By hunting the abyssal slimes he could make the area he could easily gain experience for not only his level but also for his skills.
When he was tearing each slime apart he focused on hitting the cores, he also kept frenzy bombs falling upon the enemy so that both spells would be gaining experience.
During this process he tried to ignore the lingering thoughts about the Queen's offer, he did not like the idea of being some breeding stock for a devil.
With the significant level differences between himself and the slimes it almost felt like he was hunting in the dungeon again.
The slimes were effectively large targets for his own spell and level grind.
He eventually had to start looking for larger targets since these were giving him a lot of experience but not enough to level up quickly.
With his motivation of returning to the city he hunted larger and larger prey, from the average level of the area he had learned to expect enemies of the 300 range so he worked his way through.
He avoided flying enemies and he targeted creatures that seemed to not be able to attack from a distance.
He did not quite know why it happened this way but he eventually lost track of his levels and when he finally looked again he had gotten very far.
~~~~~~~~~~
Belial
Void Mage lv231. (Supreme)
Lesser Tri-Elemental Archdevil
Affinity: 100% Shadowfire 100% Life
Mana Core: 100% Shadowfire
Strength: 20 (+60)
Vitality: 3400 -> 4000 (+510 +25%)
Agility: 2000 -> 3000 (+80 +25%)
Wisdom: 3800 -> 5000 (+80 +25%)
Intelligence: 7000 -> 8000 (+70 +25%)
Free stats: 244
~~~~~~~~~~
After distributing his stats to be as even as possible in the thousands he got ready to return and get his class advanced.
If he advanced his class at this point he would probably be able to achieve more plus he had noticed that he had many magic skills at the maximum tier but no knowledge of how to upgrade them.
So he left to find the queen.
~
Inside of the tent the queen was looking at a crystal ball while drinking tea, when he entered she smiled at him.
He felt mana fall over his body and for a moment he was incredibly confused until she spoke.
"Lv231 is not bad for a few hours of work, you will progress quickly but why did you stop?"
He sat down on the seat across from her and held his hands together nervously.
"I need to advance my class right? I also need to ask you how to upgrade a few skills..."
When she heard this she nodded.
"Well first put your hands on this crystal, I procured it for this exact reason today."
When he placed his hands on the crystal as instructed he saw the same screen as before.
Through this he would usually think of mana as balls of energy that floated through the air but was that actually the case?
Even when he used his mana control he never felt anything happen in the world until he began to use the lesser mana manipulation skill.
He could move mana before but he could never cause anything in the world unless he supplied his own mana as he would with a spell.
'What if mana isn't actually part of the world?'
He began to think about mana in a very different way, he imagined it as something more similar to cosmic radiation as the world only seemed to be filled by mana rather than producing it.
When he absorbed mana he always noticed that the empty space would end up filled by the surrounding mana rather than skme new pocket of it being made.
'Maybe mana comes from somewhere else?'
And with this thought he began to use his mana sense to try to find the veil, the line between where this world was and where mana came from.
~~~~~~~~~~
A Divine being has felt your attempt to touch the veil.
The Divine being is amused by your efforts.
Skill granted: Ojos de Dios. [Restricted lv0]
~~~~~~~~~~
He was fascinated by the idea of a god watching him so despite not knowing how to do so he simply gave a prayer of thanks for the gift in his mind before activating the skill.
The first thing he noticed was that he could see a strange haze over the world as if everything were behind a fog.
By looking around he saw blobs of strange matter in the world and when he moved his hand to touch it he felt nothing.
He tried again with his mana manipulation and the blob of matter began to move as he directed it.
He could shape it as he desired as well as force his own affinity into it through touch with his own mana.
When the mana in the air touched his affinity dense mana the difference ended and it was as simple as mixing two liquids.
When he looked at the queen he saw that everything about her was infused with mana and she even seemed to be intentionally infusing her own mana into the surroundings.
"Why are you making the area around you full of your mana? Isn't it better to keep it inside?"
"....You can see that? I surpress my mana when I do that."
She leaned forward with a grin as she reveals a number of spell circles hidden from view which his new skill had allowed him to vaguely see.
"I am impressed darling, you could see my trump cards even when all those silly heroes sent by the church never could, I doubt even the pope could see these."
She laughed as she spoke about this secret which he had learned so easily.
"So what else do you wish to know? I can see that you are not yet done."
He nods but before he could ask he actually noticed a few strange things in her body.
By focusing his sight further he could actually see strange flaws in the surface of her core and her mana veins so he began to look at his own.
The only part of his body not flawed was his mana gem and he began to suspect a reason behind that.
"How do I upgrade my mana veins?"
He listened to her explanation while examining every single centimeter of his mana veins, in each place he saw strange cracks and thin walls as well as the occasional blockage from an improperly formed area.
She explained that he would have to force his mana veins to pump more mana until they shattered, at which point he had to reform them with a denser wall which would eventually match the grade of the mana gem he had when they connected.
As she explained it to him he saw that the idea was just... incredibly flawed due to how the mana veins looked in his body.
'What if I make my actual veins pump mana instead?'