Chapter 43: Curiosity

After a brief rest as they cleaned themselves up, Therina followed Styx to the training grounds. There was a joyous hop in her step as she hummed to herself, tenderly rubbing her stomach through her shirt periodically.

The other girls were currently there, covered in sweat.

Rhea and Theo were training in a special area where there were houses structured built out of stone and a lot of areas with the floor missing and wooden posts to stand on instead.

Rhea held a bow with ball tipped heads so they wouldn't cause any serious harm while Theo had one of Styx's standard sword and two curved daggers equipment sets.

The target of this training schedule Styx came up with was that one party would practice pursuit tactics to take down the target, while the target would practice escaping and defending oneself while under pursuit.

They moved extremely quickly over difficult terrain, flittering across sections which they had to run atop wooden posts as naturally as solid ground. They didn't slow down in the least, nor did Rhea show any mercy as she targeted weaker parts of his body arrows that would otherwise be fatal, such as the neck, heart, or other organs.

Styx had long forced them to train like this, as the stimulation from danger provided a far greater increase in skills as well as potential. Even the sparring was done with real weapons that had blunt edges designed to prevent cutting and piercing attacks from causing fatal injuries. Of course, attacks were still controlled somewhat to avoid deliberate fatal attacks or crushing their windpipe with blunt force trauma.

The girls were lucky in that Styx had trained them in controlling their own mana network, even earning the Mana-Health Conversion skill as they learned to use their mana to heal their body. This allowed them to fight harder and longer, actively recovering their bodies.

Theo was unfortunate in this regard as he had to nurse his own injuries as they naturally healed, although Rhea would help tend them for him.

~~~~~

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In an open area of the training field, Styx and Therina stood facing one another while Klair, Kale, and a concerned Elena watched from a distance.

"Are you sure about this?" Therina asked as she held a manasteel training sword in her hand.

"Of course, a combat test for the avatar is required."

Styx held a matching manasteel training sword but had a much more menacing appearance due to his larger, muscular body. If any onlooker were to watch this scene, they would undoubtedly assume he was bullying the elf.

Therina no longer hesitated after Styx gave the final go ahead. She dashed forward with the sword poised to strike. She moved like a cheetah and was before him in the blink of an eye, her sword thrusting at the center of his chest with deadly precision.

Styx had an omnipresent viewpoint throughout the entire dungeon, and every single superhuman movement of hers was captured in fine detail. His avatar had trouble seeing it all, but that viewpoint was basically just an extension of his, like a second, smaller monitor.

He waved his sword to deflect the attack, but before he even got halfway, was stuck in the center of the chest with a solid, bone crunching sound.

"Ngh!" Styx grunted as several bones instantly fractured and the air was forced out of his lungs.

He flew back an entire meter and landed on his back under the shocked gasps of the peanut gallery, waves of agony raging through the body of his avatar.

"Therina!" Klair called out in objection while glaring at the elf accusatorily.

Therina shrugged her shoulder helplessly with a trace of guilt and compassion in her eyes.

"The point of the test would be redundant if I held back."

"She is correct," Styx said in pain as he controlled the pseudo mana network in the avatar to heal the injuries. "Next I will attack, and you focus on defending."

Styx attacked with his sword, far less skilled than Therina. The elf casually intercepted and deflected the sword while using a set of fancy footwork to avoid others.

"Enough," Styx stated with clear displeasure on his face.

"How were the findings?" Therina asked, putting away the training swords before coming closer to hug and shower him in kisses.

"This body is weak. While I could follow all your movements the moment you made them quite easily, the body could not keep up. There is also a difference between understanding techniques and applying them."

"Mmhmm," She instinctively nodded in agreement while trying to seal his lips, disregarding the other girls.

"Cut it out," Styx stated as he grabbed her face and pushed it back. "All you girls get equal shares as much as I can."

Styx pulled the dark elves into his empty arm one by one, deeply kissing them.

Elena had experienced it earlier so was somewhat familiar as his tongue pushed her lips apart penetrated deep into her mouth.

Klair and Kale had both never kissed a male before, as their society had a strong culture in relationships and once a pair got together, they tended to never separate again.

Klair was both shy and nervous and his arm wrapped around her waist. She hurriedly pulled back her shoulder length hair on one side and let him steal her lips. She was stiff and tense at first, but soon relaxed as all her worries vanished and she lost herself in the moment.

Kale was much more active, forcing herself into Styx's arm while pushing out a now displeased Therina. The bubbly dark elf wrapped her arms around his neck in a tight hug and taking the initiative to kiss him, her tongue instantly darting into his mouth and exploring as he fought it off with his own.

After the brief interlude, the dark elves joined him and Therina on the final tests, which were first using the avatar in work purposes. He joined the gnomes in refining steel, iron, copper and tin. He could also use the avatar to inject his mana into the iron to create manasteel, but it was neither more nor less effective than how he originally did it.

Next, Rhea and Theo were called over to join them, mainly Rhea who was his designated note taker. She held papers in one hand and a graphite pencil in another. Styx immediately created a rustic wooden clipboard in the hand of his avatar and handed it over to her, who then began taking notes and writing down everything Styx told her to.

All the work with the avatar caused the skill itself to level up, and an influx of mana causing a minor increase in its overall abilities to match.

Then, they went to the crop and mushroom cavern.

"You were saying these couldn't be eaten?" Styx asked Rhea while looking at all the food growing.

"Some of the mushrooms can, but all the other food has too high of a mana content, it will poison the body."

"Mana isn't poison, it is actually a variation of life force. It can't poison you."

"But people who consume food with too high a mana content usually die, and painfully at that."

"Spiritual fruits, especially the rare one which can expand your mana network channels, have an extremely high mana content, so that isn't true."

"…"

"High level rankers consume a lot more food, don't they?"

Kale responded to this one with a giggle as she jumped into his arms.

"Yep~ Especially Second Step rankers, they consume looots of food."

"Then the issue isn't mana content, which your body demands more of as you become stronger. It should factor into oversaturation without the ability for your body to cope with it. Perhaps the world system itself aids in the digestion of spiritual fruits, or there is something unique with how the mana is stored within themselves."

A small pot was brought over and Styx manually threshed and extracted the grains from one of the wheat stalks. He cooked the grains and gave the final product to Therina to eat while also extending his mana tendrils into her body to monitor it.

"Eat."

Therina didn't hesitate and followed the command, eating one spoonful after another without fear.

Styx watched the food enter her and begin digesting, which caused a large influx of lifeforce into her mana network as the food's mana content was broken down during the absorption process. It overflowed out of it and into her body, although her reinforced mana network passively trapped a lot of it and she would have to manually control herself to expunge the excess.

"Why would lifeforce kill people," Styx said quizzically to himself, not expecting anyone to answer.

What he did notice was that it did not nurture the mana network in any way, which was something spiritual fruits did. This was likely related with how the mana was stored and the plant's individual mana network.

With further samples and research, he believed he could even make the wheat have a similar effect in the future.

He also had Therina eat some steamed mushrooms, which had a lower mana content inside of them.

He soon reached a conclusion on what causes the "mana poisoning" that Rhea described and worried over.

"It isn't mana entering the body, but a more primal lifeforce which the mana content in food is broken down to. More is absorbed than your body can naturally expunge under a regular diet if the mana content is too high, which will cause oversaturation in the cells. They will them rupture… indeed, a painful way to die."

"So, it can't be eaten?" Rhea asked in response.

"Of course it can, you just can't eat food with more mana content than what your body can handle, similar to the Burden factor in breeding monsters. In fact, oversaturating your body could actually reduce the Burden impact."

"Your body evolves and strengthens every time you level up, becoming more adept at handling mana. I can also control your mana network to help cleanse your body if you over saturate, which I will help teach you all to do as well."

The most awkward one here was now Theo, who Styx refused to 'enter' and was essentially left to fend for himself. He also had worries about it now as he knew that failsafe didn't apply to him, and to this day, couldn't even feel his mana network.

"What does this mean for me…?" Theo timidly asked, somewhat afraid of the answer.

Styx nonchalantly waved his arm as if it was of no matter and answered, "No matter, I will design a grading system for associating mana content in ingredients and food. The mana naturally lessens when it is cooked and can vary, so testing methods need to exist. Rhea, add treatment method research to the list of important things."

Theo's worries were mostly alleviated before they moved onto the next test. Styx had Therina capture a direwolf and bring it over to him. He took her sword from her and quickly, albeit unskilfully, killed it.

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[

Direwolf <Lv. 4> killed!

+ 61 exp

]

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"Tch," He clicked his tongue as the experience was added directly to his dungeon experience, and not some personal addition to the avatar itself. "So the strength is entirely dependant on the skill level."

"What next?" Therina casually asked while kissing his cheek, causing his displeasure to immediately vanish into happiness.

"The final test… The skill said the avatar can't leave the dungeon, but the piece of me that's inside of you can leave. I want to know what is stopping me from leaving, and why."

The group then walked to the entrance of the dungeon, Styx's avatar standing on the threshold of what constituted his dungeon and what was the outside world.

He waved his arms forward and felt no barrier or other resistive force in place. Actually, there was nothing to stop him from stepping outside at all.

No warning.

No inner feeling of being unable to go outside.

For all intents and purposes, he felt like he could simply step outside.

And so, he did just that.

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[

Avatar has perished.

Cause of death: Severed

]

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[

Time until new avatar is created:

164:22:01

]

⠀

"Argh!!" Styx cried out in pain into everyone's head as his avatar dropped to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

"Styx!" "Styx!" "Husband!" "Darling!"

Elena and Klair called out his name in while Rhea and Theo raised their brows in abject shock.

The latter two voices was by Therina and Kale, whom were struck by a sudden bout of fear strong enough to cause them to call out to him in how they generally referred to him in their head.

Seeing they blurted it out, both blush slightly, but everyone was focused on his body.

Therina was the first to reach his body and was about to pick him up and bring him back into the dungeon when she froze, along with everyone else.

A cold sweat rapidly beaded on her forehead as she was struck by a primal, instinctive terror.

A woman in a worn out robe stood in front of the body where there had previously been no one. She appeared there in a manner which nobody could understand. A moment ago, she wasn't there, then she was. There was no sound to her movement, nor was the wind stirred up.

She had hair darker than the night sky, a pair of similar colored oversized wolf ears grew from the top of her head. Her ears twitched slightly as her pair of lifeless, or perhaps bored, eyes gazed at the elves and current lifeless body on the ground.

Therina tried to reach for the dagger on the back of her waist but her body refused to listen to the commands in her mind. It screamed at her to curl up on the ground in crippling fear, a feeling Theo, Elena and Klair were halfway into falling victim of.

They knew the woman was strong. So strong in fact that any resistance would be useless.

"What are you doing?" Styx's voice entered all of their minds apart from Theo. "Hurry up and bring my avatar back into the dungeon. Hmm? Who's the woman? A new minion? Bring her back too."

Styx couldn't feel the oppressive pressure the woman naturally emitted because she was currently outside of the dungeon.

Not just that, but Irie was in a private location and also currently on a tirade of complaints towards him for his voice constantly interrupting her with random, out of context things due to his lack of care in controlling who can hear him.

Styx's voice seemed to alleviate the oppression for the girls, as they rapidly collected their bearings.

Therina grabbed the avatar and rapidly retreated.

The wolf-eared woman's ears seemed to twitch, and she slightly cocked her head when Styx talked to the elves, as if detecting something and trying to focus on it. She merely watched the elves retreat back into the dungeon, distancing themselves from her.

Therina then looked at the woman, more resolute than before, and stated to her.

"You have been asked to come inside."