As I was given time to prepare before moving onto the next level, I decided to discover the new me, and the most logical starting point seemed to be inspecting my level of mana and starting cultivation. I was honestly dying to try some magic, but as that relied heavily on mana, I decided to do things in the right order.

I stored my armor and my sword in my dimension ring and I took the lotus position. Closing my eyes I placed my hands palm-up on my knees. On each hand I added half of the beast cores I had found in the chest. I managed to connect with my mana core without any difficulty. I was surprised by the size of my core, as normally they started quite small and had to be stretched over time to be able to hold larger quantities of mana.

I started cycling the mana that I was absorbing from the beast cores and the mana rich environment of the tower. The beast cores provided an absolute flood of dense mana, and it coursed through my channels and meridians, expanding both in the process. Although I had never done this before, it all felt as natural as breathing to me.

How long I had been meditating, I wasn’t sure, but when I finished, all of the beast cores had been completely depleted and I felt a power running through my veins unlike anything I had ever imagined possible. I found I was already breathing in the mana rich air and purifying it within my core subconsciously.

Somehow, I had evolved since entering the dungeon and I didn't actually believe it was all my doing. The dungeon certainly had a hand in somehow upgrading me without my knowledge, of that I was pretty sure. Already the fact that I had a fully developed mana core, advanced channel structures and that all my meridians were already opened, was not normal.

"I don’t know what’s going on, but thanks for the upgrades. You probably didn't want me to know it was you, but wow, I feel like I could take on an army now."

"I have no idea what you are talking about,” Will replied “but I am glad to hear that you're getting stronger. Who knows, you may just become a real champion if you continue this way."

My next challenge was manipulating my newly discovered mana. Mana could be used for physical reinforcement of my skin, bones and muscles but could also be extended outward to materialize the mana or affect the environment depending on your elemental affinity. It could also be used to fuel magical spells.

Even though I had absorbed an enormous amount of information on mana and magic, I expected that I would be lacking the "muscle memory" necessary for manipulating it effectively, or at least that was the theory from the fantasy novels I had read. In any case, I was not expecting my first attempts at mana manipulation and magic to be very successful.

I knew that the first mana exercise was typically forming a ball of glowing mana above your hand. As I concentrated on extending my mana outward, I imagined the form that I wanted it to take. When I had the image clearly in mind, I opened my eyes and almost jumped back when I saw a rather large mana sphere floating over my open hand. The next step would be to try to condense the sphere as much as possible. The idea was, the stronger your control, the smaller the sphere would be.

I exerted my will, closing around the mana sphere like a large fist pressing in from all sides. Like a vice I forced it mercilessly into submission, not giving it any path to escape. When I thought that I had reached the limit I searched deep inside myself, squeezing my mana core and cycling my mana faster to create a pressure similar to the way a hydraulic pump creates force.

As I watched it went from the size of a basketball to the size of a softball, then a ping-pong ball, then the size of a large marble and finally a small marble.

It was becoming obvious to me that I had a very developed control of mana already.

I decided to try the same test again, but this time I wanted to see how quickly I could form the sphere and reduce it to the size of a small marble. It only took me a couple of seconds to arrive at the same result and with a little practice I would probably be able to do it in less than a second.

Next, I decided to test my elemental affinities. Most mana users had an affinity with one or two, and exceptionally, three elemental affinities of mana, with typically one dominant attribute and the other elements being weaker. The main attributes would be fire, water, air and earth. There were also quite a few hybrid forms for each element such as lightning for fire, ice for water, wind-blade for wind and metal for earth. But it was pretty rare for someone be able to manipulate the hybrid attributes.

My first attempt was fire. I knew the theory for creating fire and for that I decided to see if I could convert a marble sized mana sphere into fire. Before changing it, I first pushed my mana further away from me as a precaution.

The bright white ball of mana turned bright blue as it changed into its fire form. The heat it projected was extreme even though it was now about two yards in front of me. I let the fire slowly expand as it changed from blue to green to red to orange yellow. It was now a raging fire, about the size of a full-grown man and I could feel my mana depleting for the first time, although I still had plenty left in reserve.

I reduced the flow of my mana and willed the fire to take on the properties of wind and was buffeted by a strong warm wind spiraling from where the fire had just been. From wind I converted it effortlessly into water, from water I decided to try a hybrid of water and formed an ice blade.

I went on experimenting and found that I could easily produce all of the different elemental forms of mana as well as all of the known hybrid forms, even lightning which was an rare hybrid of fire, was easy to produce.

Lastly, I wanted to attempt a mana-bomb or explosive mana. In order to produce a mana bomb, you needed a compressed mix of mana and air within a sphere of mana. Then it sufficed to add a touch of fire or lightning and it would cause the condensed air and mana mix to explode. I was not quite sure of the strength of the explosion I could expect, so I kept the proportions small and I did the test from a distance.

Just to be on the safe side, I created mana based earplugs in case the explosion was too loud.

My first attempt did not produce any explosion, but I was half expecting that as I only had the theory in my memories and not the experience.

I decided to try again, and this time I added much more ambient air into the mix. The sphere was now compressed to the size of a marble. I added a touch of fire through the wall of the outer mana barrier and it immediately triggered an explosion, similar to that of a shotgun going off, and there was a bright flash from where the sphere had been. Even with the earplugs, my head was ringing.

Having found that I could easily manage even difficult aspects of mana manipulation, I realized that the knowledge which I had gained from the memory stones was somehow part of me at a level beyond that of simple knowledge. Somehow, I had gained the experience as well. I had no knowledge of any similar cases in all my memories, nor in any of the novels that I had read. I certainly wasn’t complaining, but I was curious as to how Will had managed this.

Being alone in a small empty room, limited my ability to gauge my physical abilities, so I decided to test these by going through a series of combat exercises. At first, I took each step slowly to make sure that I had mastered all of the movements, I then gradually increased the cadence, reinforcing my muscles bones tendons and ligaments with mana once I started exceeding speeds of what should be humanly possible and with the abundant mana in the room, I recovered quickly from the exercises. It is obvious that I had received the muscle memory as well, I thought to myself smiling.

"So, what do you think, am I ready for what is waiting for me below?" I asked the dungeon.

I didn't wait for nor expect an answer as I retrieved my armor from my storage ring and headed towards the stairwell.