Chapter 201: Grave

"Hmm… so what now? The knowledge says I am now awakened as an Invoker or an Enchanter. Which one am I?" Ning asked. 

He looked into more information regarding that. The way to tell apart an Invoker from Enchanter was to use Aether itself and try to do something with it. 

"Either create stuff or manipulate what already exists, huh. Let's try… creating water. See if that works," Ning thought. 

He closed his eyes and started visualizing flowing water inside of his mind. As the image started forming inside of his mind, Aether started bubbling inside his Sea of Aether. 

The Aether was burning. Ning could physically feel something changing in his body. Slowly, droplets started forming in front of him and got together to form water.

He tried to concentrate as much as he could on flowing water when suddenly, his body lost all energy and he fell onto the ground. 

The drops of water that were forming in front of him dropped onto the back of his head, letting him know that at the very least, he was successful. 

"What happened?" he asked as he got back up. The feeling of lack of energy had now disappeared. "Why did I fall?" he tried to figure out. 

"Oh," he said when he remembered a bit of information from the knowledge regarding Aether and Aether users. When one's aether in their body completely disappears, their body stops functioning until they get their aether back. 

'Thank god I had the automatic collection one, or I would've had to spend many minutes trying to collect Aether,' Ning thought. 

"At least, I know I am an Invoker now," Ning thought.

As the Aether slowly filled his Sea of Aether, it also increased the size of the Sea of Aether. "I want to see how far I can go with my current size of the Sea of Aether," Ning thought and without hesitation, jumped into the crater. 

Immediately, he opened up a barrier and put all of his focus into using his divine sense to check the Sea of Aether. 

Within seconds, he was blasted out of the crater and was thrown quite far away from the crater this time. He landed on a piece of wood and rolled down onto the fresh snow. He only got to check his Sea of Aether for mere seconds, but that was enough. 

"With the current size of my Sea of Aether, I should be able to become Aether Student and be halfway along the way to become an Aether Master. After getting fully acclimated to the Aether, maybe I can increase the rate at which I can absorb and reach up there quite fast," Ning thought. 

Suddenly, he slapped himself. "No, stop getting sidetracked. You need to leave this place first. You can come back here years later. Until then, you have people you care about," Ning said to himself.

After that, he decided to go back up to the top of the crater and restart the routine. 

CRACK

'Huh?' Ning thought and looked at what he had stepped on. It was the wood that he landed on. The wood was fully covered in frost and when he stepped on it, the outer frost had cracked. 

"What's this?" he thought and looked at it. It was a thick, rectangular wood with some carvings on it. The sun still wasn't up, and Ning knew that was because he was in the south pole of the continent. So, he turned towards the aurora to get some more light. 

"Is this a writing?" Ning wondered. He only had basic language skills, so the most he could do was communicate verbally. 

If he wanted to do anything else, he would either have to ask the system for higher-level knowledge of that particular language or just learn the language as everyone else did.

"System, can you translate this?" Ning asked. 

<It is written in the general language of the continent>

<it says 'Here lies Feroy'>

"Feroy? Is that a name?" Ning wondered. He then looked around him and wondered, "Is this a headstone of a grave?" He tried to search for more and soon found many similar headstones buried here.

'I don't see any graves though. Is it perhaps buried really deep?' Ning wondered. He tried for a bit, but then gave up and walked back up to the edge of the crater. 

He was going to restart the routine all over again. He jumped back into his spear and took his body inside him and went back to sleep. 

After 3 months of collecting energy, he now had a little less than 8 Billion Kinetic energy

In the next 10 iterations, he had about 8.6 Billion Kinetic energy. 

In the next 10 iterations, he had about 9.2 Billion Kinetic energy. 

In the next 10 iterations, he had about 9.8 Billion Kinetic energy.

Ning looked at his status and made a big grin. Just a few more days and he could increase the cap with his Kinetic Energy as well. 

So, happily, he went back to the spear and took back his body. Then, he asked the system to put him to sleep. 

As soon as Ning fell asleep, he was awakened as well. He slowly got back into consciousness and suddenly, he felt something. 

'Movement?' he thought. He could feel the spear moving in a general direction. 

"Sigh, it was an unfortunate event, but you need to stop thinking about your father's death now, Famir. It was not your fault. He went inside the forbidden forest to find the beast cores on his own," A voice came from near Ning. 

He looked around and saw a group of people walking around barren land. The spear was being held by a rather elderly person. 

The youth in front of Ning, who was around 18 years old had a red face with teary-eyed. 'Did his father die?' Ning wondered and started to feel sad for him. 

'So… he is an orphan now huh? It's certainly going to be hard for him.'