Several days had now passed, and tonight would be his last in the cave. Tomorrow morning, Emil would leave and seek out whatever small town was nearby. During his time, he had continued to refine and practice each of his abilities, with the exception of Soul Manipulation. Currently, he was using up the last magical scroll to check his Sheet. So that he could see it for one final time, and find out if he had made any progress.

‘Ahah! Yes!’ Emil cheered in his head. One thing had actually changed. It was Spell Manipulation, the only ability that had transferred over from his Mage abilities. It had increased to level four. Meaning that it would be easier for him to cast his spells and potentially create new ones.

It was a skill he had been practicing for years, and leveling it up was slow progress for almost every Mage. But for him, it must have leveled up in such a short time due to how many different kinds of magic he now had as a Necromancer. Emil would have been satisfied to leave with the knowledge that he felt more familiar with his new powers. But to actually have this level up? He couldn’t help but let a grin form as he stared down at the scroll.

To celebrate his progress, he now wanted to do something big before he left. Emil had practiced the art of creating undead, but he had also learned how to destroy them. He figured out that adding death energy into a corpse to make it undead was actually a reversible process. It was also a tough one, however.

Because when the energy created a reanimated being, it fiercely resisted any attempts to pull it back out. But with enough force, it was possible to overcome that resistance. And if successfully done, the body acting as its host would immediately return to being nothing more than an unmoving corpse.

Aside from Theo, Emil hadn’t kept around any other of his test creation. He had experimented on the squirrel, a few birds, rabbits, and even a fish from the river. But a legion of undead animals wouldn’t exactly have been the easiest thing to hide from normal people when he went to a town.

As such, he had destroyed the first few completely with Negative Magic. It was for the last few though that he had the idea of simply removing the death energy, and absorbing it into himself for Mana. But to keep one roach hidden would be easy enough. And in Theo’s case, it would also be easy for people to presume that it was just a gross bug rather than a dead one.

‘Now, what to do, what to do. It’d be easy to call it there and say it was a job well done. But that’s not good enough.’ No, Emil wanted to do something spectacular. A display to himself of everything he practiced, utilizing every ability he had learned. But what could he do that would really fit such a description? It was then that he remembered something.

A few days ago, while Emil had been exploring the woods, he had come across some tracks. By their prints, he had assumed they were boar. But more than that, the path they had gone along was charred and burnt. Meaning that somewhere in this forest, there was likely a pack of wild flame boar.

They were extremely dangerous creatures, even more so than their non-elemental counterparts. Because of a special organ inside them, they were capable of crude but often still fatal magic. It took groups of well-trained hunters to take even a few down. To go alone, and face down a pack of unknown size, would normally mean one had a death wish.

However, he believed that he could do it by himself. But there would be more merit to this than just a rash attempt for personal glory. That is because there are actually two ways for a person to level up their abilities. One was the common one he had been utilizing for his entire life. To simply practice, practice, and practice some more. It was a grind, the kind where results would eventually come, but slowly.

The second method, however, was much faster. But it was proportionally just as risky and even unreliable. It was to face down a life-threatening danger. One that pushed a person to the brink of their abilities, just so that they could survive. But if they could push themselves past their previous known limits and live, then they would come out the other side stronger than before.

To Emil, this challenge could be what he needed for that to happen. At a B- rank, he felt that he could successfully defend himself against most threats. But if word of the nature of his powers ever got out, then he would suddenly be in extreme danger.

For if people knew he could create undead and wield death as a weapon, then they would paint him as a target. If a high-ranking Mage, paladin, or any influential group sought his destruction, then they would have no problem dishing it out.

There were many strong people who had faced many life-or-death situations. They had fought to survive and won, whether it was in the name of the gods, for money, or something else. It didn’t make a difference, what mattered was that they were more powerful than him because of it. If Emil didn’t take a necessary risk to quickly get stronger, then it would be almost impossible for him to fight them off.

As he left the cave and began to walk back to where he found the tracks, a new thought came to his mind. There actually was another benefit to him doing this. If Emil could kill this pack, then he could harvest their bodies. The organ that allowed them to use magic was considered both rare in markets and highly valuable.

But for him, as magical creatures, the memory orbs he could create from them might be exponentially stronger than those of normal animals. Just the Mana alone he could convert from them could be extremely useful to him. For if he had them, he wouldn’t need to worry about replenishing his Mana for potentially weeks to come. Emil had no real way of knowing yet how much Mana each would be worth, but he knew that it would be a lot.

Emil reached the spot where he had seen their tracks. They were now partially obscured by the snow that had fallen since then. But, he could still make out the scorch marks they left behind on the trees and brush. From what he remembered from his classes on magical beasts, fire boar always stuck within their established territory. So as long as he followed their trail, he should be able to find their pack by the end of the day.

‘Actually, maybe it would be better to wait before I engage. If I do track them down before night, then waiting for it to get dark might actually be to my advantage. I can see in the dark, they can’t on their own. They can only see at night by using their fire as light.’ Emil thought to himself as he began to follow the trail.

That way, he could initiate the first attack while most of them were asleep. If it was a large pack, then he would honestly need that chance to take a few of them out. After all, there was a difference between a highly risky fight to the death, and just being plain suicidal. As he walked through the woods, he decided to take that idea as his plan. He would find the pack, evaluate their numbers, and then launch his initial strike once it became dark out.

The old him from the academy would never have even considered something like this. But that life was behind him now, Emil the Apprentice Mage might as well have died in that dungeon. Now he was Emil the Necromancer, a person that had to do what he could to attain more power. Not necessarily due to his own choice, but because of the circumstances fate forced upon him.

He had spent the last couple of weeks adapting to his powers. Now, it was time for him to put them and himself to a real test. This would be his self-made rite of passage.