Ignoring his prayer, the gods allowed Emil to wake up the next day. He was very much not frozen, instead, he was hungry. He opened up the supplies for some food rations, and began to eat his breakfast. As he ate, he wondered if a search team had already gone into the dungeon. If they were currently exploring its passageways, looking for Emil and his group.

His chest began to hurt as he became filled with guilt, knowing full well that their search would end without them finding anything. He wondered how long they would look, before giving up. And what they would do, without any bodies to recover and bury.

Would his parents and siblings accept that he was dead, or hold out hope that he was still alive somewhere? When word got to Fire Light Academy, what would they do to his belongings? Would they leave his dorm room as is, at least until the end of the next quarter? Or would they immediately pack up all his things, and either put them in storage or send it to his family?

Then there were his friends. How long would it be until they got to find out? Would the academy hold a public service for him and the rest of the students, or react in a more reserved way. Emil would have no way of knowing until the next time he rejoined civilization. By the time he used up his food rations, he would likely try to find the nearest town. Then while there, he would be able to find out if the newspapers reported the story.

With a heavy sigh, he finished his meal and stood up. Emil put his bag back on and began to move. He still wasn’t sure yet about exactly what he wanted to do. But for now, he would continue to simply walk parallel with the river. And while doing that, let himself think. Now that he had gotten a full night of sleep, Emil hoped that his mind could do so without letting his thoughts become a chaotic mess again.

“Okay, I know what I’m going to do, what needs to happen,” Emil said aloud, after a few hours of walking. “If I’m going to stay out here for the next two weeks, I can’t just spend that time doing nothing but cry and get lost in my own self-pity. I need to be productive, I have to be.”

He came to another spot where he could stop. It was a cliff face, one that had a small cave. It wasn’t very deep, he could see where it ended even from outside its entrance. This time, instead of moving on again, this place would be where he spent the next fourteen days.

Emil walked inside, and placed his bag on the ground. It wouldn’t be the comfiest place to sleep, but at least it would protect him from the wind and rain. Even if exposure to the elements couldn't directly kill him now, he didn’t want to be constantly soaked and miserable.

He then opened the bag, dug around inside it for a bit, and pulled out five scrolls. It took a special material to conduct magic, and these had already been made with it. However, each one could only be used once before they were considered as depleted. Emil had grabbed them for their general usefulness, but now he knew what he wanted to use them for. He would use them to keep track of his Sheet and the progress he made.

First, he would use one now. He had already gotten a decent look while in Alterum’s prison. But that had only been for a few seconds, so now he wanted a better view of everything that had changed. That would be the base Emil could work with.

Then, he would space out the remaining four, using them every three days. By the time he used them all up, he would be ready to leave the wilderness. He unfurled one, and after cutting the tip of his finger to draw blood, reopened his Sheet.

‘My mana level is still at 120? With how long it’s been, it should have recharged to the new cap by now.’ Even though that confused him, he moved on to the rest. To start, the vast majority of his abilities had been replaced with new ones at level one. However, Spell Manipulation had remained untouched. But even so, he had still gone up a full rank. This meant that even at this level, the power of a Necromancer was greater than when he had been a Mage.

But of these four new arcane abilities, which one should he try out first? It felt like his body had adapted, at least physically speaking, he felt normal. Since he still had Spell Manipulation, using one of these in a spell hypothetically should come to him easily. Perhaps he could start with Negative Magic, that at least seemed to be in a separate space from the rest. Since by its name, didn’t immediately look like it was associated with death, unlike the others.

“Well, might as well try it and see what happens,” Emil muttered to himself. He pushed aside the scroll and walked back outside the cave. With his back to the entrance, he held up a hand and closed his eyes. If it was like the kinds of magic he was used to, Emil would need to look inward, to the part of his spirit that spells channeled through.

He tried to invoke the same feeling he did when he had used fire magic. His inner mind went deep into itself searching for a pull he could mentally grab onto. When he had done this in the past, he had been able to picture an image of flames and feel their warmth. But as he searched fire, there was only a sensation of emptiness.

But paradoxically, rather than just being the lack of anything, the emptiness itself somehow felt like something. Emil had heard of a few Mages that could use darkness as an element. Even though in essence, the dark was simply the absence of light. Maybe, this was something similar to that?

In any case, he pull on this emptiness, and tried to get it to come forth and manifest itself as a spell. To see if it worked, he attempted to channel it in the same way he would a fireball. As he felt the power rise to the surface, Emil opened his eyes. There, in the air just above the palm of his hand, there was a black void.

It almost didn’t seem real, the space around it almost seemed distorted. A ball of fire would have provided warmth as its flames crackled. But this thing was noiseless, and if anything, it felt as though it was drawing heat from his hand. Emil looked to the corner of his eye.

-10 Mana

Mana usage, under normal circumstances, was the only notification once received from the System. It was what translated his and every other magic user’s growth and mana levels into numbers. Their minds had all been modified at birth to be connected to it. This had just been the way of things for almost a few centuries now, ever since it had first become widespread as a gift to humanity from the gods. However, Alterum had somehow managed to force an update to Emil’s connection to the System. How exactly the dragon did it, he didn’t know.

But that was a question to which he had no answer. As such, he forced himself to move on and returned his attention back to the spell. Emil walked over to the nearest tree, and aimed at it. With his willpower, he forced the void to shoot away from his palm and towards his target.

As if the tree wasn’t even there, the ball of negative force went right into it. Without a sound, it cut a spherical hole through the whole thing and shout right out the other side. With a fireball, it would have simply crashed into the tree and left a charred dent, that would have been all.

But with this, it simply kept going. And as Emil watched, it only seemed to grow in size as it tunneled through every object in its path. It was only when it approximately went a hundred feet away from him, that the void lost power and dissipated into the air.

Emil looked at his palm, and then back to the damage he had done. At maximum mana, he would be able to cast twenty of those. What would have happened if he had intentionally poured extra mana into it? Would it have started out even bigger, gone farther in distance? If he put in all two hundred points of his capacity into just one shot, what kind of monster spell would that create?

He raised his hand back up, the look in his eyes was completely focused. He had to know both where his limit currently was, and how flexible the magic could be with his imagination.