As Dante woke up again, his eyes seemed too heavy after all that unbearable pain, but beneath that heaviness, there was a hint of clarity.
Shockingly, he was getting used to death, though whether that was bad or good couldn't be known.
'What now?' Dante wondered, considering his options as he analysed: 'Fighting her isn't an option yet. I should either return to the skeleton or keep trying to pass through the traps.'
'I still don't understand all my potential. I don't know how to use my misfortune, I barely used shadow, my control over mana, spiritual energy and demonic energy is weak, I have no idea of how to use Ether, and my understanding over magic as a whole isn't enough. Until now, I only enhanced my body a few times and used two spells so far.'
The only thing Dante needed was time. The barbarian was on her way to kill him, and he couldn't move through the traps recklessly.
That left only one option for him.
Immediately, he ran to the gate and followed its path. Once he saw the first trap, he intentionally pressed on it.
Click.
The floor under him opened, leading him into a long tunnel. This time, he slid through the tunnel without losing his consciousness.
After a few seconds, he returned to the skeleton room as the path he had come from suddenly closed behind him.
There were two reasons for him to intentionally go into this room.
The first reason was that he was unconscious there for an entire hour and nothing had attacked him, which would give him a chance to explore everything about himself.
The second reason was that, unlike the barbarian, the skeleton was damaged by his bullets!
Thus, he thought that there was no better place to start in other than this room.
Dante's gaze landed on the lifeless skeleton, a hint of fear erupting within him, but he immediately steeled his mind as he pointed his index at the skeleton.
'Die, you dead motherfucker!'
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Dante shot three demonic bullets rapidly. As expected, the moment the first bullet hit the skeleton's skull, it started moving, trying to dodge the other two. Fortunately, it was too late to do that.
The other bullets hit it directly in the skull and ribcage, killing the undead skeleton for eternity.
'One more time, just to be safe,' Dante decided as he shot another bullet, ensuring that the skeleton would remain dead.
Finally, he let out a sigh of relief as he sat on the ground, having his first rest since he had arrived into this world.
He was truly exhausted. It had been less than an hour since he started dying—if he ignored the time he was unconscious—but for his mind, it felt like eternity.
'I have to learn whatever I can quickly.'
He knew that his luck might be the worst, especially after seeing his runes, thus he couldn't ensure that he would be safe until the end of the timer behind his age, so he assumed that he only had an hour before something would happen.
Immediately, he took the rusty sword from the ground quickly then moved away from the skeleton, just in case.
'Think of it as a big knife, Dante. It's not a big deal...'
Taking a deep breath, he focused on his memories and swung the sword.
The more he practiced, the faster he adapted. It was because he only had to mimic the memories in his mind to improve until he could reach Fafnir's level.
'I'm starting to understand this!' Dante smiled as he swung with more confidence.
Just then, Dante decided to use his mana.
He didn't use it to enhance his body or cast magic, but to enhance the sword.
The rusty sword was covered with a very thin layer of pale blue mana. It felt sharper and more durable in Dante's hand as he thought: 'This is insane!'
He was genuinely amazed by what the mana could do. Previously, he had been so focused on survival that he hadn't thought about how amazing shooting bullets out of thin air and enhancing his body really were.
After testing the enhanced sword for some time, he began to test the Shadow Aspect.
Immediately, the sword turned black, its weight became lighter, its edges blurred faintly, becoming harder to track, and caused afterimages when he swung it.
'That's really tricky.' Dante held his chin with his fingers, trying to figure out a way to use it.
Just then, his eyes widened as he stopped his enhancing.
'Almost out of mana.'
Realising that he knew this instinctively, his brows furrowed.
He couldn't see his mana pool directly, but he could feel it being drained quickly the more he maintained his enhancement. It gave him a sense of emptiness. The demonic energy also gave him a similar feeling.
As for the spiritual energy, it was more as exhaustion than emptiness, like running for a lot of time until he collapsed. Fortunately, it was higher than his mind.
But what was his limit?
With some simple math, and judging by everything he had done so far, he guessed: 'Maybe 15 bullets? And for enhancing, five minutes for the sword, less than four minutes for my full body, and more if I enhanced only a part.'
What he did was assuming that every mind point gave a mana point.
One bullet consumed one point of mana, full sword consumed one point of mana per 20 seconds, and full body consumed one point of mana per 15 seconds.
Of course, that wasn't too accurate, and there was the factor of his mana recovery. He recovered around one point of mana per minute, but he didn't want to waste time on calculating that.
Additionally, there was the factor of his control and the spell power. The bullet would be two times stronger if he used the double amount of mana, yet Fafnir could have the same power with half the amount.
That was basically because he had better mana control, allowing him to waste less mana.
The spiritual energy and demonic energy followed the same logic.
'I have to improve my control as well.'
After resting, Dante kept training for 45 minutes, taking a few rests whenever he needed, before understanding a few things about the Shadow Aspect: 'It's more focused on stealth.'
He tried it with his spells, sword, and body, but he only noticed four changes on them.
They became lighter, which looked too useful when he swung his sword and moved his body.
They became silent, which was something he had failed to notice when he shot at the barbarian earlier.
They became barely seeable in darkness, which was something that could help him to hide in the future.
And lastly, they had blurry edges, which would make his attacks hard to trace in light.
In addition to that, he learnt the last pure mana spell that Fafnir knew, which was called mana shield!
'If I had known about it, I'd have used it to block the damn axe!'
Dante sighed, but there was nothing he could do now. Additionally, he wasn't sure if it would be strong enough to block her axe anyway.
The next moment, he took the black orb out of his pocket and checked out his comprehension. He couldn't help but smile when he noticed his comprehension reaching 10%!
'I'm on the right direction!'
Dante happily wiped his sweat, but as he was about to stop using the orb, his eyes squinted sharply at a strange change in his runes.
Vitality: 15→12