Chapter 161 - Discovering new abilities in an unorthodox way

The second I managed to throw my first fireball, it's level increased. But those progression points… I wonder how many of them do I get per single throw?

"Fireball"

With the spark of flames igniting from my energy on top of my hand, I once more pushed it away with a sweep of my energy. Limiting the force that I applied on it this time, I managed to considerably slow down it speed to a point when I was actually barely able to follow it with my eyes!

With the explosion appearing on the same spot as before, I enter a state of deep thought, trying to figure out how can I get even finer control over this spell. While the high speed of the projectile is a good thing, there will be the times when I will try to home it towards the target instead of just pushing it in one direction. Considering how this flame was made out of the spiritual energy only, there was no drop in its trajectory whatsoever! At least, I wasn't able to observe it in the distance that separated me from the wall!

Taking a look at my status window, I saw something nice.

"Small Fireball (level 2 1/50 progression)"

So every use of the fireball advanced one point in the progression bar? While it was all nice and dandy, I also realised that with the second level of this fireball, the amount of energy that it dried changed from a minuscule one to exactly fifty mana points! I can't be certain about future developments, but for now, let's say that using this ability cost is as high as progression to the next level threshold.

With that done, it's time to consider what other abilities should I use. With Bonger acting greedy only when it comes to taking my attribute points, all his other advices were on point. Since that's the case, I really don't want to practice more than three abilities for now!

"Shockwave!"

After serious consideration, I decided to go with this ability. Every gamer knows that after DPS, the most important thing to look for is crowd control. As long as you can keep disturbing your opponent, you don't even need to worry about your own protection!

Bang!

As soon as I uttered my command under my nose, a loud noise could be heard while a small cloud of dust rose from the place I was looking at when I cast the second ability of my choosing. While the effect was pitifully small, it could still be troublesome to continue moving if it appeared right under your feet!

Discarding the message that informed me about the advance of this ability, I used it again, only to see a great improvement in its power. After trying it out a few times more, I finally gauged the max distance at which I could use it.

Surprisingly, I was free to cast it as far as my eyes could see! But that wasn't the best part about it!

With a small memory from the times when I played an illegally downloaded game, that initially was designed for the consoles, yet I managed to launch it on my personal computer. At some point in my adventure in that fictional world, I acquired a rather weak ability, that dealt very small damage but knocked every enemy around my character. While it was weak, the cost of using it was minuscule as well… But it has no cooldown time between uses! Just by standing in the middle of a group of enemies, I was able to simply wear their hit points down by constantly spamming that ability!

Of course, it didn't work on any of the bosses, but I was able to get through the rest of the game without even wearing any sort of armour!

"How is your progress?"

Finished with absorbing the energy from the stones, Eve watched as the crystal dissipated into a cloud of dust before falling down to the ground before she turned and saw me with a joyous look on my face.

"It seems to be working. Can you tell me what do you think about this? Fireball!"

Turning to face my beloved, I aim my palm at the wall nearby. With the intention to let her see the travel of the fire as well, I limit the energy that I will push it with to the maximum. Instead of letting it spread like a wave, I make a thin thread out of it, and lightly poke to the side of the flame.

At this moment, I realise that something is going wrong.

Instead of launching with a slow speed, the energy that I was trying to push it with actually fused with the flame, pulling more and more of my energy inside!

With every moment, the fire turned greater and greater, making me almost unable to react in time! While my intention was to cast it somewhere near Eve to let her judge the power of the attack, I instantly move my hand away, aiming at the wall far away. With the speed of absorption of my energy growing exponentially, I use the last fumes that I have to push it away!

Barely able to hold to my senses, I grab spirit stones from my storage ring, madly absorbing all the energy that is contained within them.

"Barrier! Barrier! Barrier! Barr…"

As soon even the tiniest amount of my mana is regenerated, I instantly pour it into casting barriers on me and Eve. Thankfully, with the fireballs grown to the size of a house with all the input of my energy, it's really slow while travelling through the air. I guess its speed depends on its firepower compared to the strength that I used to push it away.

With Eve noticing my pale complexion and the size of the fireball, she instantly joined with my effort to stack as many barriers as possible. With the defences placed on this room, there was a great chance that all the energy that wouldn't be able to spread in blocked directions, would come back and hit us along with those parts that would reach us in any other scenario.

As the fireball finally reached the furthest point of the room away from us, my vision blanked.

RAOAR

As if someone detonated a fucking nuke just an around two kilometres away from me, my ears stopped functioning only a short while after a sudden flash of light deprived me of my sight. Without almost any wait, I could feel my shields crumbling one after the other, while I kept retreating while holding Eve and putting more and more shields every time our backing away made some space for them.

Just as the last spirit stone crumbled in my hand, the last bit of energy got pushed from our bodies to add up to Eve's shields and my last fume of mana got turned into a barrier, we reached the doors.

With a sudden idea, I blindly molested the wall for long enough to find the lock, opened the gate and threw both of us outside. In the last moment, before our last defences crumbled, I managed to pull out the jade key from the gate, forcing it to shut down instantly.

"Blop!"

"Fireflare ability discovered!"

"Fireflare ability locked due to insufficient strength to survive the rebound!"

"Please, upgrade your defences!"

Righ, why didn't I invest my fucking attribute points in intelligence to get enough mana to fend this ability off?