Adrin once again had found himself in the family’s mini-mirage dungeon. It was mainly used for learning things that couldn’t be learned in real life without living a mark. The most common subject should be sexual intercourse and everything else related to it.

It was such a huge waste, well, if anyone cared to know.

The total space available was tiny compared to the massive dungeon in the academy. It paled in comparison to the ancient legacy left behind by whoever ancient mage, but the possibility still didn’t diminish at all. It only needed a little bit of imagination, a spice of knowledge, and a lot of wondrous things could be accomplished with it.

And as he had expected, unlocking his mana was the key to gaining better control over the virtual space around him. The things he could touch, see and smell were all just mana constructs that become objects when he was close enough. He was in a bedroom-sized virtual box that would move and change as he moved around.

For example, he could make the fake sunrise in the distance while spending some mana and a complete image inside his head. He could tell it was just a huge display but the sight reminded him of the cute Indian girl and the Oracle.

The existence of his [Core] also granted better control over his sexy ‘soul-body’ as the amorous lady called it. He had to be honest as it felt awesome to be able to move freely on his own, and needless to mention, he wasn’t the only one who had enjoyed this freedom of movement.

If anyone had asked, he would say that Bella had enjoyed it more than himself. The woman was a beast in bed. Adrin had lost count but the woman was finally satisfied and now sleeping soundly on the bed. It felt like it was more mindless sex than he ever had in his last lifetime.

Adrin sighed, it was finally time for the real reason he’s here.

He didn’t know if others had done this but this personalized magic VR space was the perfect place to test all his outlandish theories. It was perfect because there was no way anyone else would find out. The secret would stay inside his head and the lovely sleeping beauty.

Well, if she was faking it.

Adrin wasn’t sure if a soul-body could feel tired, or if it was even the truth behind this magitech virtual reality. The term soul-body could have been just a metaphor passed down from ancient times. Or course, he could be wrong as he had nothing on [Soul Magic] but he didn’t think this VR had anything to do with it.

Regardless, Marla was right about the controversial skill. Adrin still had a lot of energy to spare after banging the MILF’s head off. The disbelief on the all too experienced woman’s face was all he needed to confirm the absurdity of the skill.

Unlike the other woman, Bella was never technically a mother to be a MILF, but she still looked and felt like one. Adrin shook his head and sighed.

He had to constantly remind himself not to drown in her.

It felt like the bedtime skill had rewarded him every time he succeeded at following its hinted, unclear instructions. The [System] just didn’t make any sense when things like this happened and he didn’t want to dig any deeper into that subject at the moment.

He had more important things to do. Visualizing his scale-armor made it appear in the magitech VR space. It covered the back of his hand as he had in mind, and a trickle of mana made it grow to scale by scale to cover his entire arm.

The arm looked inhuman when it was completely covered with silver scales and it was cool as heck. He just got to see when it was fully deployed, and so Adrin got off the bed and covered himself in the silver scale from feet to head.

Unlike in the real world, he didn’t need the scale’s help to move around and this had released an unseen burden on his mind. His basic movement was so smooth it had tickled his nerdy side to perform some exercise. The scales had adjusted themselves to not hinder his movement and it began to feel like his second skin as he performed the otherworld Martial Arts’ Kata.

He punched the empty air and the scales all over his body rippled in response. Changing from fists to open palms relaxed the scale-armor as if it was reading his mind.

Performing the moves had reminded him of the town he had visited. He wondered how the girls in that town were doing after he had left without even saying goodbye. They were already warned of this possibility but he couldn’t help but feel bad about it.

The scale-armor reacted as if it was alive as he side-kicked the empty air. It supported his movement and balance as he gradually pulled the kick back and turned around to enter the next stance.

A part of him wanted to just fly off and leave Bella and the family behind, but he couldn’t just leave this debt unsettled. Something in him wouldn’t let such things ever happen.

Besides, the lady and family had saved his life. He wouldn’t be able to live his life in peace with the debt hanging at the back of his mind.

Adrin pulled his legs together to stand straight like a pole and his palms closed on each other as he let out his breath. It was the end of the first kata and he had many more to go through.

He didn’t need to look as it happened. The exo-scales continued to adjust themselves as he went through all the movements in the second kata as if it had a will of its own. It was behaving as he had pictured it inside his head and the cool factor was not the only reason he was doing this.

It would be immensely helpful to have a personal armor that could deploy itself at the moment's notice. He spent more mana to further develop the armor and he could feel that this was the right path to take.

It took him longer than he anticipated, but Adrin was pleasantly surprised when the [System] announcement popped up at the end of his fifth kata.

[Unique Merged Skill recognized]

[Metallurgy & Shell skill merged]

.

[Living Armor (Metal) observed]

.

[Do you want to adapt the skill?]

“Oh, hell yes,” Adrin said with glee.

What else he could’ve said? Only a fool wouldn’t want such a skill, and a [Living Armor] was almost exactly what he had in mind.

Since the first time he manually controlled the scales, he already felt something was emerging from them. It felt easy probably because he had a perfect image of its final form. He also could already imagine the shocked faces of his enemies when he suddenly deployed the armor out of nowhere.

And best of all, training in this virtual space was like training in his sleep and he could do that all day long. All self-certified nerds could do it like it was their second nature.

[Skill Living Armor adapted]

[Notice; Due to the nature of the skill, two inventory slots are preserved for it.]

Wait, hold on a second, this would leave him with only two more slots. He didn't know how much stuff a slot could hold, but still, he only had four of them.

Adrin shrugged. It was probably well worth it.

Now it was time for his other experiments.

‘Let’s start with a miniaturized rapid-fire plasma railgun, shall we?’ He chuckled.

It was just the end target as he knew it would be hard to [Scribe] a completely new spell from scratch. Copy and paste from parts of other spells would help a lot, but there were still things he had to figure out himself.

It would take some time, even in this mini mirage dungeon.