Three days passed, and I spent those days killing some weak monsters and exchanging letters with Lun. After spending those three days, I could see that Lun was not interested in breaking her seal and getting out of her prison. After all, she will be free after a few more years.
Clearly, her release must have been related to either the appearance of dungeons or the earth's expiring gifts, or at least that was what I thought at the time.
In one of the exchanges on the second day, Lun suddenly said that my clothes are unsightly. Well, she wasn't wrong there, I wore a monster's skin as clothes and it barely cover my important parts.
After Lun said that though, she ordered Fen to make me some clothes. When he heard that, Fen turned his wolf face to me and said
"All right, since it's her highness's order, I will do it but I won't provide the material for it. Just give me whatever monster leather or skin you have."
Considering how I already killed some monsters before and kept their skin because I was so sure that I would always lose my clothes every time I have to revive. When I gave it to Fen though, his face turned weird, or at least that was what I managed to perceive from his wolf face.
Fen then disappears with all the skins and leather I gave him. It didn't take long for him to come back though, only about four to five hours. He was back with five pairs of clothes.
The clothes he made were five pairs of leather jackets and trousers. Although there were no shirts or underwear, at least all the clothes he made fit perfectly with me. But still, who would ever think that such a ferocious-looking wolf would be able to make such good clothes?
Now back to the current time, I was reading the letters Lun sent to me when I saw her question. She asks me why didn't I use any spells. Reading her question, I was confused. After all, wasn't using magic all this time equal using spells?
When I asked her that, she answered that what I have been doing wasn't using spells to use magic, but using shaping mana to use magic. I was interested in the topic so I asked her to teach me about spells. But well, there was no such thing as a free meal in this world.
Lun wrote that in exchange for her teaching me spells, I have to bring her one material on the list that she gave me with her letter. There were so many materials, thankfully there was a description for every material in it. To read the description, all I have to do was touch the material I wanted to know.
The deal was one spell for one material at the amount written there. I thought that wasn't such a bad deal at the time not knowing how wrong I was.
*
*
One month passed ever since I got the material list from Lun. I thought that it wasn't that hard to gather at least one material from the list.
I was so wrong about it. For example, one of the materials was soul fruit. Looking at the description, all I have to do to take the fruit was to pluck it but when I saw the tree the fruit was from, I couldn't help but shudder.
It was the same tree that almost killed my soul. The other materials weren't that different. Either it was from an extremely ferocious-looking monster or it was in an extremely dangerous environment. Whichever it was, it would always be dangerous.
Not like it's that surprising though, considering how the description of this continent was the land where bizarre and ferocious monsters live.
One thing to note though, no monsters come near the clearing where Lun's prison was. Or at least the strong ones didn't the weak ones though, they came at least a few times a day.
Those weak monsters look just like a bit overgrown lizards around one to two meters in length and their strength was considerably weaker than even the goblins that ate me before.
*
*
Time passes, it was already about two years since I first come to this continent. During these two years, I managed to gather almost all of the materials in Lun's material lists. Thanks to that, Lun taught me many things about how to use magic with spells.
Simply put, the spell itself was just a series of mana-infused words to call for the desired effect of the speaker or caster. From there, the spell can be divided into a few more types but that was too long so I will have to omit that.
With the usage of spells, every caster can bypass the limitation of main elemental attributes. Although casters can bypass the limitation, it doesn't mean that using the magic of unsuitable attributes would be easier. In fact, most caster would probably drain their mana just to cast an intermediate spell even if they were capable of casting advanced spells.
Magic spells are divided into a few tiers. The first tier would be the beginner-level spell, the second tier intermediate-level spell and the highest for the world's current mana level would be the expert-level spell. Each level asks for a different level of mana-shaping skills.
Mana shaping skills themselves would advance following the caster's mana compression. The level of mana shaping skill needed for each tier of spell would be like this.
Beginner Spells: Mana Compression 1x-3x
Intermediate Spells: Mana Compression 4x-6x
Advanced Spells: Mana Compression 7x-9x
So following that, I could only use beginner spells because my mana compression was only at 2x.
That's right, even with two years of fighting here, I only managed to reach a mana compression level two-fold. The reason for that was because of the stabilizing status that comes with every tier upgrade. It was taking a very long time for my mana core to stabilize.
Another thing that happened in these two years was that I reached level 99 for body level. The moment I reached body level 60, I could feel that it was the limit of my body, and to increase it, I have to do something. Although, even now I still don't know what that something is.
When I was still digesting all my experiences, a letter suddenly appeared in front of me and it says.
"What are you waiting for? Go and get the last material on the list. I already taught you so many spells. What are you afraid of? It's just some stupid wood anyway."
That's right, the last material that Lun needed was the soul fruit. The one from that terrifying tree. Even though it was true that with the spells I have learned I would be able to defend my soul against the tree's soul attack, I still don't know how I was supposed to fight the tree.
I write back to Lun telling her that it's not like I'm afraid of the tree, it was just confusing how a person is supposed to fight a tree. I think that even if I managed to cut those roots, it would probably be useless. After all, the roots were just- well, roots. It's not like cutting a few roots would kill a tree.
What came back as a response was.
"Why bother thinking about cutting the tree? Just burn it down with enough flame. It will die eventually and it's not like the fruit will be burned too. After all, soul fruit is pretty much, not a physical entity. So you can just rest easy and burn the whole tree down."
Reading it, I feel that Lun's idea was a good and simple one. It makes me think why didn't I think about that before? But well, whatever happens, happens.
Though, when I think about it again, why did Lun ask for all these materials? Maybe I should ask her now? Well, whatever, that can be done after I finished my grudge against the shitty tree.