strength.
On top of that... it was changing. I could feel a difference. Mana was being drawn to me even more.
If I continued... maybe I could not only regain my strength but even go beyond it.
And that was what I wanted, that was what I desired.
So... I kept going without thinking about what was happening, over and over.
It didn't take long for my sense of time to disappear. I literally lost myself in this huge atmospheric mana.
What made me stop after a long time of 'training' was not really that my body started to collapse or that I realized I was close to death. Rather... it was that the awakened mana that had allowed me to do such training in the first place began to disappear.
My sense of time and senses quickly returned as I felt the gentle breeze on my face.
When I opened my eyes... the night was ending. The darkness in the sky was slowly being replaced by dots of green, and the glow of the river was receding.
But more importantly... there was a notification in front of me. A notification I hated every time I saw it, a notification I never wanted to see again. And that's how I understood the reason for the change I felt in my body.
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Congratulations! Your Charm statistic has risen to S grade!
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