Chapter 561: I've been waiting for you

Hearing Emily trying to console him, Max came to his senses and felt warm in his heart. He placed his hands above hers on his cheeks and gave her a dazzling smile. "Yeah. You are right. This will be a new beginning for me."

Seeing he no longer looked 'worried', and was smiling, Emily secretly heaved a sigh of relief and also felt proud of herself that her words of comfort were powerful enough.

Max was stunned when he saw her grin, which enhanced her cold beauty by several folds. Unconsciously, his hands left hers and cupped her cheeks.

This made Emily snap out of her smug daze and she blinked her big, misty eyes, and gazed down at him, looking puzzled and asked. "What are you doing? Why are you touching my face like this?"

"Um..." Max was left speechless for a moment before he blushed and coughed. "Nothing. You looked just too adorable, so I couldn't stop myself. Why? You don't like it?"

"Oh..." Emily didn't say anything and kept staring at him for a while, causing him to become awkward and slowly lower his hands. But just then, grabbed his wrists, placed his palms on her cheeks and said, "It's okay. You can touch them for a while more since you like it."

Although she tried to look indifferent, her face still reddened and her black eyes became limpid like autumn dew, making her look enchanting. This made Max fall into a brief daze. Thump! Thump! When he recovered, he realized his heart was beating wildly, his breathing grew strained, and his blood flow had increased, which made a certain part of him hard and rise toward the sky.

"Hm? You alright, Max? Eh?!" Emily was startled when she noticed his breathing had slowed and his heart was beating loudly. But when she noticed a tent rising right below his stomach, she went still for a moment before her face blushed crimson and she cried out in alarm and surprise.

When Max heard her surprised cry and followed her gaze to his nether region, he grew frantic and cursed himself for having such low self control. "Ah, Emily. This isn't..." Whoosh!

Just when he wanted to explain himself, Emily moved his head away from her lap, putting it on the thin bedding laid underneath them, sat up, uttered a muffled, "It's alright," and dashed away, instantly disappearing from sight.

Even after she disappeared, Max continued to stare into the distance. After a while, he smiled bitterly and muttered, "I'm really hopeless, huh?"

A short while later, he threw these thoughts at the back of his mind and started contemplating what he was going to do going forward.

'I can sense mana now. So, I should try cultivating.' Thinking this, he pushed himself up, sat down cross-legged, and closed his eyes.

As he pushed his senses outwards, he could easily sense mana, and unlike when he used to recover his mana with mana stones, he felt refreshed. After basking in the feeling for a while, he started circulating his basic cultivation technique-that Esther gave him when he wanted to form his mana core. However, he soon realized something. When he used this cultivation technique before, he could easily control the mana inside his body and circulate it around his body however he wanted. But now, he couldn't even grasp the mana in his core, forget controlling it.

'Don't tell me the system was helping me with it?' Realization hit him hard, causing his face to turn dark. In the past, whenever he saw Rima and others cultivate and tell him how tiring it was, he used to feel that he was a genius, since he could easily do it and it wasn't that tiring for him. However, now he realized it was all thanks to the system. Realizing this, he couldn't help but reveal a self-mocking smile and sigh. "How pathetic!"

"Don't tell me I'll face the same problem with my spells" Suddenly, his expression changed. He wanted to try them, but because he didn't have any mana left, he gave up on the thought. Taking out a few hundred low-grade mana stones, he circulated his cultivation technique and started to recover his mana.

After an hour, he used up over a thousand low grade mana stones, but only recovered one fourth of his total mana.

SIgh!

Max sighed and muttered as he glanced at the used up mana stones and muttered, "I wasted more than half mana in the stones. This efficiency... is just too poor."

He knew it wasn't only because he wasn't proficient in circulating his mana through his mana veins since he wasn't too familiar with them, but also because his cultivation technique's grade was too low for a peak three-star mage. Not to mention, he couldn't use it properly like before.

'I can slowly get used to using my mana veins, but I need a better cultivation technique as soon as possible.' He thought. Then suddenly, he recalled when he scolded Ellie, he counted giving Ella this cultivation technique as a favor. Thinking this, his face twitched. If it could be called a favor, what else couldn't?

"Let's try the spells now. Then I'll ask Emily to teach me her cultivation technique." Deciding this, he stood up and started to cast his spells one by one.

Before long, he confirmed... without system, his spells' might had reduced a lot and he needed to train in them again to achieve his former level. But what really made Max frown was the fact that he couldn't accumulate any spell without being noticed, unlike before. This meant he lost the element of surprise, which always gave him the upper hand when fighting stronger enemies. It was a huge blow, and he also realized, once more, how significant the system's assistance was.

"There is no use drowning in sorrow. I should go find Emily now." He muttered and stopped thinking about the things he lost since it would only worsen his mood. Stowing away the bedding in his spatial ring, he walked out of their temporary residence-the cave-to find Emily.

Just as he walked out, he heard a nonchalant voice.

"Oh? You've finally woken up. I've been waiting for you."