Author’s Corner: Finally, our MC has defeated a boss without cheating! Using numbers to overpower it isn’t considered cheating, right? Well, no matter! He has stuff to do now!

Immediately after the death of the boss monster, I went and began studying its aura. Out of its displayed abilities, what I wanted most was obviously the healing power. Although its ice breath might be powerful, that could have simply come from its monstrous mana. The other significant feature of the boss that had been displayed was its size, but there was no way I’d be able to mimic such a size with my available mana.

Anyways, while studying its aura, I ran into a small complication. That was, my last attack had all but destroyed its brain, so I couldn’t study that. I wasn’t too worried, though, because I could probably substitute the brain of a regular wolf and just gradually make adjustments until it worked right. Now I just needed a test subject… What, you thought I was going to do this to myself this time? No, I learned my lesson, no brain surgery experiments without absolute confidence.

To my surprise, the tail that Amy had severed during the fight had not dissolved like the others, leading me to believe that the wolf only had one true tail, and that it was likely the source of the regeneration power. As such, I focused my attention on the tail, and how it connected with the rest of the aura. The result… actually made me think that I was getting better at the whole aura reading thing.

Since I had studied similar tails before, albeit on a smaller scale, I was able to mentally discard the physical components of the aura, such as the tail’s shape, color, and structure. Instead, I was able to focus directly on the magical component, which helped me greatly. After all, I wasn’t too fond of the idea of running around with a half dozen tails behind me at all times.

So… my real bounty from this fight, rather than the boss’s full aura, was the message that came after I understood the aura of the tail. Even if I had to experiment to see just how it worked.

New Spell Unlocked!Aspect of Health - Nature Magic - ★★★★★

By studying the aura of certain creatures, you are able to copy health related abilities, such as enhanced natural healing.

One thing that I did understand about this new Aspect… was that I needed to attach it to a physical modification. For this experiment, I chose to attach it to a scale I created on my forehead with Aspect of the Armored Beast. The result… well, it’ll be easier to show you my status as of now. Keep in mind I haven’t spent the points I got from leveling up, yet.

NameJohn HulettRaceWood ElfTitlesVengeful Heart, Amateur Brain Surgeon, Spider Slaughterer, Starship CaptainFame25,000Level 9521%ClassDruidAdvanced ClassXeno-ShifterDeityMalthanHealth460/460Health Regen0Mana2000/2000Mana Regen13.73Strength20Wisdom200Agility26Intelligence200Dexterity37Charisma35Vitality46Luck25Points Remaining100Earth 31%Fire 28%Wind 27%Water 28%Lightning 25%Light 25%Dark 28%Plant 25%Void 25%Metal 25%Magnetism 25%Plasma 25%Gravity 25%Time 9%

As you can see, my health regeneration completely disappeared. That by itself was quite an alarming change, but ultimately I decided to wait and see what happened next. While I continued studying the rest of the aura, I felt a slight change in my head. Naturally, I could not look at my own forehead normally, so I called out a bit of water from my grove, and froze it to form an ice mirror. Beside the scale I had created on my forehead, a second identical one had been formed.

Thinking back, the entire process had taken… ten minutes? That was also the amount of time it took a health pool to completely regenerate, so I was able to reach a simple conclusion thanks to that. This new aspect alters the way health regeneration works, so that instead of gradually healing over time, it gave a reusable burst healing factor. Given that the wolf only had six tails, and that the first one isn’t usable for this purpose, five seems to be the limit. Unless the wolf just happened to only be an hour old, which I found unlikely.

Still, five ‘full heals’ before it ran out once fully charged, and the ability to automatically grow a charge every ten minutes… that seemed to be more than worth trading away a slow recovery speed. Even if, for some reason, I needed more than five lives within a ten minute period, I could supplement my recovery with potions and spells. Speaking of which… I should probably make sure that they still work.

After a quick test, I was pleased to discover that recovery potions, pills, and spells all still worked as normal. The only thing that was affected was my automatic recovery rate. There was still the question of whether enchanted items that boost that amount would give me a natural recovery speed again, or increase the rate I grew my life saving scales. I would have to test that later, when I didn’t have other stuff to worry about.

“Yang, can you come down here and get this body? You should be able to finally finish your divine quest with this, I think.” I spoke into the intercom, calling down the girl in question.

“Yes, Master.” Soon after she answered, both her and Yin appeared nearby. As Yin looked at the massive corpse, she scoffed lightly and looked away. No doubt she still held a grudge for it freezing her like that…

“Uhm.. Master, this will take a while.” Yang spoke after she pulled out a skinning knife I had Celeste make for her. Yeah… skinning a beast this big… Would probably take most of a day. Then there’s the matter of its bones, which can also be used for weapons. We should probably save the meat as well, since it might be good to cook…

“I’ll leave first, then.” I nodded to Yang, before turning and flying into the air. Now that there wasn’t a whole lot to do here, I could head to my lab. Celeste, make a note that I need to find a critter to experiment with later.

“Yeah, yeah.” The AI replied in my head.

While I was flying, I went ahead and did a test, making two more of the scales for the Aspect of Health on the back of my hands. I wanted to see if five was a hard limit, or if I could potentially stock up on them. Since I wouldn’t be able to tell the results right away, I decided to check up on them again later.

When I arrived at my lab, I smiled at the large pile of element seeds that sat there waiting for me, before depositing them all in my inventory. Next, I went over and checked the information on the terminal that Celeste had set up after my… unfortunate episode last time. On it were recordings of monsters being created, as well as sensor readings listing the amount of mana it took to create them. This would be useful for my upcoming monster making marathon! Though, I should have them go deeper into the dungeons so that they can place more scanners and get a larger sample size.

Anyways, where was I? “John, you in there?” Okay, scratch that.

“I’m here, Sharon.” I called out from the basement, looking at the walls and figuring out how I would expand this room to conduct my research. Soon, Sharon was down to join me, back in her normal elf body. I had no doubt she just ran over here from the scene of the fight, because she was breathing a bit heavily.

“What are you up to?” She asked curiously, looking over the terminal.

“About to get started on my monster mayhem. Care to join me? Could use an extra pair of hands, and someone to talk with.”

She thought about it for a minute, before nodding. “Sure. Any ideas what you’re making first.”

“...Absolutely none.” I sighed, looking at the terminal. “From the information that thing gave me, I can determine a few patterns in monster spawns. For instance, skeletons never spawn with blood mana, and lizards never spawn with fur mana. However, the ratios seem completely random. I was thinking about having Celeste compile a program to assess the creatures and the mana requirements to spawn them, in order to reverse engineer the conditions for custom monsters. But right now, we don’t have enough samples.”

Sharon raised an eyebrow curiously. “If stuff like blood and skin mana is necessary, then how have you been spawning ettins until now? I am pretty sure that you don’t train either of those affinities. Even I only trained them to a basic level.”

“Ah… well, actually they aren’t needed. Monsters are formed in two steps. The first step is the catalyst, where elemental mana comes together in certain quantities and patterns, then triggers the gathering and formation of other mana types to fill in the body. But that makes it even harder, because I can’t tell what the reactions to base mana types interacting will be. Goblins and trolls only differ by about a hundred mana, but that mana changes their size, intellect, and strength by a large amount.”

Sharon nodded her head, seeming to understand. “So the problem is figuring out how the first and second steps interact, right?” When I agreed, she continued. “Would it be impossible to skip straight to the second step? If you had enough of the different mana types, I mean.”

I thought about it, but shook my head. “No… even if I set up a machine able to refine every type of mana, which I can’t, the first step is crucial. Without it, then the gathering of mana wouldn’t have a physical anchor.”

Sharon nodded again. “Well… what about an artificial grove? You could use it for simulation practice, maybe? Make a machine without an AI, give it a soul, and then make it a grove. If you can command it with user input, you could conduct your tests there, in a safe environment without worry.”

I.. actually really liked that idea. I was just about to agree to give it a try, when Celeste spoke up in my head. “Do you have any idea how hard it would be to program an interface capable of manipulating every mana type in a three dimensional world? Give it a hundred years, and the tech I’d need to build something like that might be available. For now, though, you can forget about it.”

I chuckled dryly after hearing her response. “Celeste says that’s a no go.”

“Hmm…” She thought about it again, before sighing. “I got nothing. Looks like you really need to get more information, first?”

I nodded again at that. “Seems like the only option. But, that means we’ll be dungeon diving again.” I couldn’t help but grin at that. “And it’s got to be us, because the others aren’t high enough levels yet.” Though, the secondary team would be able to go too, since Brian and Nathan received the same huge level increase that we had.

Speaking of which, I decided to spend my entire 100 stat points on intelligence, boosting my available mana to three thousand, and my recovery rate to twenty mana a second. With this, I should have more than enough mana to work with for a while, and can begin focusing my future points on my physical stats. And since I was approaching the level 100 benchmark, I was quite interested to see what I would be getting.

“Basically, an--” No spoilers! “Fine, fine…” Celeste replied wryly in my head when I stopped her from spoiling the level rewards. I wanted to work towards it myself and earn those rewards. It’s like spoiling a Christmas present, you just don’t do it, you know?

Anyways, with this, we made plans to try and conquer the demon dungeon in a week. Why the demon dungeon? Because the elemental ones and the plant ones would be too easy for me, and the undead one is too risky. We could do the goblin one, but the demons seemed so much more interesting.

“You just want to see if you can find a sexy succubus, don’t you?” Celeste had to get the last word in to tease me. I swear, that’s not it!