"Don't get too excited and go overboard with it. You should take it slow. Let your body adjust to the increasing mana and its power first." Akriel voiced in a careful manner.

"I understand." Then without any other word, Noy quickly got to training. He ran for many hours to increase his stamina, swung his dagger at the dummy thousands of times, and practiced trying to manipulate his mana properly.

As he kept on practicing his various skills, his body slowly grew accustomed to having more mana than ever before. As a result, soon after a few months, the amount of mana he had started to rise rapidly.

Sometime later, his mana pool was completely filled with his own mana and he felt something growing inside him.

"What is this?" Noy questioned himself.

Intrigued, Akriel looked closer at Noy and said, "Congratulations! You seem to have formed your mana core. It is way earlier than any other human. I think that mana liquid helped you speed through the process."

"What's a mana core? Since I thought I would be a swordmaster like my father, I didn't delve into the mage's aspect." Noy curiously asked.

"Mana core is the essence of all the mage. The spell that you cast becomes more powerful the higher level your mana core is. You should also be able to perform spells that the normal elements doesn't cover. Think about the elements that you learned from the book that I gave you. What are those elements?"

" I think I had learned earth, wind, water, fire, and light from the book."

Akriel explained in detail, "So, those are the normal elements that everyone can learn as long as they have mana. However, there are other ones like psychic, dark, holy, time, and space that you can only learn if you have a mana core.

The level of mana core goes like this:

White → Silver → Blue → Green → Yellow → Red → Purple

White is the beginning level where everyone starts whereas Purple is the highest human can reach. But there are also stages beyond the purple color. You will know it when you get to that level.

Each level is divided into 5 stages:

Initial stage → Formation stage → Genesis stage → Origination stage → Core stage

The initial stage is where you are right now. After going through other stages, it will enter the core stage which will then solidify the color and you will get white color. Then the process repeats if you want to get higher level colors."

"Woahh!!!" Noy jumped with excitement.

"Like I said earlier no need to get too excited right now. It is extremely difficult to reach higher levels, especially the red and purple ones.”

"Yes! Thank you" Noy bowed his head.

With that, he went on to carry on with his training.

***

1 year passed by, and Noy had advanced to the origination stage of blue color.

All this time he had trained inside the room on his own with the time-to-time guidance of Akriel. His body became a little taller.

He wanted to get experience with his new mana core and grow more. Thus, he decided to go out to fight the monsters outside the room and absorb their mana to advance to higher stages.

Akriel took the chained dagger that Noy had been using for this whole year and exchanged it for a more longer chained dagger.

"You said you wanted to use a longer chained dagger that you can wrap around your forearm."

"Yes! Thank you. I'll be off then. I'll return when I think I am strong enough to fight that two guardians that you talked about." Noy bowed to say farewell and ventured out to grind the monsters for mana.

Now that he was 12 years old, he had become a little more mature.

***

Another year passed. Noy had reached the core stage of green color. He felt like his growth had started to slow down tremendously. Even after absorbing the mana of the monsters he killed, the progress of his mana growth was terribly slow.

However, he didn't give up and kept grinding monsters.

***

Three years went on like that. Noy had become 16 years old now but he couldn't keep exact track of the time. His hair grew to the length of his waist and he became more taller. He had no choice but to tie his hair back for now.

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He progressed to the genesis stage of yellow color. This showed how much slow his progress became.

He also learned space magic where he learned to teleport to a short distance. This was extremely helpful in fighting monsters. Another magic he learned was dark magic but he had only grasped a part of it, he didn't fully understand its implementation or how to activate it.

Noy didn't realize it, but his determination was slowly waning away after fighting monsters nonstop.

"Huff... huff... How many years has it been? Maybe 3? or maybe 4 years? I don't know."

He was fighting a group of large centipedes and mercilessly slaughtering them. All these monsters that he defeated were nothing but a source of mana for his growth to him.

All this fighting tired him up. So, he went up to this darker wall overshadowed by a tall tree.

"I should rest for a while." Noy went up to lean and sit against it when suddenly he just passed right through the wall.

He fell on his back, "Huh? This looks familiar." Then he had a flashback about the place where he escaped from wolves at first. This place almost had the same eerie silent feeling to that place but this time there was a visibly large tree with fruits growing along its branches.

He had no idea how he passed through the wall earlier but he was happy arriving at this hidden room because a huge amount of mana was coming out from the fruits. It seemed like he had stumbled upon a treasure of heaven.

Noy happily went to grab the fruit when a huge sword swung towards him.

***

"Gyaaaaaaaaah!!" Noy instantly jumped to dodge the attack. He landed on his feet and tried to counterattack but the sword effortlessly parried his blow.

There stood a knight covered in white armor all from the head to the toe. It donned a white helmet covering his whole face accompanied by a topping that almost looked like a crown. The greek helmet shape sat atop either shoulder that made up the top of the armor followed by a slim waist filling up the rest. The Two shield-shaped chausses covered it from the waist to the halfway of the legs. Inside was the long beautiful red long cloth that oozed out from it covering up the rest of the part. Still, this was not the most bewitching part of that knight, it was the alluring white wings that emerged from its back which almost resembled the holy knight in the mythology book that was commanded by the gods.

However, there was no time to admire the mesmerizing appearance of the knight before him. It was trying to kill him and he had to defend himself.

It instantly leaped forward to the Noy with the giant sword ready to cut him down. But Noy's dagger skill was not inferior to the giant sword-wielding knight.

They exchanged blows without any signs of backing off. The sparks came out from each dagger & sword clash and the whole room was filled with that noise. This went on for a full minute when the knight finally decided to make its move.

Suddenly the knight changed its attack pattern and Noy was barely managing to block its attack. But it still felt like it was holding back against him. He was getting pushed back.

As they were clashing, he prepared a fireball and shot at the knight which was easily blocked by its sword.

"Ohhh!! You can use both daggers and magic." It spoke for the first time.

"So you can talk. I thought you were just a magical knight who was guarding this tree." Noy replied.

"HAHA!! I am guarding it and you won't touch a single fruit from..."

Without letting it talk anymore, he bombarded it with lightning spells.

The knight easily dodged all his spells and rushed towards Noy and slashed its sword with a huge force. Noy rolled away and evaded the next following swing.

"Why are you in a hurry? We have all the time in the world." It mocked him. Noy couldn't see its face but he could feel it's smug.

He was annoyed but also surprised that the knight wasn't using any magic. He figured that it was simply relying on his swordsmanship alone and was toying with him.

It quickly flew towards Noy and again clashed with his dagger.

"You're quite good for a human. Just that, you're far from being on par with me. Your skill has a lot of room for improvement. Let me teach you a lesson." It kicked Noy in the stomach.

"Uuhh..." Noy groaned from the pain.

The man came again and swung his sword. Once more Noy dodged it and tried to counterattack but he couldn't inflict even a single scratch against it.

"You're hurt. So I'll end this quickly." The man walked towards him and swung his huge sword downwards.

"Teleport!!" Noy teleported a short distance backward and stood up with a smile.

"This isn't over yet." He took a deep breath and readied himself.

He already knew what to expect, and he was ready for it, "Your underestimation of me will be your downfall."

He shouted, "Mold earth!"

Just then the ground below the knight started to shake and crumble. Surprised, he jumped up to avoid being the collateral.

"Flaming sphere!" The gulf of flame engulfed the knight in flame and chipped away its armor endurance.

"Explosion!" The flaming sphere then exploded with a very loud force that the impact wave could be felt at all the other ends of the room.

After the impact, a moment of silence followed. Nothing could be heard for a while then a voice emerged.

"I almost died there." The knight appeared heavily wounded but alive on one knee, "So you are also at the higher level mana core. I should have gauged your mana core. But I won't underestimate you now. Prepare yourself."

As a huge circle with various markings appeared on the ground around the knight, Noy shouted, "I don't know what you are trying to do, but it's too late now. DIEEE!!"

He appeared as if he teleported behind the knight and the blood spurted out from its neck. He had used 'umbra' combined with 'wind slash' which further helped in penetrating its defense.

The knight was surprised, " H-how do you know this move?"

He faintly saw the familiar aura in Noy. "So that's why..." This was the last word that came to its mouth before he faded away.

Blood poured out from Noy's mouth like the last time he used this move.

Cough cough...

" Heal!" He healed himself as he sat down in relief.

He felt very proud of himself because he had just defeated an opponent stronger than him in terms of both physical power and magic. So, he at least deserved to bathe in the glory for a bit.

Taking advantage of the small window of opportunity is also a skill that you must have to win battles.

After a moment of feeling accomplished, Noy thought back to its final words, "What did it mean by how did I know this move? Isn't it just supposed to be a higher-level sword skill? But the drawback is huge. Even after having more physical power and a higher mana core, I am still coughing up blood after using this skill, and a huge chunk of my stamina is drained just by activating it. Maybe it's really a higher-level move?"

"There's no point in thinking about it now. I will just ask Akriel when I get back." Noy shook his head, "For now I will eat these fruits as the reward for my hard work."

Noy walked towards the tree with greedy eyes like a predator eyeing its prey. "All of you are now mine!!"