10 Exi

For now, Foster just tried to move around like he usually would, just rather basic things so that he could get used to these heavy robes. He ran from side to side inside of this room, did a couple of push-ups, sit-ups, and other body-weight exercises.

And while Foster really couldn't notice it before when he was just standing around, now he could really see a massive difference to before. Sure, with these robes on, it still made it a fair bit harder to do everything he wanted to, but in general, it was still far, far easier than it used to be.

At the end of all those exercises, he wasn't even really feeling all that exhausted. He had barely even been sweating too much. Sure, it was pretty cold down here, so that might also be a reason for that, but not sweating at all was still pretty weird to Foster.

But then, he came to the spot where he had to test out things that were even more extraordinary. Quietly, Foster looked at his hand, just slowly trying to activate the 'Deadly Surge' skill. The moment he did so, the 'mana' value in his status that he had float next to him at the moment went down by fifty while a small cloud of black mist was pushed out of Foster's palm.

It wasn't all that much, really, but something did happen just then, although it was rather hard to see in this dim lighting. It seemed like Foster would really only be able to test this out thoroughly once he was back outside of this cave... If he made it there again.

Especially that other skill that had to do with his hands, 'Draining Touch', wasn't anything that he could use right now, probably. Then, he just had to move on to his last active skill, the 'Life Detect' skill.

Carefully, Foster tried to activate that skill, and soon, literally, everything completely disappeared from his sight, and his surroundings became pitch-black. Foster would have dropped to the ground if he hadn't already been mentally prepared for something like this to possibly happen.

And when Foster actually tried moving around a bit, he soon managed to see the first bit of 'Life'. That life was his own! His own body was just filled with something like a white mist inside of this darkness. As if Foster's body was just a shell of glass filled with thick vapor.

Once the young man then looked up above him, he managed to see some more life around him. And that life was there in the form of the forest growing above him. The roots that were reaching deep into the ground, and the Tree's crowns stretching into the sky.

Actually rather excitedly, Foster wanted to keep looking around. Still, when that happened, he instead started feeling a deep, stinging pain in his head and immediately deactivated this skill.

[Class Skill Leveled Up!]

After seeing the level-up message, Foster turned to the side to look at his status, seeing that his mana had gone down all the way to 20.

[Foster Locke]

[Class – Dyotis Necromancer][Level – 10]

[Health – 180/180]

[Mana – 20/190]

[Stamina – 200/200]

[Vitality – 15][Strength – 15][Endurance – 15]

[Agility – 20][Intelligence – 10][Wisdom – 9]

[Available Stat Points - 17]

[General Skills]

-[Appraisal LV. 3]

-[Arthor Language Comprehension LV. 11]

[Class Skills]

-[Body of Death LV. 1]

-[Deadly Surge LV. 1]

-[Draining Touch LV. 1]

-[Dyotis Form LV. 1]

-[Life Detect LV. 2]

[Available Skill Points – 1]

"You've gotta be fucking with me... It actually has an effect like that?" Foster asked with a wry smile, trying to rub his head as he sat down on the ground.

"This is so annoying..." He muttered quietly, just pulling his headphones onto his head before laying down on his back. Foster couldn't play any music right now, but it was still pretty comfortable for him to just wear them, so he figured there was no real reason not to just wear them if he could.

Using this chance to properly take a look at this part of things, Foster slowly started counting in a one-second tact to see how long it would take for his mana to rise again. And to his surprise, after just a little more than a minute, it went up by another twenty points again, making his headache ease up pretty quickly.

And roughly ten minutes later, Foster's mana was completely full again. "Hmm... Mana does seem pretty important. And which was it? Usually, Wisdom is supposed to increase that, right?" He muttered quietly, before starting to put some of his stat points into wisdom to bring it to 20, which increased his total mana to 300.

Then he brought intelligence to 15 as well, and just put the point he had leftover into strength. "Okay, then let's keep going." Foster said to himself. The last of his skills that he had to test out was the 'Body of Death' Skill.

With a quick thought, Foster activated it, and immediately felt his skin blister and burn in response to the activation. It wasn't really that bad of a pain, it was just uncomfortable to the point of a bad sunburn, but his skin turned completely pale.

Sure, he didn't exactly have a healthy skin-tone anyway, but it was never this bad before. Foster may have gone to the gym roughly four to five times a week, but that had health-related reasons. When Foster was still a kid, he had an open-heart surgery because of a congenital lesion. Well, technically, there were more surgeries than one. So, he had to pay especially good attention to what he did with his body, usually at least.

When he managed to convince his grandfather to let him start learning martial-arts, he even had to go to weekly checkups at the clinic for a while to make sure everything was going alright with that. He didn't have to do that anymore later, because his grandfather started understanding that he really was fine, but Foster still had to be careful with what he did.

Especially after his primary source of exercise was gone and his sleep-cycle completely broke down, so at some point, Foster started to go to the gym for general muscle-workout stuff... And to go to the shower, because he hated using the communal bath in the building he lived in.

So sure, even if Foster didn't technically spend too much time directly in the sun, his complexion was still always pretty healthy. But now, he just looked like a dead body.

Although something else also happened. The clothes that Foster was wearing were incredibly light all of a sudden. To him, it felt like he was floating in water as if his body had become weightless.

In general, his whole body seemed to move a lot better. But within twenty seconds, he already had to de-activate the skill again. It just drained way too much of his mana at the moment.

"Why am I getting skills that I can't even properly use...?" He asked himself as he properly took a look at his skills. They all required a tremendous amount of mana for relatively little return, at least at the moment. Especially the 'Draining Touch' was a bit extreme. Because of the rings of the necromancer, the cost of his skills may be halved, and the effect doubled, but that still meant that he could at most drain 120 points worth of energy. And if 'Energy' was supposed to be something like Health, then 120 points may be a large amount, but only when it came to low-leveled people or creatures. And then after that, Foster couldn't even use any other skills because he was out of mana.

At the very least, that 'Dyotis Form' skill didn't cost anything to use. "I guess I really am supposed to focus on wisdom? But then why do I have a class that makes me fight in close quarters..?" Foster groaned annoyedly as he waited for his mana to recover again.

"I need to think about a way to get out of here." The young man thought to himself, before looking down into the water to see if there was anything that could help him there. Maybe there was something about that glowing stuff on the walls?

"What even is this?" Foster asked quietly as he walked up to the closest wall and just scratched over one of those veins with his fingernail. He soon found that small crumbs of whatever it was were now stuck underneath that fingernail.

But then, Foster remembered something. The inside of the tunnel had a far higher density of those veins, which meant that they probably came together inside of the other room. Maybe he could find something there.

"But also..." He thought, "It wouldn't make sense for the only entrance and exit to be above a body of water."

When Foster went back into the room, he quickly tried to see in what way all the veins were running across the walls. He tried to figure out if there was any point where they came together other than the tunnel.

And that place was soon found, right on the other side of the room behind the rock throne. Since the throne was placed directly against the wall, it was hard to really see that without paying attention to how the glowing veins were structured, but now, he could tell. They did definitely come together right behind that throne.

Foster started trying to look behind the throne somehow, seeing that it really wasn't set totally against the back. There was a slight slit there, but one that definitely wasn't thick enough to push his fingers into.

He needed something else that he could use to just for a moment create a bigger gap. Since it seemed like the throne wasn't directly connected to the ground either, and was just standing on it, he might just have to push it out of the way.

As Foster was looking around the room to possibly find something, he soon found part of a broken shelf. It had been split in half, but not cleanly. It was the kind of split that caused those really thin, even sharp edges. It wasn't necessarily perfect, but it should work, since the thin, split part could be pushed in between the wall and throne.

Foster grabbed it and wedged it in between there as much as he could. He then just grabbed a random, seemingly durable book that was lying on the ground and basically used it as a hammer to get the wood even further in between there.

Once the wood nearly wholly disappeared behind the throne, the gap was finally large enough so that foster could actually push his fingers into the gap as well. And while he was undoubtedly stronger now, he still wasn't strong enough to just pull a solid-rock throne away from the wall just because he could grab it more easily now.

Foster climbed on the throne, standing on the armrests, and pushed his fingers into the gap in front of him as stably as possible. He slowly lifted his feet to the wall and pressed against it as firmly as he could.

Foster didn't have extraordinary finger strength, but he hoped it would be fine like this. It seemed like he was able to at least somehow get the gap to widen since he could hear the piece of wood slide down the back of the throne.

And soon, he could actually hear the piece of wood drop onto the ground into an open space, which managed to confirm Foster's hopes. There was an exit behind this throne.