Just by being near I can feel mana saturation hitting the ceiling. This would be ideal place for a wizard to train. But as soon as I step inside the cave I feel strange feeling. Feeling of death and decay.

“You’re sure that it is fine for me to enter this cave?”

“Yes! Get some backbone already, there isn’t anything that can kill you in there.”

“If I die in there I will come back as a ghost and haunt you for all eternity!”

“………”

“And do you think that silence is reassuring?”

“It’s fine just go in there already.”

Stupid tree better be right.

I enter the cave and start to walk slowly deeper inside. Deeper I go stronger the feeling gets. But one thing that is reassuring me is I don’t actually feel any danger. So, I think tree might be right after all.

After following the narrow crystal corridor for about twenty minutes I come before a wooden door installed into crystal wall.

“Are you there?”

“What now?”

“Do I go in?”

“Guess.”

This stupid toothpick is really starting to piss me off.

I turn the door handle.

“CLICK”

It opens with a sound. Behind the door I see big hall with crystal walls and ceiling. And on the floor, I see circles with varying colors connected by with lines.

Circles are colored white, red, yellow, blue, purple. Ooh, now this might be interesting. And as soon as I step inside the room, big dice drops from who knows where and levitates in front of me and statue of me made out of white material appears on the first circle.

So, I guess this is pretty simple, I roll the die and my statue goes forward by rolled number. Now the question is the functions of the colors.

Seeing my statue on a white one I can safely assume that is safe platform. Of course, I think I can assume that the red one is danger one, as for the yellow one, seeing that those ones are connected to two platforms at the same time I think yellow ones are teleport platforms.

Got no guess about the blue ones, but I think those aren’t dangerous ones as I’m not getting anything threatening from them like I am getting from purple ones.

Now those purple ones are exuding very worrying auras. So, I think it would be in my best interest to avoid those ones.

Okay, let’s start.

Now, this dice is too big for me to throw so I will just try punching it with everything I got. I clench my left fist and punch the dice with everything I got. Dice gets thrown far and starts to bounce around the hall. Only after bouncing around for almost twenty seconds does it stop on two.

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Platform on two is red one. And as soon as my figure gets above the platform, mannequin like figures made out of the same material as my figure starts to appear all around me. There is ten of them.

I knew red ones were danger platforms. As one of the figures come near me I take a deep breath and release my fire breath and watches the figure gets burnt to cinders and aim at another one that is getting too close to me.

I manage to take out three of the before my breath runs out. And as soon as they burn and become incapacitated, they disappear like how they appeared. I think those figures are perfect training dummy for me to experiment my possible usage of elemental mana.

As they get close, I conjure up elemental mana sparrow like I did outside but this time I made it out of fire elemental mana so, this one is orange colored. After conjuring it up I will it to hover over to one closest to me and make the bird explode on its head. Since I pumped plenty of mana in there it manages to make quite a big explosion destroying the puppet’s upper-body.

“Yes!”

Couldn’t help but shout out at my success. This can become one more weapon in my arsenal. This time let’s try with more birdies. I conjure up a four more birds and do same with them. Make them explode on top of the puppets. This takes quite a bit of concentration since I’m controlling four of them at the same time.

But after pushing myself I manage to dispose four more puppets. Eight down, two more to go. As for the remaining two I extend my left arm and skewer these puppets like a shashlik.

And as soon as I got rid of all the puppets, dice drops from the ceiling once again after disappearing to who knows where. I punch it again as hard as I can and manage to roll five this time. My figure comes above blue one this time. And as my figure land on the blue platform I start to feel mana being infused from around me.

This mana is so much purer than mana inside the crystals. As my body absorbs the mana I manage to replenish my mana reserve and use the leftover to nurture my mana vessel more.

I think I’m going to like the blue platforms. After mana being exuded from the walls disappear dice once again appears.

This time I roll three. And my figure land on red one again. Once again ten puppets appear. This time let’s try more birdies again. I conjure up seven sparrows this time and push myself again to make them go over the puppets head but his time those puppets try to swat my sparrows. And one of them manages to swat one before I can make them float higher to avoid it.

I think these puppets are getting smarter. But since they’re now mainly focusing on my birds I direct them one by one and make all seven of the explode. Thus, killing seven of the puppets. As soon as their comrades explode, remaining three lunges at me faster than the ones before.

I conjure up a spear and start to fight the puppets. But it is hard to fight them with spear since I can’t actually wield it, I simply chose it for its long reach. But I think I can’t use it against prepared opponents.

And I don’t have any kind of training in any other kind of weapons. Since that’s the case I can only depend on my fists. Since Alex practice little bit of boxing as exercise and self-protection.

So, I swipe forward with my spear, making the puppets backout. After that I cover my arms with mana and compress to make it harder. Making makeshift gauntlets with spikes on its knuckles.

After doing that I get into basic boxing stance. Front toe and back heel on the center line. Right hand in back, weight evenly distributed across both legs, knees slightly bent, feet diagonal, little wider than shoulder width apart, back heel raised, elbows down, hands up, Head behind my gauntlets, chin slightly down, eyes see over the gauntlets, relax and breathe!

First puppet to get in range tries to tackle me. I spin right and dodge the tackle and step forward to get in range of the second puppet and as soon as it gets in my range I throw right cross along it jaws as hard as I can popping the puppets head.

That was stronger than I expected. I suppose these gauntlets are doing their job. Just as I popped the second puppet’s head third one come from behind the second one. This time, before it comes in my range I pump some mana into my left arm extending it and hitting the puppet right

Just as I disposed the third puppet second one manages to tackle me from behind. Throwing me under it. As soon as I hit the ground it starts to going to town on my head. As that happens I conjure up another spear from my right palm while pointing my palm to its head, skewering its head. Thus, killing it.

After I managed to conquer my second danger platform, dice once again appears.

It seems longer I progress along the game stronger the puppets will be on red platforms.

This is really starting to get interesting.