CH406

He didn’t know how to react to the notification that just went off in his minds. He’d leveled that skill just minutes earlier, and in that time all he’d done was experiment with it a bit as he spoke to Myriad, raising and lowering the speed his many minds thought at.

It was through that same combination of speed and minds that he had his answer though, only moments after thinking the question. Back when he’d gotten meditation for the first time, it had come to him quickly thanks to having a handful of minds at his disposal to practice the skill concurrently and leveling it hadn’t been that much work compared to the effort he put into it for that same fact. Same with calculate, hidden mind, and speed reading; all skills that he could practice multiple times at once using mostly just his thoughts, and now he had a number that dwarfed what he had before.

Does this mean I might be able to work my way through this skill in a week? Hell, that’s thinking too small. As long as I get a mind skill that can be done purely in my head, I should be able to power-level them like crazy! Isn’t this actually insane?

…Except there really aren’t many other mind skills I want. Hmm. Well, if I get one or two more as life goes on it won’t do me any harm to rush through them like this, and I still have this one to blast through too.

He felt himself smile a bit just thinking about it as he let his horde of thoughts experiment with moving at different speeds before going back to his original task, picking up his job crystal to see all of the changes to how he could grow.

AVAILABLE JOBS

Trap user
Craftsman- alchemy path
Craftsman- artistic path
Craftsman- blacksmith path
Craftsman- cooking path
Craftsman- stonecrafts path
Craftsman- sewing path
Holy craftsman
Mathematician
Cursed item maker
High tank
Otherworldly craftsman
Destructive craftsman
Master adventurer
Soul defiling gardener
Summoned enchanter
Ritual enchanter
Divine enchanter
Mind master
High marksman
High destruction mage
Master material mage
World killer

“…Okay, fairly sure I’m not going to be killing any more worlds, so other than that one I have four new options.”

Mind master, high marksman, high destruction mage, and master material mage, all of them being advanced variants based both on the jobs he’d taken in his robotic slaughter, as well as the skills he’d leveled up.

“High marksman is just out, plain and simple. I get the logic behind why I took the first one, but I don’t need the next. The question is if I even want to take any of the new ones or not.”

He frankly had no clue what to aim for. He hadn’t given it any thought considering that he expected both infernal craftsman and profane enchanter to take longer than they had, but that meant he wasn’t sure where to go from there.

“Do I want something with a crafting focus, more specifically an enchanting focus, a magic focus, or a mind focus?” He muttered as he thought it over, having no idea how he wanted to grow.

At the very least he decided that mind master was out. He was pretty sure his promise not to take mind jobs anymore didn’t matter since the roughly thousand he had in his head wasn’t causing him pain or strain, but he didn’t see any need to take it, at least at the moment, but from there he didn’t actually know where to go or what he wanted to do.

At a loss, he looked back at his card, hoping something on it would stand out and help but came up blank.

“Okay, let’s think about this reasonably,” He told himself. “I already know that enchanting counts as a crafting skill and since material manipulation is a combination of material user, destruction, and material knowledge then every part of it should be getting bonuses from my crafting jobs too, so I’d technically be training all of them by taking a crafting job, but at the same time, crafting jobs don’t give bonuses to my mana and mana regen, both of which I want more of, so an enchanter job or master material mage would be better, but then what would I even do with either of them?”

The moment he asked that question though he felt it snap into place as he had to stop himself from taking the job he wanted then and there before he tested anything.

If I can still do it then it will absolutely be worth it to take master material mage. I just need to know if I’m capable of it on my own without stealing mana from others.

With that thought clear in his head, he put the crystal down and let himself focus, every mind he had thinking about one thing. Iron.

The weight, the density, the feel in his hands and the sensation of striking it while it was hot with his hammer. He thought about information on it that was less commonly known, only available to him so easily because of his lessons from Quilith. Its melting point and boiling points, its atomic structure and how that reality’s version of atoms would join together to make a greater whole. He thought about the shine and weight, even the taste from getting any slivers in his mouth. With everything he had, he thought about what iron was before grabbing hold of the mana within him and forcing it out, creating a ball of the substance in his hand as it materialized before his eyes.

All at once he felt woozy, his mana dipping shockingly low from creating a sphere of the stuff no bigger than a baseball, but despite that he couldn’t keep the grin from his lips as he held it, lifting it to his eyes and looking it over.

He’d really done it. He’d taken intangible mana and changed it into the physical matter of the universe with his knowledge and skill. He didn’t care how much it had cost him to make such a small amount, with his regeneration it would only be fourteen minutes till he could make more and see just what else he could create.

“I’m taking master material mage.”

Without Thera there to help him there wasn’t much way for him to explore how connect had grown, meaning that he’d be using the time to focus on the potential his magic now held, and after only a few minutes of waiting he immediately put it to the test, imbuing the iron sphere he’d just made with his power and watching as the shape of it changed in a second, going from a ball to a perfect replica of his head. Even the hair, which in the past had to be done by digging lines in the metal to just replicate the look, was now real strands of iron, so light and thin that if his mana wasn’t holding it all together they’d break.

“So my speed and skill at manipulating the stuff I work with has shot right up then, huh? That’s excellent, but not exactly unpredicted. Let’s see how else it’s grown.”

As he said it he raised his bust in the air through mana alone, not using the cost-saving measure he’d discovered in the past of keeping it to a small section, but letting it flood the whole thing before flying it around as fast as he could, watching it move in a blur.

He could feel his mana dropping as he did it, but slowly, at a workable pace.

And if I can do this then I might be able to do even more.

With the thought so clear in his mind he needed to test it out, and without another second he got out of bed to move to the window, seeing the devastation beyond.

He felt his gut tighten as he looked at it but suppressed the feeling with all he had. He could feel bad again later, right now he was working, so he opened it up before pulling a marble’s worth of metal from his statue, loading it with as much force as he could, and shot it off.

It was another drain to him but it gave the exact result he’d been hoping for. The small bullet was gone in a flash and he knew he could do a few more, meaning that he finally had a magic attack in his arsenal. Not the best one, but in a pinch it could save his life.

And in a lot of ways too. It’s not like I need to materialize that much every time, I could absolutely make a bullet and fire it off immediately. Oh man, this has potential.

Potential that needed to be refined. As exciting as it was, it wasn’t the combat aspect that hung in his mind, but the act of materialization he wanted to dive into more to see all he could do, and with his mana returning to him he was going to focus on exactly that.

“So my knowledge on the material affects the mana cost, but I already knew that. What matters more is that it seems like with only a couple annoying exceptions, everything else is basically the same to materialize.”

Stolen novel; please report.

Those annoying exceptions were the magic materials, with the volume he could make of each one minor in comparison to the other elements of the world.

While he could make an amount of mythril about the size of a large grape, the amount of moribusial and orichalcum was half of that, along with white mana crystal ending up the size of a pea and rainbow was no more than a grain of sand.

It made sense, unfortunately. His lessons from Quilith on those materials were lighter so he had less chemical properties to use while doing the spell, and the mana crystals seemed to need not just the mana to create them, but the amount they’d store as well.

Hell, the only reason I can make so much mythril is because Myriad’s people knew plenty about it and my generous god shared the knowledge. Still, all of that’s at least better than deathstone. I can’t cheese it by using connect so looks like I’m only making non-affinitied magic materials from now on. At least it will be good practice.

Depending on how his later tests to borrow mana went, there was a chance he’d be able to stop having to buy from Abrus and Pelenia, instead using Thera’s mana to make what he needed. It was an appealing prospect and seemed like it would give excellent experience for both his job and skill, so it was something to experiment with later.

Other than that, it looked like there was a small boost in the cost if he was making compounds composed of different elements, but it was nowhere near what he’d expected it to be. It seemed as long as he knew what he was going for and could properly visualize it then that was enough to keep him from spending all of his mana.

That did however lead to a different test, extraction. Unlike before, he was now able to thoroughly combine two or more different substances and separate them again with his magic alone, his level of control overwhelming compared to where it was in the past.

And I’m going to make sure I keep getting better too.

At a lot of stuff it seems.

Related chapter tags