With the volunteers being bossed around by Fiona within the now abandoned orc camp, all of them rushing around, carrying the immobilized victims, and loading them onto a large double door sized levitating platform that she had purchased from the system shop to aid in the transportation. Something she was more than willing to do after all the TP she had received from slaying the orcs. And besides, Sir Laurence had privately informed her that she would be handsomely rewarded in points when she returned. Informing her to spend as many points as she needed to buy medical supplies and the like, without fear that she would run out a TP to spend on bettering her own combat power.
It seemed like that fortress of his wasn't only filled with plenty of defended space and other amenities like the healing wing, but would also generate daily income, likely based on the amount of people under his banner, presumably one of the benefits of having the beacon so early into the tutorial, having been visible to all around mere hours after she herself had stepped through that portal and appeared in the forest. She hadn't been there at the very start, but Sir Laurence had apparently demanded that the people he found share their TP with him so that he could afford to buy the fortress. Something many hadn't been too happy about, especially those from that Earth place, but when up against a figure as powerful as the royal knight, refusing wasn't an option.
When Fiona had been thinking of a way to transport all these people back to the fortress, the plain-looking magical platform, appearing as nothing more than a sturdy grey plank, was one of the few vehicle adjacent items she could afford and that would allow her to travel through the forest without too much hassle. As well as allowing them to keep an eye on the injured, the old healer using his skills on the most injured in addition to the healing salve.
The platform is self driving, or floating in this case, and simply hovers behind her without any commands, although it follows only her, and she has limited control over how it moves. The platform simply drifts out of the path of people and obstacles alike with fluid grace, providing a smooth and painless ride for the injured people atop it. Something a carriage ride could never have granted.
But although all the people within the orc camp were preparing to depart, Lewis was still standing at the entrance, his mouth agape as he stared at his full status window for the first time in a while. And boy had it changed drastically. Far more than even when he had picked his Magebreaker class.
Name: Lewis Caddwell
Race: Human (G) Age: 23
Class: Mage lvl 15
Exp: 12%
Titles: Forerunner, Defier of fate
Health: 100%
Stamina: 68%
Mana: 100%
Stats: (Spirit physique bonus)
Strength: 16 (52)
Speed: 17 (56)
Endurance: 10 (41)
Constitution: 71 (113)
Perception: 6 (9)
Intelligence: 24 (26)
Willpower: 20 (25)
Spirit: 33 (121)
Free points: 4
Skills:
[Universal tongue], [Identify - lvl 9], [Mana detection - lvl 13], [Arcane nullfield - lvl 10], [Unravelling strike - lvl 12]
Resistances:
[Mental resistance - lvl 1]
Techniques:
[Spirit body physique - lvl 1]
These numbers are insane! So the parenthesized values are my current stats with spirit body physique passively boosting me?
I knew spiritual alignment was great, but the system guide was really underselling things when he said it was only a free sample of the real deal. After all, it doesn't cost me anything to get these enhancements; it's an entirely passive technique that has just permanently and drastically increased my physical attributes by more than 200%, well beyond anything I would have achieved anytime soon, even with my new class granting points in those attributes.
Quickly doing the math, he realized that he would need a level around the high 30s to early 40s to achieve the number of stat points his spirit physique technique was granting him. Still, that was mainly for the attributes directly related to his body; those linked to his mental stats were far less affected, only being pumped up a couple of points, including his perception, but that was to be expected. After all, this was only the first of the required three fundamental techniques he needed to fully awaken his spirit.
But the main attribute that stood out to him was his already large mana pool having become almost bottomless now in comparison. He had always had a surprisingly high spirit value, but this was abruptly off the charts, and the reason why was pretty obvious; his spirit seemed to directly feed into his skills and was itself partially made of the purple energy that destroyed all mana and turned peoples insides into a thin soup.
It was one of the most telling changes he had first felt, since he was partially empty of mana at the time, so feeling his body bursting with energy once again was a drastic change. His body had also healed almost instantaneously, but he suspected that had more to do with the fact that his new defier of fate title seemed to have been granted to him the moment he aligned his spirit, rather than after he had trounced the orcs, as his ability to survive the threat they posed was all but guaranteed the moment he developed the technique. That massive influx of vital energy seemed to have greatly tempered his body, making him tougher and more resilient than ever before, including his regeneration. Although he suspected he wouldn't be able to spontaneously heal his injuries again like during the fight. That had only been possible due to how much squishier he had been when receiving the flood of constitution points, meaning receiving injuries of that degree again would require a much greater amount of force to start with, so anything on this first floor of the tutorial wasn't likely to even be able to leave a scratch, never mind a wound to heal in the first place.
He also found it interesting that both his mental resistance and spirit body physique technique had been placed in entirely separate sections of his status window, indicating them as different from his other skills. He found that odd, but he could always ask the system guide about it later; it wasn't that important. For now, he was more concerned with that system notification informing him that he had forced his spirit too early, and it might cause permanent damage if he didn't fix it. But before he could enter that space in the back of his mind where the entrance to the system shop was located to ask for clarification on how exactly such a thing was even done, he heard movement from within the orc camp and turned to find all the injured and volunteers marching back out, a floating platform behind Fiona as she and Morris walked at the front of the now significantly larger group.
"Do we know the way back to the fortress?" He asked them as he came into step beside them, the group of humans streaming out of the camp.
Fiona nodded as she took out the sketched maps of the southern region, riffling through them until he found a particular one and nodded.
"Yes, I believe I know where this is, and it's not actually that far from the fortress, simply that we need to traverse through some rocky hills to cut straight through to it instead of taking the longer way round, as most people would. It's the main reason we hadn't located the orc camp until now, despite being so close." She replied.
Lewis nodded, looking over to Morris instead as he kept throwing worried glances back towards the people following behind, the new dagger he had employed in the fight tucked away at his waist.
"Hey Morris, can you keep an eye out at the front? I'll stay behind and make sure nothing ambushes our rear." Lewis said, nodding towards the back of the line that stretched a fair distance back with a bit under a hundred people now travelling in a line, many of whom were lying down on the floating platform, but it formed a long enough line that people at the front of the group might be too late to respond to a threat from behind.
Fiona gave him a thankful nod while Morris agreed to keep his eyes peeled for danger. The man was clearly rattled by what he had seen back there, his calm and confident mask having fully broken by now, replaced by a look of distant shock and anger, something Lewis could easily relate to, but he had been tempered by a thought life and didn't let his emotions control him. Still, as he passed the former orc prisoners and glanced at their brutal injuries, he couldn't help but feel his anger flare up at the memory of the orc shaman slipping out of his grasp at the last moment.
Fortunately, the trip went fairly smoothly; nothing seemed interested in attacking them despite clearly carrying helpless injured people with them, but it seemed the rather rough terrain and many rocky hills they were forced to climb had served as a deterrent to most predators as well. No use staying in a rugged and unpopular location when you could be hunting beasts in the wider forest. Not even the orcs that had run off seemed willing to stick around, or at least were very well hidden if they did, as not even with his leveled-up mana detection did he spot any sign of creatures from their mana presences. And that was something that had become a lot easier now; his perception stat may not have increased by much, but his ability to sense mana had undergone a quantitative change.
It wasn't a change in the way his mana detection worked; he still wasn't able to pierce through the veil of Morris's ring, but his vastly increased mana pool meant that his senses could now spread out to cover a far larger area than ever before. But once again, just like when he had pushed himself to sense mana frequencies, he wasn't able to properly process such vast quantities of information quite yet, his spirit body's physique not having improved his mental abilities by much.
Still, seemed like his spirit body physique had made all his skills that used mana drastically increase, both in level and quality, as if they were all now supercharged with the source of their power now moved so much closer within himself. He couldn't tell so well with mana detection, but both unraveling strike and arcane nullfield had both clearly been greatly improved. Their default threshold for mana used per activation has definitely increased. And his spirit even seemed to be further enhancing them the same way his strength and movements were, all passively at that.
The skill he tested most in this regard while journeying back with the injured people was actually the greatly changed arcane nullfield. The skill had seemingly become far weaker than before, but that was simply an illusion due to how strongly his body now naturally destroyed all mana, resulting in him being able to pull the field's range completely within his body instead of only being able to retract it until skin tight.
He didn't know exactly why he couldn't do such a thing before, but figured that maybe it was a quirk of the skill that was clearly designed to projected outside of his body, but with his spirit newly aligned within himself, even if apparently unstably, it made it so that the epicenter was far closer, rearranging the skills functionality, especially since he had a feeling that his improved body was partially responsible for generating the passive nullfield, meaning that the skill was roaring at full throttle with dual factors now counting towards its power, his body no longer acting as an impediment but a boost for the nullfield, multiplying the effect without the need for him to manually pump mana into his surroundings to enhance it, allowing him to fully control the anti-mana field within and outside of himself with far greater potency than ever before.
He practiced with expanding and retracting it as he walked, but didn't dare expand it too far, not wanting to affect the floating platform with all the injured aboard. Still, he got some good practice with focusing the field, extending it only in a specific direction instead of in a general sphere around him. He was hoping to eventually learn to use it as a phantom limb that could snake out and smoother specific mana sources. It would be immensely cool to be able to control his anti-mana enough to avoid erasing all mana around him. Perhaps he might one day be able to use magical artifacts like that ring Morris possesses, or even a cool magical weapon like he had seen that one orc use.
But for right now, he was content with the power spirit cultivation promised and had already provided, deciding to fix his unstable foundation as soon as possible. Preferring to focus on abilities that would serve him in the long term, rather than using his now steadily growing stock of TP to purchase some temporary equipment he would likely grow out of after not long. After all, even the system guide had warned him that his unusual disposition would lock him out of many of the available items and knowledge others can get in the system shop. But then again, the memories of his nullfield spreading over the orcs, destroying their mana while his enhanced body crushed them with ease made his lips tug upwards slightly.
Why would I care what sort of spells or skills they can get in the shop if I can simply snuff it all out and crush them with my fists? Sure, I would prefer to be slinging spells myself, but if I can't have them, then why should my enemies?