Chapter 9: My Strength Increased? - Fixed
Sensing his hunger, he placed his right hand on top of his stomach and licked his lips.
"I don't remember if the moss is edible.", looking at the purple moss with weird liquids squirming through its xylem, he decided against testing his luck.
"Yeah, I'd rather not get poisoned to death."
He began contemplating in silence.
'If I had enough Mana I could have just cured the Lich Essence off of the Branded Wolves, but I don't have enough Mana and neither do I have enough time to get stronger.'
Turning his phone on once again, he checked his notes.
'And I didn't put any information here about the type of monsters appearing in the lower level areas, so this is useless.'
To be sure that his phone had enough battery power for him to memorise the notes before it turned off, he used it for a very limited amount of time.
"So what can I do..."
He placed his hand on his chin, his head tilting slightly to the side.
"Ah!"
He smacked his head with his hand.
"When a Branded Wolf dies, the Lich Essence within its Brand seeps into its flesh and contaminates it, and I don't have enough Mana to remove this contamination."
"But!"
"If I reduce the amount of Lich Essence before the Branded Wolf dies, then it becomes comparatively easier to remove the Essence from the dead Branded Wolf."
Deciding on his path, he moved the purple moss to the side and greeted the sun.
'Let's find some Branded Wolves before I lose all my energy to fight.'
After a short 30 minute walk in a random direction, he arrived at a location far enough from the cave.
"Navigating back to the cave shouldn't be difficult considering my experience."
Mana began flowing through the nails in his right hand.
Slash.
He clenched his fist, allowing his nails to pierce through his skin, blood splattering across the floor.
"Branded Wolves are linked to the Lich Essence Grounds, they can detect where the Grounds are collecting Essence, so if I feed the Grounds my Essence I can lure some Branded Wolves over."
The howling of the Branded Wolves arrived.
"Here they come."
A small grin spreading across his face.
-----
Beneath its Knight helmet sat a mouth of pure black.
Its Mana exploded out of its mouth, a mist of dark-purple mana spewing outward.
"I sense the rats' movement."
BOOM!
The ground beneath it shattered, a sonic boom melting the eardrums of the prisoners beneath the castle.
Rocks flew into the skies as the castle walls broke into pieces, but the moment the walls turned into rocks a dark mist coiled around the flying rocks, slowly drawing them back to their original location.
Just a second later, the walls had returned to their previous firm yet a dilapidated state.
-----
Blood and spit drooped out of its mouth, its belly split down the middle with the intestines and stomach sneaking out.
The white Essence Brand wrapped around its body could only emit faint lights at this point.
"That's good enough."
Slicing down, its head rolled over for a few seconds, blood flowing out of its neck, spilling all over the ground.
[0.5 EXP Gained]
Looking at the other Branded Wolf corpse he confirmed that it was useless to him and continued with his actions.
Placing his palm onto the corpse, his Mana flew out, wrapping around the Branded Wolf like a blanket.
Sweat began dripping down his face as he focused.
Pshhh...
White steam began floating out of the Branded Wolve, dissipating into the air.
The Mana surrounding the Branded Wolf began to wobble and shake, Ariel's concentration was slowly running out.
"Just a bit longer...", taking in deep breaths, he calmed down his shaking.
His Mana was running out at a rate faster than the rate at which the Branding was being removed, "Come on..."
Relaxing his Mana he aimed to increase his efficiency to outlast the procedure.
A minute later...
Thud...
"Phew!", sitting on the floor he wiped the sweat off his head.
The Branding on the Wolf had disappeared and the contaminated flesh had been cured.
'I can't stop moving just yet.'
Standing back up he began cutting out the flesh from within the Branded Wolf, the cuts weren't the cleanest as his Mana was quite unstable and weak at the moment, but it was good enough.
Strapping the meat together with a piece of bendable wood he cut off the trees, he began making his way back, covering his feet with Mana to wipe away his traces.
-----
A few minutes later, at the same location the fight had occurred.
A web of cracks spread out, trees blew into the air from the impact, the heat burning the moss into ashes.
Creak...
The skeleton knight began drawing the sword from his side.
Slash.
Light shone off his blade as he swung it horizontally across his body.
Any surviving trees began toppling over, split in half from his slash.
"Where is the rat.", looking around, a mist of Mana began spewing from its mouth again.
Its dark bones began to rattle and shake.
"WHERE IS THE RAT!!!"
Raising his sword high, he pierced downwards, the cracks beneath his feet continued to spread as he tore the earth apart.
A plume of dust could be seen rising from hundreds of meters away.
-----
Turning his head backwards, he witnessed the dust rising into the sky.
"Whatever is there, is at least level 40.", ignoring the commotion he continued walking back to the cave.
But not before picking up a few pieces of wood and purple moss.
'Missing an arm is so annoying, just picking up wood becomes twice as long, and fighting is a struggle.'
Around 25 minutes later he was sat back within the cave.
After stacking the pieces of wood on top of each other, he picked up one sharp rock and placed another on the ground near the wood.
Stepping onto the one on the ground, he imbued it with Mana through his foot and imbued the one in his fist with Mana as well.
Raising his hand he struck downwards.
Shifting the Mana to the sparks he gave them a hint of life, allowing the wood to catch fire.
Swoosh!
The crackling and popping of the flames cleared up the eery silence that Ariel lived within.
Using sticks, he pierced through the meat like how kebab was made and placed them on top of the flames.
Gazing at the meat momentarily he watched as the fat changed colours from a bright red to a golden yellow.
Whilst he was waiting for it to cook, he looked to the side where he kept a few pieces of raw meat and some purple moss he picked up outside.
"If I can't test it on my own body, then I'll just test it on the meat."
With his hand covered in Mana, he ripped through the purple moss and smeared the liquid over the meat.
Nothing happened.
"Is it safe?", he was quite surprised that this purple moss had yet to damage the meat, you would expect something that can live within a Lich's Essence Ground to be dangerous.
Just to be sure he waited an extra few minutes.
His eyes lit up in joy, "That was easier than expected."
'Acquiring food and water was easy, at a minimum, I thought I'd have to rip apart a level 20 Plant monster or so.'
A delicious smell wafted into his nose, "That smells better than I expected.", picking up the skewer he bit into it, the fat melting away and spreading through his mouth.
"Hm?"
His brows raised, he sensed a faint wave of energy flowing through him after swallowing that skewer.
Without hesitation, he picked up the rest of the skewers and stuffed them into his mouth.
Sitting down cross-legged, he digested the rest of the food.
He sensed the energy flowing through increasing in power, using his Mana as a guiding stick, he ordered the energy to flow through the important muscles within his body.
The sounds of flesh pounding and grinding could be heard faintly within him.
Gritting his teeth he continued guiding the energy.
30 seconds later.
Boom!
The jagged lining of the cave began to shift and move slightly, the loose rocks began to prance around under his pressure.
"My Strength increased?"
-----------------------
[Ariel Grey]
[Level 1]
[EXP - 2.5/20]
[Stats]
-----
Strength - 6
Agility - 5
Endurance - 5
Vitality - 5
Mana - 2
Free Points = 0
-----
[Race - Unknown]
[Status - Unchained]
-----------------------
"Not only my Strength, even my Mana has increased.", it was a surprise, but he welcomed this one with open arms.
Well, one arm.
Picking up a piece of purple moss he crushed it and began drinking the liquid from within.
Wiping away the water from his mouth he continued thinking.
'This is either to do with the change in my Race or the fact that I'm now Unchained, It's one of these two and I'm more inclined towards the change in Race.'
He rubbed his chin slightly.
'But what Race am I now?'
Thud...
The cave began shaking unceasingly, the jagged cave walls began to crumble.
"Hm?", removing all of the useless thoughts, he jumped towards the cave entrance and looked outside.
With a giant teeth-laced club in hand, stood an Undead Giant.
The flesh on its face rotten with maggots crawling all over, pus spilling out. Its body, on the other hand, was covered by thick hide armour.
But you could easily imagine what it looked like under that armour.
'A level 10 Undead Giant, it's a bad opponent for me but I can use it to test my new strength.'
Ariel's ocean blue eyes reflected from within its eyes.
"ROOARRR!", it smashed its club down towards Ariel, the dirt beneath them was flung meters high up into the air.
Ariel could be seen holding onto the club with his right arm as the dust slowly cleared up.
Mana violently raging from within his hand.
"You give more EXP, right?"
An evil glint flashed through his eyes.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
AlwaysTired
AlwaysTired Thank you for reading :D
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone