Upon closer look, the fruit looked like persimmon. There were about 40 of them scattered around the tree's branches and each of them looked the same containing an equal amount of mana.
Noy devoured the first fruit with excitement but quickly regretted it as it didn't taste even close to persimmon, rather it was very sour.
Even so, the mana obtained from consuming it far exceeded the mana obtained from any monsters. It was equivalent to the 1 year of the time he spent hunting those monsters before.
The drastic change in his mana fluctuations made him feel like his body would burst open any minute now. He had to control the mana inside him as soon as possible. So, he instantly sat in a meditation position and got to control the mana inside.
It took him a whole day just to take control of the fruit's mana from going wild. An additional two weeks passed by before he could completely manipulate the mana and make it his own. This went to show how much mana that fruit contained.
That one fruit was enough to advance Noy from the genesis stage of the yellow color to the core stage of the yellow color skipping a whole stage.
"Wow!! This is even more than I thought. If I skipped a whole stage from just one fruit then I might be able to jump to the core stage of the purple color by consuming all of them. I might even be able to attain other levels beyond purple that Akriel told me about." Noy was thrilled.
One by one Noy plucked the rest of the fruits and consumed them.
***
Little more than a year passed by with Noy just consuming the fruits and meditating to convert the fruit's mana to his own. He had reached the origination stage of the red color.
"I thought I would progress to purple color but I didn't even get to the core stage of red color. After I advanced to the core stage of the yellow color, it took 10 times the amount of mana required in the yellow color to advance just a single stage. This isn't all bad as it also means that there is that much mana gap between each stage.
From what I have experienced during my progression, this is how much mana is required for each stage if I put it in numerical terms.
If there's 1 mana, then 10 mana was required for each stage of white color. Since there are 5 stages on each color, it required 50 mana for me to advance to the silver color. Using it, this was the amount of mana required for each color:
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50 - White color
500 - Silver color
5,000 - Blue color
50,000 - Green color
500,000 - Yellow color
5,000,000 - Red color
So, if the same pattern is followed then it must require 10,000,000 mana for each stage of the purple color. The power gap becomes really big in every stage of the higher-level colors. I should seek out consumables like this fruit in the future if I want to get stronger quickly."
"I have already spent more than a year here in this room. Now it's time for me to get out. Let's see... if it's the same as the last hidden room that I got into, then there must be a pathway somewhere in this room that will lead me outside." Noy thought as he searched all the corners of the room.
"Huh??? There's no pathway to go outside." Noy began to worry as he frantically searched the whole place again. At that moment, he remembered that there was one place that he hadn't checked, THE TREE.
He first checked the root of the tree, "Nothing here!". He then double-jumped to see the higher parts of the tree.
After searching around for a while, he stumbled upon a magic circle embedded in one of the leaves.
The aura resonating from the magic circle seemed familiar to Noy, "I am sure this is a teleportation magic circle. I don't know how but I can feel it. "
Sure enough, as soon as he touched the magic circle, he got teleported to the place near where he previously met the golden lion.
"This is perfect. Time for a rematch!" Noy exclaimed with a delighted face.
He soon got into the same pathway where he previously met the golden lion.
"It should be around here..." As he looked around for a while, a strong roar could be heard and it appeared in front of him.
"Now that I look at you carefully, you are not as powerful as the white knight that I fought."
The golden lion roared fiercely in response like it could understand what he said. It swiftly dashed to Noy with its claws. But he easily defended it with his dagger, he could now match up with the lion's speed and even surpass it.
He felt confident that he could kill it. His confidence grew when the golden lion made a flinching motion toward its head. That was probably its weak point. He would try to hit its face when it opened its mouth.
It ran towards him once again, but this time it opened its mouth wide. "Nn!" A ball of lightning magic appeared inside its mouth, the size of a average ball. However, Noy easily dodged it by leaping aside. Its lightning burned through the air where Noy had just stood and the ground became electrified.
"You are not the only one who can use magic!" Noy shouted as he prepared a fireball of his own. The moment the golden lion opened its mouth, Noy threw his fireball at it without hesitation.
The golden lion immediately tried to dodge the attack by backing away from Noy. Unfortunately, it didn't escape. Because Noy had unleashed another fireball after its first one. The two fireballs collided with each other and exploded together inside its mouth.
His fireball was smaller than the lion's lightning so it wasn't able to fully extinguish them. Instead, they were blown back by the blast wave. The explosion caused the earth beneath them to shake violently. It must have been very painful for the golden lion. The entire forest swayed wildly.
"I see... Your magic's a lot stronger than I thought." Noy muttered.
With its body on the ground, the lion was completely defenseless. Noy rushed in and sliced open its throat. Blood spurted out like water gushing forth from a fountain. The golden lion writhed in pain before finally collapsing.
"Now let's see what the guardian looks like who guards the door."