Chapter 200: Status: Pending

Vlad had only just started absorbing the mana from his surroundings when he felt a piercing pain shoot through his meridians.

[Warning! Impure Umbra Mana of Tempest Grade has been detected in the host’s meridians. The host’s body is incapable of purifying or absorbing Tempest Grade Mana. Immediate cessation of the Art of Dragon Breathing is recommended!]

"Khwak!" Vlad coughed out a mouthful of blood. He immediately cancelled the absorption, the thin smoke of darkness dissipating from his body.

Thankfully, no one noticed, as their attention was fixed on the ceiling above, where Seraphina and Alisha had just plucked out the eye.

’Damn it, I completely overlooked the presence of Tempest Mana,’ Vlad muttered, clutching his chest. In an attempt to replenish his mana, he had ended up suffering even more internal injuries.

As Seraphina and Alisha reached the ground, he quickly wiped the blood from his lips and rose to his feet.

"Is this the Genesis Artifact?" he asked, gathering with the duo along with Hugo and Raphael. Their curious gazes were fixed on the Eye in Seraphina’s hand, which shimmered with a faint silver glow.

"It looks really mysterious," Hugo gasped, taking a closer look. "What kind of abilities could it possess?"

"That’s for the academy to find out," Raphael stated matter-of-factly. "Our work here is done."

Seraphina extended her hand towards Alisha. "Keep the artifact with you. My storage ring contains the corpses of the trolls and the oni. It is highly unlikely, but the artifact might react with them."

"Then I definitely can’t keep it," Alisha immediately waved her hands in dismissal. "I also have the body of a troll in my storage ring."

"Same," Hugo said, shaking his head.

"Likewise," Raphael added.

All of their eyes shifted to Vlad.

"Well, I don’t have any monsters in my ring, but..." he mumbled, rubbing the back of his head. "I am completely out of mana. Even opening the inventory of my storage ring could cause Mana Deviation."

He was barely keeping himself from fainting. Not only was he drained, but he was also injured.

"Why didn’t you say so?" Seraphina scoffed, taking out a potion filled with dark liquid from her storage ring and placing it in his hand. "Here, drink this."

"This is?" Vlad asked, looking at the potion with a raised eyebrow.

"An Umbra Element mana recovery potion," Seraphina revealed casually, causing Vlad to release a shocked gasp.

He was well aware of his low mana reserves, so he had visited the market to buy some mana recovery potions.

Their exorbitant prices almost pulled the poor soul out of him. A low-rank recovery potion cost two thousand Credits. And for that price, it could restore only fifty percent of Vlad’s mana, who already had very low mana reserves to begin with. Not to mention, he was already fifty thousand Credits in debt.

Thus, he had decided not to buy these poor-value potions. He could just use the Art of Dragon Breathing for a quick recovery. That was what he had thought, at least.

He never expected that he would actually need one.

He looked at the potion with hesitant eyes, well aware of how costly a single bottle was. If it had been someone else, he would have outright rejected it, but he and Seraphina were already way past that.

"Thanks," he said to Seraphina, opening its lid and chugging down the potion. A thin veil of dark energy covered his body as his mana slowly recovered. Since his core was formed of dual elements, he could convert this umbra mana into electro and vice versa.

Around ten percent... thirty percent... fifty percent... sixty percent... seventy percent!

Vlad’s eyes snapped open, his jaw dropping. It had restored almost three-quarters of his mana reserves.

"H-how much did this potion cost?" he asked Seraphina, seeming genuinely worried now.

"Tch, stop asking useless questions and keep this with you," Seraphina retorted, shoving the Eye into his hand.

"A-are you an angel?" he asked, tilting his head, his crimson eyes staring at her with newfound admiration.

Both his words and the way he looked at her caused an immediate blush to spread across her face.

"Ughh, how could you say such stupid things with a straight face?" she exclaimed, averting her eyes. The fact that Alisha and Hugo were already giving her teasing smirks only made it all the more embarrassing for her.

Vlad, completely oblivious to the silence that was louder than any words, put the Eye into his storage ring.

His mind had drifted elsewhere, a deep frown of thought evident on his forehead.

"What’s on your mind, commoner?" Seraphina asked, noticing his absent-mindedness.

"There is something that I can’t make sense of," Vlad said in a serious tone, gathering the attention of the entire squad. "I thought that the presence of Umbra I was sensing came from the Genesis Artifact. But as you all already know, the artifact is element-neutral."

"So you also noticed something strange?" Seraphina’s serious words shifted everyone’s attention to her.

"You mean..."

"The sabers that the oni used in the fight... they were forged from cold iron," she revealed with a frown. "It’s not uncommon for monsters to possess forged weapons. Seniors and Professors visit the Forest of Death every month. The oni might have found those sabers discarded somewhere or taken them from the corpse of a fallen awakener. But that still doesn’t explain its ability to wield Aura."

"Lady Seraphina is right," Hugo added. Now that she mentioned it, there was definitely something not right about the oni. "It took years of training and proper methods to channel mana, and only then might an awakener manifest Aura. If it were that easy for a barely intelligent monster to learn it, then the whole world would be filled with Aura users."

Now the entire group seemed to be deep in thought.

These weren’t the only strange phenomena. For some reason, Vlad hadn’t received the notification for the completion of the quest, even though they had already eliminated the reason for the monster surge.

Just to be sure, he ordered Ren to show the quest window.

[Main Quest Part I: The Abnormalities.

Description: Eliminate the reason for the sudden surge of monsters in the Forest of Death.

Reward on Completion: Early Stage Dragon Transformation Technique.

Penalty on Failure: Inability to enter the next part of the Main Quest.

Status: Pending]