Before using the domain stone, Ryan had to find a way to defeat the death specters. There was no sense in setting his domain before that since he would need some time to learn all the ins and outs of what a dungeon master could do.

"If my guess is right, Death Sense will alert the monsters when you prepare an attack powerful enough to kill them," Femradiel said. "Once that happens, even if they don't find it, they will use Intangibility to escape from all damage. That being said, I am pretty sure that Death Sense will alert them of your current position."

"Still, they can only stay intangible for a determined amount of time," Ryan said. "Besides, I don't think they might be able to pass through things made of mana since they will use mana to become intangible."

"That is also what I think," Femradiel said. "But while you can lock them inside something made of mana like an ice cage, you are not as nearly proficient with magic as you are with a bow. You will probably waste too much time, and I don't think that attacking them endlessly until they run out of mana is something wise either. You will also waste too much time and mana."

Ryan once again nodded at Femradiel's words. She was entirely right, and yet, it didn't look like she was done talking. While Ryan couldn't use magic as fast as it needed to be, Femradiel could. Dragons were essentially monsters pretty good at using mana, after all.

"Here is the part where you say that you will handle them, right?" Ryan asked. "While I don't intend to reject your help without reason, I can't let you do all the work."

"Not really. I was going to recommend you to learn Hydromancy," Femradiel said. "With that skill, your ability to control water-based spells will increase quite a bit. Besides, I want to create another familiar soon, so I need to conserve my mana."

"… Can I already learn that?" Ryan asked.

"If you use Mana-Eater in just a few more magic items, we will reach a point where you can learn that without owing anything to me," Femradiel replied. "Although you say that you don't mind my help anymore, you still don't want to use my powers, right?"

"Indeed," Ryan nodded.

While Ryan was thankful for the understanding and sincerity of Femradiel, he couldn't but feel that she was starting to understand him too much… that was the downside of working with someone 24/7. In any case, after using Mana-Eater on a few more magic items, Ryan finally reached the requirements to learn the skill.

Congratulations! You learned the skill Hydromancy.

Effect: Greatly increases your control over the water elements and their variants. It also increases the power of your water-based attacks by three percent per level.

You obtained 01 status points.

It was a passive skill, as expected. Still, even at level one, Ryan noticed that his control over water reached a whole new level. Much faster than before, he could create all kinds of things with water. Bullets, arrows, spears, shields… but for some reason, he wasn't fast enough to learn the spells to create those. Ryan was missing something, but that was a question for another day.

"This is kind of obvious, but you should look for isolated targets to train how you are going to defeat them," Femradiel said.

"Yeah, that is pretty obvious," Ryan said.

It looked like Furball, and the Steel Eagle wouldn't be of much help in this fight, so he decided to let them train in Shreveport on the dungeons there for the time being. Daniel's friend, whose name Ryan had forgotten, and the other survivors who stayed behind when the people of Shreveport headed toward the secret base were put to sleep when Ryan copied Titania's skill list. Considering that they were much weaker than his pets, Ryan assumed that they would sleep for a day or so. That was more than enough time to see if he was capable of dealing with those troublesome monsters.

"I guess I really need to learn an invisibility spell," Ryan said after returning to Dallas and noticed how annoying it was to use magic.

It was only obvious that Ryan's spells didn't have the range of his physical attacks, so he had to get very close to the monsters. Not only that, but he also had to look for those stupid enough to wander around alone. In the end, Ryan got impatient and decided to attack three specters that were at a certain distance from the main group but pretty close to each other.

In the blink of an eye, Ryan created a layer of water around the monsters and also froze them. When the monsters noticed what was going on, they suddenly summoned some purple scythes to attack the ice. However, their strength wasn't at a level where they could withstand Ryan's magic.

Ryan smirked from ear to ear, but only for a moment. His smile disappeared when the ice he was creating slowly disappeared in a single point around the spheres. Ryan tried to focus his mana on those points, but then the monsters changed their targets for the weak spots of the spheres.

"I think they are draining the mana of your attack…" Femradiel said, and she seemed slightly surprised. "I didn't think they could use that kind of ability on spells as well. Ah, you should go all out. They are absorbing the mana and leveling up."

Ryan clicked his tongue in annoyance and shrieking the ice spheres after he used some potions. As if that wasn't enough, his health began to decrease… even though the specters couldn't see him.

"How in the hell they can use such spells from a distance?" Ryan asked while frowning.

Ryan's health was being drained insanely fast. So, even though he went all-out and used all his mana, it took a while for the specters to die since they were decreasing the power of his attacks and recovering by draining his mana… that fight was going to become more difficult than Ryan thought.