The first thing that Bokan noticed was the heat. The moment the door opened, he felt sweat forming on his face. In front of him, he saw dark grey and black rock, with a haze of heat throughout the air. In the distance, he saw a dark glow, as some terrible red liquid, from his education he guessed it to be magma, formed small streams spread out across the wasteland. He thought he saw a flash of movement at about the height of his ankle, but it quickly disappeared as it seemed to fly up a small cliff, of which there were many in the broken landscape. From where he was standing, he was relatively high up for this floor, most of it seemingly below the ground level outside. It spread out until it disappeared in a haze or was blocked by cliffs of the strange dark rock.

To add injury to injury, everywhere the rocks were they seemed to be capable of being an inconvenience, either they looked unsteady, or had seemingly sharpened edges. It was immediately clear to Bokan that this was not somewhere designed for long-term human habitation. You advanced past this floor, or you died. If you had a moderate or more amount of talent, and were willing to work with others, you would survive. If you had a truly exceptional amount of talent but were anti-social, or you had terrible talent, you would die. Some of the most, and least, dangerous magic users in the land would die in this place.

Also, most of the elven magic users to try and become a tower magic user died on this floor. The humans who had constructed this place didn't want their elven "allies" to learn their secrets. Back then, things were much less cordial between even the allied "civilized" races than they were now. Still, no one could change the tower, no one had come close to the sort of power required in over 500 years, and those powerful ancients were all long dead.

Egro, the young man who had welcomed Bokan to the tower, laughed long and hard as he saw the younger man's face twist at the sight. He laughed, and laughed, to the point it began to feel extremely forced.

Eventually, he began to speak. "I remember when I first came to the tower, this felt like nothing more than a warm day! Now, it feels like a veritable paradise relative to what you'll find on the higher floors." He began, every word other than the fact that he remembered his first day here being a complete lie, "well, let me tell you about this place, since it seems you'll be a little more in need of guidance." With that, he began to string together one long set of complete lies.

Bokan didn't care what he said, but did find it interesting that Egro was clearly trying to sabotage him early on. He hadn't even set one foot in the tower yet, and already the politics seems to have begun, though on a micro scale for now. With his own experience as the heir apparent to a wise ruler, he could see straight through this tactic, Egro simply wanted to paint himself as a kind and patient mentor to an utterly incompetent and cowardly newcomer, to eventually "give up" and "allow him to go his own way" if Bokan ever attempted to ask for any actual help.

Courtiers had used such methods in the past many times, and fortunately Bokan also knew a few fairly decent responses. If he wanted, he could utterly crush most others in the game of politics, what with his wealth of knowledge on political history, and his upbringing.

However, it was important to note that one thing was required for him to do that. He had to care.

"Is there anywhere I have instructions to go from here, or do I just need to take this first floor as an entry test?" he asked, deciding to try his luck one time at getting some useful information out of the baboon.

"This is a test of sorts, however, if you would follow my instruction, I would gladly guide you through" the baboon in question (aka Egro) replied, "however, in order to ensure you wouldn't backstab me, I would of course need you to sign this magical contract." With that, he pulled a small, shining piece of paper out of the folds in his robes to hold it forward.

In the several hundred years of recorded history, signing such a document in a position of weakness had never worked out well for anyone, so Bokan just said "No thanks, I must take my leave." and walked past the noisy one (Egro).

As the stupid one (Egro) had been talking, Bokan had been carefully using his magic sense on him in order to see if he could ascertain the power of the enchantments on his clothes. He shut him up and left when he realized he could not, the enchantments were too powerfully warded, the clothes themselves were impressive garments of white and gold, clearly not made by the clumsy one (Egro).

Being offered what was effectively a slave contract had not particularly improved Bokan's opinion of him, and in some regards he was taking some liberties in his estimation of his abilities. Regardless, he was confident that Egro had gotten his clothing made and enchanted from someone else. If so, following the rough path, or just following Egro, would likely lead him to them, or someone connected to them.

At the same time, an immense opportunity had presented itself to him. The fauna in this strange new world were in many ways similar to the fauna in his previous one, they had regular habits and basic instincts. They could reason to some extent, but could not truly be compared to a human, their thoughts, even if faster and more complex in some cases, were not able to truly understand the difference between choosing one's master and serving whatever masters one was born with.

As a result, they could not be called monsters, but they could be called beasts. They did not have souls, so they could not use skills, but mage and a high magic density environment would still alter their bodies in certain advantageous ways.

Most importantly, killing them gave experience, experience gave power, and enough power would lead to revenge.

Still, the environment itself was hostile, draining away Bokan's stamina, every second counted.

There were multiple ways to grow stronger. One way was to simply use magic, which allowed the user to gradually increase their magical reserves. Another way that bears mentioning is killing stuff. The way it works is that, every life has a certain amount of a magical footprint. If you take a life, you get to take that footprint, which increases your own magical capacity. Basically, by killing something else, your magical capacity would grow. If you exclusively killed things in order to grow, your magic control and regeneration might fall behind, since those were primarily trained through practice.

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At least, that was the case until the invention of the soul orb. The soul orb, once bonded, would result in killed enemies making progress towards the next level. It wouldn't give immediate strength like before, however it did allow for much more significant gains over a large period of time, making 3 times as much value from every kill, on a conservative estimate.

In short, Bokan needed to kill stuff, and he finally had not just an opportunity, but the perfect environment for it. Technically, learning more knowledge might be more helpful, but knowledge without power was like vision without a voice, to see what must be done but be unable to achieve it is a terrible burden.

By the time he had finished thinking this Bokan had passed Ergo and was a few steps down the path. His advanced thinking from his stat gain already proving extremely useful, his thoughts and calculations were far faster than before, and he felt his confidence in his decision making growing as he felt the improvement. How arrogant would someone with 10 times his intelligence be? 100 times? Would they possibly leave weaknesses out of their sheer arrogance and belief in their own ability to respond quickly and accurately, or would their greater intelligence lead to great wisdom, and help them to see the value in humility even more than others? He would see.

Reaching down and grasping a rock, Bokan promptly dropped it again. Although he could vaguely feel it through his shoes, until he had actually touched it with his hand Bokan had not fully realized just how hot the rocks below him were. Sitting or lying down would not be possible in this environment without causing himself severe damage, he needed to find some form of shelter quickly.

Decided to go in the direction he saw the flash of movement heading in, Bokan began a slow and painful journey across the inhospitable lands.

All the time as he went, he practiced what he had been taught by Osk, rapidly improving his own ability to form magic constructs, although for now he wasn't entirely certain of how he was going to properly use them.

Over the course of 6 hours of walking, he had managed to enchant his shirt to resist heat somewhat.

After 12 hours of walking, he enchanted his trousers to do the same, at a higher level.

After 20 hours of walking, he enchanted what was left of his shoes to resist the heat, as he continued his march.

At the 30 hour point, he finally succeeded in something, he managed to use his first offensive magic. He enchanted his shoes to be slightly harder.

Truth be told, this wasn't designed to be offensive, but it was the sort of enchantment that would be used on weapons in order to shorten collision times, increasing the impact received by the victim and improving the piercing ability and durability of the weapon. For now, it would hopefully increase the durability of the scraps of leather that he now called his shoes, his feet already sore and blistered from the walking.

Exhausted, he finally found a tiny alcove half way up a cliff that seemed relative cooled. It was barely enough for him to fit his full body into, but he managed. He couldn't sleep in it without risking himself falling, but he didn't really have a choice, so he set himself down to rest.

Some time later, he awoke to find himself in a lot of pain, having just fallen about 2 meters down onto sharp rocks. His unnaturally strong body resisted the fall extremely well, however he was still hurt. All the same, he was well rested and barely tired. Had he not of spent a full day in a carriage spending magic and learning new things from his father, he would have been able to walk for 50 hours the day before easily, if he had of not been spending his magic continually, he could have pushed to 55 or even 60.

For now, the most important thing was finding food. The difference between finding food the first day he started searching for it, and finding food on only the 3rd day he arrived, was immense, and he knew it. Dehydration was also a major threat to him, though his magical attunement would protect him somewhat from his physical needs.

First step of finding food was securing a weapon with which to catch the food, which was going to be hard. Considering his eyes were barely able to keep track of the little critter he'd seen yesterday, Bokan could choose 1 of 2 paths. Either, he could try find larger, more powerful fauna to fight, or he could try catch enough small critters to maintain his stamina.

Neither were particularly likely to be successful, and the best option was definitely securing a larger prey to feed him for a longer period of time, however it wasn't guaranteed that there were larger prey to catch, other than humans, whereas the existence of the ankle-height creature had already been confirmed yesterday.

It did not help Bokan's mood that nearly 30 hours of walking had resulted in 0 food, 1 terrible shelter and not a single sign of other human habitation or anything he could turn into a weapon,. He was going to have to get creative.

Firstly, it was worth noting that humans, while sometimes being called "endurance hunters", were really "whatever works" hunters. Although the human body was remarkably well designed for endurance hunting, the human mind was still where the real power lay, and that power allowed a human levels of cunning and shrewdness not awarded to many creatures. That brain also cost about 20 times the energy of the other muscles in the body and was likely a large part of what was starving him right now, so he had to make use of it.

using his shirt as a means of carrying rocks worked, although it still damaged the shirt beyond his best attempts at enchanting it to resist the heat. The important thing, was that it allowed him to set up a trap.

Travelling to the largest cliff he'd seen, which was easily 20 meters tall, Bokan climbed to the top and prepared his ambush.

10 hours later, he got 1 opportunity to hit a creature and missed.

5 hours after that, he got a second opportunity, and missed again, his thrown rock smashing right next to the creature's head.

The third attempt, 20 hours after he had started, finally succeeded in stunning a creature. All of the rocks he had left and a very rapid decent to finish the battle later, and Bokan had secured for himself his very first meal, a small gamy lizard. More importantly, he had gained himself experience. Secure in the knowledge the food would keep him going for another 2 days at least, Bokan ate it raw, lacking any means of cooking it. It sated his thirst somewhat, and his hunger, and prepared him minutely for the task ahead of him.

It was time to grind some levels, more strength and dexterity was a must in order to hunt these creatures, and he needed more mana so he could enchant more often, to raise his enchanting skill level. The best way he knew to do that, was to cast the most powerful spell he knew over and over again. Unfortunately, that spell was torturously painful for him at this stage. Sighing, he took out his soul stone and prepared for the pain ahead.

Two days later, he continued killing creatures, killing 2-3 a day rather than one. Then, 2 days, he continued his level grinding via status page summoning for 2 days. It was slightly faster than his current hunting, which just showed how much a single kill netter him, but slightly faster was still faster. Gradually, he gained levels, and by the time he had practiced like this for a month, he had finally reached level 10. It was time for his future to be unveiled.