While holding it in his right hand, Abel held the Horadric Cube close towards this private storage box. He wanted to put the box inside his Horadric Cube. There was no one in this world anymore, so using the box here felt weird for him.
As a white light flashed by, the private storage box had taken four slots inside the Horadric Cube.
What did it look like outside the camp? The sky was bright now, so Abel walked along the main road of the square towards the exit of the camp. After he went around the wall, he came to the Blood Moor, a huge plain located outside the rogue encampment.
The morning sun shone on the land of Blood Moor. The ground was barren with nothing but weeds. Abel felt lonely when he was walking around this place. It was human nature to be in a group, after all. Right now, it's probably just him who's still around.
Swish.
While Abel was getting kind of zoned out, an arrow suddenly shot at him from his front. Fortunately, he was in his armor, so the arrow just bounced off his chest as soon as it landed.
Abel was startled. He looked towards the direction where the arrow shot from and found that it was a mouse that was attacking him.
It was a mouse with thorns. It was kind of like an echidna, except the spikes could be fired like tiny arrows.
"Quill rats!"
Abel didn't expect there to be any creatures from the underworld here. Quill rats were the lowest amongst creatures from hell. When a normal rat was corrupted by the dark powers of hell, it would be turned into a quill rat that would hide in the bushes to shoot spikes at any nearby humans.
The magical sword in his hand lifted, blocking this second long thorn. Abel stepped on the ground and pressed hard, leaving a deep depression on the ground. He rushed forward like the wind and swung at the rat in an attempt to kill it with one hit.
Bang.
Abel thought that he could split the quill rat into two. Yet, even with his full strength, the most he could do was to leave a big cut on the quill rat. Black blood ran from the darn beast's wound, but it was not moving any slower. Soon, it shot a third spike towards Abel.
Abel dodged the long spike again. He looked at the quill rat that was slowed by the ice magic sword. If a rat was this hard to kill, he might need to do a lot more preparation if he wanted to survive in this world.
Even after two seconds, the slowing effect of the Ice Magic Sword was still in place. Abel felt kind of weird for a bit. The slowing effect was only gone after two more seconds, but the quil rat had already shot so many spikes at him.
Just how durable were these creatures against physical attacks? Abel was thinking about killing it with magic, but he couldn't even cast a basic "fireball" at this stage, let alone launching a spell that would finish this fight.
Abel came forward and slashed for a dozen times with his sword. After mashing the quill rat into the mud of flesh, it finally lost all signs of life. Not even cockroaches were that hard to kill. As it turned out, all creatures from hell were highly-resistant against physical attack. If Abel wanted to explore this land further, he might need to learn some more magic first.
While thinking that he was safe for now, a shadow suddenly appeared from the pile of the dead rat's corpse, then rushed straight towards the Horadric Cube. Abel had never seen anything like this before. He quickly opened his Horadric Cube to check if anything was wrong, but couldn't find much change at all. Perhaps the Cube was just absorbing the soul of the quill rat.
Anyways, it had been more than ten hours since he came to this place. Abel returned to the square of Rogues' Encampment. He held down the Horadric Cube in his right arm and took out the Scroll of Town Portal from it. Since this wasn't Earth, he might just be able to go back to his bedroom.
The mana slowly flowed to the town's teleportation scroll. After blue light flashed by, the oval magic portal appeared once more. Abel looked around him for a while. When the white tent appeared in his sight, he said goodbye to it.
"I'll come back!" Abel whispered.
Then Abel walked into the water ripples in the magic portal. He suddenly felt very dizzy again. After he opened his eyes, he found himself to be inside his room at the Bakong City Boulevard.
If his calculation was right, now was the time to head to the noble arbitral tribunal. He still had some compensation fee that he needed to pay.
After finding Loraine to be in front of him as he opened up the room's door, Abel chuckled for a bit.
"What's wrong, Loraine?" Abel asked, "Are you here to come to the noble arbitral tribunal with me, by any chance?"
"No?" Loraine replied with a confused look on her face, "I'm here to tell you that dinner is ready! Aren't you going to the noble arbitral tribunal tomorrow?"
"Ah!" So that's what it was. As it turned out, the flow of time in this reality was not the same as the one in the world of Diablo.
After having his dinner with Loraine, Abel got himself two hourglasses and went straight back to his room. He didn't mind as Loraine was watching him doubtfully this entire time.
Abel took out the Town of Town Portal from his Horadric Cube. By this point, the two Scrolls of Town Portal he used before were now recovered. After checking that there were twenty scrolls inside the cube, Abel took one out and opened up a portal with his mana.
Abel reversed the two hourglasses at the same time, one on the ground, the other in his hands. He then entered the portal, then returned to the square of the Rogues' Encampment.
Whilst waiting for the portal to take him there, Abel decided not to waste time and began to meditate. As he focused his internal thoughts, the pattern of the first-level apprentice wizard appeared in front of him. He then guided the magic into the pattern with his mana.
While Abel was channeling the mana with his power of the Will, the mana started pouring and flooding inside the rune. If air here wasn't so concentrated with magic, he would've had to spend a lot more effort trying to keep the magic inside the rune's patter.
The magical meditation in the magic tower was like the air flowing into the pattern of the first-level apprentice wizard, but here the feeling of air was very different. Abel was painful but happy at this time. The pattern of the first-level apprentice wizard who has just been drawn for a long time had never been poured into so much magic. Now he was able to try to slow down the influx of magic with mental power.
Although he didn't get much help in this world, the magical environment had given Abel a huge surprise. At the end of a careful meditation, he found that one-time meditation here was comparable to five times meditation in the outside world. After many months of meditation, other people's five years of meditation, he could achieve the same effect in only one year, and it would allow him to get more time to learn other knowledge.
Looking back at the hourglass, one meditation took an hour, and Abel 's meditation experience was very low. As the number of meditations increased, the experience has increased, and the time of meditation would become faster and faster. It was the only way Abel knew to restore magic at that time.
When Abel just entered the tower, he didn't know much about the wizard, but he knew that there must be other ways to add magic, because meditation could only be used in the tower, and if we went outside, the thin mana of the world couldn't help him meditate normally. Without auxiliary methods, the wizard couldn't leave the magic tower.
Maybe he would know this as Abel's stayed in the Tower of Magic became longer and longer, but now he was only able to use meditation to restore his magical power.
The next step was to practice the 'fire bullet' spell. Abel was not prepared to save mana but used the mana directly to draw the 'fire bullet' pattern here. This practice effect would be better, he thought.
Abel's magic was only enough to practice drawing the complete 'fireball' pattern four times. It was very hard for him not to make any mistakes now, but for the most part, he could practice for about twenty times before he needed to replenish his mana.
During meditation, one could replenish mana and increase manas. When the mana was increased, one would have to be very careful to distribute it as evenly as possible across the rune. Replenishing was a lot easier. As long as one's power of the Will was connected to the mana, the mana would automatically flow to where the rune designed it to be in.