Bro, I'm not an Undead!

[ Name : Festos Dawn ]

[ Level : 10 ]

[ Experience : 0/800,000; <Trial Pending> ]

[ Class : Insurgent Magnus ]

[ Race : Discount Human ]

[ Inv. Status : Still doomed ×2, Cursed ]

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[ Stats ]

[ Strength : 1895 ]

[Agility : 1775 ]

[ Intelligence : 70 ]

[ Endurance : 1815 ]

[ Luck : Atrocious? ]

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[ Health : 2175/2175 ]

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[ Mana : --- (1300) ]

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[ Null Life Essence : 0/6000 ]

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[ Skills ]

[ Elevated Mana Manipulation | Lv.27 ]

[ Great Saint's Invigoration | Lv.3 ]

[ High Cosmetic Body | Lv.1 ]

[ Revenant Flames of Ecstasy | Lv.12 ]

[ Null Extraction ]

[ Guard Light | Lv.6 ]

[ Mana Force | Lv.5 ]

[ Flash Flicker | Lv.7 ]

[ Raw Impact | Lv.5 ]

[ Great Rush (I) | Lv.4 ]

[ Revered | Lv.1 ]

[ Basic Combat Arts | Lv.5 ]

[ Swindling Death Dance (Incomplete) ]

[<Class>]

[ Advanced Evil Weaving | Lv.11 ]

[ Advanced Evil Production | Lv.13 ]

[ Basic Evil Invasion | Lv.2 ]

[ Basic Evil Sanction (Special) | Lv.1 ]

[ Basic Light Production | Lv.4 ]

[ Crude World Projection ]

[ Bead of Malevolence | Lv. 3 ]

[ Perfect Night Domain | Lv. 4 ]

[<Arts>]

[ Pseudo Evil Veneration (1%) ]

[<Oddities>]

[ Luminant Seed (Dormant) ]

[ Binds of Fukal ]

[ Fruit of World Myths ]

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[<Affinities>]

[ Evil Darkness - B ]

[ Just Light ]

~~~

"My stats have really shot up. It's ridiculous," Skullius said as he looked over his status. With the exception of luck and intelligence, all his other stats were above a thousand, much of that credited to the Enriching gems, most of which he had absorbed being the purple red ones, finishing off what he could ever gain from them.

The rest was due to the Creed Sila had used but that hadn't merely translated to raw physical power.

Sila had sacrificed Skullius' previous mana core and all its future potential in exchange for equivalent physical attunement of the highest order.

This meant that Sila wanted all that power converted or rather adjusted into physical prowess.

It didn't merely correlate to Strength, Agility and Endurance getting a large increase, but a profound capacity for his body to utilise this new strength to the most efficient degree, his body adapting to this dual effect immediately!

Now as Skullius felt his muscles, he could feel this Discount Human body of his responding rather perfectly.

He had mostly been focused on its sensitivity before but now, as he shifted to its overall physical capability, he noticed that it was vastly more phenomenal than what he had before.

As for his senses, once again, he could discern shapes and overall, his surroundings through everything his skin came into contact with. It was even better when he had a specific target to zoom in on, as the sensation of the shape of the target would rush through his <RUSH BLOOD> and then be transmitted into his mind.

In every sense of the word, this was the perfect body!

To top all this off, if Skullius used [Elevated Mana Manipulation] he could be completely aware of everything around him on a basic level and on a physical level at all times!

'This is incredible! No wonder Sila's movements just seemed to refined!'

The way the old soul had moved while equipping his flesh could not chalked up to his experience alone. How he reacted to attacks as well.

'Awareness...' Skullius thought as he recalled lesson he had learnt from Oliviana. The key to adapting to attacks was increasing one's awareness!

...!

'OH!' Skullius had a thought. A rush! 'My mana manipulation already has a great range and if I couple that with my physical senses, I could create an area where it's impossible to get the jump on me! Hmm. Get the jump? That's a weird thing to say. But that's expected!' Skullius thought as he got quite excited.

Instead of simply using this new sensitivity of his over vast ranges, wouldn't it be better to apply more focus on a specific zone around him effectively making sure that nothing went in or out without his knowing?!

Skullius immediately tried it out!

He reeled in his hundred meter natural sensory range, bringing it down to roughly 20 meters, the winds, the sounds and vibrations in it being his target!

The falling leaves and the swaying branches became perfectly clear to him as he strained his focus, every shift of the mud within the range as well as the barely existent vibrations it caused that ran under ground being made known to him.

Even though Skullius was yet to discover any semblance of life in this forest, everything that could move was subject to his senses.

Because [Elevated Mana Manipulation] was being used to pump him full of mana, Skullius didn't go all in when layering its effect over his already incredible senses.

He merely exerted his reach lightly, tracing through everything that possessed mana and taking in the motions.

Even with this much, it was perfect!

'It's easier now because there's not a lot of information to cycle through but I'll get the hang of it soon. I can have Ferex help me to learn and perfect it. Oliviana taught me that awareness is important as a combat skill, so I guess this is one way to build up to it,' Skullius thought. 'Still, I shouldn't forget about the wider range outside this one. I'll put 80% of my focus on the inner area and 20% everywhere else. Yes, that should work. Though, I'll probably need names for these two areas.'

In the spirit of having clear distinctions towards everything that Skullius was learning, the Discount Human started brainstorming for names.

He didn't aim for anything too complicated, but this did not appeal to his superior ability to name things... because it didn't exist.

At the end of a three minute stretch, Skullius decided to temporarily name these two zones of focus, the Inner Domain and the Outer Domain.

How creative!

Where these names were derived could not be more obvious.

The rest of Skullius' day was spent doing nonstop mana consumption and developing the two zones of focus.

During this long and draining schedule however, the Discount Human was forced to take breaks to feed as his body demanded that he take in food even if he still lacked the ability to taste it.

There was quite a lot of food which he had stocked up before leaving Inhone and quite a LOT of it still remained.

Passing the time by munching on tasteless items helped quite a bit when Skullius grew bored of doing the same thing over and over again but that was just about it.

By the time [High Cosmetic Body] timed out though, Skullius was confident that the Centre to his core was at least a quarter finished, the marker for this, the limit as he hypothesised, being that he felt a light constrain on his abdomen, like how a normal human would feel when a stomach-ache was announcing its arrival.

To Skullius, this meant he was probably going to finish the centre in the next two days or so, leaving the harder part for the next stretch.

With his skeletal body forming, Skullius exited the forest as he crossed the distance towards the mountains.

The hours he had spent in that one spot, and forest, weren't wasted.

His mind had been active, trying to figure out what else this disguised opportunity could hold and one could bet that 24 hours allowed Skullius to get an idea or two.

The Null Lifeform had been trying to figure out how to make a non-generic core that was different from the simplistic design that normal people had.

Sure the progress was flattering but he still needed to make a powerful core.

One with special capabilities.

One with unique attributes.

How so, one would ask?

Well...

The answer he had glimpsed, lay with the three high level concepts that nested at the peak of the stout mountain where Skullius had climbed before.

Between Distorted Gravity, Spatial Lightning and Stagnant Space, one of these had to become relevant to his Discount Human's mana core!

Somehow...