Inside of a certain black cave illuminated by a glowing blue pool of liquid in its middle and several white crystals in it's roof, there stood a young man wearing brown slacks, a white flowy shirt a size too big for him and no shoes, his brown eyes now framing a completely bald face.

Looking at his reflection, he saw the scars of the several gashes to his skin still there despite the now rugged skin of his mien being burned and tawny, his mouth not moving as he wanted it too.

Yet, he could tell this was better than what he should look like. His skin wasn't raw, so he could only hope that this ment the system would help regenerate his body even if there was some change like losing a limb or organ, as long as he was alive to see his HP regenerate.

He quite disliked looking like this even if there was nobody to look at him, and it bothered him almost as much as being barefoot.

Actually drinking the 'water' though, made him immediately realise that the tasteless but refreshing liquid was unlikely to be pure water, but that impression came mostly from the amount of mana entering his system from his mouth.

That burned much like poison, but he wasn't really losing…

[Warning! Your body is being ravaged by arcane energies it failed to contain.]

"Fuck you too." He groaned, his mana going over the limit as his body was slowly damaged.

As he waited for a new skill to pop, Aki started trying to collect the humidity in the room above his head.

Ten minutes later and he had it figured out.

[Arcane resistance is now level 2

You have developed the skill Water condensation Lv 1

You have developed the skill Water ball Lv 1.]

He was going to be needing a lot more of those, he was pretty sure. More importantly though, he was getting hungry again.

There was not much to be done about that though, he was a growing boy after all, so he had to hunt for his food. Maybe if he found some moss and mushrooms he could make some kind of soup as well, but he really hoped to find the exit of the cave system and get seeds to plant before that.

For now, he was just going to be drinking spider ichor though. He imagined it was like eating crab with the way he had to break their legs to get the meat out, what with being allergic to crustaceans and his food being either raw or overcooked. Partly poisonous too since he ended up popping their venom glands every time.

Calmly walking outside the safe zone, he didn't bother to wait till all his resources were full, starting to work on his trap by hollowing out the floor of the cave leading to the safe zone, mostly by its entrances.

Obviously that didn't work with only his meager 200 strong mana pool even if he was progressing towards it. It actually took over a dozen trips to get it done, but only in part because the dungeon kept trying to regenerate, the cave was simply a jagged dome around fifty to sixty meters around, there was nothing he could do about it but keep practicing his capabilities.

The undertaking did in fact grant him a ton of levels, but it also granted three new skills, wind and earth affinity, plus thoughtful meditation, which was what he was actually doing, reason why he didn't bother to finish more paths during or before the process.

Spell casting while his body was burning from the inside and flooded with mana was hard, but it felt very right to be doing so right now.

More importantly though, as he had finished his trap it was now time to put out the bait. After walking till he was only a couple of steps out of the safe zone, the door open, he let out a shrill, piercing scream of pain, a wail of lament holding most of what he felt for his loss, a promise to what he would do to every and each monsters inside this dungeon, a shout so determined he only stopped after nothing else would come out of his now hurting throat.

By the time he caught his breath again, he could already hear the sound of chitinous carapace hitting stone, thousands of legs moving their bulbous bodies in his direction.

Now he just needed to wait. Wait until they were past the cave entrances, till they had filled the roof, till some were getting ready to jump on him.

*SPARK*

Already fully expecting to be thrown back, Aki jumped towards the safe zone, lighting a spark inside the giant pockets of gas he'd made.

As most of it was just oxigen, the effect was mostly that of an incendiary bomb filling the room, but as the rock broke and melted, slag was thrown around and hit everything inside the boom radius.

Including him, who ended up inside the pool of mana water.

Normally that'd be great, but he might as well have dunked himself in a vat of acid instead, he had to quickly remember how to swim so he could leave the shallow pool and close the door, trapping the heat outside.

For now, he needed to remove pieces of rock from his back, thighs and hand, as he'd been shielding the back of his head with them and needed to get rid of the excess mana.

….

[Congratulations! You have completed the bloody berserker path! +3 endurance. +2 vitality. +2 physical stat points. You have learned the skill Blood thirsty marauder (O) Lv 1.

Your foes know naught but their fear for the unstoppable, ruthless and blind killing machine coming for their blood and those that dare stand between his prey.

Blood thirsty marauder (O) Lv 1- For every death 1 meter around, you receive 0,5% of the respective entity's max health as healing. Range increases with skill level. Healing increases slightly with skill level, being capped at 100%.]

"So I can see what each skill does." Aki mumbled between bites. Not that he was going to go looking through most of what was in his status anytime soon.

On the other hand, he was definitely going to try and level that skill like crazy.

Despite drinking from it like a man who had been lost in a desert, his personal pond of battery acid did not seem to diminish, and indeed, his now better than average eyes could tell that there was a small opening near the bottom that seemed to flow from somewhere else and feed the pool.

So it was to be understood that he now had a great supply of protein for regeneration and a seemingly infinite amount of mana potions inside his safe zone.

...He was going to be there for a while, random master appearing out of nowhere to guide him or not, so the best he could do now was to mindlessly train while killing more and more mobs.

Certainly that will unlock good paths.

[Congratulations! You have completed the Genius mage path! +4 to all mental stats. +1 mental stat point per level. Mana and mana regeneration multiplied by 1.1x. You have obtained the skill Grimoire (Y) Lv 1.

Magic comes naturally to you. Your cunning and talent culminate in a great path forward as a mage.

Grimoire (Y) Lv 1- Write spell formulas in your grimoire to slightly reduce the spell's cost and casting time. Reduction increases with skill level. Using this skill for the first time will form your grimoire. You receive a new chance of forming a new one every 100 skill levels. Charges: 1.]

"I'm so going to be abusing that." Was his immediate reaction to the skill explanation. Maybe he wouldn't need to eat all the charred corpses he'd hauled into the safe area after all.

First though, he'd need to figure out blood magic and healing magic, preferably not in that order, so he could try and turn the corpses directly into nutrients, as there was a chance that he'd be taking damage to a ridiculous degree if he did what he was thinking of doing, though there was also a chance that creating the grimoire required plenty of HP anyway but that was rather unlikely unless he decided to infuse his lifespan on the thing, which he didn't know how to do.

For both tasks he was going to need to get hurt though, so he took the chance and put points into the newly unlocked path of Pain immunity I.

Which ended only giving one point of endurance every five invested, so he got four out of it. He probably needed to raise it to a higher rank or something.

This, unfortunately, led to hours upon hours of exercise as he did his best to figure out how to reinforce his body with his mana. With his physical stats a bit more than doubled by the several paths he’d taken, Aki was honestly a bit surprised when he began, but eventually he forced himself to start actually taking things seriously and to lift stones while doing squats, push ups, lifts, bars, situps, basically everything he could do while still inside his cave apartment.

After several repetitions that had his limbs bleeding and in great pain, he had come to two conclusions. First, stats could not be raised through normal training even if you did improve your body. Second, having abs was awesome. Oh, and he figured out a blood magic spell to force his regeneration up in exchange for an increased burning of nutrients. Not perfect or the most efficient, but he had magic and protein, so it worked well enough.

He felt like he could one punch anything, almost losing shame for his lack of hair, though he wouldn’t complain about his arms and legs now being naked and perfectly showing the muscles he’d been able to train in what had been at maximum twelve hours.

Then again, he had probably exaggerated considering he’d gained around around ninety skill points. He had just gained a skill named starvation resistance, which was now level 9, without really being bothered by it, so that probably spoke volumes about how fucked up his current mental capacity was.

At the moment however, hitting harder and being more resistant certainly didn’t seem like that bad a deal when all he had to pay was some pain.

Another thing of note however, was that he was receiving less and less damage from the pool now, and he was pretty sure that wasn’t because he’d unlocked the swimming skill.

Honestly, it was probably because of a combination of his fitness skill, higher endurance, mana capacity and magical defence since arcane resistance had not actually leveled much further, but still, it was rather impressive from his point of view.

He was probably ready for forming his grimoire already, but he should probably restock his supplies before that he just needed… He should probably also do something about the fact that he was naked and his clothes didn’t fit him anymore.

Looking at the spider carapaces he had broken to get his prize, he had an idea.