Seeing that, I sighed in relief. "Phew~" I canceled my 'Night Vision' skill. It was a waste of mana to continuously activate it. Besides, because of the fire around, the surroundings temporarily brightened up a little.
When I couldn't sense any enemies below, I jumped off of the branch. (Thump!) My feet landed smoothly on the ground like a falling leaf. Then, I also canceled the 'Lunar Jump' ability to stop consuming my 'Physical Force' and avoid further weakening my body. The second layer of glowing aura that was enveloping my body just a while ago had disappeared completely. The one left was the 'Advance Breathing' ability.
I could not cancel it yet because I would be suffering intense thirst if I did that. This 'Advance Breathing' ability also helps me to not feel sleepy. The activation of this ability required a great amount of 'Physical Force', so it was better to let it active after activating it than to turn it off and on repeatedly.
In my vision, prompts started coming one after another.
I accepted all the rewards.
After accepting all the rewards, a pouch of white-grade soulstones and a knife materialized in my hand.
"Finally, a weapon," I said as I stared at the knife in my hand.
I unsheathed it from its leather sheath and stared at it for a couple of seconds. It was just a normal knife. About 10 inches long. The handle was made of fiber and the blade was made of iron. It has normal weight. I could swing it without difficulty. I played with the knife in my hand for a bit before sheathing it back to its leather scabbard.
"Mhm. It's a good knife," I approved.
The last prompt to appear was the Exp Update. I noticed my current Exp was 20% now out of 100%. I only need 80% more to advance my level. It wasn't easy to level up. You need to work harder to do that.
While I was engrossed in my stats and rewards, a sudden prompt kicked in.
[You have received a mission]
"Eh? Another, huh."
I tapped the message to see what would come next.
"Oh…"
That surprised me. It was different. Not the usual 'defeat the enemies'.
Gathering 'Spirit Essence' means killing the enemy. Only by killing that their 'Spirit Essence' would appear.
WATER?!
That's a very tempting reward.
Water! Water! Water!
My mind was screaming for it and I subconsciously gulped down. I accepted the mission immediately when I saw the
But that was the wrong decision I ever made. I shouldn't have let myself be tempted. I failed to check the penalty for the mission failure. When I checked it, I froze on the spot and it seemed my heart sank into the deep ocean.
"….."
I fell silent and touched my head while shaking it. I wanted to shout but that would only make things worse.
"How careless of me…" I muttered in dismay.
There were a total of 10 ranks in the growth potential a magician's skill could have. From ascending order, F is the lowest rank, followed by E, D, C, B, A, S, SS, SSS, and the highest among was SSS+ or also known as limitless.
Since I have SSS+ in all skills, if I lost 9 ranks in each, then it meant my growth potentials will degrade to F; I'll become a waste who had the shittiest growth potential as a magician.
(Sighed.)
I was baited by those unimportant penalties a while ago. This mission this time was undoubtedly harder to achieve than the previous ones. I thought it would be the usual 'minus lifespan' penalty.
In that case, I need to kill 100 enemies to gather 100 spirit essence.
It looks like I'm more of an idiot than Lucius. Not even my centuries of experience can save me in this if I fail.
Forget about escaping this forest. Because if I ever failed the mission, I would be living my life here worse than Lucius'.
By the way, how come the reward is not as valuable as the penalty? Even if I wanna ask that no one can answer me.
Dang! (Slap!) I clenched my face with my hands.
"This is why I hate being reincarnated."
Anyway, there's no use complaining about it now. The deal was done. What I need to do is to give my all to complete it.
I can't waste any more time. I looked around. I saw the bodies of the 'Dire Wolves' I had killed.
I noticed around me there were already 6 bodies lying on the ground. Two of them were the 'Mad Boars' and the four were 'Dire Wolves'.
I see. That was already +6 Spirit Essence of mutated beasts.
Spirit Essence could not be seen by naked eyes. They are ethereal. I needed to activate my 'Spirit Eye' ability first to see them.
To activate it, I closed my eyes. I needed to summon 'Spirit Energy' to my eyes. The mechanism of activating it was just the same as when I activated my 'Night Vision'. But this time, instead of mana, Spirit Energy is what I need to activate it.
In this world, there are three different kinds of energy in a human magician's body. First is the Physical Force, then Magical Energy or better known as Mana, and lastly, the Spirit Energy.
From my 'Spirit Realm', which was located in the head, I tried to summon spiritual energy from it.
"Wait! What?!"
My eyes shot open suddenly. I couldn't sense it… I couldn't sense my 'Spirit Realm'!
I sat on the ground in a lotus position. I need to try again. However, no matter how I tried, I could not sense it.
"Damn, don't tell me… Lucius is a virgin?!"
Well, to be honest, there were some ways to open a link to the 'Spirit Realm', but the easiest way was through sexual intercourse with opposite sex.
I'm not flexing, but in my past lives, I did it many times with my women.