Twelve days later Zortex was in the training grounds practicing his newly acquired spells. He had been following the classes of Nertian and Bhaner, but he found out that they were not that interesting anymore. All the other people who started with him were still struggling to learn their first spell, so the teacher were mostly giving suggestions and personally overview the overcharging. A couple of girls had already had their first success, but it was hardly something to brag about in Zortex’s eyes. One of them called Zaria had learned to cast Fire Dart, but the dimension of the hit was barely as big as his hand, slow of speed and could only leave a scorch mark on the wall, for sure not something to kill a monster. The other girl’s name was Angela and she learned Electric Hand, a spell which required direct contact with the enemy. The effect was much stronger than the fire dart, but it was not long range. Probably she had chosen a path that mixed spells and weapon fighting, something that he would have done at the beginning of AoL if not for his ‘friend’ Matthew. When the teacher and the other people saw what he could do they just took it the wrong way: they thought he had already trained and learned these things during his trial or after it, and then he came back to the courses to show off. They also thought that his looks where so weird to make him stood up in a crowd. This only made him more isolated from the other people and Zortex loved it: beforehand he was afraid that the other travelers would gather around him to ask questions on how he reached such skills levels in so little time, however he was left more alone than ever, just the way he liked it.

The wizard tower was divided in different ranks. After ten more days Zortex was still at the first rank, which included all the students who hadn’t learned more than three spells. Basically it was the level where the noobs dwelled. Most people could not overcome this rank before the end of their trial, and if they did they were those highly skilled characters that would probably be successful in the future. Zortex could already get his promotion to the next rank considering that he had learned four new spells, but he decided to wait to finish all the first month courses and most importantly to develop one of his skills to his liking. He looked at his status and smiled, something that he didn’t do often.

Name: Zortex Enark

Class: Shadow Slime Warrior

Level: 8

Stats:

Strength

20

Health

214(214) + 2.1/min

Endurance

16

Stamina

252(252) + 11.5/min

Agility

12

Mana

287(287) + 12/min

Spirit

27

Skill proficiency

Knife mastery

Level 4

Throwing mastery

Level 2

Slimification

Level 11

Slime summoning

-

Sonar

Level 7

Slime eating

Level 9

Mana Control

Level 19

Spear Mastery

Level 3

Tentacle

Level 4

Acidic Shot

Level 22

Blind

Level 39

Poison

Level 9

Entangle

Level 7

· Resistance to darkness: Every darkness attack will have 50% reduced effect on you. Increased vision at night.

· Weakness to fire: Every fire related attack will have 500% more effect on you.

· Weakness to light: Every light related attack will have 100% more effect on you.

· Slime muscles: Small resistance to some physical attacks

· You will not be able to choose any spell or skill unrelated to slimes or darkness.

· Godly senses

Remember that you can always discover new skills. Combining skills you already have or by using them in creative ways new skills can be created.

His Slimification increased only by one, as he barely touched it in the last three weeks. His Sonar and Spear Mastery also increased a little, but he had spent little effort on them, only when he needed a pause from his main training. Of all the noobish spells available to rank one students he was allowed to learn only Poison and Entangle. To his understanding both of them had a darkness component and probably somehow available to also Slimes. It was really difficult to understand what a Slime could or could not do. Although he learned them he spent no time at all on them as he focused all of his mana, time and crystals into developing on his other spell:

Blind Level 39

By using your mana you can cast a curse of darkness against an enemy. The amount of darkness, obscurity, duration and speed can be improved by the amount of mana and the level of the skill.

The maximum level of a skill was 100, but it is basically impossible to reach it because there can always be an infinitesimal way to improve it. The fact that he had reached such level in only three weeks was astonishing. He had devoted all of himself to it and he was close to reach his goal.

Today is the day I will get it done. Once I am able to do that, my life will be ten times easier. I cannot wait anymore. Also I like the new Status that appeared since last week.

Godly senses

Your senses have reached the realm of Gods. This is not a skill from this world. No living creature can achieve something like this and survive. Only those outside the realm of human comprehension are granted such a gift.

Godly senses was not a status skill available to AoL, but something which Endless added to it just to explain Zortex existence. It was not useful or anything, it was just a name given to what he was experiencing.

Zortex reached the library once more. People were used to see him passing by as no one else spent so much time in there. Other noobs spent more time socializing and they had to do quests to get some money before the end of their trial, on the other hand Zortex already had money and no social activity. He entered his favorite training zone and prepared himself the usual way. For the next three hours he tried and tried to achieve his desired goal, and in the end he succeeded.

Zortex started his Blind spell the same way as usual, but created a divergence. The normal way to use it would be to send the shadows into one of his hand, but in his case it moved in another direction converging into his head. The darkness exited from his eyes, his mouth, his nostrils and ears, enveloping all of his face in a dark mist. Zortex was focused 100 % on his task as he had closed of all of his other senses as best as he could. The dark mist remained in front of his face for the next five minutes, then ten minutes, then half an hour, then two hours. After 5 hours Zortex dispelled the skill and dropped to the ground exhausted. He had finally mastered it.

New skill learned: Shadow Mask Level 1

· By using your mana you can cast a curse of darkness to cover your face. The amount of darkness, obscurity, duration and speed can be improved by the amount of mana and the level of the skill.

Phew! I’m done. Not yet enough to be efficient, but the system recognized that I created the skill. Now I just need to get used to it so much that I can maintain it without even thinking about it.

Zortex first thought when he used the Blind spell was that he would let himself be hit by such curse if someone attacked him with it as it would be really helpful for his sight problems. From that sparkled the idea of casting the curse on himself, however it resulted to be more complicated than he thought. It was easy to blind himself, but the level of darkness would decrease in time and the duration was too short for what he wanted to do. So he trained his Blind skill to his outmost, increasing all technical aspects of the spell. At the same time he studied a way to change its direction from his hands to his head. Most people would have found that to be too big an obstacle, but Zortex had already learned to redirect his Slimifaction to different parts of his body, so he found it quite easy to apply the same pattern to his Blind spell. The last step of his training was to learn how to maintain a steady level of darkness without interruptions, so he learned to keep active a small trickle of mana keeping active the darkness spell, just like he had learned to maintain Slimifaction. Today for the first time he had been able to do it for a long amount of time, so the system awarded him by recognizing the creation of a new skill. As soon as he would be able to use it full time he would be able to dismiss the bandages covering his eyes.