I woke up groggy as hell, not from the new ouroboros seal but from the massive amount of drinking last night. My memory was kinda fuzzy... I could remember bits and pieces like Soup running at top speed in wolf form, jumping straight into a ring of fire conjoured by M1 and M2. It didn't end well. Wolves were weak to fire by nature after all. Especially since its magic damage.

I remember Beathoven using one of his skills for the first time. It's called weapon smash.... All i remember was Beathoven was being too retarded and Slick was just beside Beathoven saying stuff that seemed like...

“Smash your lute over his head smash your lute over his head you know you want to do it you know he's begging for it you know he's asking for it GO GO GO.”

And that was when it all happened. Beathoven couldn't resist his temptation and used the skill on Breadtalk. It seemed like the skill was legit. Since it was a Bard's only way of inflicting damage, it seemed like it took your art stat multiplied by the value of the instrument times some base multiplier and converts it into damage. And trust me Beathoven's art stat by now was not something to be trifled with. Breadtalk nearly died. He ran around screaming from the pain and eventually for some godhelpme reason, ended up with his head under Horse's skirt. Needless to say, he died. He died a death so horrible I think I only could remember traces of it. I remembered one long knife, shining green with poison and repeated slashing and stabbing. Oh well. I checked my friends list.

Yup. I wasn't just dreaming. It was all real. Breadtalk was unable to log in for about 19 more hours in real life and Horse had a red coloured name, showing the murderer's mark.

Should I kill her for the EXP and fame?.... Hmmm...

I weighed my options. She was sleeping it would be painless and fast. Especially if I used a 300000 mana condensed divine judgement on her. Then again she would most probably hate me for it. Bah who cares.

I saw my mana bar in the ouroboros seal drop by almost half. A sword made out of pure light mana shone so bright that my eyes wasn't even able to handle it. Xantos immediately woke up, drawn to the light and everyone started to wake up.

Oh shit I probably shouldn't have used light mana. Nevermind lets make things fast.

WOOOOOSH

And Horse was gone.

You gained 10000 exp. You gained 1000 fame.

WOO! Kekeke. It was a weekend somemore so they would have no choice but to do something with their lives while the three of us could do our own stuff. Soup and Beathoven woke up shortly. Both of them immediately guessed what happened so I told them the truth. Yeap Breadtalk was killed and the killer met her due justice :P Soup decided that he wanted to make his rounds in the military camp which is the castle for short. We were just hanging around in the lobby so he wanted to check on the barracks and the officers.

Beathoven also decided to went to take a look at the town since we were busy for about one whole day. Every day was important when you were managing a town as fast growing and popular as Carnival. Every single hall in the residence was filled and the waiting list was longer than... Well most things.

I went to the NPC shops as usual to greet the NPCs, making sure nothing out of place was happening. I got free stuff as usual but it was pointless. My equipment were as up to date as possible since I got level 100 armour from top to bottom. I even got Death's Cloak now which was kickass. I wondered what I could do around town that would make me stronger. And then I remembered what I was missing out on.

You see RoyalRoad is a game that focuses not only on battle but on economy to a great extent. Professions were highly respected here. A popular enchanter could easily have more fans and friends than a highly popular mage or archer. Professions were important and not only were the advantageous in making money or connections. They could enhance your fighting abilities.

Blacksmiths are able to equip more armour and weapons due to their professions. They would also get an increase in strength and defence as passives. Handicraft increases damage by 1% per level. Can you even believe it. 1%! By master level that would be easily a 30% increase in damage. Just by doing stuff like folding paper hearts or swans and eventually moving on to professions such as tailoring or crafting which required the handicraft skill. However it does not increase attack power for magic. Only weapons...

I was sitting at my fountain which gave me my art stat in the first place and wondering what profession should I be taking up to further increase my jack of all trades status as well as become stronger. All of a sudden, a well dressed, prim and proper looking guy wearing all black with brown dress shoes and the exception of black long unkempt hair came up to me.

“Excuse me sir, do you know who created this fountain? I'm pretty sure it was one of the founders of Carnival but I do not know who it is.”

What does he want to do with me?

“Yea I have a pretty good idea of who he is. They say his name is Breadtalk. What do you want with him??” I asked.

“Well you see I'm a mana sculptor. We are a branch of sculptors that use only our mana to sculpt with. Our works are less recognised than sculptors because we do not believe in using any tools so everything is made with mana alone. However, this fountain was so intricately and proportionately designed that to make it self sufficient.. I need to meet this Breadtalk and make him my master!” He said excitedly.

Mana sculptor. The answer was right in front of my eyes. Literally. Of course I should have known. I should do the profession that gave me the art stat in the first place. Holy shit. I always thought I was kinda smart but because these type of situations happen quite frequently, I should know better.

“Actually, I was lying. I created this fountain. Hello my name is Jinx, one of the founders of Carnival and an honorary member of the Bunch Of Tards.” I said, showing a gesture of grace.

“What? You lied to me?” He replied.

Oops.

“Sorry. I thought you wanted to ask me to do something for the town but I was in the middle of deep thinking and I didn't wish to be disturbed.” I said sheepishly.

“Well alright I guess but can you prove that you aren't lying now?” He asked.

I used mana manipulation and created a penis around my height. I don't know what is with my obsession with penises but honestly I just found them so bloody funny.

“HOLY SHIT. NO SPELLS NO INCANTATIONS NO NOTHING AND YOU CAN PRODUCE A PENIS OF SUCH GRANDEUR?! THE CURVATURE, THE VEINS, THE BALLS, EVEN THE PUBIC HAIR OMG CAN I CALL YOU SHIFU?!” He exclaimed, bowing down on his knees immediately.

(Shifu is chinese for master.)

I pulled him up immediatly while laughing at his genuinely funny reaction.

“Bro, I don't even know your name.”

“Longbean.”

... That's a BOT worthy name wtf.

“Okay... Longbean. Look I don't have a profession. I can just manipulate the very essence of mana. This is why I need to find someone to learn this profession for. I think I'm very suited for this profession. Can you introduce me to someone I can learn this profession from?” I asked.

“YOU WHAT?! This world is fucking unfair I swear. Actually... I may not look like it but I have reached master level 1 just recently in this profession. I created three masterpieces already but I still think your fountain is one of the best work I ever seen. That's why I wanted to find you and learn from you. This level of intricacy and proportion is too damn high. To think it was made by someone who didn't even have the skill.... I could teach you this skill you know.” Longbean replied.

“Teach me.” I immediately said.

“Don't you want to find other possible teachers?” He asked.

“I'm not picky. I believe teachers are important but I do not have the luxury of time. And I've grown to know that people who are already masters who can still admire a person's work and want to learn from it will never be a bad master. It's those who think they already learnt everything that are the worst sort of people.”

“Whoa that's some strong principles and ideals you have there.” Longbean commented.

“I'm serious about this that's why. Usually im worth nothing though. If you show me a video of an old man falling into a surprise pit I could laugh for hours. But I'm serious about this. Teach me.” I said earnestly.

Longbean nodded his head.

For the rest of the day, I was busy learning the basics of mana sculpting. It seems like mana sculpting involved altering of the runes to shape your spells to reach the ideal size and shape as you want it to and then locking it in position. For example, a simple fireball spell could be altered to be made bigger and brighter and once cast, you can use the mana sculpting skill to make the spell lose its effects and in return, remain as how it is until someone breaks the spell. It was like a time lock skill onto a spell. However, the limitations were that it could only be used on your own spells. I tried to time lock Longbean's spell as he was demonstrating it to me and I failed. I thought it would be a good exploit in battles where if someone cast a spell I could just time lock it and continue the battle.

Longbean was so amazed because I did not have the time lock spell and managed to create a mana sculpture. Usually this was impossible but only because of my design, where the mana would interact with each other in the dome to form a sustainable climatosphere, the sculpture was semi-permanent and that's why it even counted as an artpiece in the first place.

If i didn't have the timelock skill, like the penis I conjured up earlier, I would have to use mana to sustain it's form. However, the basis of all mana sculptures lie in the first skill that was taught to me. Mana lock. I started practicing mana lock. It was a very enjoyable process. I recreated a scene from one of my favourite shows of all times.

I made a humanoid figure from earth using mana and now that my mana control has improved by leaps and bounds due to the training from one day ago, the human figure was perfectly shaped. I then added fire mana to wrap around his body and legs like a jacket and trackpants. I used electric mana to give him blonde hair. Then, I gave him black shoes using darkness mana.

Behind this figure, I added another one with white longer hair from light mana and a jacket which was black and green which meant poison mana was the best to use. As I was doing all this, Longbean had his mouth agape, his mouth was so wide open that I think I could stuff not one but both of my fists into his stupid looking face due to the big wide open mouth. I gave the finishing touches to the figure and it was showing the second figure clasping his hands together and sticking two fingers out before poking his fingers into the ass of the first figure.

It was “A thousand years of pain” adapted from Naruto. Any idiot would be able to tell it was Kakashi and Naruto because of the intricacies of the design. I used mana lock to finalise the looks of the now complete sculpture. You could even go and touch it because the mana was frozen in place. It could not harm anyone at all and the texture of the sculpture was smooth and warm. One drawback of mana sculpting was that you were unable to control the texture. Mana only has one texture.

Longbean managed to recollect himself after 1 minute and managed to talk only after 5 more minutes.

“Do you even know what you did? You made such a well designed sculpture which would take even a master level like me at least a few hours. And you did it in 15 fucking minutes. You're a level 1 beginner holy shit. Can you be more fair? How do you even manipulate mana like that anyway? We have to use spells that we are familiar with like fireball or lightning strike and manipulate the shape until we get it right. For you it just pops out of mid air in the exact shape that you picture it to. What are you? God???”

And right on cue, Xantos flew towards me and nested herself on my head. Ever since eating my mana, she was now alot more energetic and loudspoken.

“Jinx Jinx more mana please =D MOREEEEE!” And I had to feed her of course. I made a concentrated ball of light mana as usual and tossed it to her.

Longbean's face looked even more incredulous. I cannot even describe it to you. It was as if his face had a stroke that can be recovered from. I'm sorry but there's no way I can describe a face that priceless.

I explained to him what my mana manipulation skill was and his face just grew increasingly cancerous and cancerous every time he heard more and more of what I could do. By the end of it I couldn't even call it a face. I was struggling to not laugh at his face every single second but it was too irresistable.

“OH MY GOD CAN YOU FIX YOUR FACE HAHAHAHAHAHAHA WHAT THE FUCKYOU HAVE THE BEST FUCKFACE I'VE EVER SEEN!” I rolled around the floor.

Longbean gave fuckface version 2.0

“HAHAHAHA STOP YOU'RE KILLING ME STOP. STAHHHHPPPPPPP!”

Longbean just grinned at me now.

“You are meant for mana sculpting man. I never heard of that skill before but I'm pretty sure that skill is probably the skill most mana sculptors would kill any amount of people to get. It's like that skill was created for mana sculpting or mana sculpting was created because of that skill. You're definitely going to become the best mana sculptor I've ever seen man. Can I follow you on your adventures? I just want to be there when you make your outstanding statues and achievements.”

I could not sense anything but utmost honesty and sincerity in his voice.

“You're the master. Not me.” I grinned at him.

He grinned back and then a split second later used his fuckface.

“YOU CAN CONTROL THAT FUCKFACE? YOU'VE JUST BEEN TEMPTING ME TO LAUGH HAVEN'T YOU?!?!” I said while trying not to laugh but failing miserably again.

“Hey you lied to me so I had to get even!” He shouted back at me.

It seemed like I picked up a master who was on the same wavelength as the rest of us. And boy oh boy was it rare to find someone like that. There can only be so many retards in the world. And now in Carnival, I was sure there was at least 6 of us like that.

I minimised four notification boxes while I was talking with Longbean and I decided to open them now.

New Profession : Mana Sculptor

You have decided to walk on the path of becoming a mana sculptor. Usually shunned by people as a hard to master class with drawbacks far outweighing the benefits, you have chosen Longbean to be your master and will henceforth be known as a mana sculptor.

New Skill : Mana lock.

The primary skill used by mana sculptors to lock their mana in place so that they have a definitive shape and volume. However, the mana will lose all form of effects and just be purely aesthetic after this is cast onto mana.

New Skill : Manart (Passive)

Being a mana sculptor, you must take pride in the way you harness mana. It is not just a tool for casting magic but crafting creations which will turn heads of many. As such, it is important that you keep an artistic mind not only in sculpting but fighting. During battles, the more artistic your attacks, the more damage they will do. Also, the art stat will be taken into account and added into the damage of your spells.

Created : A Thousand Years Of Pain

You've created a splitting image of a scene from a famous anime in the middle of the town square beside your original work, the Fountain of Carnival. This statue looks so well replicated that passer bys will look at it in awe and appreciation of the sculptor's talents. This will increase fun levels of the town as well as provide a source of inspiration for beginners be it in terms of class or profession.

Mood +100

Inspiration +50

All stats +10

Propensity to laugh +50%

Effects last 1 hour

You have created a fine piece!

Gained 2000 art points.

Holy shit! I knew about all of this but that passive! THAT PASSIVE! Assuming that it won't decrease my damage because that would be unfair, my art stat would now be taken into consideration for additional damage from mana attacks! Also, the more artistic my attacks the higher the damage?!?!

The possibilities were endless. I could just imagine it now. Creating 1000 hands using earth mana and slapping Breadtalk with those thousand hands. How much additional damage would that give me? Creating a penis that shoots our a stream of water so highly compressed like a hydro pump for nude art. HAHAHA THE POSSIBILITIES MAN. THE POSSIBILITIES.

“Got the passive skill Manart eh?” Longbean smirked at me.

He knew about my mana manipulation so it looked like he too saw the potential I now had not only in mana sculpting but in fights.

“Oh yeah. It's getting dark. Let me treat you to a meal back at the castle master.” I grinned at him before attempting a go at the legendary fuckface.

Longbean looked at me and retaliated.

My stomach was positively aching by now and all I could think was.

I gotta get that passive to level up more and I also got to learn that face man omg that epic face.

End of Chapter 30