-----

[Day 95]

It has been four days since everyone evolved or got Dragon Marks, and we had been slowly reaching farther territories that not even Draugann has reached through the commodity of our floating ice fortress.

Benladann's parents have been resting most of the time, although whenever she had tried to speak with them, they would be able to barely whisper her name and then feel too weak to do anything else.

For now, we are nourishing them with our mana, and I am feeding them phantom mass.

What is Phantom Mass? Well, it is something I've discovered that forms around a bare soul when it moves around the world while it has yet to become a monster or an undead or whatever.

This mass forms naturally, and it is an excess of mana accumulated around the surface of a soul.

By grabbing wandering souls, extracting their phantom mass, and accumulating it into a ball, we can use this particular ingredient to nourish weakened souls such as Benladann's parents.

After four days of doing that, her parent's souls seem way bigger and less damaged, but they still require sleep.

I have decided to enchant Benladann's weapons by pouring my blood over them and then creating several runes of Protection and Defense and Magic Defense, making it all even stronger and protecting the souls inside even better.

Runes are easy to make for me now that I am Rank 3, by concentrating mana into a place, a rune pops up, and based on what I desire it to be, it might enhance defense, attack, and so on. And no, I can't do it over people, it won't work, or me either.

I can only make as much before it becomes a strain to the item, so there was a limit.

Meanwhile, I've been practicing Death Attribute Magic while trying to get Null Magic. But it seems that I require to enhance my Mana Core, even more, to get to Null Magic.

According to Draugann, Null Magic is a magic that only those without any magic affinity can use, no element at all either…

It is a special element-less magic, which costs several times the amount of mana that element spells would cost.

For now, I don't have much interest in it, as I've been eating Rank 1 Mana Cores to enhance the cultivation of my death/null mana core, the result? It has reached Upper Sage just now.

My Death Magic had become comparatively stronger as well, although we should get to the basics of its use and what Death Magic truly is in this world.

No, it doesn't make instant death or something, that's not how death magic works.

Death Magic is based on the concept of the attribute of death, if there is a life attribute, there is also a death attribute.

The Life Attribute encompasses the control and nourishment of life and nature. It can help some control plants and tame them, some can learn healing spells, others can learn enchantment spells that enhance the five senses, muscles, and so on, and others can learn the ability to cure diseases.

In this case, Death Attribute does the opposite.

It is capable of taking away "life" from others, but not instantaneously, and it can do so slowly, like… make someone age faster over time, or slowly make their muscles tire out.

And I can also… take death away from things, after all, life magic is the manipulation of life, ad death magic is the manipulation of death.

There are other things it could do, such as creating diseases, making things age faster, mostly inanimate ones… like accelerating the process of making cheese, wine, and so on, or even helping at making dried meat too.

However, one of its major powers is the ability to manipulate the dead! It can be used to move souls and order them to do certain things.

However, it is not as if they will obey me happily, and I had once tried making an Ice Golem using monster souls, but it went berserk and tried to kill me, so I had to destroy it.

For now, I am trying to enhance my magic and power so I can find a way to create a spell or something that lets me reign over the undead I can create.

But for now, I seem to be lacking in that, so for now I can't.

Also, Phantom Body, Split Soul, and so on are skills that are connected to this Magic, and are enhanced up to three times if I combine them with this magic… I can easily materialize my own phantom now and shapeshift it around more easily.

It is an amusing thing, this magic fits right into my previously learned skills.

Oh, and through these last days, the kids have been training their magic diligently. Though we have not done group cultivation with them, we had taught them how to cultivate by gathering the mana around their bodies and constantly making it flow through them and their mana core.

But it's not like in four days they will become geniuses, although some of them are very talented already.

"We have gone pretty far away…" said Benladann, as she sat over my back. We were out in the skies, flying around on this clear day. It seems that we are finally reaching areas with fewer clouds in this region.

"Indeed. I wonder if there are places without snow in this place. I know I am an ice dragon and all, but it's getting sickening…" I sighed.

"Yeah, I wonder the same…" said Benladann.

We traveled through the skies near Fuyu, as we watched down below. There were a few patches of grass already popping out of the snow. This grass was not blue, it was green.

Also, new types of trees that were not pine trees began to appear around, and we found several long rivers that led somewhere far away.

We had been following the river because where there is water, there are always people.

And coincidentally, we found people…

But not the right people…

It was a camp of what seemed to be bandits.

-----