Even though I strengthen my body, it's still weak, so I dodge the first attack by letting myself fall, my knuckles scratching as I still hold the sword. The leech passes over my head and, without even turning around, I send a short pulse of thermal energy at it, hearing it screech in pain.

Another attack from the ground hits me, and this time I let it. I create armor only in front of my chest, absorbing some of the hits, strengthen my arm as much as I can and stab the monster. I continue to keeping up the armor on my chest and stabbing the monster. In the end, I also shoot a pulse of kinetic energy, finally killing it.

Both of us fall down, and I keep the sword stabbed inside the corpse to absorb as much mana as possible.

I pull the sword out and stagger backward, only to avoid a nearly invisible mana attack that the leeches like to use. Small part of it still hits me, making me spin. Falling down to my knees, I push with kinetic energy, sending myself rolling away and dodging another attack.

Another pulse sends me back to my feet, just in time to surround my arm with mana armor and stab the sword deep into the monster's mouth.

Sharp teeth bite on the armor, cracking it, even sucking on the mana and weakening it further.

Crumpled armor presses against my skin, even slightly cracking the bone, and I send thermal energy through. The armor lights up with yellow flames, and the leech, while screeching, lets go. I send a cone of kinetic energy against its head, killing it.

The fight continues for what feels like hours. I'm so terribly weak right now, and killing a few dozen monsters strains me as much as nothing lately.

I roll on the ground, I stumble, I dodge. I groan in pain. All while killing one monster after another, slowly and methodically, saving every point of mana mana and straining myself as little as possible.

At some point, everything stops existing, and there are two orders I follow. Keep thermal energy flowing through so you won't freeze. The second one is to kill anything that moves through the mana particles I use to track the monsters.

Even then, the time comes when the last notification sounds, and after sending my senses into the area, I feel no presence.

A surprise hits me, and with it, a hint of disappointment. I start coming back to my senses and to this dead, dark world with only stars lighting it. The second Beyond trial.

Once again, I stagger towards the closest corpse and stab the sword into it, the blade hungrily sucking on the mana and strengthening my body.

That's when I promise to myself that my next epic passive will be a healing one. Either a strengthened version of my current one or a better one. Actually, should I go and buy a rare passive now to heal me?

After restoring my eyes for a moment and checking the timer, a greedy part of me decides against it and that I would rather save for a stronger passive than buy a weak one. The fight is over anyway, and I’ll soon have Lily to heal my dumb ass.

With ten minutes remaining until the end of the trial, I stand up and start moving back into the valley between the mountains.

Only five minutes remain when I stop in front of the door, my chest moving up and down heavily even after a small usage of mana to get here faster.

The next four minutes I spend staring at the inscriptions and remembering as many as I can, even etching simpler versions of them into a mana stone I have on me. They don’t do anything, and it's more akin to drawing on paper, just that the mana stones are much more expensive, yet I do not hesitate and do it as much as I can.

One minute left.

The world starts feeling as if it freezes over. I hear no sound and nothing moves at all. In the deafening silence, even mana inside my body refuses to move, and so does my mana heart. Only by checking the timer do I confirm that time didn’t freeze, as it continues to tick down.

Then a whisper sounds in my head, (So very curious. Haven't I met you during your first Trial?)

There isn’t any connection that I could cut off, nor mana I could feel. The voice is just there, in my head. The inscriptions on the door start glowing even brighter, and the entire mountain feels as if it's shaking.

“Who are you?” I ask.

(Just an intent I left in the tutorial.) the voice says as if it explains everything, yet it only creates more questions for me.

“Why?”

(To mess with @*--?#)!) it pauses, and I can nearly feel amusement from it. (So she censored even her name.) This time it laughs, the mountain shaking even more, and big pieces falling all around as it continues to crack.

The inscriptions glow in a painfully intense light, and I feel sick just from sensing the enormous amount of mana they contain and manipulate.

Five seconds remaining.

“Who is she?” I ask my last question.

(The Ruler of Greed, obviously.)

Then I get forced out.

No portal appears near me; it's just my body that is yanked backward, everything around me turning into a blur. When it all stops, I find myself in the underground area under the house.

I sense that I triggered some sort of trap, and when I send my senses into the area, I realize that it's only Sophie's vastly improved web that surrounds the house. The effect I triggered was something akin to detection or a doorbell.

(Welcome back,) I let Sophie connect to my mind through her web.

(Can you send Lily here?) I ask while sliding to the ground, my back against the wall.

Huh, there is still so much blood?

(I did it already. Are you…)

I do not hear the rest of the words, and finally, after a week, I let myself pass out. My last thought is that Lily will be pissed off.

When I get back to myself, I decide to keep my eyes closed and don’t move at all, nor change the way I breathe. Instead, I only send my senses and detect three people in the room: Lily, Tess, and Hadwin.

“So, how is he?” Hadwin asks first.

At least a few hours must have passed already, so this more looks like he and Tess are checking on me while Lily heals me.

But there is one question. Does she need to touch me that much? I mean, it's probably so her powers can more easily enter my body and all, but it still feels a bit awkward having her hand move on my chest and around the wounds there.

“If I use [Sacrifice] I can heal him much faster, but I don’t think it's needed. His passive did help a bit,” from Lily’s voice I hear contempt, as if she is looking down at my rare graded passive.

That's quite rude. Pyrokinetic Resurgence is trying its best.

“Well, you can tell him he almost died and you saved his life, Lily,” Hadwin says it in a way a grandpa would talk to his favorite grandchild.

In answer, Lily giggles and jokingly says something back.

I didn't even notice they became so close. It feels a bit awkward finding it out. Sure, enough time passed to create friendships between people in the group, yet it still feels a bit weird.

“We will go, there is a quest to scout the territory around ants, apparently they are even closer now and if it continues this way they will get to the city in a month or two,” Tess sighs.

Oh boy.

“Take care,” Lily shouts as they leave and I hear the doors close.

For a while, Lily continues to send her mana into me and I observe it. I continue to compare it to her skill a few weeks ago and the difference is huge. Lily is slowly but surely becoming really good at it.

Out of nowhere, she pinches and twists the skin on my right collarbone, “I know you are awake.”

Should I start fake snoring and pretend to sleep?

Lily pinches again and I finally open my eyes, “That's rude.”

“It's rude to think I wouldn't notice my patient being awake,” she snorts and lets go of me. “You should get rid of your passive skill. To be honest, it's pathetic how weak it is,” Lily adds out of nowhere.

“It helped me a lot,” I try to fight in the name of my innocent skill.

“I could heal better even on the second floor,” the black-haired healer doesn't seem to be impressed.

Looking around, I realize that I'm on the bed in my room. Feeling the weight on my legs, I look down and there is a big burrito reminding me of a corgi sleeping on my legs.

“He stayed with you the entire time and refused to leave. Even when Izzy tried to lure him out with some food,” Lily says.

“I see,” I get out of myself, “How long?”

“Only a bit over a day.”

Huh, that's not that bad. Slowly I’m improving. I should start working on my new construct to help me deal with these situations. First, I will need to get into healing a bit more. Traditional healing like Lily’s isn't something I was able to get in, but healing through thermal energy with my passive seems like something that I could work with.

Before I realize it, Lily pinches my nose, “You are spacing out again. You always do that,” she complains, “Your eyes start looking even more distant. So what are you thinking about?” she pauses, “Women?” her eyes are cheeky as she says so.

Little twerp, pipsqueak! How dare she use my nose-pinching maneuver against me!

“Yesh, I thoukht about phwoman,” I say while she keeps my nose pinched.

Our eyes meet, she pinches even harder and twists a bit, but then slowly a smile crawls on her lips.

She starts laughing, and I can hear relief in her voice as her laugh sounds in the room, “I'm glad you are fine, Nathaniel,” Lily's voice is soft as she says so.

When Lily leaves, I reach to boop Biscuit's nose to feel manlier, but then I see him sleeping peacefully and remember Lily saying that he stayed with me the entire time. With a sigh, I stop myself from doing so and lay back on the bed, careful not to wake him up.

So weak! I’m so weak! Damn, what would Victoria say if she saw me like that? Actually, I don’t even have to think about it, I can imagine her words, “Just do whatever you want, Nat.” That's just how she is.

“Status,” I whisper quietly to not wake up Biscuit.

Name: Nathaniel Gwyn

Difficulty: Hell Floor: 4 - Waning Realm

Time left until forced return: 4y 125d 10h 2m 6s

Traits (1/3): Mana Circuit

Lvl 182

Strength: 85

Dexterity: 87

Constitution: 223

Mana (Stage 1/3 - Vast Mana): 686 + 686

Primary Class: Focused Channeler (Epic)

Sub-class: [Initiate of Pride]

Active skills:

Focus (Dual Focus Consolidation) - Lvl 40

Mana Manipulation (Advanced Mana Manipulation) - Lvl 41

Perception - Lvl 39

Redistribution (Symbiotic Transference) - Lvl 38

Armament - Lvl 40

Mana Infusion - Lvl 37

Resonance - Lvl 31

Mana Domain - Lvl 15

Tether - Lvl 7

Constructs:

Reinforcement (Construct)

Kinetic Mana Heart (Construct)

Mana Regulator (Construct)

Mana Sovereignty Mantle (Construct)

Passive skills:

Cerebral Harmony (rare)

Mana-Fortified Resilience (rare)

Pyrokinetic Resurgence (rare)

Mana Reservoir (epic)

Arcane Resilience (epic)

Tokens:

Beyond Difficulty entrance token

Active skill combination token (low-grade)

Shards: 3032

Nice, the reward of 1000 shards is already here. I have gained 12 levels, three of them from that annoying beast. A few skills leveled up too and broke through a bottleneck, meaning that I need to get two more skills over 40 to get a skill upgrade token as a reward from a side quest. Well, maybe I will ignore this quest and just use the active skill combination token as it seems much more useful than the skill upgrade token. It could also take me a few weeks to break through the skill bottleneck to level forty.

But the biggest reward surely is the way I used [Armament]. A mecha-like armor allowed me to increase my size and fight against a much bigger monster that was resistant to my ranged attacks.

With a few improvements, this could become terrifyingly strong, even though right now I should hesitate to use it. My proficiency is still terrible, so it used way too much mana and the process was so bad it put a useless strain on my body. A few weeks of experimenting with it should improve it further and add another weapon to my arsenal.

But now, the thing I want to check the most.

“Use active skill combination token.”

You have used an active skill combination token. Please pick two skills from the following ones you would like to combine.

Warning! Combining two skills will reduce the level of the acquired skill.

Warning! A combination of not-compatible skills can result in worse skills.

Warning! After combining the skills, it will become extremely difficult to acquire the skills used for combination.

List of available skills to combine:

Mana Manipulation (Advanced Mana Manipulation) - Lvl 41

Perception - Lvl 39

Mana Infusion - Lvl 37

Armament - Lvl 40

Tether - Lvl 7

Oh, so [Focus], [Redistribution], [Resonance], and [Mana Domain] are not available for combination. It can either mean that the skills are just too high tier to be used this way, or the skill combination token is too low tier, and I would need to acquire a stronger one to actually combine these skills.

Well, it doesn't matter; I wouldn’t use it on either of those four skills. They are way too important to me to use them this way.

[Mana Manipulation] with [Perception]

[Mana Manipulation] with [Mana Infusion]

[Mana Manipulation] with [Tether]

[Mana Manipulation] with [Armament]

[Perception] with [Mana Infusion]

[Perception] with [Tether]

[Perception] with [Armament]

[Mana Infusion] with [Tether]

[Mana Infusion] with [Armament]

[Tether] with [Armament]

Now then, I have ten possible combinations. Let's get into theorizing.