Chapter 142: Flesh Weaver, and the Dark Realms of mana

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[Foreign strand of Arcana successfully adapted, and absorbed.]

[It is now at your behest.]

The thing that Jimmy liked to call the doomsday timer, had reached zero an hour ago.

Jimmy had initially swiped away, and ignored the system tab that flashed him the notification, because of everything that happened over the past couple of hours.

Luckily, he didn’t have to worry about Vorin anymore. Despite the fact that he initially took a fall, and broke his wing, he was doing okay now. Though he zoned out sometimes, he could fly just fine.

Now that Jimmy was up in the air, staring at the beautiful maze-like landscape of greenery riddled between the lakes below, all he could think about was that foreign strand of Arcana. He wanted to figure out what exactly made it foreign.

Likewise, now that he had the time, he asked the system not to only brief him on the matter, but to share every detail she could possibly share.

[The initial foreign strand of Arcana, was a skill that I categorized as dark magic, before introducing it to your arsenal. You couldn’t have found it in your Evolution Tree, so you couldn’t have bought it even if you had a million system points to your name.]

[What makes this skill so foreign, is the fact that nearly no mages practice it. Running into it in one of your core scavenging sessions is purely based on luck.]

‘Okay…’ He added, silently, albeit irritated, ‘Don’t beat around the bush with me here. What is this skill? What is it called, and what does it do?’

[It is called: Flesh Weaver]

“Huh?” He grunted, and then, through a silent thought, he asked, ‘Fuck me! That does sound dark. Can I curse a human with testicular cancer or something?’

[Technically, yes.]

[The Flesh Weaver skill does not discriminate between living, and undead flesh, but the most efficient way to use it, would be to use its bone multiplying properties to essentially design undead slaves of your own.]

[Assuming you have the dark mana to support your ideas, you can design something like the skeleton of a dragon, give it flesh, organs, and even, life. The dragon would then forever be at your bidding, as it would automatically recognize you as its master.]

[If it ‘dies’ in battle, you can just design another one.]

‘Damn… and I thought the skill was dark.’ He thought, ‘Your recommendation is much darker, system, where is this coming from?’

[I’m designed to sit on a fence, to be neutral. If you ask for information that I can provide, I will provide it. If you choose to follow the dark path of creating undead slaves, the sins are yours to rack up, not mine.]

After he read through that short, compact description, Jimmy pondered over the matter for a full hour. He didn’t say a thing to the system, partially because he didn’t want to have an ethical debate with her, one that he was sure he’d lose, but he did feel that the system shared some of the blame.

She introduced him to a much darker version of dark magic, and if Jimmy knew himself, and he did, he was going to pursue this path. Not for the sake of glory, prestige, power, and everything those aspects entailed, but he’d follow that path just because he wanted to see what happened if he tried the skill.

He had the natural curiosity of a great scientist. Frankenstein’s master would agree with his views.

At last, he asked, ‘You mentioned dark mana. What’s that all about? I feel that you mentioned it before.’

[Dark mana supplies dark magic. In fact, experienced dark mages have a completely separate path of mana realms that they actively pursue. It’s somewhat identical to your current realm progression in terms of levels, and pools, except it’s dark.]

[You need three dark magic based skills to officially tap into the dark realms, and ascend through them.]

[If you choose to pursue this path, you won’t lose, or get locked out of your progress in your current blue mana realm. You’ll wield both realms, though, at obvious different rates of progress.]

The system tried to simplify things for him, but as always, learning something new was difficult. He had to read the system tab containing those few details over and over, up until he actually understood it, ten minutes later.

‘Yeah, I guess that makes sense.’ He nodded lightly, ‘After all, since MQ, and SQ exist, it wouldn’t surprise me if DMQ was a thing as well.’

[It is actually called DQ, short for Dark Quotient. Would you like to view your current DQ?]

‘Obviously yes,’ He nodded so fast that he got dizzy. ‘I live for stats like that, you know?’

[Your current DQ is 10 points.]

[As you might be able to guess, you got those 10 points when you obtained the Flesh Weaver skill.]

‘Starting from zero once more, erg, from ten? That’s great. Now I have four kinds of intelligence to worry about.’ He added, and then asked, ‘Let me guess, those ten points won’t even let me ‘design’ something as stupid as a frog?’

[Incorrect.]

[You currently cannot design anything at all.]

[As I said, you need three dark skills to unlock the dark realms. Only then can you practice dark magic.]

Jimmy thought that was fair. He also understood why dark mages were so bad at what they did. Compared to the normal, pious mages, they had to do three times more work just to get started. He almost pitied them.

The natural next step he took was to open his Evolution Tree, flip to the Arcana Branch, and then he followed the fifth branch collar of that branch, revolving around dark magic. He wanted to see if he could find a couple of dark skills that he could buy right away so he could hit the ground running! So to speak.

To his memory lapsing shock, he was reminded that this collar of the Evolution Tree was beyond his price range!

‘Five thousand system points for a simple resurrection skill?!’ He screamed internally.