Other than the Master's Call ability, Timothy also bought the Tame Illusions ability. The arcane branch of illusion magic, tip-toed across the line of being pure, and necromantic, it was an endless dance of good and evil, and it was oftentimes difficult to see the line that separated the two. The ability he bought the latest, however, was absolutely necromantic, no doubt about it!

  It was the most expensive purchase too, towering at seventy-thousand system points, simply because it was difficult for one to attain any, and all illusion-based abilities!

  “Seventy-thousand points… this bastarding purchase better be good!” He mumbled.

  Based on the system's description, he could either choose to ‘tame' monsters, or people with this ability, or he could choose to torture them mentally for forty-two hours straight, keeping them awake until he’d push them towards an eternal slumber, or insanity itself, sprinkled with Paranoid Schizophrenia! This ability was considered dark, because it could ruin the lives of many, and it could leave its victims to suffer for years, possibly decades, because there was no known way to reverse the negative effects of the Tame Illusion ability!

  There were simpler, more positive uses to this ability as well. He could use it to calm people down for a couple of hours, in order to avoid them fighting them, but any dark mage who possessed such an ability would rarely use it in such a calm manner.

  Skendus had variations of this ability, spread across countless powers in his arsenal, and he could do the same damage if he wanted to, but he knew how to tip-toe along the line of good, and evil. His mana pool didn't have a spec of dark mana in it, for example, which was an advocate that he knew how to avoid over-using the more brutal side of his powers!

  “Now that I understand illusion better, I have to admit that Skendus is a badass! He could've been a dark mage a long time ago, but he controlled himself. It's so unfair that the Mana Gods punished him as much as they punished the rest of us, he's a saint!” He rattled on, in admiration of his friend.

  After buying these couple of dark abilities, Timothy's percentage of dark mana had bumped up to twenty percent, which was more than he would ever want, but he knew how to reduce it. He had plenty of fractional, dark powers that he absorbed from those dark mages that he had killed, back in The Old Sea, and if he chose to process these powers now, and get rid of the plenty of them that he found useless, he could drop the influence of dark mana in his pool by a bit!

  This was only possible because the powers were fractional, otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to get rid of such a dark influence, even if he dumped all of his dark abilities in the sea! Full, dark abilities had a permanent effect on his mana pool.

  Timothy didn’t want to use the Tame Illusions ability right now, because he didn’t know anyone he hated enough for him to try the illusions on. If he was to try it, he wanted to try it to full capacity, and unless he had a strong enemy opposing him, he chose to avoid using this ability.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Besides, with his MQ towering at five-hundred points now, he was more ready than ever to process the multiple fractions of the dark abilities that he stole from the Hunched Humans, back in The Old Sea. He felt smart enough to make the best use out of them, and considering that he had been tinkering with mana channels even when his MQ was at three-hundred points, he just knew that he'd achieve something interesting today! He was confident about it!

  “If I can compress all of the fractions into one, useful power, then maybe I can keep this darned, dark mana at fifteen percent…” He plotted.

  Timothy then spent an hour tampering with the fractions of the dark abilities that he stole. Most of them seemed useless to him now, considering that the upgrades that he bought from the system were a lot more superior, but he still studied all of them, and picked up on the few, most useful mana channels that each fraction of power had.

  The Soul Eater ability was the most important fraction of power that he had, from what he could understand, so he decided to build on that, and make one of his own!

  The Soul Eater ability had specific patterns of hollowed out mana channels, which was what made the ability unique. These hollowed channels were a ball-hair away from being considered ghostly, or phantomized, and this was what allowed the literal consumption of other souls!

  Even with his heightened MQ, Timothy struggled to understand these hollowed patterns entirely, but he still created something useful with them. He paired these hollowed mana channels, with a lot of important patterns that he learned from the other, fractional abilities, and as a result, the ability he created ended up being more useful, and intensive! He named it the Amplified Soul Eater ability.

  Using this ability, each soul he consumed, would be worth more, meaning that his Phantomized Mana Pool would have more chances of experiencing flash upgrades, every time he consumed a soul. It took quite some effort to create such an ability, but he succeeded, and afterwards, he expelled all of the fractional dark abilities out of his body, because they were useless to him now!

  There were a couple of abilities which would allow him to summon weaker, less significant demons, but he wasn’t interested in them any more. He had to take a calculated risk there, and he decided that it wasn’t worth it to increase the influence of dark mana in his mana pool, just to summon a demon that was so weak that it could get killed by one of his goblin slaves! It wasn’t worth it, so he simply dumped all of those fractions out of his body, along with the rest.

  Now, even though he had a new, fully dark ability to his arsenal, the dark mana within him, only took refuge in seventeen percent of his mana pool, which was lower than earlier on. However, this seventeen percent was permanent now, he wasn’t able to change it, so he wanted to steer clear of creating or buying any new, dark abilities anytime soon!

  Instead, he wanted to focus on his offensive abilities that were based on his blue mana, such as his fireballs and lightning bolts, but before he could tamper with them, the system interrupted him. She informed them of something special!

  [More than an hour ago, you bought the last, available purchase on the sixth badge of purchase options. Congratulations!] She beeped, [As promised, you can now upgrade your current abilities as much as you choose, and whenever you choose, so if you want to improve your elemental abilities, I suggest that you spend a few thousand system points on them, rather than creating something entirely new. With your current arsenal, it’s best to improve what you already have, and if you choose to, you could spend all of your system points on your elemental abilities!]