Before exploring any other building, the first thing I plan to do this morning is to survey the surrounding area around this ruin.

I plan to stay as long as it takes to explore this ruin. And if that's not possible, now that I can use space magic, I should be able to come back here as long as I have enough mana and unlock the required Teleportation skill.

As for the off chance that I may get corrupted, I do have an idea, but that would have to wait until I find another corrupted monster.

As I don't know how dangerous the area outside of the walls are, I plan on climbing the wall and making a trip around the ruins on it. That way I get to investigate the surrounding area and also get an idea where everything inside the ruin is with respect to each other.

I climb the nearby tree to confirm the direction of that sentry tower-type building beside the wall I saw last time and carefully move towards it. Sentry tower type building is a mouthful, I'll call it Sentry Tower until there is another name for it.

I reach the base of the Sentry Tower that is attached to the huge wall and look around the area for anything unusual but there is nothing here. I check the metal plaque at the entrance and the building's name is Sentry Tower.

I move into the building. From the outside, the building looks like a large cylindrical-shaped object whose height is at least a floor bigger than the wall to which it is attached.

Now that I'm inside, it looks like a four-story apartment, and the stairs that connect these floors are broken.

On the ground floor, I can see a small hall-type room and a small kitchen attached to it. There is nothing in these rooms except for a lot of dust and debris. I want to move on to the next floor but as I said before, the stairs are broken.

I guess I'll have to climb.

It took some effort but I did climb over those broken stairs and that unlocked the skill.

Skill Unlocked : Climbing

That could be useful in a pinch but not essential so I'm not going to add it to the list.

The first floor has what seems like personal quarters, a couple of them at that. There's nothing left here either other than dust and debris, similar to what I found on the ground floor.

On to the next floor.

I climb up to the second floor and I can hear the sound of steps further inside. I stop instantly and take my time to carefully check the surroundings while trying to move quietly.

This floor is similar to the below ones, two rooms. One room is what appears to be for weapons and armor storage. The other one is a corridor opening onto the wall.

I move to the edge of that corridor to observe what is making that noise. I see a black skeleton lumbering on the wall. It doesn't look like it has any weapons or armor on it but I'm a bit far away from it to be sure.

I move back into the storage room and look around to see what I can find. There isn't much left in here, just a couple of longswords and daggers that may have seen better days. The rest has lost their fight against time.

I appraise them to see if they are of any use.

Honed Longsword

Grade : Uncommon - Damaged

Type : Weapon

Standard longsword made for the use of Imperial Guards.

Sharp Dagger

Grade: Uncommon - Damaged

Type : Weapon

Standard dagger made for the use of Imperial Guards.

It seems that these weapons are the standard gear provided to the Imperial Guard.

But what's this damaged tag next to the grade?

Does it mean the weapon is damaged or the grade is damaged?

Well, a damaged weapon is still a lot better than the branch I'm using. I throw away the improvised staff and wield one of the longswords.

As for the rest of the weapons, they will have to stay here for a little longer. Until I can unlock Spatial Storage, I'll have to leave valuable stuff like these weapons behind when I find them. I can always carry them back to the Temple when I leave.

Although the longsword is damaged, it is an Uncommon grade item and from what I know that is above Common grade so it should be powerful.

I wonder whether it has any magical properties. If I had to go by the names of these two weapon types and guess their properties, they should be sharp, that is all that comes to mind.

Now that I have a weapon to use, I'll unlock the attack skill I was postponing until I find a suitable weapon, Spatial Slash. If I remember correctly, I need to channel my space mana to form a coating onto the blade edge so that it can influence the spatial fabric when the weapon is swung.

I may have been able to manipulate space mana quite well but that doesn't mean suddenly I can manipulate it as freely as I please. Luckily I have Perfect rank affinity with the element and gained a few levels in the manipulation skill. That makes space mana manipulation a bit easier.

Even then it took an hour to coat the blade with space mana and another hour to maintain the coating and even that coating is a little uneven. It took two more hours to maintain an even coating around the blade edge and to keep a constant mana flow.

Now for the next part, I have to swing the sword and while doing that I have to make sure that the mana coating on the blade and its mana flow are both present to unlock the skill.

One might think it's easy. I wish it was.

Just for that whole process to follow through in one smooth action, it took another three hours, and then I got the notification I was waiting for, which I immediately added to my list.

Skill Unlocked : Spatial Slash

Spatial Slash

Grade : Heroic

Mastery : Beginner

Level : 1

Ability to slice through the spatial fabric at any particular place. Any physical matter caught within the severed spatial area will be cut. Strength and precision increase with its level.

Cost : 100 Mana

The moment I unlocked the skill, I felt a severe headache as my mana immediately dropped to zero. I had to sit down and meditate for a while to gain some mana which helped in alleviating the headache.

From what I understand about the skill, this is an attack that distorts the spatial fabric so there is no physical defense against it. But if you have enough mana to counteract the damage, you can stop it.

Also, the mana required varies according to how it's used, however, that does require a lot of control which I don't have right now. I'll have to use the skill as it is for now.

As this skill negates physical defense, it will be useful for a very long time.

Now I understand why there aren't that many people who use space magic for offense if it costs that much. It costs me a hundred points of mana to activate the skill once and you have to consider that I have a Perfect rank affinity.

The thing about affinity is the greater the affinity, the less mana, concentration, and effort are required to activate the same skill.

Let me say, for example, a person with a Poor rank affinity needs 500 points of mana to activate a skill. Then a person with Average rank affinity requires half the mana to activate the same skill and it continues like that to the next ranks.

Now if I think about how I, a person with Perfect rank affinity require a hundred points of mana to activate Spatial Slash.

How much do you think a person with Poor rank space elemental affinity will require?

1600 points of mana. That's an insane amount of mana to be used for one skill. That's the reason most people who have Average or Poor rank affinity prefer being warriors than mages.

I'm glad that I have Perfect rank affinity, I can use high-level space spells for less mana cost as long as I have the required mana and control.

Back to exploration.

There is another floor to check, I wonder what's up there?

Just as before I have to climb these broken stairs. The top floor doesn't have any rooms, just a big open hall with vertical and horizontal slits on the four walls.

If I had to guess this would be the place from where the archers would fire at the enemies during a siege or more likely during an emergency as this was the capital of an empire and I don't think enemies would have been able to reach this place that easily.

There is nothing here so I move down one floor and very carefully with a sword in one hand, I move towards the corridor that opens onto the wall. As I reach the edge of the corridor, I appraise the skeleton that is a lot closer now compared to before.

Corrupted Imperial Archer - Lv. 7

And here I thought it would take a lot of time and effort to find another corrupted monster.

By the description given, it seems it is an archer but I don't see any bow with it, just a set of daggers in his hands. The bow must have been destroyed by time. And if that's the reason then I may have a chance of defeating him without taking any risk.

But I don't plan on killing it anytime soon. There is only one monster roaming around on the wall and I've a clear vision of the surroundings, so I won't be ambushed by anything else. And from what I know, undead are supposed to be mindless.

Then why would I kill it without utilizing it for all its worth?

Scouting the surrounding area can wait.

Hmm.

How should I proceed?

First I should check if it really is mindless.

If it is, then I can face it in close combat and focus mostly on dodging without attacking it. That way I can get used to combat and also that way, my reflexes and instincts may improve over time.

I can use this skeleton to try and regain my lost combat instincts from back when I was in the military. I can go through this process until I don't feel like I can learn anything else from it and only then kill it.

Well, if it isn't mindless then I guess I won't be getting any combat training.

Making my decision, I move towards the skeleton.

Before engaging, I stop and take a moment to think about what happened during the last fight with the corrupted skeleton.

I couldn't sneak attack the librarian. Moreover, there was that sudden feeling of dread. I can find out if sneaking works on this one and also be ready for that dreadful feeling.

After I'm done with my musings, I start actively sneaking towards the skeleton.

Just as the last one, as soon as I move into its surrounding area, the skeleton suddenly turns towards me, and that dreadful feeling is back.

These skeletons don't even have eyes in their eye sockets but how are they able to sense me that easily?

I should check the monster encyclopedia when I retire for the night.

Already expecting this outcome, I bear that dreadful feeling and charge towards it and duck just before reaching it to dodge its ungainly attack and counterattack by slashing at its body but stop before my sword touches it as I plan on keeping it alive for a long time.

After dodging its first charge, I kept dodging its consecutive but ungainly attacks.

As the fight duration progresses, I'm getting winded as my stamina is becoming low but the skeleton just keeps on attacking without stopping. It looks like what I read in fantasy books about undead having infinite stamina looks to be true.

I persist with my combat practice until my stamina reaches very low and then Blink away from the skeleton and eat a Yaire leaf to boost my stamina regeneration. Although I want to keep fighting with it, that wouldn't be possible if the undead never tire.

The skeletons seem to be only able to detect me when I'm in their immediate surroundings. If I quickly Blink away from that area, they search around them for a while and go back to do what they were doing. I used this flaw to my advantage to take breaks whenever I needed to fill any of my pools.

As for the actual fight, let me say that those daggers in its hands are more of a danger to me than the skeleton.

It's just swinging its hands haphazardly without any power behind them. It has speed on its side but it couldn't fully utilize it being a skeletal body. The first thing I did when this fight started was to focus on disarming it while being out of its weapon's range which was easier as my longsword has more reach than its dagger.

After disarming it, I moved in close to push myself to the limit to dodge, block or parry its attacks to hone my reaction time.

Even when I'm trying to bear that dreadful feeling, sometimes it would become too much and I slip up. This may have caused me to bear the brunt of a few attacks here and there but nothing life-threatening.

The first time an attack landed on me, I flinched due to the immense pain and blinked away to check up on the wound. That is when I saw the grey smoke circulating around the wound and as the grey smoke is depleted rapidly, the area around the wound is turning grey.

Is this the corruption that I've read about?

Does that mean getting wounded by a corrupted monster can corrupt me more easily?

The pain felt by the wound is unusually large when compared to normal wounds in the same area, is this also the effect of corruption?

Whatever the reason maybe, I don't like the idea of these grey marks spreading on my body but I would have to bear with it if I want to unlock a resistance skill against corruption like the one I unlocked against the poison.

That was my plan to fight against corruption, to get a resistance skill by infecting a part of myself similar to how I got Poison Resistance after ingesting poison.

Fight with the skeleton until any one of my pools i.e. health, mana, or stamina runs low and then Blink away and wait for them to refill and then join the fight again. And in between get myself attacked such that I can get a resistance skill against corruption. That was how I spent my time until dark.

As soon as the daylight was starting to dim, I collected the extra weapons both from the skeleton and the storage room and went back to the temple.

Name : Janus Arthridge

Race : Human

Level : 1

Bloodline : N / A

Class : N / A

Level : 1

Health : 100 / 100

Stamina : 150 / 150

Mana : 100 / 100

Attributes

Strength : 10

Dexterity : 15

Vitality : 10

Endurance : 15

Resilience : 10

Perception : 10

Intelligence : 10

Wisdom : 10

Willpower : 10

Attribute Points : 0

Skills

Appraisal Lv.1

Stealth Lv.2

Meditation Lv.4

Space Mana Manipulation Lv.4

Blink Lv.1

Spatial Slash Lv.1

Skill Slots : 4

Perks

Otherworlder

Summoned Being

Polyglot