The Hallway was broad. It felt like he was inside some Jungle. Small insects were flying here and there, and birds were occasionally chirping. Rather than a test, it felt like he was in the Jungle, one with the nature enjoying a peaceful walk.
As he went on, the height of the hallway increased. At first, when he entered, he could see the ceiling above his head, made of old yellow bricks with vines and mosses covering most of it. But now there were only vines, branches of trees, no yellow bricks, no nothing.
The width was also increasing. The visible walls of the hallway were now completely hidden behind the branches and vines. The forest began to grow thicker, making it difficult for Mizar to move forward. Forming a Moonblade in his hand, he proceeded to move forward, cutting the vines and trees.
Although everything seemed normal, Mizar felt a weird eerie feeling creeping up within him. He felt like eyes were watching him like some predators watching their prey.
His rate of cutting down Vines became slower as he started to pay more attention to his surrounding. The rustling of leaves, the chirping of birds, the buzzing of leaves started making him paranoid. He felt like anytime a terrifying creature may jump out of nowhere and attack him.
The previously peaceful silence of the forest started to become an ominous paranoia for him. He stopped cutting the Vines as he began to tremble. The staff on his hand slipped down due to the sweat forming all over his body.
For him, time began to feel like an eternity. Every second felt like a thousand years. His eyes looked heavy and dead as if there was no life within him. Just as everything was going dark, a shock travelled through his body along with a sound.
[BEEP! BEEP!!]
[User has awakened from Hallucination.]
[Life Force is being drawn out from the body.]
[Lifespan decreased by two years.]
[Lifepan decreased by three years.]
…
His previous state of mind was gone, and he had become calm. As he looked around, he saw that he was tied down by vines sprouting from the ground as well as the vines coming from the tree.
One of the Vines had drilled a hole to Mizar's Heart and was sucking something from it. The System's red alert message was going on hinting at the seriousness of the situation.
It looked like the peoples from the Dark Legion weren't coming to rescue him. Hundreds of ideas started flooding the brain of Mizar as he analysed the situation. He couldn't move an inch due to all the vines tying his whole body down. Within a few seconds, he thought of an idea.
He used his Necromancy Skill, Summon Undead to summon all of his marked undead from the Underworld.
Zombies with swords, daggers, Skeletons with bows and Wild Boars appeared out of nowhere. Without having to give any order, they started attacking the Vines seeing the state of their Master.
As they started closing in on the Vines tying down Mizar, many other vines from around the forest started to attack them. The Zombies, Skeletons and the Boars started fighting the Vines, slowly making their way towards Mizar.
Mizar gave some Zombies and Boars the order to attack the Vine sucking his Life Force. Following his intricate orders, the Zombies started making their ways by dodging the Vines, and Boars made their way by ramming the Vines. He also ordered the Skeletons to shoot the arrows at some Vines that may be approaching the Zombies and Boars.
Like this, within half a minute, few of the Zombies made their way to the Vine that was sucking Life Force. The Zombies started attacking the Vine with all their power but failed to make even a scratch on it.
Mizar felt anxious, but not for long. Calming himself down, he ordered the Undead to attack the Vine that was tying his right hand down.
Like before, the Zombies, Skeletons and Boars coordinated to reach their target. The Vine wasn't as durable as before, and they were able to cut them with a few hits. After freeing his right hand, he ordered one of the Zombies to hand him the dagger that was on the floor beside him.
But not even a few seconds after, twice as much as Vines came from the ground and above to tie him down. He ordered his Summons to defend him against these Vines.
He cut other vines too to give him enough freedom of movement to swing his dagger. He then applied all the skills that he could to the dagger and swung it towards the Vines on his heart.
The Lunar Dagger with its enchantment of 65% attack speed, Moonlight Blade, Moonlight Aura and the new skill Lich Life along with the buff of the passive dagger skill landed on the Vine.
The reality was a complete opposite to his expectations. The attack only managed made a tiny scratch that was barely visible on the Vine.
Mizar felt hopeless at this point in time. The Vine had already sucked 37 years according to the System. The memory of his entire life was replaying in his head.
Seeing his entire life flash by in a moment, Mizar gained his hope back. He wouldn't let his dream die in such an insignificant place.
Taking out his staff, he ordered a Zombie to take it to his other hand. The Zombie took the Staff and placed it on Mizar's left hand. After equipping the staff, he gained additional buffs from it.
Using the same technique as before, he started to attack the Vine non-stop. The small, barely visible scratch began to grow in size and became a big scratch, but it looked like fate had other plans for him.
The Vine started to heal itself using the Life Force he sucked from Mizar. The rate of the Life Force being sucked out decreased but it wasn't good news for Mizar. After healing itself, the Vine would most likely start sucking the Life Force at the same rate as before.
Mizar didn't give up. He continued attacking the Vine. The attack would sometimes land at sides and other places, but the majority of attack landed on the scratch. The only better thing here was that the vine wasn't that thick and with enough attack, it looked like he would be able to destroy it, but now that it kept healing itself it looked like that wasn't possible. The longer it dragged on, the more disadvantageous it would be for Mizar.
After launching a successful attack, he prepared for another attack, but the skill took more time to form than before. Mizar heartbeat began to increase. It was one bad thing after another.
He started thinking about it and attacking at the same time. After thinking for a bit, he came to a conclusion. His MP was zero. His aperture was empty; there was not a single drop of mana inside.
Usually, when he had mana in his aperture, it would increase the amount of mana output from his body, helping him to use multiple skills and spells at the same time. Although there was plenty of Mana in the surrounding that he could absorb, his Mana Bandwidth; MB was only 1170. So he could only output a total of 1170 Magic Power or Mana Power.
If he still had mana in his aperture, he would have an additional 730 output which could easily activate all the skills. But now that he had only 1170, the Mana had to come twice to activate the Skills, taking more time.
Take a note that the fight had only been going on for a few minutes, and every second had a significant impact. The 100 or 50 Mana that aperture had contributed helped the skills to activate instantly. Now that it was gone, it needed a few seconds for the skills to activate.
Every second, the Vine was constantly sucking many days worth of Life Force from Mizar's body. The few seconds wasted on the skills would slowly become minutes, and it would not be long before his whole Life Force was sucked dry.
Mizar started multitasking as he became used to attacking the Vine. He opened the shop and looked for potions and bought a lot of Mana Regeneration Potion from the coins he got from the System Update task.
He then ordered the Zombies to cover him while defending and took out the potions that he bought from the inventory. He did it so that hopefully the people from the Dark Legion couldn't see his secrets. He could only pray that they couldn't see it and not care about it.
He also remembered about the title and swapped the title to 'Master of Using Mana'. It gave him a buff of 20% Mana reduction while casting spells.
And once again, the grinding for his life started.