"I'm fine though. Well, besides the frostbite, but our resident fire spirit has taken care of that for me."
And that was indeed the case, he had little to no injuries, with the only issue being the fact that he wasn't resistant enough to the cold generated by the spell as he did not possess the ice attribute.
The magic tiers shown on the status board, did not only denote how high the level of magic of a particular attribute one could use, but also how resistant to the element they were.
It was because of Evan's tier 2 status in flame magic that his arm was not burned when he covered his entire right arm in flames earlier. He was more resistant to flames, especially his own.
This was the reason why he had to overload himself with lightning and bypass his own base resistance, to gain the additional resistance from adaptive evolution.
If he wanted to increase his lighting resistance again, he definitely could not use this method again. Maybe he could increase it if he fought a 'crawling lightning' like Jenson did, although the current him would die from a casual flap of its wings.
Anyway, Evan's only current problem was his lack of cold resistance, which was something he wished to avoid given the nature of the 21st to 30th floors, but he was sure that given enough time, he would definitely gain it due to his adaptive evolution.
That and the fact that his energy circuits were overexerted by him casting a Tier 3 spell when he had not yet achieved tier 3 magic, but this was a minor issue that would be solved over time as well.
With an hour or two of rest, he would be back in shape and able to continue dungeon diving. In fact, as far as he didn't overexert himself again, he was very capable of using his energies now.
After all, he was a master-level existence at level 133, and with his 130% stat effectiveness, his body's natural recovery rate was leagues above that of a normal person on his level.
So, it would actually only take him a few minutes to recover enough to use basic and Tier 1 spells, and a few hours to be able to use tier 2 spells again without issues.
"I wanted to replicate one of the spells Jenson showed Laurene and me during one of our lessons, but sadly I don't have the Ice attribute so I had to make do with the skill."
"Jenson? You mean the chief court mage?"
"Yeah. That Jenson."
As Evan replied to Eliza's query, he suddenly realised that there was something about her he wasn't sure of.
"Hey Liz, are you from the great western empire?"
"Huh? Obviously Not."
Her reply made Evan's brow twitch silently as he instantly retorted.
"Where the heck was it Obvious that you were not?!"
"I believe I told you this before, haven't I? That I left home and 'Came to' the great western empire. My choice of words should have made it obvious, shouldn't it?"
It was then that Evan realised that he had indeed had a conversation regarding this with her and she indeed said that.
'Ah, the day before we entered the dungeon.'
"Oh...I forgo-OW!"
Eliza flicked the grey-eyed boy's forehead before pulling him off the ground and turning towards Pride.
"Do we move keep going, or we call it a day?"
"We can keep going. He can too."
The high demon replied, with the latter half of her statement referring to Evan who was now playing some sort of hand-clapping game with Kayla and Amy.
"Ha! I win!"
[Master! No fair!]
[Mmh. Unfair.]
Seeing the interaction between the three, Eliza didn't even know when to start retorting, eventually choosing to ignore it altogether and find consolation with Kuro who was trying to see if he could find any magic stones among the thousands of shards of ice on the floor.
Meanwhile, Pride had pulled Evan out of his game and was questioning him about his new ice magic skill.
"You know about my adaptive evolution, right? If I have enough time and fight enough ice-type rift mages, perhaps let a few spells hit me, it would be enough for me to develop a cold resistance.
As for you, just the very existence of Amy sitting on your shoulder would eliminate all traces of cold coming to you and she can also extend that to Eliza.
That way, we won't end up using any of the resistance potions we brought."
The young hero explained to her as he tossed his damaged gauntlets into his inventory, pulling out a pair of black gloves and putting them on.
"Just how many types of potions do you carry in your inventory?"
Hearing pride's question, Evan placed a hand on his chin and thought about it for a moment before giving a reply that stunned the high demon.
"I bought at least a dozen potions of each type from every city we passed on the way here. And then on the day before we came to the dungeon, I went to the magic tower and was able to purchase full cartons of magic, health, buffing potions for strength, agility, durability and a few others, then I got as many resistance potions as I could for a variety of things.
In the end, I blew through more than half of our cash on potions and used half of what was left on armour and weapon maintenance."
"...Evan, maybe I should manage our money from now on."
"Huh? Why? What's wrong?"
While the two were discussing their finances, Eliza walked back to the group with Kuro in her arms and posed a question to Evan.
"Hey, Evan. Just how many unique skills do you have?"
"Hmm? Four. Why?"
"Four?!
Aren't unique skills supposed to be like, super rare? How do you have four?"
Evan tilted his head and appraised Eliza before making his appraisal result visible to her. He pointed to the unique skills tab and asked.
"Aren't unique skills supposed to be like, super rare? How do you have two?"
"First of all, stop appraising me without permission.
Secondly, my case is different, I was born with one and I got the other one when I was forced to use the first one to escape a few pursuers from home."
"Pursuers from home?"