After 20 minutes of searching, Damien finally located his clothes, hiding away in a servant's wardrobe.

Damien inspected the suit and noticed a bit of dust had accumulated on the shoulder pads.

“Damien robbed a nobleman while traveling to this city for these clothes, since traversing the monster-infested forests while being naked was rather unpleasant.” Damien just laughed lightly at how ridiculous the situation was. The poor nobleman fainted at the sight of Damien emerging from the woods, butt naked. The man’s guards were terrified, so they gave him anything he asked for.

“I should go to the city and purchase some new clothes, and maybe some weapons I could manipulate with Psychokinesis,” Damien said while tapping his finger on his chin.

Damien rummaged through the contents of the room a bit more. It seemed this was Fay’s room from the various items of clothing he came across. Sure enough, there was no silver dagger or money to purchase one stashed away.

“Maybe she really isn’t planning to kill me?” Damien mused while opening a side draw and finding something rather familiar from Earth. A pack of playing cards.

Damien took the pack and observed they were made out of crude and cheap cardboard and the pictures were hand-drawn on rather poorly. Damien's eyes lit up as he thought of a perfect way to practice Psychokinesis.

He quickly got dressed as best he could, utilizing Psychokinesis to tie his shoes and to remove the dust.

“Imyrll is still in bed recovering and Fay will still take a few hours… this is a perfect opportunity to practice some magic.”

Damien went down into the basement of the mansion and injected some mana into a yellow stone, it lit up and enveloped the room in a soft glow.

“Okay, I should be away from prying eyes down here,” Damien muttered while gazing around the small room.

Damien then opened his favorite gold-plated pocket watch to check which skills he should level up.

Psychokinesis [C+]

Automatic Writing [F]

Telepathy [E]

Pyrokinesis [E]

===

Blood Magic [D]

Blood Contract [F] (New)

===

Spatial Magic [F] (New, gained from Blood Contract)

===

Mana Control [D]

“Alright, from my observations and experiments, I have confirmed the following things about the magic of this world.” Damien declared to nobody but himself. Talking to himself had become a habit since he was often left alone for days in his hospital room, his family rarely visited.

“The most important is how skills are leveled. Just using a skill often will raise it from F to D grade. A skill isn't considered usable in actual situations until it reaches the D grade, the skill takes too much mana or concentration to use effectively.”

Damien then activated his Spatial Magic. Within seconds he crumpled to the floor, gasping for air as his mana completely vanished into the abyss.

“Holy… shit…” Damien shouted between gasps. Taking a minute to recover, he then began muttering to himself again.

“Spatial magic was always the most mana hungry, but my god that was intense!” Damien exclaimed to the ceiling while lying on his back.

He looked at the floating pocket watch’s little mirror and grinned

Spatial Magic [F] → [E]

“Spatial Magic is a School of Magic rather than a simple skill like Automatic Writing. By channeling my mana into Spatial Magic, it converts my mana forcefully into the Spatial Affinity. The lower my level with Spatial Magic, the more wasteful the process becomes.”

After 10 minutes, Damien's small mana pool had fully recovered due to his [Lazy] trait increasing his mana regeneration while resting.

“Alright, let's try that again.” he declared as he pushed himself off the basement's hard stone floor.

Damien once again shoved all his mana forcefully into the Spatial Magic affinity and crumpled to the floor but in far less pain this time, it took only 8 minutes to fully recover his mana.

“That's strange, why did it take less time to recover?”

Damien checks his status, but his Spatial Magic was still at [E] grade. Looking further down the list, he noticed,

Mana Control [D] → [D+]

“Ah, as expected, there's no better way to train mana control than Spatial Magic.”

Damien remembers using this particular synergy on another character in a previous playthrough. “Spatial Mana is incredibly unstable and hard to control, so forcefully converting all of my mana into Spatial mana all at once is bound to have some effects on my Mana Control.”

Damien repeated the process of emptying out his mana reserves through Spatial Magic and then recovering on the floor. After three more rounds, he finally upgraded.

Spatial Magic [E] → [D]

Phantom Form [F] (New)

Mana Control [D+] → [C]

“Once a School of Magic reaches D grade, the system awards the person with a skill from that School of Magic. In my case, I unlocked the same skill Imyrll used to enter my house.”

Phantom Form - D Grade, The ability to escape the material realm. Allows the caster to convert their body into an incorporeal form. The caster can pass through any material, however, the denser the material the higher the mana cost to maintain the form.

Damien activated the skill and converted a portion of his mana reserves into Spatial affinity mana. He then forced the mana through the skill and directed it towards his right hand.

The skill was incredibly mana-hungry, and Damien quickly worked to convert more of his mana reserves.

“It's still at the F grade…” he muttered, trying to justify the insane mana requirements to convert just his hand. Imyrll had managed to convert her entire body while also walking through his front door with this skill. “Her Phantom Form was most likely at the C grade or higher.”

Damien repeated the repetitive process of converting his mana to Spatial affinity, shoving it into the skill, and turning his hand into a ghost-like appearance.

Even after 2 hours the skill only leveled up, once, and his Spatial Magic didn't even increase an entire grade.

Spatial Magic [D] → [D+]

Phantom Form [F] → [E]

Mana Control [C]

Damien was sweating profusely from the repeated mana depletion and absorption. He felt his mana pool had maybe doubled in size, but there was no way to accurately check since the game's interface had disappeared; there was no sign of the red and blue bar in his top left representing his health and mana.

“This… was… so… much… easier… in… the… game” Damien muttered while gasping for breath. Although he could level the skills without engaging in mortal combat with the monsters in the wilderness outside the city, training skills like this is incredibly slow and inefficient.

Although he was unimpressed with his skill growth if a mage from the Mage Tower or Imyrll heard him cursing about his rate of growth they would faint on the spot from anger.

Learning and upgrading skills to the D tier just takes a lot of time and effort, something anyone can do. But increasing a School of Magic is incredibly hard, and painful.

The reason a mage cannot wield 10 different Schools of Magic at the same time is that new mana paths have to be carved into the body. It's like creating more veins for blood to flow. Mana is directed to the brain, and then the mage uses his own mental power to bend the mana into a certain affinity.

The problem is at this point. How does the mage direct that new mana away from the brain to the part of the body that needs the mana to cast a spell? The mana’s affinity has been changed, so if it's forced back the way it came, it would react with the null affinity mana and convert back into null mana before it’s even used.

When a person is born their body naturally comes with two passages (mana circuits), one for the null mana and another for that person's affinity. In Damien's case, his mana circuit would be for Psychic magic. Blood magic is unique since it can be manipulated through the bloodstream and doesn't require a special mana path.

For Imyrll her born affinity was Spatial, if she was to try and learn a different affinity she would be unable to as she doesn't have a mana circuit for any other affinity.

Damien on the other hand was cheating. His blood contract unlocked the Spatial Affinity. During his sleep after forming the blood contract, his body carved out a new mana circuit for Spatial Affinity.

A normal mage would have to conduct many painful blood rituals on himself to carve out a new mana circuit, but Damien did it naturally while asleep, and felt nothing as his body healed itself automatically.

“Right, that's enough Spatial Magic for the day.” Damien could feel his body protesting as it was actively trying to increase his Spatial Mana circuit’s efficiency. “Any more practice would be detrimental to my progress… time to practice Psychokinesis.”

Damien retrieved the pack of crudely made cards from his pocket and threw them into the air. The fifty-two cardboard cards began falling and Damien reached out to them with his mind.

He winced slightly as he only managed to grab twenty of them, the rest falling and laying silently on the ground. Considering that controlling two gloves was his limit a few days ago, controlling twenty objects at once was rather impressive. His constant practice of control with Psychokinesis over the last week has paid off.

Damien made the twenty cardboard cards fly around him. He manipulated them into many shapes and formations.

“What if I made metal playing cards? They can be used to defend and attack if they are sharp and solid enough…”

Damien moved the cards into a square formation in front of him and imagined it blocking an attack from an assassin or even an arrow from an archer. “I have to get creative, Spatial Magic increases my survivability once it's leveled up some more, and I unlock Teleportation, but I still need a way to attack and defend myself instead of just running around. Not to mention how demanding Spatial Magic and Teleportation would be on my mana pool.”

Practicing for another hour Damiens mana pool ran out for the tenth time today and he laid on the floor. Gazing at this pocket watch.

[Damien Nightshade]

[Noble Vampire]

Skills:

Psychokinesis [C+]

Automatic Writing [F]

Telepathy [E]

Pyrokinesis [E]

===

Blood Magic [D]

Blood Contract [F]

===

Spatial Magic [D+]

Phantom Form [E]

===

Mana Control [C]

Damien let out a tired sigh. “I should ask Fay if she knows any blacksmiths for the metal cards, I also need to buy some new clothes… ugh, but I have no money either… wait.”

He suddenly sat up. “The Princess should be on her way soon…” a sudden glint of greed flashed across his eyes. “I need a wealthy person to sponsor my endeavors until I get paid for being a Head Professor and Head Librarian!”

A sudden knock on the basements door broke him from his trance.