"Well done, you're weak but you can use your mind. The winner will always be the smartest, I have seen higher level mages being killed by lower levels ones only because they believed that their level made them invincible, learn this."
Kyle was getting used to seeing this move from the old man and knew that an item was would appear in the hand that he had just extended.
Two books, a golden one and a silver one, after seeing these two colors appear repeatedly everywhere in this dungeon he started thinking about what kind of symbolic these colors had.
The old man threw the books and left without opening the door, the three other doors also fell ! Without looking back he said.
"You're leaving me here ?"
"Learn them both before you die of hunger and thirst."
He disappeared after saying that and was nowhere to be seen.
'Crazy old man... if he gave me this time limit tho it means that it's possible, hard but possible.'
He looked at the two skill books in his hands, the golden one was [Transcendence] and the silver one was [Elemental affinity], both were high grade legendary skills and very different from utility skills, unlike [High grade Analysis] these skills couldn't be learned instantly but only through an arduous training, after reading both books he realized it would take longer than he could hold on with thirst and hunger...
At that moment his eyes fell on the dead cats...
He stood up and walked towards them, if he wanted to survive he'd need them. Water was more important than food but he didn't have any source of water here, eating could also hydrate you a bit, for now that was his plan.
He also decided to start by learning [Elemental affinity] because its effects were :
< Give control over a random element after every 10 levels. >
If he was lucky and the first element he mastered was water he could extract it from the air and then he could take all the time he needed to learn the two skills.
As he didn't have a knife to dismember the corpses he had to use his hands and slowly work the bodies to get something edible. He had lots experience as his grandfather gave the cooking responsibilities to him since he was 7 years old and he was done cutting the meat after a bit more than an hour, using his bare hands had made them bloody all the way up to the forearms.
He then wrapped the meat in skin to delay the rotting as much as possible, the best would have been to have a refrigerator or salt but would the old man obediently give him some ?
Without losing anymore time he sat cross legged and read the [Elemental affinity] skill book once again, the content of the book wasn't any magical method to learn the skill right away but only insights left by whoever wrote this book that's why Kyle would need time to learn these skills.
Slowly mana started rising and swirling around Kyle as he understood more and more about how mana worked and how it was linked to elements, mana was invisible to the eyes except for some special eyes that could be obtained through skills or races, this time however white dots could be seen to the naked eye swirling around Kyle.
This was Kyle's first contact with mana ever as the first levels were only training of the body and after the level 5 he had jumped over 7 levels without having the opportunity to learn how to manipulate mana.
Slowly the mana started gathering in his extended hand, he had now opened his eyes and was looking at the mana with ecstasy, he finally took a step towards his ambitions. If he believed the words of the old man, which he did obviously after all he had done for him then the step he had just taken was way bigger than most people ever took.
Very few people had cleared legendary class dungeons because of how high the difficulty was and how much time was required, the few who had were old people who had trained to very high levels, Kyle's grandfather for exemple.
So people amongst the younger generation who had access to Legendary class skills either had an ultra strong grandfather or had a luck stat of over 100 points, that made them less than 1 out of a hundred thousand, this was obviously Kyle's hypothesis which had no validity whatsoever.
He focused on the mana gathering in his hand which was getting infused by a yellow hue.
'Yellow... I better be fast, in normal conditions I would be happy but I'm lacking time. Without water I won't survive long enough to use the Lightning affinity.'
Finally the yellow mana in his hands transformed into real electric threads and enveloped his arm all the way to the shoulder, it would have stayed in the form of a thunder ball for a mage but he was a magical knight who preferred fighting at close distance, enveloping his arm with electricity would make his punches destructive.
< Congratulation on learning [Elemental affinity]. The system wishes to reward you for finding and learning a legendary grade skill : +1000 exp. >
He was done with one of the skills, he put aside the first book and focused on the state of his body, he didn't see time pass while focusing on the skill so he didn't know how much time was gone.
'I'm slightly hungry, a bit thirsty too... maybe two hours ? Is it possible to learn such a high grade skill in 2 hours ? I think I'm a genius hahaha !'
Kyle was completely wrong, he wasn't used to the changes in his body yet but he should have known that a mana infused body didn't need to eat or drink as much as a human normal body, in fact he had spent 64 hours learning [Elemental affinity].
'If i can avoid eating that thing I'll just learn both skills before I feel hungry!'
Without losing anymore time he grabbed the golden book [Transcendance] and read it again, and again, and again...
He didn't expect it to be way harder than the silver book, the effects of this skill were very simple and straightforward but the more he thought about it the more it looked like a cheat...
+10% experience points
Such a skill was already invaluable in the outside world but that wasn't all there was to it.
+1 to each stat at each level.
+1 unassigned stat point at each level.
Normal people got +1 stat point to each stat after a level and until now he was the same, on top of that they had 1 unassigned stat point that they could distribute how they deemed fit.
Now Kyle would get ahead in stats after each level and keep getting further and further from the rest, that was obviously if he survived until he learned it.
He tried, tried, tried and tried until he couldn't take the hunger anymore, he was trying to delay this moment as much as he could but even the raw cat meat looked like a delicious meal now, his stomach was shrinking and he felt the emptiness inside it. His mouth was dry.
He slowly unpacked the meat from the skin and took a bite, chewed, took another bite, chewed again and kept doing it until he felt nauseous but he couldn't allow himself to vomit as that would make him even more dehydrated.