INTERLUDE – PREPARATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

“Wow my skills have all leveled up and this ‘All Seeing Eyes of the God’ have shown its true colours. I just can’t wait to use it.”

I walked to the entrance of the room and just thought about using the Eye of Investigation as my status window said.

I could feel a burning sensation in my eyes and also pledge that I felt my eyes were glowing blood red.

{APPRAISAL – THE GREAT TATHYA LABYRINTH – FLOOR 50}

I see so this is exactly a game-like labyrinth but with my life on the line, it is no more like a simple game. I doubt I will have the luxury to enjoy it as a shut-in pro gamer.

But I will play it, and victoriously escape this cringe place. I think I can now have all the information I need to survive this place. And after defeating that super-strong beetle I have more confidence in my abilities as if I was meant to do this one day.

I used appraisal on Tathya Labyrinth and was amazed to see its potential history and that this whole place has 100 floors in it. At present I am on floor 50. If I climb up, then I will be free in no time.

But I need to make preparations and test all my skills one by one in a day and search for more food for my sustenance. Well they might get ready for me at floor 49, till I feast upon the remaining beetles in my storage.

For some time I wanted to know more about the materials I found in this place. I walked to the centre of the room and looked upwards. The beautiful crystalline thorn like structures hanging from the ceiling and radiating a spectrum of vibrant colours illuminating the whole plain like a solar disk. I wanted to know more about this new beautiful element. I used my eye of investigation and this is what I found.

They are called MAGITITE and are a special kind of crude ore that absorbs magic from the surrounding area. It seems that it is overloaded for now and that’s why radiating light with such high intensity.

At present it is just crude ore and so has no use for me. But just maybe if I am able to get a crafting or alchemy skill, since it is a fantasy world so there must be one, then I am sure that I can put it to good use.

Time for some mining! I opened my dimensional storage near the cluster of MAGITITE and they just got sucked inside it. My dimensional storage surely resembles a black hole. But if it’s like that then it reduces my work and raises efficiency. Which girl ever wants to enter a mine with a hammer and spade to get the required minerals?

It was not only the ceiling but the side walls, the cliff and the bottom of lake; all had this shining bright stuff lying idly. I am sure no one would mind if I hog them all for myself.

I went back to the other floor from where I came from and did the same. But before leaving I had an interesting idea. I went to the lake and tried to pull a stunt. I opened a huge opening to my dimensional storage and stored all the water in it. Now the question of the day; will the Magitite get wet or not. I pulled out some ores back and they were still dry.

That proves that inside my storage each entity is stored in a separate compartment or is rather stored in new small pocket dimension. It sounds super – cool.

I bet every multinational corporation on earth would kill to have this kind of purse. But at present its mine and mine alone. There is no sharing.

I headed back to floor 50 and found myself in a pinch.

“I made a big mistake to take off with all the Magitite. Now the entire room is in dark.”

I am glad that at least monsters from other floors cannot enter or invade someone else’s floor unless there is an unforeseeable event like a wall break or dimensional crack.

Time to come up with new magic tricks or attacks! I need to work on defensive spells too. If only there could be a teacher to teach me new spells then this entire process of learning could be faster. But making spells of my own made them easier to use and the ability to control elements on my free will made it much quicker. Being self-taught is not that bad, if the magic I create proves more effective and useful for what I use them for.

For now I had been using fusion ball and it has always proved to be handy and highly successful. I need to try other elements too like wind, ice, earth and the newly gained gravity magic.

I went inside the forest and chose the trees as my target practice. When one thinks of using ice, the only thing that comes to my mind is freezing them to death. The next is creating some pointy things like spears or swords with ice and throwing them at the enemy.

I first tried controlling temperature and it took some time, visualizing it to freeze is making it a slow process. But what if I think about it on molecular level. What if I slow down the molecules kinetic energy and increase its potential energy for compensation. Now this extra potential energy will be a burden on my enemy and to counteract it, the building molecules of my enemy will be pushed to force movement using the very life force of the target’s body and in turn weakening them. What a shrewd spell, and evil indeed.

I tried again and in less than a second all the trees in my area were ice cold and were covered in bright white like material. I just out of curiosity touched them and the tree cracked and shattered into small shining shards in an instant. I was dumbfounded. Maybe I crashed down its entire molecular structure by bringing it to close to absolute zero. My visualization and comprehensive ability of controlling magic sure is at a high level, or maybe I am just high.

Will that make me invincible, only time will tell!

Next I practiced making spears, swords and cannonballs with ice of different sizes and densities. Controlling them in the air took some time and increasing their launching speed was another big hassle. At present I can throw them at almost half the velocity of sound. All that is required is now target practice. After hours of hard work I am able to control 200 icicles simultaneously without missing a target. All that is left is to check their effectiveness against enemy monster.

Next is the gravity magic which made the giant beetle a formidable opponent. Now the question is how to use it.

Is visualizing more than enough? I thought about the black magical orb that manifested on the beetle’s trunk and the same happened in front of me. A huge dark magic orb appeared in front of me and kept growing. I could feel it taking magical energy from me continuously and the sudden change of air current in my surrounding. The ground was breaking and it was being slowly pulled towards the center of the orb. It was like formation of a small planet. I need to do something quick or the whole room will get destroyed and I too will be killed by my own spell. Yes that’s right, this is my spell, so I just stopped the inflow of magical energy.

Believe me or not, I have gotten a huge grip over my magic control and its understanding and effect towards nature.

The rocks fell back to the ground creating a small earthquake haphazard.

Haaaah, Safe.

I need to work on this spell and make it more efficient and put it to good use. Of course I cannot let go waste of such a strong magic just because I myself become a victim of the spell.

I tried again and again keeping in control the magic flow towards the orb. Sometime it succeeded but sometimes the spell failed and the orb vanished. After thirty minutes I had managed to pull it off. Not only that I could now summon 20 gravi-spheres at the same time and launch them at the target without fail. Yes, did I mention that I now call it Gravi-Sphere.

Now I need to work on gravi-force field. I need to practice this because it will work in my defense. But for this I was going to use my new ace – a feature of Eye of Investigation – ANALYSIS. Since I saw how the beetle used it. All I need to do is scan that part of my memory with my mystic eyes and behold. I was able to summon the same force field. Not only that, but it was almost 10X more powerful than before and increasing its force was no problem at all. I could increase this force field for now in almost half the area of the floor. Or either concentrate it at one place, which usually led to deep crater formation.

All that was left was add science to this magic. Here it comes. My new brilliant idea – ANTI-GRAVITY.

With this I could fly or float in the air the entire day and goof off….no I mean keep an eye from above over my enemies. If you think I will slack off, then you are underestimating me as well as disrespecting my metal and my workaholic tendencies.

All I needed to do was visualize about the gravity acting almost in an opposite way or simply putting it reversing the very nature of gravitational force. That should work.

“What is going….”

I was almost floating in the air along with all the broken trees and rocks but when I lost my concentration I fell head-butt rolling over again and again. I think I casted it in the whole floor. My magic powers sure goes on a rampage now and then. I wonder why my Status doesn’t show the exact value of these two stats. I would like to know what it means for me, exactly.

I needed to now cast anti-gravity magic only on myself and then use wind magic to control my movements and with my spidey 360 degree vision I could keep an eye on my surroundings. That was all the know it – flying magic lessons.

Time to use it!

I tried to focus on the gravity field and manipulated it accordingly by reversing the flow of magic or the stream lines of magic power which I was now able to see thanks to the All Seeing Eyes of the Gods or rather say the Mystic eyes.

The flow of magic is like a streamlined glowing light of different colours and is omnipotent. It flows in our body and in our surrounding.

If you think of its benefits then, you can predict which kind of spell the opponent is going to use. Red for fire, blue for water, white for wind, brown for earth, golden light for light, black for dark, purple for gravity and so on. Also, you can pinpoint the location of traps, or formation of spells in surrounding by sudden change in the flow of magic.

But coming back at hand, I am pleased to inform you that I was now floating high in the sky till I hit my head with the ceiling. Using wind magic to control my movement was a piece of cake. All I had to work on was now the speed at which I could fly. Since I was running out of time, it was important for me to compromise by using my webs and therefore enhance my movements.

Also I discovered that my webs have gotten much stronger and elastic too. The speed of generation and the force at which I spread my webs across have increased considerably. Not to forget that they feel much lighter and soft. I wonder if I could make a futon with my webs to sleep.

Not to forget that I can feel that I have learned a new type of poison technique – Paralysis. My poison not only can now kill targets but if I want then it can also paralyze my targets.

Wind magic – the magic which I had used up till now the least. It’s not that I am bad with it. I can easily change the wind current and control it. It’s just that I think I have never thought of using it as an attack spell.

Usually when I think about wind all it comes to my mind are the sandstorms, cyclones, thunderstorm. But they are all just in conjecture with other elements. Controlling wind to move simply in circles and then throw everything in tandem is not my style. Well the most prominent thing in my mind is to use it as a blade.

Controlling a thin layer of layer and projecting it at a very high speed could be one of the best choices. Smooth and crystal clear.

Wind Cutter. Moving a thin column of air is not too difficult, if I consider all the air molecules in a single one dimensional packet and use it to bisect across a 3-D figure, simply put sliding one dimension across two dimension.

SWAAAAAASH.

SHRRR.

“EEEEhhhhhh, what in the God’s name happened just now? Did I buy mistake unleashed the spell. The amount of damage…. Is it really me…. Unbelievable!”

What I was looking at a whole forest chopped down in half and ground leveled, while the wind didn’t stop here, till it hit the wall and left a huge cleavage.

“WAAAAHH, Sorry, Sorry, I had no intention to do this. Will the forest officers come and arrest me for illegally chopping down trees. I need to pack my stuff. Its time to leave.”

Wait! I am no longer on earth, so I am sure in this fantasy world, the trees will grow back magically in no time.

But I think I should be thankful to this strong spell, that the ground is leveled. I can now easily practice Earth magic. I think I already know what I need.

An earth wall spell, a swamp creation spell and creating earth spikes from anywhere from ground.

It didn’t took me much time to create a thick wall of earth appear in front of me. As for the swamp it works best with loose soil and water. I would like to trap a dinosaur and then keep its fossil for myself as a trophy. I wonder are there such beasts still alive in this world.

But the most deadly spell was the earth spikes. Creating certain elongations with pointed edges sure was a tough job. It took all out of me to reach perfection. Initially there were all twisted and curved projection but slowly they took shape and finally bloomed into a deadly flower of piercing thorns.

REPETITION IS THE KEY TO MASTERY!

Not to mention, I could easily control the length of these spikes and make them appear through the horizontal, vertical walls and even the ceiling. For the first time I thought this labyrinth was actually in my favour and provides a special advantage to earth magic users.

This world is so unfair, well doesn’t matter dead people do not complain so I said.

In all this self-purposed magic training which actually I was enjoying a lot came to an end.

I know you must be thinking of physical combat abilities. I tried doing push-ups and sit backs but having so many legs makes it confusing and the more unreasonable. I am already more than confident in my running speed and evasion tactics thanks to my monster instincts and Danger Sense.

It’s not that I can’t punch, but a kick seems more viable. Also the fly and kick/bite/slash strategy is best suited for me and easy to enact.

It was time for me to head out and explore the new floors myself.

I used my dimensional storage and stored all the lake water in it. By now I have more than enough water to flood an entire colony.

The entrance to floor 49 was on top of the cliff at the right end corner of this grassy plain floor.

Monsters in this place will always try to hunt me down. The question is what should I do?

I do what I can. There are only two choices for me:

Wait Here – and rot.

Or,

Keep Going – and survive.

I looked back and thought I will never come back here again. I had to climb up and reach the first floor. The person, who was waiting for me, was all I could think about as I took my first step into the dimension cover of the new floor.

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INFORMATION BROCHURE

THE GREAT TATHYA LABYRINTH

The Great Tathya Labyrinth is hidden deep within the Kanandra Mountain and its trenches, and is considered the most dangerous place in Isleguard because of the natural instability of the region with highly dense magical region , and is a nest to powerful and dangerous monsters.

These mountains separate the landmasses of the Demon or Chaos Continent and the Human Kingdoms in the northern region. Two hundred years ago, this place was but a flat land and economy flourished between the two continents as wealth, culture and prosperity was shared. But after it became the final battle ground of The Holy Crusade, people started calling it the cursed land. The very topography of the region changed. Landmasses sunk in the nearby water bodies, while the remaining was rendered infertile and left barren. Until later it became densely populated with high level monsters and the wild vegetation which helped these vile creatures thrive here flourished.

The corpses, dreams, anxiety, fear, relics of the past, negative emotions all collected and gathered at one single point led to formation of the Great Tathya Labyrinth.

The labyrinth consists of 100 floors with each containing a certain species of monster or a single catastrophe-class monster. Most of the monster species are considered intelligent and their desire to kill far exceeds any other monsters on land.

Also the labyrinth is home to many relics and legendary weapons that were lost during the Holy War. Magitite is yet another precious and most expensive and rarest ore on land but is present in abundance in the lower floors of the labyrinth.

ALL SEEING EYES OF THE GODS

A unique skill possessed by one of the reincarnates Sachi Kondo. In initial stages it is a non-combat oriented blessing, but can be put to great use during fights if certain conditions are met. Originally, it is one of the special skills of Almighty World God himself.

As per record there are only two other Gods who possessed this ability and is said to possess a total of eight special forms which manifests as the holder grows mentally and physically or during certain emergency conditions when the requirements are fulfilled.

FIRST FORM : EYE OF INVESTIGATION

ABILITIES

APPRAISAL - Allows user to see the target's information. While only giving the name on lower levels, on higher levels it also reveals the target's status values, titles, and skills.

ANALYSIS – Allows user to scan any object, living being and energy source and provides with the required information based on user’s capabilities. Also helps to understand the nature of magic and spells leading to their evolution as the user grows.

ADVANCED MAGIC SENSE & DANGER SENSE – Allows users to perceive the flow of magic in any object, living being or surrounding areas. Provides a comprehensive understanding and sense of hostility from another being or special environment.

NIGHT VISION – Allows users to see clearly in the dark. Can even see through closed eyelids, if desired and even during sleep.

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STATUS WINDOW

Every living being in the world of Isleguard has a status window; a frame designed by the World System to measure and keep a check on the growth of this world. So, the reincarnators and gods will too be provided with this status window.

COMMON ELEMENTS OF THE STATUS WINDOW

NAME : -----------------

AGE : ------

RACE : -------------------

LEVEL : ----------------

HP : ------------------------

MP : -----------------------

SP : -----------------------

SKILLS : -----------------

TITLES : --------------------

HEALTH POINTS (HP)

This is the parameter that measures health status of an individual. If someone takes damage from an attack or suffers from an illness then his health points start decreasing. When health points hits zero the individual dies.

HP points is directly proportional to health, endurance, dexterity, agility, stamina, body strength and speed.

Hence more HP points gained a day, keeps the doctor away.

MAGIC POWER / MAGIC POINTS (MP)

This is the parameter that measures the amount of magic a person can store in his body and use in magic arts and spells. The more the magic points the more the person has an affinity for magic and restores magic from the surrounding easily than reproduce it slowly inside the body again.

Magic power can be basically of three forms – magic of the mortal realm

Divinity of heaven – the divine realm

Black miasma or dark matter of hell

The basic attribute of magic are – fire, wind, earth and water. Light and Darkness are other independent attributes.

Mixture of two or more attributes give rise to a totally new nature of magic like – wood (water + earth), magma (earth + fire), and ice (water and heat manipulation).

Then there are other special independent attributes like beast tamers, sound, lightning, metal, gravity, shadow and many more which depends on sophisticated and special affinity for the base elements.

Other psychic powers do exist like telekinesis, space and time control magic, telepathy etc.

SOUL POWER (SP)

Soul power directly refers to the individual’s life force or energy. Every individual has his own soul core placed inside one’s soul realm. The larger the soul core and the denser it is the more the Soul power is and the larger the soul realm and its constitution the more the soul power it can contain inside it.

If the soul core ever breaks or the SP parameter hits zero the individual dies.

Using SP; combatants practice special arts called AURA SPIRITUAL ART which increases every fighting aspects like instincts, mobility, endurance, combat abilities and heightened senses. Even mages uses SP points to convert them into MP and recover their lost magic quickly.

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MONSTER DIARY

LIZARD MONSTER {CATASTROPHE CLASS}

NAME : HELODARMA

AGE : 160 YEARS

RACE : REPTILE GILA MONSTER

LEVEL : 3000

HP : 15000

MP :10000

SP : 20000

SKILLS : [BODY ARMOUR LV7] [BODY REINFORCEMENT LV8] [EARTH MAGIC LV 5]

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MONSTER DIARY

SCORPION MONSTER {CATASTROPHE CLASS}

NAME : MADAKKA

AGE : 185 YEARS

RACE : MONSTER

LEVEL : 3500

HP : 25000

MP :5000

SP : 30000

SKILLS : [BODY ARMOUR LV9] [BODY REINFORCEMENT LV8] [POISON MAGIC LV 7] [PIERCING LV 9]

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MONSTER DIARY

BEETLE MONSTER {CLASS – B}

NAME : DIVINE MESSENGER

AGE : 5 DAYS

RACE : DIVINE BUG MESSENGER

LEVEL : 50

HP : 5000

MP :10000

SP : 2000

SKILLS : [BODY ARMOUR LV5] [BODY REINFORCEMENT LV5] [EARTH/FIRE/WIND/WATER/LIGHT MAGIC LV 5]

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MONSTER DIARY

RAINBOW GOLDA BEETLE MONSTER {CLASS – S}

NAME : KALEID

AGE : 5 DAYS

RACE : DIVINE BUG MESSENGER

LEVEL : 900

HP : 50000

MP :20000

SP : 15000

SKILLS : [BODY ARMOUR LV10] [BODY REINFORCEMENT LV10] [GRAVITY MAGIC LV 8]

TITLE : KIN EATER {FEEDS UPON OWN KIND TO ENHANCE ITS STATS}

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INFORMATION BROCHURE

LEVELING SYSTEM AND IT’S MECHANISM

Every individual capabilities and potential are summarized by the World System and the processed data is visible as information in Status Window.

Every individual above level 20 is granted by a basic ‘appraisal skill’ and from then onwards they can see other’s status window. But if the level of target is much much higher than the user, then the Status Window appears hazy or distorted.

Each skill can be maxed up to LEVEL 10 and then there are three pathways:-

The skill becomes permanent and the level label is removed. The Skill evolves or combines with other skills giving birth to a new advanced skill. The maxed out skill converts into a title.

Not to mention that every species has their own leveling standards. For example - a level 500 slime can be defeated easily by a level 20 human. But a level 200 demon can easily defeat a level 500 human.

Usually people prefer to hide their status and skills or sham them by using a ‘Fake Skill’.

MAGITITE ORE

A legendary stone/rock or mineral of impenetrable hardness and has exceptional magical properties.

When regular ores are exposed to dense concentrations of Magical Powers and other special supernatural conditions, the ores will slowly absorb them and eventually turn into Magitite Ore. Since such deep concentrated magical concentration is hard to come by and the period of formation is extended over hundreds of years is hard, these ores alone are considered highly rare and serves as reserves for national treasure or as liquid money in national treasury by all the human kingdoms and even in the demon continent.

Due to the high magic concentration requirements for this ore to form, usually only high ranking adventurers can obtain it from deep underground dungeons, dangerous unexplored mountains or at the bottom of the deep seas.

Magitite Ore is hard to obtain in itself but it is still considered unrefined and incomplete for proper use unless purified, which is yet another expensive process and the output is extremely low. The material is exceptional at inducting magical power, enabling any objects made from Magitite ore to "grow" with their user. It allows the user to reflect, absorb, channel, or even store magical attacks up to a certain threshold.

It’s worth can be ascertained by the fact that only the high ranking knights in the army has access to the weapons and armours forged with this ore and is even exchanged in form of gifts or as family heirlooms among nobles.

However, in an unexplored and extremely dangerous labyrinth – The Great Tathya Labyrinth where no human has explored below floor 12 and those who attempted never came back alive, due to the presence of catastrophe monster on every floor, the whole dungeon is filled with large amounts of Magitite Ore, found nowhere else on the entire planet.