From Player To Npc

Dark Shadow was happy.

He learned that the person he enjoyed having around was alive. He somehow communicated with the person with the big stick or staff as mister Sinhunter had told him to call it.

But it seemed like he couldn't get back to them for some time, and they would meet him at another of these rooms that they trained last time. They had to go through many places, or floors as the rest called them, to reach that destination, but he now had a goal to go through them.

He also wanted to get stronger and improve to impress that person next time they meet again. He actually worked on something that could make it happen.

He couldn't speak to anyone other than mister Sinhunter, but he could understand them, as long as they didn't use any complicated words. His problem was he couldn't produce the same variety of sounds as the rest, so he couldn't speak back.

But then, one day, he noticed that the air was making a sound while moving around. Although it was a certain type of sound, it seemed with some manipulations, and he could change the resulted sound. So he tried to make way for using the air to produce sounds that would be close to what he wanted to say.

He would secretly work on this project of his, as he didn't want the others to inform the person he wanted to surprise.

He also continued his training to increase his power and what the person called level. He seemed to have gotten more aggressive against their foes, but in reality, it was that he was just more reckless. In the past, they guided him to what to do, even if he didn't always follow those guides, but now he was taking all the decisions by himself.

There were some close calls, and others had to come to his rescue, but none that really put his life in danger. Even when he was cornered, he could deal with many powerful monsters because of his innate strengths but would take more damage in progress.

After each battle, he imagined that person scolding him about the mistakes he made, but instead of feeling sad, he was getting more determined. He had to get better by himself and make that person proud. This was his mission from now on, and one would pity anyone who got in his way.

He couldn't also wait for them to make a camp to rest, as he had found a new source of food.

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Shingi didn't know what to do, as never in the past was in a situation like that.

He had some love interests in the past, but they never lasted long, as he was more focused on playing the game than his partner. So the only time they had fun together was when they were playing the game, but they got bored and mad at Ameanum for not doing anything else after some time.

Ardent walked over and sat in front of him, and he could feel her stare piercing his body.

"So, what do you do there?" [Ardent Scythe]

This response surprised Shingi, as he couldn't detect any anger in it.

"Just testing my Skills and training. Did you have a pleasant sleep?" [Shingi]

"Could be more pleasant if you had stayed more." [Ardent Scythe]

She stood up with nothing else to say and walked over towards Zhen.

"Come on. Let's go." [Ardent Scythe]

She clearly didn't speak to Shingi but Zhen.

"Go? Where?" [Zhen]

"To our date, silly." [Ardent Scythe]

This response confused both Shingi and Zhen. It seemed that she actually meant it when she said she would go on a date with Zhen.

Shingi didn't know what to think and found it suspicious and that there was something more behind this. Maybe something had happened between them while he was gone. Or Ardent was planning something.

He put it in the back of his mind for now, as it didn't affect him, and went back to focusing on the task at hand. He kept changing mana at both Light and Earth Element simultaneously and then changing the Eath to Light and the Light to Earth.

He noticed that every time he changed an Element, it was harder to change it again, and he could change it at most three times currently. With each change, the compatibility of the mana was falling, and at the third one, it became pretty much unusable. He was aware of that limit and knew that the strongest recorded person with that title could make ten Element changed to an amount of mana.

Making that many changes could be considered unthinkable for one to do, but in combat situations, change with every moment, and that type of change could be needed at any moment. So he had to decrease the change of compatibility with each change, too.

But also the biggest the limit, it also meant that the better his understanding over the Elements and his title's ability.

There were no records of any NPC reaching Master of the Arcane III, other than Soren, who had pretty much all Arcane-related titles.

Shingi wanted to increase the proficiency with all the Elements of his Mana Pool so that he could pass the limit of having only three active of them, not counting Spirit Element. The limit was of the System, but it didn't say that it couldn't change or be nullified at some point.

He also wanted to unlock the missing Elements in his Mana Pool, but he could feel that his Mana Tree was at its limit with what he currently had. Furthermore, he could feel that the accidental addition of the Air Element wasn't so as good news for his Mana Tree as one thought.

It had affected the balance for the production of his mana, so he had to balance them all once again. If he tried to add more mana elements in there, it would ruin the balance even more and even lead his Mana Tree to explode. If a Mana Tree exploded like that, which wasn't too uncommon, as there were people pushing limits they couldn't handle, then there was also a chance of the person to die.

If the person didn't die, the explosion would damage his inner place, meaning that it would damage the Skills houses and Manors and the ones for the Spells. This kind of damage would affect the power of the Skills and Spells when used.

Shingi didn't want to test his luck and would try to keep trying into safe areas.

His training continued for a few hours. Zhen and Ardent had returned from their date during that time.

It seemed like they had fun, even if they didn't leave the dungeon as Zhen couldn't go outside as it was still day. Shingi had wondered why Zhen didn't like sunlight, as Oozes didn't have any problem leaving outside, just were used to be underground. They wanted their privacy.

Maybe wanting his privacy was also the reason Zhen didn't leave.

Shingi had reached his limit for the time and decided to rest for now. He didn't plan to go back to his house, as it would be a waste of moving around.

Marcy had recruited him, and the Zhen's Lab was within range of him not getting automatically unrecruited from being too far away. So since she had recruited him, she could send him a message to the chat if something had happened.

He went to the only bed that existed there, and soon he cast one of his MANA DOUBLES to stop Ardent Scythe from sneakily joining him.

He was aware of what was happening around him more than ever as his MANA SENSE had improved even more. It was currently more than half its original power, meaning before he got weakened. However, this didn't mean that losing the effect that weakened him would make his MANA SENSE to be stronger, at least not by much, so he had to keep training it.

His MANA MANIPULATION also had increased, especially when he had to manipulate Earth of Light Element.

He had to let his mind lest a bit, and he would do the same training but this time with Air and Fire Element, as his proficiencies on those were the lowest other than the Spirit Element. He could use these two in combat the most, so he had to make himself as much used to using them as possible.

He had to let his mind rest and not use his Mana Skills, but this didn't mean he had to do nothing.

He had another mental training as he still couldn't access his TRANCE ROOM. In that training, he had summoned his sword and started training with it.

He was great at using the sword effectively but without a specific fighting style. He had studied a few schools of martial arts that involved using a sword, but he mastered none and had a mix of them at his way of fighting.

This training actually made him think of Annoue and what type of training she went through, as that Zax guy was teaching her how to use the sword.

Maybe she could teach him a special style next time they meet.