Chapter 578 - The box of wonders

“Alright, I’m going in,” Sofia told Bookie and Pareth, “Make sure that the midenicite slab is slotted correctly and bury it all well.”

“You can trust Engineer skeleton!” Bookie proudly answered, “and we won’t let anyone come close!”

“I’m in safe hands then. See you in a bit,” Sofia finished, jumping into the mithril box at the bottom of the pit.

She pulled on the interior handle to close the mithril box and sat down in the center. She had to change for a cubic box rather than the initial plan for a coffin-like box, not only because it would be more comfortable, but also because the final step of using the ring of Zar for mana reforging was to be replaced by a much more involved process which required some space to move around. Buying enough mithril to make the box to the required specifics was something else, she couldn’t afford it even with her reserves unless she started to sell some precious things she owned, but she had managed, taking a no interest loan from Richard’s Red-Carpet as a VIP client.

Sofia looked through Pareth’s eyes, watching the Engineer slowly lowering a large and thick midenicite slab on top of the mithril box, which was already itself sitting in a larger midenicite box, which was more than halfway buried inside of red sand. The slab finished to seal the midenicite box, and Sofia completely lost the connection, her vision snapping back to the interior of her box.

The soul link is still intact but mithril and midenicite together is too much for the mana to pass through… The red sand might not even be needed at this point even if it’s to prevent outside interference.

The skeletons got to work quickly filling the entire pit with the remaining red sand, and finally, Sofia’s levelling cube was ready.

Sofia took off her clothes and stored everything in her eye. She had left most of her things outside in Pareth’s care, now the only thing she was still wearing was her black glove, and she had the admin dagger along with a small handwritten booklet on her lap. She shivered as her bare skin touched the mithril.

“Why is this stuff so cold?” she complained, changing her sitting position so that less skin touched the metal.

After taking a deep breath, she exhaled and slowly expelled almost all of her mana, leaving her with just enough that she wouldn’t feel too dizzy. 

“Now to keep filling that space with mana until it starts to kill me. This feels really weird to be doing with a rune on…”

Flooding the cube with mana was long and boring, Sofia just had to wait, expel her mana, and do it again. She was so bored that she started meditating and lost count of how many times she had to repeat the process, only realizing that she was getting there when she had a severe coughing fit out of nowhere.

For someone with cosmetic lungs that mostly served to activate her vocal chords, starting to cough uncontrollably was a pretty good sign that something was wrong.

When she managed to stop coughing, Sofia more precisely felt how bad the situation was, the mana in the cube was even more concentrated than it had been in the upper stratum, and it warped the air so much that it felt like she was underwater.

Sofia watched her health meter, it was going up and down, the environment actively harming her while the [Bone dominus] blessing on her own skeleton was healing her back up.

That has to be enough, right?

Stopping there, Sofia expelled her heart and entered her demon form. She grabbed and opened the small booklet she had brought down in the box with her, this was a guide drawn by Velania on her own refined version of the Ancient human circulation technique which had slowly gotten her to the level she was today. Velania had warned Sofia that the technique by itself was useless without the breakthrough methods, but that is what the system trials were for. Sofia opened the booklet from the last page, and started following the method in reverse. She had already done that part once outside of the box with very little mana just to be sure that she could do it. It was easy enough, just very painful.

The technique in itself was quite simple, it was just patterns in which to guide one’s mana in their body that would help slowly reinforce it while also enlarging one’s mana reserves. It required some concentration but anyone could do it, as long as they were ready to invest the time. One full circulation of the entire method, as the booklet described, could take up to a month.

Thankfully Sofia did not need to be so precise, and only needed to rush through the entire technique in reverse as fast as possible.

If Sofia had to describe the resulting sensation, it was a bit like having crushed glass flow in her veins in reverse, an absolutely excruciating pain. But it was working.

Whenever the pain was too much and Sofia felt like stopping, she was pushed to continue by the intense excitation she felt from feeling herself becoming stronger.

After what seemed like an eternity, Sofia reached the start of the booklet and could finally stop.

Her hands trembling, she grabbed the key, and started to wildcast the graveyard, having skeletal hands emerge from her body, grabbing her from the outside and bringing her partway into the spiritual plane.

There came a small issue, in that one is always unable to see their own soul. She let Mr.Scribe take control of her mana, and he slowly used it to guide her hands to the right position.

[There. A fast slice, then bring your left hand to your mouth and swallow. It is going to hurt.]

I expected no less from soul cannibalism…

When Mr.Scribe gave Sofia control of her body back, she followed the instructions. She extended her right arm, slicing with the dagger along the path Mr.Scribe had traced for her, feeling a distinct pain that was hard to describe, then, grabbing on to nothing, she trusted that she held a piece of her soul and brought it to her mouth, swallowing air.

She felt a jolt like she had bitten into a super sour fruit, then nothing. The pain from the soul cut was dull in comparison to what had come before.

That’s it?

I’m shocked the soul-eating part was the easiest… If nothing else the Eddarinians at least had a great leveling method, huh. 

Sofia allowed herself some time to breathe, but she couldn’t wait for too long.

Now the last part.

She started to cast a piercing angel bolt. Unlike usual, where her main concern was to pump as much mana into as possible, she, this time, sent it a weak and steady flow, letting the bolt slowly come to a form, becoming a thin ray of sky-blue plasma in her hand. The bolt, lacking a proper energy supply, started to draw in some of the abundant ambient mana.

This works. Now the rune.

Since she no longer had the ring of Zar, the next best way to achieve mana reforging, in Mr.Scribe’s opinion, was this. She was to draw large runes on her body by carving them with a piercing bolt. The ambient mana would flood in and her body would fix the injury while intaking all that mana, leading it to reform in a slightly more efficient way, guided by the runic shape.

Sofia was pretty numb to the bolts’ energy carving into her flesh by now, so this was a lot better than it sounded, and it was over relatively quickly too, as there was really only enough mana in the box to do one rune per run.

She took some time to breathe and relax, and her transformation expired.

“First run over!” she felicitated herself, “and flawlessly executed too!”

No change in my status sheet yet, though… What’s going on there? I clearly felt myself getting stronger. I guess Mr.Scribe is a bit overworked at the moment.

After some wait, finally the results were in.

‘You gained a level!’

[Calculating stat gain, please wait.]

‘Health: +62’

‘Stamina: +43’

‘Mana: +5652’

‘Hidden stats: cannot provide accurate measure.’

“Woah! That’s a lot better than I expected! It’s actually not a meaningless increase. That’s like… Three hundred thousand points worth of stats for the fifty next levels?”

Compared to her normal system-given growth rate of twenty health, twenty stamina, and two thousand mana per level, that was almost triple.

“Still, so much effort for three pills’ worth of stats… Not having an alchemist like Alith around to make the pills is like being crippled. That’s such a huge gap… I need to get a special pill package to Shaily really soon.”

Sofia rested while she filled the box with mana again.

When it came to seeing her stats go up… She was thoroughly addicted.