Walking through the darkness yet again, Frank saw an arachnophobe's biggest fear.
This room was filled with unholy amount of different spiders: big, small, hairy, any kind of them that you could think of.
There were massive cocoons at the corners of the room, even at the ceiling. Small spiders were constantly crawling out of small holes in the cocoons.
Even Frank, who found spiders cute, was somewhat disturbed by the sight before him. He quickly formed Flame Shower combination using the runes he took with him. This combination resembled a stone cylinder with a big opening in one side, deep inside this opening were engraved Fire Runes, while at the ‹flamethrower's› mouth were inscribed Energy Runes. He invented it based on his understanding of runes.
The Runemasters from Rune Multiverse didn't make many Attack Combinations because Rune Multiverse isn't really dangerous, with abundance of resources no one wanted to lose their time by fighting. What a waste of potential.
Using his aura, Frank agitated the Fire Runes making them release a wave of fire, which became extremely wide, covering the whole room, after going through the Energy Runes.
The stone cylinder have crumbled, destroying the runes. The whole room was burning, so, to not be killed by his own combination, Frank used abundant stone runes, that he always had with him, to construct a thick stone egg around himself.
Even though it was still hot as hell inside the egg, Frank didn't need oxygen to live and his soul was strong enough to endure this heat, so he was fine. After some time, feeling that the fire has ended with his aura, Frank dismantled the egg back into runes.
The room was wholy burnt, nothing was left alive.
'What a pity, nothing to eat...' thinking about his loss, Frank inspected the room, finding nothing, so he went into the only door in the room, besides the one he came from. This door was to his right (the centipede room is behind).
Sight of what inhabited the room made Frank happy. The room's inhabitants were three scorats standing in the line at the center of the room, which didn't have any objects like stones or campfires.
Using the aura, Frank materialised The Seeker inside scorats' heads, killing them quickly and easily. The Seeker could easily go through anything that's not made out of runes or infused by mana, or not. Frank didn't know for sure because he only tested it on the things he had.
'It couldn't go through me though, maybe aura can protect from such invisible attacks' thought Frank, while lifting scorats' corpses with his aura to take them into ‹barbecue room›.
After having a hefty meal, Frank returned back into the scorats' room. Looking around and not seeing anything, Frank proceeded into the door opposite the one from which he came, it was the only door in the room.
This room was empty aside from a chest standing in the middle, the chest was standing on a 1x1 meters platform surronded by a large pit. The platform was levitating and the pit took almost all space in the room, the only place there you could walk was a platform that was extending from the walls, it was 1 meter wide.
The chest was of copper quality, so Frank could open it. Opposite the door he came from was a big red door with a skull symbol at the top, beside it was a sign with a [BOSS ROOM] written in blood on it.
Using his aura, Frank levitated some stones over the pit, that was unfathomably deep.
The stones were immediately sucked into the abyss, with so much power that Frank couldn't even contest.
'It seems like I can't take this chest yet' thought Frank, looking into the abyss, trying to understand how it worked.
Shifting his attention from the abyss, Frank looked at the door leading into the boss room.
'So soon. I thought that the first floor would be bigger, considering how dangerous it is for normal souls. It would've been better for it to be bigger to make normal souls strong enough to defeat the boss. I was just lucky to obtain that artifact and book.'
Considering his previous experience, Frank could tell that the boss will be unjustly strong, normal souls without AOE (area-of-effect) attacks wouldn't even be alive after entering that SPIDERS' room. The room beside the shop would've been enough to kill them as well.
'This place never said that if was fair to everyone anyway.' thought Frank, going back into his bedroom.
'I should practice more. I need to understand how to make a Mana Storage as well.'
Sitting on his bed cross legged, Frank took the Stone Golem Heart out. After inspecting it closely from every possible angle and not finding anything else besides what he saw before, Frank began constructing the Mana Storage combination.
He first constructed the icosahedral frame made out of 12 Stone Runes, then placed 30 Life Runes at the edges and finally filled the sides with 60 Energy Runes.
After placing the final energy rune in the place, Frank wanted to cheer at his success, but the combination has collapsed, destroying every rune.
'I need to try constructing it in different order.'
'Considering its function, I should place the Energy Runes first, then Life Runes and only then Stone Runes.'
'It's much harder though, with nothing holding the Energy Runes together they will always try to drift away, the same with Life Runes, I need to constantly hold them in place using my aura.'
Following his own instructions, Frank constructed the combination and it was stable this time. Only for 5 minutes though, it has collapsed then.
'I made the combination right this time, so it seems like I need some Mana to make this construct stable enough to not collapse.'
This was much harder than it sounded, because Frank needed to constantly use his aura to hold onto Mana, while also constructing this unstable combination. One mistake and many hours of work will be wasted for nothing.
It only took two days for Frank to collect Mana this time because he already had some experience. He failed in construction this time because he couldn't control the Energy Runes well enough, causing the combination to collapse at the beginning stages. Thankfully, he didn't lose much Mana, so he had enough for another try.
Second try was a failed one as well. He let too much Mana slip away from him because of him being too concentrated on the runes.
He failed eleven more times before finally constructing his own Mana Storage Mk1 at the fourteenth try.
But his fails weren't just a waste of time, he gained a lot of experience at collecting mana and controlling his aura. He could kind of multitask now.
This Mana Storage wasn't complete, it had only two mana infused Stone Runes, so Frank began collecting mana once again. It took him measly five hours this time.
Using the mana, Frank echanted every Stone Rune forming what he decided to name as ‹Stone Enchantment›. He choose this name for convenience's sake, because he knew that the Stone Runes' weren't the only ones that can be mana infused.
With the structure being absolutely stable now, Frank received a wave of information into his mind.
-------------------
[Mana Storage]
[Tier 0]
[Mana Storage - can store mana]
[Mana - 0%]
-------------------
[+0.1 to Intelligence]
-------------------
«Oh»
'That's something unexpected'
'Stats'
[Name - Frank Terestra
Gender - Male
Soul Age - 21]
[INT - 1,42 (4x) (Im4x)
CON - 2,1 (4x)
STA - 2,3 (6x) (Im3x)
AGI - 1,8 (1,5x) (Im1,5x)
DEX - 2 (6x) (Im3x)
STL - 0,05 (1x) (Im1x)
SEN - 1,23 (1,1x to Touch)
{Sight - 1,2 (2x)
Hearing - 1 (2x)
Smell - 0,8 (1x)
Taste - 1,03 (2x)
Touch - 1,8 (3,3x) (Im3x)
Proprioception - 1,7 (2x)
Temperature - 1,41 (2x)
Intuition - 0,9 (1x)(Im1,5x)}]
'My stats are better now, espetially the senses'
'Touch and proprioception should have improved so much because of my aura. When I inspect things with my aura it feels like touching, and because of my aura I can feel everything around me, so yeah.'