Five days later...
Ten vile jaguars were running in a group after a target that had decreased their numbers over the last two hours from twenty nine to a mere ten. These were rank two magic beasts that looked similar to the jaguars on Grand Earth but had black colored magic laws visible all over their bodies and they had the speed of cheetahs so they were about to catch up to their target.
This target who was running with all that he had was none other than Nick Capitol who had been hunting magic beasts of the curse path within this realm for almost a week.
(It looks like I cannot outrun them after all. I didn't want to continue fighting because the sun was going down but I have no choice.)
Nick quickly stopped running, turned around and cast his spell.
(Soul Pressure.)
The vile jaguars were slowed by the spell but they continued running at a normal human's running pace.
(Sigh, Soul Pressure is becoming less and less effective with these magic beasts. Apparently curse path beasts have a fair degree of resistance to soul path methods and the strength of my own soul is not strong enough to overcome the resistance.)
Nick planted his feet firmly on the ground and folded his hands into each other, casting another spell.
(Malevolent Shrine.)
The area within a fifteen meter radius was covered in a feint darkness with large numbers of bones piled up on the ground and an old rundown temple stood erect behind Nick. The vile jaguars running towards him felt something amiss and so they tried to turn around and flee.
(Too late for that.)
All ten magic beasts were cut in half from the midsection through to the spinal column. When Malevolent Shrine concluded, all ten vile jaguars were as dead as could be.
Nick quickly went into action and started dissecting the upper half of one of his victims, stripping away its fur coat and going for its internal organs. Nick took hold of the magic beast's heart that was still pumping lightly and bit into it, spending the next five minutes completely devouring it.
After Nick was finished eating, he started to run again towards the north direction where twenty minutes later he found his base of operations. It was a cave that was situated inside of a cliff wall; although it was small and smelt of iron, it was warm and avoided by the magic beasts that resided within this realm.
"Man, I really can't get over how bitter raw beast meat and blood tastes."
Nick sat on the ground and began meditating, drawing a torrent of magic energy towards him. Over the last few days, after multiple sessions like this, Nick had figured out why his meditation was so much more effective when he came here. The first reason being that his mindscape had more than just the quality of having a high capacity for holding magic energy, it also attracted a large amount of magic energy to him based on the saturation of rule magic energy within his surroundings, increasing his rate of magic energy recovery and increasing the rate at which his mindscape was nurtured. Nick could tell after spending a few days within this realm that although the predominant type of magic energy in the atmosphere was curse magic, this place had a far higher concentration of rule magic in the atmosphere than Grand Earth.
Slade had suggested to Nick after using his wisdom path methods that this was so because curse magic was actually closely related to rule magic. The second reason was that ever since his bloodline was altered, he became more easily affected by and more sensitive to magical laws and so when he ate the flesh of these magic beasts a portion of their laws remained within his body and this temporarily caused an increase in the magic energy that he attracted from the surroundings and even promoted the development of rule magic laws within his mindscape. Of course he wasn't exactly sure how accurate the latter conclusion was but he felt certain that it was close to the truth and Slade agreed with him.
Nick had been hunting magic beasts for days on end trying to progress in his mediation and he could feel his mind becoming stronger and the quality of his magic energy becoming greater.
Nick finished up his meditation in a few hours and within the darkness, he focused on his thoughts.
(...and that should be it. During my last 'vision', I received some inspiration from Growth and I have been working on an interesting spell for the past five days after my hunts. It's actually very easy now to use my own mind as a notebook because of my improving mindscape and my understanding of rule magic is getting better everyday.)
(This new spell is called Growth and theoretically, it should help me experience some kind of growth every time that I consume beast meat, although I don't know by how much as yet and what form that this growth would take. The spell's laws are not very complex from my perspective so it should be easy to cast, I just have to wait for daytime to go hunting.)
Nick created this spell from inspiration so he was not entirely sure about the spell's specific effects, he just knew that it would result in 'growth'.
Nick would always stay within the cave at night because curse magic seemed to be even more effective in dark settings which resulted in the magic beasts being stronger at night so he did not want to take the risk of encountering a strong curse path magic beast during this time.
(I've also noticed from using Malevolent Shrine that when it came to killing, blade path is far more effective than space path or soul path.)
Slade chimed in at this time:
[You are right about that, blade path and sword path practically specialize in killing and have very little use in doing anything else. Your malevolent shrine is very useful to you at this stage but how much magic energy did it consume in order to use the spell?]
(It cost 11,000 magical units to kill all ten vile jaguars.)
[Kid, that's too much consumption just to kill ten lowly pups; if you were a normal rank 2 Apprentice Magician, you would never be able to use this spell. You have powerful spells but the fact that you have a large amount of magic energy reserves is ruining your sense of proportion. A good Magician should not waste a drop of magic energy and so you should stop using ox cleavers to kill chickens. I know that the inheritance that I gave you requires you to begin training and altering your soul to use almost all of its attack methods but you still have a few less costly attacking methods within your space path inheritance. You should use them.]
(The reason why I did not learn them before was that I thought that they lacked lethality.)
[So? An attacking spell does not have to be lethal for it to be effective on an opponent, why are you so concerned about that?]
(I'm not sure but if a spell doesn't have a sort of lethality to it, it doesn't seem worth using to me. From my experiences, I think that every blow to my opponent should have the chance of killing them, I'm not trying to tickle people into submission.)
Slade was quiet for a while before speaking again:
[He, he. Nick, those are actually some extreme and demonic thoughts. If you really want to walk down that road, things won't be easy for you.]
(I'm not looking for my circumstances to be easy.)
Nick waited until sunrise came and the darkness lifted by a large margin. Because of the forest canopy, the forest floor was still fairly dim but Nick's vision was not hampered by much. Nick went out of his cave looking for his next meal; he actually never kept the travel bag of food that Carla had given him since he thought that it would weaken his resolve.
(That sounds like some samurai type thing but I needed to push myself in order to continue eating beast meat and drinking beast blood to grow stronger so I ended up throwing the bag away.)
Throughout the next six hours, Nick ran into vile jaguars, petty owls, meager dogs and quarrel rats but he killed them all fairly easily with his overpowered spells. Nick needed about one minutes to recover his magic energy reserves in this realm so he was never in a situation where he was completely tapped out.
Nick soon discovered a clearing after going a distance in the eastern direction that he had never traveled before. This part of the forest was well lit because of the lack of trees and existed over a large radius.
CLANG BASH RIP
Nick soon heard a mixture of sounds as he entered the clearing and it was not long before he discovered the source. About thirty meters in the distance, there were two magic beasts battling each other with their lives on the line. One looked like a two meter tall crane with an incredibly sharp beak and silver feathers and the other was a just as tall gorilla like beast covered in black fur. The gorilla punched and the crane pecked and clawed.
Nick lowered his posture and moved closer, making sure not to alert the fighting beasts. The two rank 2 magic beats continuing fighting for over an hour until the crane like magic beast finally used its sharp beak to slice off the gorilla's arm then used its unbroken leg to pierce into the gorilla's abdomen and cut it in half at the midsection. The gorilla like magic beast died with obvious grievance expressed on its face.The crane's body fell to the ground after the victory; it had a broken leg, a damaged left eye and its beak was on the verge of breaking. A few minutes later, it tried to muster the strength to fly away but the space around it started to twist, and shake madly and soon it found itself being beaten into brokenness by the phenomenon.
The crane fell to the ground with all of its bones broken and clear internal bleeding as blood pooled at its now distended abdomen. Nick walked up to the carcass and took a look at the crane. He had used Rumbling Pillar to defeat the crane that was unaware of his presence.
(This magic beast seems different from the rest that I've faced. Do you also feel the difference, Slade?)
[Indeed. This bird beast is actually of the sword path, not the curse path like that gorilla over there or the other magic beasts that you had killed.]
Nick nodded in affirmation.
(I wonder how its meat tastes...)
Nick took out his knife and started dismembering the crane after which he devoured its heart and brain.
(Now is the time to use my new spell.)
Nick had not used Growth before in the forest because the areas he had been traveling in were home to many magic beasts and he did not want to stop running to dismember the carcasses which would attract other magic beasts. Nick focused on his mindscape where he started to form the laws for his spell and within the next ten minutes, they were fully formed.
(Growth.)
Immediately Nick was bombarded with all sorts of memories that were not his own that consisted of flying through the sky, perching on trees and fighting magic beasts. These fights mostly consisted of severing limbs, pecking out eyeballs, cutting throats and scenes like this played in Nick's mind over and over again for a seemingly long time.
(Severing, cutting...severing, cutting...)
"Interesting...is this the effect of growth?"
Slade was quick to comment:
[Kid, although you seem really plain, you do have some talent. The spell that you created is using rule path to mimic wisdom path, providing you with the experiences and memories of that magic beast. Have you gained anything else from its effects?]
Nick smiled.
"I think that I have."
Nick ignored the corpse of the other magic beast and spent the next few hours finding his way back to his cave. Once he returned to the cave, he took a sitting position and began meditating; while the magic energy around him flowed into him and was processed by his mindscape, Nick's consciousness looked at the stars in his mindscape's sky that patterned the laws for his bloodline spell, Malevolent Shrine.
"Severing, cutting. Malevolent Shrine also involves these principles and if I can just take them and reapply them in a different way, I should be able to mimic at least a portion of its effects."
Nick got to work immediately with working on a new spell based on the inspiration that he received from the use of Growth.
(The effect Growth had was to take the memories and experiences of that crane magic beast and give me inspiration. Now that I think about it, I did eat the beast's brain.)
Nick wasn't sure if that was exactly how growth achieved its effect but he was sure that he would figure it out later. Nick spent the next five days in the cave meditating and working on a new spell, not even going out to hunt for food and water.
(Magic seems to nourish my body in a way that extends the period that I can survive without food and water, that's good to know.)
On the fifth day, Nick emerged from the cave with a smile on his face and a kind of sharpness in his eyes. Nick ran into the forest with no clear destination in mind and eventually found himself face to face with a wicked bear, a type of magic beast that he had encountered before, a few days after he entered the realm. They walked on all fours but could stand on their hind legs to appear eight feet tall; they looked very much like European black bears and they had the ability to sound out a growl that weakened one's legs for a certain amount of time.
This wicked bear stood on its hind legs as it faced Nick, looking like a towering menace and was about to make use of its signature growl but Nick intervened before that could happen. Remembering the motion that the mysterious Magician made when he first experienced Malevolent Shrine, Nick used his right index finger to trace a horizontal straight line away from his body; laws were formed within his mindscape and some of his magic energy was consumed in using the spell.
(Sever.)
The wicked bear suddenly realized that its vision had turned upside down and that it seemed like it was falling to the ground but actually only its head was falling to the ground; the wicked bear had been decapitated by Nick's spell. The wicked bear died with an almost human like expression of surprise on its face.
Nick stood in his spot watching the rest of the wicked bear's body fall to the ground with blood oozing from the opening in its neck.
(A rank 2 spell that requires only 1,500 magical units of rank 1 magic energy. With such lethality, I've finally solved the problem of my main attack methods costing too much.)