As I've already decided which building to explore next, I move towards that building but not before going to the pond and making a few more of those waterproof canteens, fill them with water and store them in my storage.

I could see the top of that tower-shaped building even with these trees to obstruct the view. Imagine a sorcerer's hat on top of a pyramid, that's how it looks from outside. I retrieve a longsword from my storage to arm myself and move towards that building while carefully checking the surroundings.

I slowly sneak through the dense foliage of the forest while being careful of the small monsters that may be in my way. I reach the building within an hour as I'm slowly skulking towards it. The door at the entrance is gone, mostly rotten away to time but there is a metal plaque on the wall that says Imperial Mage Tower.

That at least clarifies what the building was used for. Imperial Mage Tower, I can guess what type of monsters that I'm going to face next, corrupted mages. This is going to be a difficult place to explore.

I may have fought some corrupted skeletons but they were archers who didn't even have their bows and that was in close combat which I'm good at. Now suddenly I'm going against mages, whom I've never faced in a fight and thus have no experience against.

What do I do?

Should I retreat and come back later when I'm more powerful?

No, that would be a waste of time. I have to face them sooner or later and I can always Blink away and retreat to the Temple when things turn dangerous. I've never seen any skeletons near the temple so this can be my backup if something goes wrong.

I slowly enter the Mage Tower and the first thing I see is a room that has what seems like an inquiry desk to the left from where I'm standing. There aren't any monsters present in the inquiry room, just a lot of dust and the furniture in the room is in various stages of decomposition.

The only other place that I found wood that isn't fully decomposed is in the library reception room but here all of them are in various stages of decomposition i.e. nothing is totally decomposed i.e. magical wood.

Mages must be rich to use magical wood even in what seems to be a reception room. I go through the whole room but the only useful thing I found is some gold coins in the desk that was in relatively good condition when compared to others which I promptly store in my pockets for now.

Now that this room is scoured clean, I move towards the opening in the wall to the right where there should have been a door that leads to the next room.

The next room is big, some type of hall which I can't see the end of. Strange, the size of this hall from what I can see looks bigger than the size of the whole building from the outside.

To confirm this assumption I try to check the length of this room by counting my footsteps but stop suddenly when I hear the sound of shuffling coming from the darkness.

The room is a bit dark.

It's bright outside but as there aren't that many windows when compared to the size of the room, there are only a few bright places due to the sunlight entering but the rest of the place is dark and now I can hear shuffling sounds coming from a place that is engulfed in darkness.

I need to get some kind of vision-type skill as soon as I can or else this type of exploration will be difficult.

The magic book did say that one way to get such skill was through fine-tune manipulation of my neutral mana to flow through my eyes which would give me Mana Sight skill.

As I don't have that much experience with mana manipulation, I don't plan on trying this method as the slightest deviation of mana may cause me to go blind. I'm not sure I would be able to recover my eyes from that.

I guess torches will have to do for now. I retrieve a torch from my storage and light it up using Heating Plate.

Now that I have some way to observe the surroundings, shall I see where that sound is coming from?

As I still can't see what's making this noise, I crouch down and slowly move towards where the sound is coming from.

This place is really huge, I still can't see the far end. There is no way the size is similar to the outside. The inside of the building much too large for that. Must be some kind of space magic being used here but I don't feel anything, should be high level.

I move around slowly, cautiously using my torch to illuminate the surrounding area, hoping to find whatever that is making the sound before it finds me.

I hear the sound once again before I can see the skeleton but as I follow the sound I can see it moving around in the distance.

I observe it from more than ten meters away so that it can't detect me with its magic sense. It's just moving around the place. First things first, I appraise it.

Corrupted Apprentice Mage - Lv. 8

Hmmm.

Looks like I can easily kill it if I sneak attack it but that's still not possible. I've been practicing manipulating my space mana every day but I'm still only able to cover my lower body and that's uneven. As for the neat even coating, I can cover both my hands for now.

I have the initiative now. I should be able to Blink next to it and kill it quickly but once again I'm not going to do that.

I've never faced mages before, I could use this skeleton to understand how they fight and then get used to fighting them. If I can do that much I should be able to fight them even when I'm unprepared.

Then how do I fight it?

If I go by what I know from fantasy books, first I need to know what its range of attack is?

Wait a second.

Isn't skeletons passive magic sense range is ten meters?

Doesn't that mean they can't sense anything outside its range?

If that's the case, no matter their spell range, wouldn't it be useless out of this ten-meter range?

It looks like these skeleton mages are being limited by their magic sense range, as I don't think the range at which they can throw spells is limited to that.

Now I know their spell range, what else should I consider before starting the fight?

Their elemental affinity and the different kind of spells they use I guess?

I can find its elemental affinity but I won't be able to find out about its spells without fighting it.

But before that, I want to see if there is any way to add some light into this room as this darkness is being a big inconvenience.

I don't plan on fighting a mage with one hand holding a torch. That's plain stupid.

Anyway, shouldn't there be lighting systems set up in towers like this?

Something similar to what I found in the Temple's basement.

I know I'm hoping for a lot but this place has some kind of space expansion magic combined into it somehow and it's still working.

If that is working then why shouldn't the lights work?

Being very optimistic about the lighting situation, I move towards the exit and start checking the walls from there.

I quickly found metal plates similar to the ones in the Temple basement at the back of the reception desk. I infused my mana into and it took ten points of mana just like the last time. After that, the place started lighting up slowly.

When I lift my head to look at the ceiling to see where the light is coming from, the ceiling looks like the night sky with countless brightly lit stars lighting up the place. It was beautiful. I moved towards the hall to check whether it was illuminated and it was and the ceiling canvas was even more beautiful compared to the reception room.

Now that I can clearly see, the size of the room is similar to the Temple and the place is littered with skeletons. It looks like there are at least twenty of them are mulling around in this place.

Now that there is light, I drop the torch to the ground and move towards the first skeleton I found before.

Where was I?

Ah, I was planning on finding its elemental affinity first.

In order to find its elemental affinity, I move into the magic sense range of the skeleton so that it can hurl any of its spells at me and Blink away before it hits me.

I look at the wall to see a solid piece of grey-colored rock with grey smoke coiling around it falling to the ground.

From the sound that piece of rock made from its impact on the wall, I wouldn't want to be in its way.

Regardless, does that come under earth magic or rock magic?

And isn't it supposed to some shade of brown if the magic is related to earth just like how my space mana is silver in color?

I move towards the greyish rock and check it. When I touch the rock, there is a prickling sensation on it and the piece of rock is very hard.

Doesn't look like it is made of loose earth, should be rock magic then.

But why is the rock grey in color?

And is that grey smoke coiling around it is similar to the one around the skeletons?

That means each of its attacks can corrupt the wound and the pain will be as intense as before. For now, I'll call that spell Corrupted Rock Bullet, if it has any other name, I'll change it later.

Is that the only spell that the skeleton use or are there any others?

I'll have to move into its range to find out.

Even if it doesn't have any other spells, I need to get used to that particular spell at least. From how I blinked away from the last attack, it seems I can easily dodge them by blinking.

But what about doing it manually?

I'll have to enter its range to check it myself.

This time I would like to know if I can observe the attack and dodge it.

I slowly move towards its range and before entering it, I start chewing on an Atulica leaf in advance to increase my health regeneration just in case of emergencies, and focus most of my Perception on the skeleton.

The moment I entered its range, the idle skeleton turned towards me and within a few seconds, another Corrupted Rock Bullet was buzzing towards me, which I was barely able to dodge it by lunging to the right. Even then my left arm took the brunt of it, I heard a crack, and then came the pain.

Overcoming the pain, I quickly blinked far enough that, even if it moves to my last position, I would still be out of its magic sense range.

Now that I'm relatively safe, I look at my left arm to see that it's bent at a wrong angle. I grimace at the condition of my arm and the overwhelming pain.

What can I do about my arm?

Can it be healed?

Do I need to set the bone right or does the system's healing will take care of it?

Hoping that it can be healed, I bite onto the handle of my longsword and set the bone straight, and wait for the healing to happen.

As the seconds seem to pass, I was afraid that I might've lost my left arm for good until the pain recedes little by little and after a while, I was able to use my arm again.

Thank goodness.

But what happened just now?

Why couldn't I fully dodge its attack?

Hmm.

I think I know.

I was able to observe the spell clearly but as I was solely focusing all of my Perception on the skeleton, my reaction time was a bit slow and those valuable seconds were the difference between a clean dodge and a broken arm. It looks like I need more practice to get used to those sudden movements.

I did see the skeleton raising its hand in my direction before firing the spell.

Was that necessary or just an old habit from when it was human?

I need to go into its range once again and check if that's true.

For the third time, I move into its range and focus my perception on it, ready to dodge at any given moment.

Same as before, it eerily turns towards me and raises its hand, pointing at me and in a few more seconds, another Corrupted Rock Bullet was whizzing at me which I manage to cleanly dodge this time by lunging to the side.

Hmm.

So the direction in which its head turns is the direction the spell is going to be in. Good to know.

That's three down, how many can it throw before its mana runs out?

I can dodge these attacks one by one by lunging all over and be done with it but I can't keep going like this with all the mages I face in the future. I need to be able to face them up close to get more used to their way of fighting.

But that can wait, first I need to get used to its attacks at range and then move closer. I can slowly take my time to get used to their different fighting styles. There must be more of these mages in this tower. And just like that, I tiptoed around its magic sense range until it couldn't throw any more of those attacks.

I wait for a minute but there wasn't a next attack, its mana must have been depleted. Although my dodges were Crude and ungainly, it was working, I can practice against more of these skeletons to improve my reaction time.

I wait another minute to confirm that its mana is depleted and then rush towards it and kill the defenseless skeleton.

After killing it, I sit down and start meditating to regain my mana and eat a Yaire leaf to help with my stamina regeneration. After refilling my pools, I start luring another skeleton by throwing stones near it, similar to what I've done with the archers on the wall.

But I always stay at least ten meters away from the impact zone so that they don't immediately focus on me. After luring it away from the rest, I repeat the same process as before, tiptoeing around their range to get further experience at dodging.

And when their mana runs dry, kill it, settle down to recharge my pools, and lure the next skeleton.

There were groups of two and three skeletons here and there but once you know their exact magic sense range then luring one of them becomes a lot easier.

The longer I keep dodging, the more refined my reflexes become against their projectile spells. There were some occasions where a few attacks landed on me but it was nothing life-threatening.

All these skeletons appear to be apprentice mages ranging from level five to twenty. I don't know whether they are dumb or they don't know any other long-range spells but they only used that single type of projectile spell which was a blessing in disguise for me.

You have defeated a Corrupted Apprentice Mage x 28

Your class has gained a level x3

Your race has gained a level x2

Corruption Resistance reaches level 3

As for the twenty-five Attribute Points, I don't plan on investing all of them.

As I've already decided in the morning, I'll invest in the attributes I need but I'll stop investing in them just before they reach their next ten multiple and make sure that only one attribute reaches that ten multiple-stage every day so that I can check how my body improved the next day.

By the time I've killed all the skeletons on the floor, it's already dark outside so I thoroughly search the hall for any loot and go back to the Temple.

After reaching the temple, I eat some meat and keep practicing my Spatial Mana Manipulation skill until I'm exhausted and then go to sleep.

Name : Janus Arthridge

Race : Human

Level : 4

Bloodline : N / A

Class : N / A

Level : 8

Health : 190 / 190

Stamina : 190 / 190

Mana : 290 / 290

Attributes

Strength : 10

Dexterity : 20

Vitality : 19

Endurance : 19

Resilience : 10

Perception : 20

Intelligence : 29

Wisdom : 10

Willpower : 10

Attribute Points : 3

Skills

Appraisal Lv.2

Stealth Lv.2

Meditation Lv.5

Space Mana Manipulation Lv.6

Blink Lv.1

Spatial Slash Lv.1

Longsword Mastery Lv.5

Corruption Resistance Lv.3

Spatial Storage Lv. 1

Skill Slots : 1

Perks

Otherworlder

Summoned Being

Polyglot