Checking his notifications, he found that he had once again leveled up, despite already gaining a level from dispatching all of the tidal ape minions.
Does something about the generals being a sort of mini boss mean that they are worth a bunch more EXP compared to the standard mobs? He wondered, going over the notifications and feeling a smile tugging at his lips.
Congratulations! You have reached level 19 (+1 STR, +1 DEX, +1 CON, +2 INT, +1 Free)Skill: Arcane nullfield has reached level 20Skill: Unravelling strike has reached level 19Skill: Mana detection has reached level 19
His skills had taken a massive leap forward since the start of the secret trial. His refinement of his abilities having been greatly pushed forward when he spent the time to create those nasty traps. It seems that pushing them to their limits in terms of control and adaptability is far more rewarding than simply punching monsters really hard.
And its true that he felt far more powerful now, the skills allowing him to do things he had never previously even considered. Giving him a level of control and versatility far beyond the crude manner he used to use them. That's not to say that making traps and avoiding a direct confrontation is always the right choice, but rather, simply having that option is hugely beneficial.
Despite not wanting to be here at all, he had entered the secret trial completely by accident. He nevertheless felt glad for the opportunities and insights it had granted him.
Getting up, his body recovered and his mind sharpened, he realized that his body had actually benefited a fair bit from the fight, having washed away much of the dirt and blood that had been stuck to him like a second skin. Giving him a desperately needed clean, making him feel a sense of lightness and refreshment completely at odds with how he looks. His clothes mostly gone as only his pants were determined enough to hold on, making him look like the Hulk after returning to his human form.
He threw a curious glance back towards the river, thinking on the general's words about the depths of the river. But he wasn't too interested in whatever abomination lived down there. Instead, he simply swam across without looking down into the dark depths. The waters still choppy from the water queen's magic, but Lewis was a fairly good swimmer and made it to the opposite side in just a few minutes.
From there, the jungle started thinning out, the dense canopy making way for a lush Savanna.
It took him surprisingly little time to encounter the third ape group, mainly because he could see them leaping about as if they were attached on wires. Their steps assisted by the wind as it carried them about like leaves flying through the air. Do to the open nature of the savanna, they could also see Lewis this time, so he didn't have the chance to observe their abilities before engaging in combat.
But that didn't seem to be nearly as problematic as it might have been against the water apes, as simply expanding his nullfield to suppress the wind mana seemed to make them pretty much helpless. Similarly to the goblins, the wind apes were mainly focused on swift and rapid movement instead of powerful or crushing attacks, so the moment their magic was disrupted, they were no longer able to fly around, leaving them vulnerable. Especially since they didn't seem to be physical fighters, but instead had some kind of lightbending stealth skill that made them harder to spot. Something was also disrupted by the nullfield.
All in all, it was a very bad day for them, being the most magically inclined of the ape types so far, Lewis being more than strong enough to defeat them with his bare knuckles, not even needing to employ his unravelling strikes for most.
The wind ape general was likewise surprisingly easy to dispatch, although he put up a bit more of a fight, as his mana was able to temporarily overpower the nullfield, allowing him to employ his wind movement magic in short bursts, letting him flying around like iron man. He tried slicing Lewis to bits using wind arrows, but they didn't hold the same physical weight as the ice shards, and were therefore mostly useless when stripped of their mana, barely doing more than ruffling his hair due to his high constitution.
But the real revelation of the fight involved his arcane nullfield. Usually, he would simply extend the nullfield towards any mana he wished to dissolve, but during his fight to suppress the water queens escape attempts, he had truly come to understand his lacking use of the skill. Instead of slamming the nullfield head on and hoping for the best, he had started weaving it in more precise patterns to better erode the mana. Against the tidal ape general, this was done by ignoring the pulses of water mana she would expel around herself like waves, pushing back against his nullfield's effects. It was a similar approach to how the ring of the observer had tried to fight back against his attempt to disrupt it, and it was surprisingly effective, but with his fine control over the skill, he could simply puncture through that external sacrificial layer of mana and attack the true source beneath.
Against the wind mana the ape general employed, he found that pushing against the gusts of wind head-on was a fool's errand. instead, he attacked it from the sides, disrupting its structural stability and making the shaped air lose all semblance of order and dissipate. It was shockingly easier than fighting against it head-on, essentially dismantling the magic by attacking its very foundation, making his practice with forming whips and tendrils out of his field extremely beneficial.
An unraveling strike to the wind ape generals face was all it took to defeat it. A shockingly easy wind considering his previous encounters with the other generals, but he was simply perfectly suited in countering these wind apes. Not to mention their stealth technique was less than effective against his mana detection, allowing him to spot them easily.
Congratulations! You have reached level 19 (+1 STR, +1 DEX, +1 CON, +2 INT, +1 Free)Skill: Arcane nullfield has reached level 23Skill: Mana detection has reached level 20
He could feel his skills growing stronger with each level, his stats increasing and control refined. He could probably whoop the ass of the him from yesterday.
Feeling emboldened by his growing proficiency in disrupting magic, he decided to allocate his 4 acclimated free points into willpower. He hadn't allocated any new points to the stat since selecting his class, but knew that it could be huge in allowing him to further utilize his skills for precision work. If he could progress further down this path, then being able to carved spell patterns into mana crystals might not be so far-fetched. Not to mention being able to better dispel mana constructs without needing to brute force it and overwhelm them with a ton of anti-mana, like back when he had tried to disrupt the ring of the observer's cloaking ability.
Along side his increasing anti-mana potency rising each time he got an extra two points in intelligence, and it was becoming clear that even beings twice his level, like the ape generals, would have no way of using their magic against him even when burning it like mad to overcome his nullfield's effects.
And as long as he could defang them by stripping their magic, he could keep leveling up like crazy by killing what are supposed to be vastly stronger opponents.
Still, he was well aware that these wind apes were only so easy to dispatch due to their reliance on external manipulation of wind. Anything more tangible would still pose a serious threat. Which is why he tried to be even more cautious when moving on to the next territory, that of the final ape general.
He had been expecting them to possess another elemental affinity, but realized that the apes weren't just one-sided fighters, always having a secondary ability.
The nature apes had regeneration and muscles, the water apes had water and ice, while the wind apes could use the air and also bend light to obscure their position, something that he hadn't even noticed until the ape general had tried to hide himself when his magic was heavily suppressed.
So when the vast savanna tempered out into a hot volcanic landscape, he got a feeling he knew what sort of apes lived here.
Cautiously, he scanned the environment, only to discover exactly what he had feared. The apes here were a mix of fire and rock, looking like some sort of demonic inhabitants of this nightmarish landscape.
The reason he was so hesitant to go and face them wasn't because of the searing heat they could likely wield. After all, fire magic was something he had gotten quite familiar with. He could easily erase a stream of burning flames, but what he couldn't erode, was a molten rock being chucked at him. Truly, it was even worse then the tidal apes, at least their water couldn't do much more than make him wet, whereas this lava rock would not only burn his flesh, but stick to him and form a hardened crust, slowing his movements and making it easier of the apes to bury him alive in molten rock.
I've seen how horrible it is to be buried alive, so I have no desire to experience it myself, nor get slowly cooked to death in the process.
Clearly, this final ape tribe would require a more thoughtful approach, but unlike the lush jungle he had access to before, these lands were very barren, covered in charred volcanic rock and veins of red hot magma releasing steam into the air. Other than that, the was little else in sight. The only thing he had going his way was the jagged landscape, allowing for some cover, unlike the open plains of the savanna.
He spent several minutes in quiet observation, finding that the magma apes seemed to have patrols around their territory, bulky apes with a layer of black rock streaked with veins of magma coursing throughout their bodies. They looked like artificial golems more than anything natural or organic.
Still, the good news was that this place was teaming with magic; the very lava itself was full of a fiery mana, which seemed to indicate this entire region was unnatural. Which made sense considering there was no sign of a volcano anywhere around, just the ground radiating an unnaturally intense heat which would be cooking Lewis alive if his anti-mana-filled body wasn't passively stripping the mana from his surroundings, dispelling the heavy fire attuned mana being released from the very ground.
Looking closely at the magma apes, it seemed like they were absorbing the magical heat from the ground, transferring it through their bodies thanks to the veins of lava streaking across their bodies of volcanic rock. As he analyzed their patrol patterns, he realized that they would rarely hang out on the outskirt for long, usually heading deeper into the volcanic haze, where the fiery mana was thicker, their bodies greedily absorbing and cycling it throughout themselves.
Are they absorbing the heat to grow stronger? Lewis wondered, not even realizing such a thing was possible. He hadn't seen the other apes be so greatly aligned with their mana affinities to be able to simply eat it to grow stronger. But that definitely seemed to be the case here.
The more he observed from the shelter of a ragged volcanic hill, the more he began to understand what they were doing.
The magma apes weren't patrolling, or at least, not just. They seem to have a limit to how long they can spend deeper in the lava domain, needing to com back out to the outskirts to cooldown and adjust their stone bodies to the temperatures, the volcanic rock showing signs of cracking before the veins of lava in their bodies reinforces it, compressing and refining their bodies with each pass through.
Looking closer, he pushed his mana detection passed the heavy fiery mana in the air and spotted more apes deeper within, all doing the same process of patrolling deeper then returning to where the heat isn't as intense for them. They were all refining their bodies to resist greater and greater degrees of heat, while constantly refining and hardening their volcanic bodies.
It was a surprising scene, but made him realize that he would be pitted against the weakest magma apes first as he pushed deeper into the haze covered lava territory. In that sense at least, it was obvious that the trial had purposely set things up so that he would be fighting the magma ape general last, allowing him to better understand how to defeat them beforehand.
In that regard, he felt relatively confident that the apes deeper within would ignore him until he reached their zones, meaning he at least didn't need to worry about getting swarmed.
The only question was what kind of attacks they could use, since none of them seemed to be doing anything other than cultivating the domains heat, he would have to confront them to find out.