Alright, last chapter of the day guys.

Again, many thanks towards the reviews and comments, I am aware that I lack a lot of writing experience, still striving for improvement the best I can.

Thanks for the support!

Free Magic

After the incident with the Elves yesterday, I returned to reading leisurely.

I also put down a [Small-Apartment(3,000P)] to contain the 5 prisoners of war.

I also asked Ana, the Arch Demon I summoned, to call up 10 Lesser Demons (her basic summoning magic).

Their jobs would be to guard the house where the Prisoners are.

Of course, except for the 2 guards at the outside door, the other 8 are all females.

Can't have male guards in female prison.

The female Lesser Demons will split up, 5 as cell guards - though it was a just single room for each Elf girl - and 3 as maids.

The maids will take care of housework and feeding the prisoners.

The source for food would be either me or home made food with ingredients from the beast tribe.

Later on I'll have them do labor work or something like that...

Done.

I can now enjoy reading my books.

There's also a rule on giving out books from the Menu.

And of course I followed it.

Through experiences I learned that if you're not an important individual of an organization, do not recklessly break the rules without legitimate reasons.

The rules stated in the Menu that, except for [Divine] level Archives, all other kinds can be given out unconditionally.

Which makes perfect sense...

As a God you really do not want to spread knowledge beyond the mortal world widely.

There are also special exceptions to give out [Divine] Books but I don't have any need for that right now, so let's over look that one...for now.

Right, back on my reading time, I learned about the History of this world through an Ancient [Divine] Archive called "Dawn of Ejorelle".

According to this book, at the beginning of everything, there were 3 beings called Origins.

Light, Fortune, Dark.

Fortune?

I have mixed feelings reading this word...

Anyway, they gave birth to everything.

Their most proud product was Ejorelle, this world.

At the very beginning, there are only Demons born from Dark Origin, and Angels born from Light Origin.

The eccentric individual among those beings, through Fortune Origin, became Gods and Demon Lords.

After that was a long, long, long history of constant wars.

They fought as if it was their only reason to live.

Until one day, God of Peace was born and stopped the war.

They progressed through time and arrived at this point, the current world.

In peace time, the Gods decided that human race was interesting, so they reached out their hands and formed shrines, sanctuaries, churches, temples,... all around the world.

Those very first Sanctuaries became the base for powerful nations nowadays.

The ranking system came from within the Gods as they divided their social standing.

That said, disputes happened countless times between the Gods.

They fought for higher ranking, fought for possession of a mortal woman as wife...

Literally, they can fight for anything, like a bunch of kids.

By the way, I'm reading a [Divine] Archive, so there isn't anything about Demon Lords.

I'll get to the [Phantom] Archives when I need to know more about Dark Origin.

The rest of the book was basic biography about the top brass of the Gods.

In other words, the guys with ranking 10th and above.

Which includes a familiar name, Bagdur, God of Sorcery.

He didn't fight his way up to this position of 4th rank.

He contributed to divine sorcery so much that people brought him up to 4th rank.

It wasn't because of curiosity that he researched, he tried to revive a woman.

What?

A God can't do resurrection?

Well, she didn't die on his land.

So her soul wasn't there for him to resurrect.

Poor guy...

Anyway, enough of others' love story.

I switched to another book.

[Basic concept of Magic].

I've only been using points to shoot out magic until now.

Though I have plenty to spare, but that isn't good.

What if I ran out of point and we got stuck in a fishy situation?

That's disastrous...

So, now that I got this supreme mortal body, a homunculus vessel actually, I need to learn how to use magic ASAP.

According to the book, the very fundamental core for using magic is [Mana Manipulation].

People who use body's inner Mana are Sorcerers, Wizards, Witches,...

People who use surrounding's outer Mana are Summoners, Elementalists, Spirit Mages,...

So from those two options, I picked the Third one.

I'll use both.

Why the hell should I choose and limit myself?

There's also a section that wrote about people who use both system.

They're call Prophets of Disasters.

These guys are literally viewed as incarnate of calamities.

Why? Because even Gods can't use both.

When you utilize two systems of Mana at the same time, your body explodes.

People that use both systems were usually those that perform one ultimate spell then die without a corpse being left behind...

That's the case for mortal bodies and materialized Gods.

Then how about a certain jerk who made his body from Black-Demonic Sapphire?

On top of that, this isn't even his body, it's a homunculus vessel for possession.

The answer is that it's possible.

My body isn't...a body.

It's a medium, an object to circulate my movements.

So there shouldn't be problem for me to experiment this.

I immediately went outside, pulled up the Menu and ordered 2 Scrolls.

[Magic Knowledge - Scroll of Inner Mana Manipulation(1,000P)]

[Magic Knowledge - Scroll of Outer Mana Manipulation(1,000P)]

[Points: 32,000 remaining]

They were only basic stuff so the price was trash cheap.

But who would have thought that their potential in my hands are unlimited.

I opened up the Inner Mana Scroll and clicked [Learn] on a separate popup menu.

The scroll glowed brightly and knowledge started to pour into my mind.

How to control the flow of Mana, how to utilize the output, how to suppress the recoil...

Everything on the topic of inner mana became clear.

So utilizing those information, I focused and easily created a fireball floating on my hand.

I could control all elements around me, it was so cool.

[Achievement Unlocked]

Mortal Elementalist.

+10,000 Points

Next is the Outer Mana Scroll.

I did the same thing to it and information poured into my head.

I quickly became comprehensive of all things about borrowing mana in the surroundings to rewrite phenomenon.

To compare these two systems, it would be like this:

Inside a barrier that doesn't allow phenomenons to be rewritten, for example making molecules move faster to increase heat, Inner Mana would make it possible.

But inside a barrier where your flow of inner mana is blocked and cannot be released, outer mana would make it possible.

And inside a perfect barrier, you combine both systems and create an Extra system that goes beyond even Gods.

It's something called [Essence] - the problem child from the marriage of Inner and Outer Mana.

Then I created a similar fireball.

The chanting time was 1 second slower, but the heat created from the flame was 1.5 times hotter compared to the flame that came out of nowhere using inner mana.

Goddamn it, I curse whoever programmed this world.

So balanced, you made game developers jealous because of this Mana system.

But coming from the jerk who exploited bugs to use both systems like myself...

It sounds rather dumb...haha...

Then I finally experimented on [Essence].

I brought inner mana into my palm and at the same time gathered outer mana into the same spot.

「Fireb*ll Ju*su!!!」

A gigantic sphere of flame as big as a freaking boulder emerged and scared me to half death.

「Uwhoaaaa!! Stop!!」

I cut the mana source and it dissolved into thin air.

Phew.

That was too close, I would not prefer a forest fire near my sanctuary...

Now I understand why people treated this Extra system like a criminal.

The output of Essence could not be controlled that easily.

When outer mana and inner mana merged, they double the amount of power.

So if you want to use Essence, you have to control the flow of inner and outer mana way better than average people...

For example, you need 50 MP for a fireball.

You can either spend 50 inner mana for one, or gather 50 outer mana to make it happen.

But when it comes to essence, people would misunderstand and gather 50 inner and 50 outer.

Resulting in the outburst of Essence and destroys their bodies.

If you can narrow down the inner and outer mana output accordingly, using Essence won't pose any challenge.

That sphere of flame just now, if I wasn't made from Black-Demonic Sapphire, I would've been roasted alive in one tic of time...

Let's take note of this and restart our training.

I then performed many other experiments on other elements.

I now can create water blades, wind blades, stone cannon balls,...

I also figured out how to use merged elements, like ICE for an instance.

The way it works is that, you create a water ball out of nowhere with the first half of inner mana.

Then you gather outer mana to rewrite the phenomenon, slowing down the molecules to make it freeze.

The result is an ice ball made by essence.

The hardness and the lowness of temperature were way superior to ice made from only one system.

Even the chanting time got reduced by split seconds.

For a magic user, one second is enough to take lives.

Satisfying at the result, I continued to perform more complicated experiments.

[Achievement Unlocked]

Essence Apprentice.

+10,000P

That doesn't mean I'll neglect martial arts and kenjutsu training though.

But for now, I'm glad I can use magic on my own...

And the Elves?

I have no idea...

Later on, there was another crusade of armed humans passed through my land.

Some of them prayed, some didn't.

I got some points and that's the end of my knowledge.

None of the Elves ever came back.

Well...I couldn't care any less...

I have no obligation whatsoever to look after them.

So that...would be just that. Goodbye.