I hit the dice as hard as I can once again. Four. Lands on a yellow platform moving forward by six platforms. Next time I roll three, landing on blue platform. Once again, I can feel my body being infused with pure mana, replenishing my mana reserve with little left to nurture my cells.

I hit the dice again, rolling two and landing on red platform again. As I was waiting for more puppets to appear, I suddenly get and ominous feeling and jump forward. As I look back after jumping I see a red laser like light frying place I would have been if I didn’t jump forward.

More and more lasers start to circle and chase me around after a while. I dodge them as best as I can. While dodging I touch one of the lasers briefly, but it still managed to singe my elbow. Luckily, I healed quick enough.

Only after dodging for twenty seconds does the lasers stop.

“PANT, PANT, PANT”

This is quite tiring and extremely dangerous. I need to rest for a while to continue. It took everything I got to pass this red platform. Pushing my focus to keep observing my surroundings is extremely taxing on my mind. I’m fine physically but mentally exhausted.

I start again after resting for almost thirty minutes. This time I roll five landing on white platform. As I guessed white ones are safe platforms. After that I hit the dice again, rolling three and landing on blue one again. As I wait for the mana to infuse my body, I hear a sound behind me.

I turn around and see three golden chests. Now is it trap chests or treasure chests. Who knows what might happen when I try to open one of them.

So, I conjure up a long spear and try to poke one of them from far. Just as I touch it with my spear, two others disappear and one I poked opens on its own.

I step closer to the open one slowly and carefully and take a peek and see a book with black leather cover and two bracelets with black metal sheen.

Those look good, but what if it is a trap. I try to pick up the items inside the chest and suddenly chest turns in a monster and devour me whole. Oh, I can use my left arm.

I extend my left arm and pick up the items inside the chest from far. And it seems chest is not a trap.

I take a look at the book first. It has nothing on its cover. I flip it open and see a martial art stance. On the second page I see breathing exercise.

This one is actually very interesting. I don’t need Qi to temper my body. I can use pure energy with this breathing exercise to temper my body.

So, I guess I can try this exercise after exiting this cave. As for the stances, those seems to be some martial art techniques. No matter how I search I can’t find a name. I think this will help me tremendously after I start to practice it.

As for the bracelets, they’re made out of material I don’t know of and they’re almost weightless. Since the book contains martial arts, these bracelets must have some connection with this.

After observing it for a while I discover nothing. So, last thing I can try is try to infuse these with mana.

I take little bit of mana and will it to enter the bracelets on my wrists. And as soon as my mana enters the bracelets it starts to turn into pitch-black gauntlets. After gauntlets form greaves starts to form on my feet too. And finally, after that face-fitting mask covers my face.

Ooh, this is seriously cool. All of it fits like a glove.

Since it got activated when I infused little bit of mana, I wonder what will happen if I infuse even more mana?

As I injected more mana into the gauntlets, they start to charge up, converting my mana into pent up power. And as soon as I punch out it releases all the accumulated power causing small explosion on point of impact.

Greaves on my foot are same too. Just thinking what charged up right straight can do makes me giddy like a kid on a Christmas Eve.

It converts back to bracelets if I simply take back the mana I injected first. It seems it functions as a simply trigger.

As I was hoping to test my new gears I hope that roll will land on a red platform. Three. Figure lands on a yellow platform barely passing over a purple one and teleporting to connected red one.

But as my figure passed over its first purple one I felt danger. And as soon as it passed the purple platform, I actually felt some kind of relief.

It seems this time I got the puppets as I hoped. But these puppets are different. They resemble large, lizard-like creatures with oversized claws. And they seem much faster than the mannequin puppets too. Only similarity is their white color.

Instead of charging at me directly they start to circle me around waiting for me to expose an opening for them to strike.

As they circle me around I push my focus to its fullest. Observing these creatures. Constructing a plan to dispose them. I equip my new gauntlets and greaves first. Then wait for them to strike first as I wait them while charging my gears.

After ten second stand-off, one of the lizards rushes at me from my back. And as soon as it enters my range it lunges at me from behind. Just before it manages to slash me with its oversized claw I squat and it misses its target. And just as it passes over my I punch its stomach with everything I got.

BOOM!!

My right gauntlet let out a deafening explosion and the creature disintegrates. That was awesome, albeit little too loud.

And as soon as one of them disintegrates, others start to attack me. As they lunge at me with their oversized claws I extend my left arm with my gauntlet still on it and swings it around me like a whip.

First one to get in contact with my gauntlet explodes to smithereens. Even after that I keep swinging my arm to stop the others from reaching me. As I swing my arm, I manage to sweep the others and throw them off.

This gives me some distance. Before they recover and attack me together again I run to one closest to me and stomp on it with my left greaves, killing it with another loud boom.

While I was killing one of them others manage to recover, once again attacking me together.

This time as they got into my range I simply take a deep breath and use my fire breath. Three in the front gets burned to cinders, but ones behind them manage to dodge to the side and taking distance to avoid my fire.

Six down, four more to go.

As soon as I run out of breath and my fire stops, they start to circle me again like in the beginning, trying to get in my blind spot. They start to spread out to distract me while another one tries to take me down from behind. It seems they are learning.

And as soon as I try to get in range they run from me while one behind me tries to backstab me.

So, in order to kill them I need to be faster. To do that I get into sprint start position and kick with my greaves just as I lunge forward with frightening velocity and gets in range to punch the closest lizard before it even knew what happened and punch it with another loud explosion.

One that was behind me tries to sneak on me while I was killing the one in front, but I already know where it is and as soon as it goes for the kill I pivot to my left and kicks it from beneath, slashing it into two.

Two more to go.

But even before they knew it two small orange sparrows land on their head while they were focusing on me. And as soon as they land on their heads they try to swat my sparrows.

“Too late.”

BOOM!!!

That was so satisfying.

As soon as they disappear dice comes once again. Now I’m so close to finishing this game. I only need to roll more than two and I’m a winner.

Between my victory platform and now stands one last purple platform. I hope I won’t roll one.

Ooh, I think that was a flag.

“Come on, two.”

ONE!!!

“FUUUUUCK!!!”

As my figure land on purple platform, my surroundings start to change.