The 4 cores on Rin’s hand slowly turn into mana particles. It looked like blue dust getting carried by the wind and then slowly disappearing.

“I’ve actually learned magic!” Rin cheers. It was a little difficult for him to hold his enthusiasm. Magic is something that only exists in fantasy but here it is, right in front of him.

Obtaining the skill gives Rin the knowledge to create and control water. To be more specific, he can convert mana to water as long as he can grasp the aspect of the water element, which is calm and formless yet it is also all forms.

Rin decides to do a few tests with his newly acquired magic, testing his control over water and the cost of mana. He made a few discoveries while playing with it.

He can create water the size of a basketball with 1 mana. He’s able to move the ball of water for about 10 seconds before it starts to consume 1 point of mana. The mana consumption also increases as the water gets farther away from him.

Rin also tried to change the water’s form but it was a difficult task. It requires him to have good control over his mana but he is still a newbie so he was not able to do much. At this point, he was already out of mana.

Rin decides to call it a day and head back home. He was mentally exhausted from the 2 battles. He will practice his [Water Magic] for the rest of the day.

Rin gathers the staff and 4 spears into an orderly pile outside the house and drags a bokin body next to it. He picks up his knife and walks toward the cornfield to pick up the club that he had left behind at the beginning.

When he turned around the corner he saw the usual vast cornfield. This time, however, Rin could see the upper half of a giant humanoid in the middle of the cornfield.

The giant’s features are similar to a human’s. He has pale skin with a slight tint of yellow. His face has an ancient feel to it. He is bald but has a thick beard. He has a skinny structure compared to his size but his arms are still as thick as a bus.

The giant was gazing at the mountains before his eyes shift towards Rin. The two massive eyes portray no emotions, It would be difficult for one to tell what he is currently thinking.

Fear was running through Rin’s body, he was paralyzed. This was completely different from his encounter with the goblin. Right now he is completely helpless. Fighting or escaping would be futile.

The giant stands up. He now stands at 10 meters tall and is wearing a red fur skirt that covers his private part. The giant walks toward Rin. Rin’s heart beats faster each time the giant takes a step; his whole body is covered in sweat. It feels like the giant is purposely walking slow but it was just Rin having a nervous breakdown.

Before Rin knew it, the giant walked over him and casually continues to walk toward the mountain. Slowly, the giant’s footsteps become distant until Rin could no longer hear them. He releases a deep sigh of relief and falls to the floor shaking. He felt like death had a grip on his heart and was ready to pull at any moment.

“It’s a good thing I didn’t look up. Otherwise, I would have seen his holy sword hahaha…” Rin jokes, trying to calm himself down.

His legs were so weak that he thanked whatever divines above he didn’t piss his pants. If he didn’t die from the fear then he would’ve died from embarrassment. He begins to regain his strength after a while so he gets up and quickly fetches the club.

With all the weapons under one arm, Rin drags a bokin towards his house. He has a plan for this little fella, though he’s not sure if it would work. Rin left all the other bodies inside the house. Since they are in an enclosed space, their smell shouldn’t attract others.

When he reached his house, all he wanted to do was knock out on his bed but he did not want to waste daylight. First, he grabs his first aid kit and tends to his chest wound. He simply disinfected and bandage it.

Then Rin grabs his shovel and starts digging in the front yard. He digs a pit that is 1.75 meters deep and 1 meter wide and throws the bokin inside. Then he suddenly remembers about the goblin he had buried.

‘The goblin should have a mana core as well.’

Rin digs the goblin back up and grabs the mana core. The core looks very similar to the bokin cores with only a few noticeable differences in its patterns.

Too lazy to bury the goblin back, he throws it in the pit with the bokin.

Then he digs the spears into the pit in such a way that the sharp end is facing upward. Rin made his first trap.

He was hoping for the bokin and goblin body to lure a few creatures and cause them to fall into the pit and get pierced by the spears. He was only planning to do this for one night as an experiment.

He gathers a number of fragile sticks and places them above the pit then he gathers some leaves and puts them on the sticks. The leaves hide the pit and the sticks are fragile enough to break whatever stands on it.

By now Rin has regained his mana so he heads inside to practice magic. He was about to start when he remembers the staff that the bokin mage used.

Rin picks up the 1-meter staff and tries to get the system to identify it. However, nothing popped up. He tries to transfer a little bit of his mana into the staff but there was no result. He was hoping the system would tell him how this staff could be useful but it looks like he will have to find out himself.

Rin conjures a ball of water but finds that it is about 50% bigger than what he could originally conjure for 1 point of mana. This is most likely the staff’s doing. He tries to manipulate the water ball’s shape and test the mana consumption but there was no difference.

After a few more testing, Rin finds that the staff only helps with the water conjuration and nothing else, which makes sense considering how a low-level bokin was able to conjure a huge amount of water.

Rin takes a look at his stats while he waits for his mana to regenerate. He has been pondering about what attributes to focus on so he held onto his 2 attribute points from his level up.

Ultimately, Rin decides to go for a magic build since he has the potential to learn a wide variety of magic. He assumes that the magic stat will increase the power of his magic but he puts his 2 points into mana first, leaving him with a total of 8 mana.

Rin can’t see how magic power would affect [water magic]. He imagines that magic power may affect each element differently. For example, it makes sense for magic power to increase the heat intensity for fire magic. But what about [water magic]?

Rin could only imagine that he can shoot water with more speed and force, thus dealing damage through the impact. However, his [water magic] is like a gentle wave in his current state, so how many points must he spend on magic before he can deal actual damage? He decides to focus mana over magic for now after coming up with this conclusion.

As Rin practices into the night…

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[ Water Magic leveled up!]

[ Water Magic level 2]

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‘My skill leveled up?’

Rin was wondering about the skill level before but it looks like one only needs to practice to increase levels.

He does a few testing to see if there's any difference. He finds that he can conjure around 10% more water than before and his control is slightly more efficient as well, it was a pretty decent improvement overall.