The twenty seventh floor was a real shock to me though. The aesthetics reminded me of a haunted house, with creaking floorboards and rotting wallpaper. It was still a labyrinth, and not like a fortress level though.

I walked past the lobby, through a hallway and into a side room. There wasn't anything around, but I could swear that there was something circling me. It was like I could sense something near me like a radar, but there wasn't anything according to my primary senses.

Scratching my head, I turned to leave the empty room when a grey, transparent figure materialized in front of me and stabbed at me with it's claws.

Instinctively, I slashed at it with my weapon while stepping back, but the metal blade simply slipped through the torn hooded robe that the figure was wearing like it wasn't there.

A sharp pain in my shoulder dulled my mind as I tried throwing a ball of acid at the monster this time, but it passed right through and splashed against a wall, and without a sound, the roughly humanoid figure disappeared.

But despite that, I could feel that it was still there. The presence slowly moved around me to my back then stopped for a moment.

I turned around in time to see it materialize again to strike at me.

Unlike last time, I bent my body to the side to avoid the strike while stepping in and thrusting out with my claws. But against my expectation, there was no sensation beyond the air that passed in between my fingers. For some reason the phantom could attack me, but I couldn't touch it.

It was annoying, but in games, enemies like this were generally weak to magic or magical weapons. I didn't know how to use magic yet, but I did have one last chance outside of the normal options.

The monster faded and circled behind me before striking again. This time, instead of using my normal weapons, I simply lunged at it after avoiding it's claws and bit into it's neck, sucking out it's essence.

The sensation was even weirder than with the skeletons, as my fangs didn't have anything solid to purchase onto, but as I held that position, I could lightly feel something tugging on them as the monster struggled, and the feeling of something misty entered my hollow fangs.

It was kinda like biting into whipped cream or something, and tasted like raspberry yogourt.

Like always for bloodless monsters, I felt a vague sense of fulfillment, but a serious lack of satisfaction as my stomach pulled at my mind in a mild tantrum.

This trick worked, but it was risky and left me vulnerable if there was more than one monster. I wouldn't be able to heal on this floor either if all the monsters were like this. I needed a better strategy for this floor.

With that thought in mind, I picked up the black gem and a small bowl of a slimy gel the monster dropped and returned to the fountain to plan.

I sat on the newly cleaned fountain lip and lightly kicked at the water while I sat with my boots and pants off. My eyes were absently gazing at the rippling water as I thought.

The only monster I had confirmed was that phantom thing, but even if that was the only one that was invulnerable to physical attacks, combined with the fact that I couldn't see it until it attacked, it would be serious trouble if I had to fight it in addition to other monsters. Multiple of those phantoms would be even worse.

If my theory was right, then they would be vulnerable to magical and enchanted attacks. I didn't know how to do either.

I had the skills for both, presumably, but the [Enchanting] skill was a crafting skill that applied an enchantment to equipment, as least as far as I presumed. But I had switched over to relying on my claws as my main weapon lately. Trying to loot weapons to use from monsters were wholly unreliable and they broke too easily.

Even the two times I got a weapon from treasure chests didn't help me too much. One was a bow and the other a heavy axe. The bow wasn't very conductive to enchanting for close combat, and the axe went counter to my current combat style.

I wondered if my luck with getting weapons was bad, or if this was simply normal. I hadn't been getting many clothes either and heavy armour had repeatedly showed up. It almost felt like the dungeon was harassing me, who currently was a speed oriented melee fighter.

But due to all that, even if I figured out how to get enchanting to work, it didn't feel like it would be too reliable.

Instead, the better option was straight magic. I still didn't have all the pieces to make it work, but I did have solid clues along with the appropriate skills. It felt like the better option by far, and it wasn't like I was in a hurry.

Spending a while trying to figure it out wasn't a bad idea, and expanding my repertoire was always a good thing. Especially since I was so limited in ways to fight despite how many skills I had.

I mustered all the knowledge I had about magic systems in various fictional stories, using them as reference as I practised my chants and motions.

I was pretty certain that I was missing some element of spell casting that prevented me from actually using magic. While I questioned the importance of chanting and hand motions for casting since not all spell casting monsters used them, I didn't think that what I was doing was inaccurate.

There was the fact that I had MP, and had used it for some skills previously, though it always recovered after eating. And I did tend to eat after each fight, though my restraint had improved since the first floor.

In theory, MP should've been the main resource used when using magic. In games, it was normally consumed in order to cast magic, but my spell casting attempts weren't really connected with it's usage. I just presumed that it would be used if I did the casting actions right, but maybe there was a more direct usage of MP?

A lot of fictions had a magic user manipulate their internal energies in some way to create special phenomena. That was something I hadn't been doing, and felt likely to be the problem.

With that thought in my mind, I tried meditating, focusing my mind inside of my body and feel for something I wasn't currently aware of.

Quickly, almost immediately, I felt something.

Excited, I felt deeper into my core and prod that feeling, trying to discover what it was.

*gurgle*

My stomach turned over, demanding my attention.

I wanted to punch it so bad.

I wasn't some sort of glutton in my previous life. For that matter, I often forgot my meals, especially the last year. It was pretty absurd how much my new life was dominated by hunger. I didn't know if it was because vampires had poor fuel economy or my new body was simply unused to resisting the feeling of hunger.

Pushing the feeling to the back of my mind, I returned to feeling around for any foreign sensation.

Inside of my body, there was something there. It felt like water in a cup slowly sloshing around. The feeling was difficult to grasp and solidify in my mind. It just felt so natural being there. But the fact that it was there, and not something I had before, made me able to perceive the difference. It was a natural part of my body, yet foreign to my mind with a second life's memories.

I tried touching this fluid. Poked and prodded, trying to make it move in some way aside from the normal gentle sloshing.

At first, nothing happened. But as I continued trying different approaches, a small changed appeared. It felt like the fluid started to slowly spin, turning from a simple calm pond to a gentle whirlpool.

As the fluid gained direction, it grew easier to manipulate, and eventually I managed to squeeze some of it outside of it's container.

But despite being outside of it's container, I could still feel and manipulate the fluid.

When I opened my eyes, I couldn't see anything in front of me, but I could feel that something was there, moving to the left and right as I wanted.

'You have gained the [Mana Manipulation 1] skill! You have gained the [Mana Perception 1] skill!'

The two announcements resounded in my head, congratulating me for my efforts. With this, I felt like I was only a step away from actually casting my first spell.

Concentrating my mind, I imagined this free floating mass of mana transforming and doing my bidding.

"Arrows of fire, fly through the air and strike my enemy"

With the cant and motions I memorized from the kobald mages, I tried casting magic once again.

*bang*

Startled at the sudden sound, I opened my eyes again.

There was a burn mark and smoke rising from the fountain's central pillar

I had done it! For the first time ever, I had used magic!

The excitement made me forget everything and I entered the water curtain and touched the burned spot. It was still warm, though the stone pillar itself hadn't been marred in the slightest.

"Yes yes! Oh my fucking god yes!"

I had solved the problem. I was missing additional skills to make it work, but by learning them I was able to cast magic!

But that begged the question, why hadn't I gotten those skills, or at least [Mana Manipulation], from the previous magic using monsters?

The only answer I could think of, was that those monsters didn't need the skill. Either there was something innate that wasn't a skill that allowed them to cast magic, or they used a different technique from what I used. It definitely felt like the latter, as the former conflicted with the way the world worked.

If the technique used was different, then it was possible that I didn't need the chant or hand motions.

I pointed a finger at the wall and worked the mana inside of my body, imagining it into an arrow of fire flying out from my finger.

It took a second, but a pointed flame appeared in front of my finger and flew out, exploding when it touched the wall.

A grin naturally formed on my face so big that my cheeks hurt, but I didn't care.

It was a dream come true. I had used magic, and confirmed that I could repeat it.

From there on, I started to experiment. I had four different magic skills.

One after the next, I played around, creating one supernatural phenomena after the next.

Stone bullets, wind blades, icicle javelins, various walls and big AOEs. I kept going until I felt lightheaded and was forced to stop.

A quick glance at my status explained why I was feeling that way. It wasn't some after effect of the euphoria I had been feeling, but mana depletion. My MP was almost at zero.

Not only that, but my body felt tired.

I had no concrete way to tell, but it seemed like I had been working at learning magic for quite some time. My shoulders were stiff and my butt was sore.

In addition, my hunger had come back with a vengeance, now that I wasn't being overwhelmed by the excitement at using magic for the first time.

My hunger really was the only way for me to gauge the time, and even that felt extremely unreliable.

It did make me wonder how long I had been in this world already. But once a few years passed, it probably didn't matter, so I shrugged the thought off pretty quickly.

I went back to the 23rd floor where I hunted orcs in a large walled settlement-style zone. They were big and fat, but made excellent and filling meals, like eating greasy pork cutlets. When I first finished the floor, I got tired at eating so many rich meals back to back, but now it was perfect.

As a side, my [Exceptional Vitality] and [Strong Arm] passives I originally acquired on that floor had risen to rank six by the time I filled myself up. Thanks to that, my HP had broken the four digit barrier, and my strength had surpassed my agility.

With a full belly, I returned to the 27th floor, but rested at the fountain for a little while rather than diving in immediately.

The phantom monster I found was very different from what I had seen before, and I was eager to see what sort of skills I could get from it.

On my second foray into the haunted house-like floor, I followed the same path as before. The first room I checked was empty. There wasn't a feeling of some sort of presence there.

Exiting from there, followed the hallway to a dead end. The hall had collapsed, blocking off further access in that direction, but there were doorways on either side.

I picked the left one because I could sense something there. It felt a little different from the one I first encountered. Rather, instead of different, it was like I could feel a wider variety of sensations from it. The thought of it being another new monster excited me.

Once inside the room, the presence drifted around behind me, then stopped.

I turned around and readied to fire off a wind blade at it, but to my surprise, the monster that appeared looked identical to the one I first encountered.

Not expecting that, I was late in reacting, and was unable to cleanly avoid the phantom's attack. My shoulder was scratched and a trickle of blood ran down before the bleeding stopped.

The monster faded back into nothing, but I could feel where it was, presumably thanks to [Sense Presence].

This time, I didn't need to wait for it to appear and attack, and instead I simply launched a wind blade at it's estimated location.

With a sharp hiss, the spell cut the monster in half, and the floating apparition drifted to the ground in two pieces before settling.

After a few seconds, the monster remains disappeared in a puff and left behind a black gem and a worn out piece of cloth.

While I was happy to get some cloth which I could use to make clothes finally, the strange feeling of the monster stayed in the back of my mind. The feeling I had made me think that it was a different monster, yet it was the same one I first fought.

As I was trying to figure out the reason, I picked up the drops to store when I noticed something. The gem and cloth gave off some sort of strange feeling. It was like they emanated some sort of energy.

There was no reason to think that the black gem was any different from any of the black gems I had looted before, yet it felt different. A niggling feeling made me go back to my home base and check my stash of gems.

When I got there, all of the gems gave of similar feelings, with the black ones all being identical to the new one I had found. My answer was right there. It wasn't that I was feeling something new, but that I had learned to feel something that was already there.

The only thing that had changed was that I had learned to use magic.

No, rather, not just that, but I had gained two new skills that allowed me to use magic. Of the two, the only one that made sense in this context was my [Mana Perception] skill.

If that was the cause, then it made everything make sense. Not only could I feel the mana in these gems, but also anything else that contained sufficient mana. And not only that, but I could feel the nature of that mana, which was why each of the gems felt different.

That also meant that the ragged cloth I got as loot was filled with magical power as well. In that case, it was probably bad to recklessly use it to make clothes until I knew more about it.

The discovery made me a little sad inside, but that just meant that things didn't change on that end.

I was still severely lacking clothes. For some reason, half the time when clothes appeared in the chests, they were some sort of heavy metal armour, something I just didn't want to use with my combat style.

Now that I confirmed all of that, I returned to the 27th floor and went back to exploring it.

Following the same path I took, this time I encountered a new monster at the end of the collapsed hallway.

It was a faint and transparent floating woman in a tattered white flowing dress. It was another ghost type. When the ghost noticed me, it raised an arm with a loud screech and a large icicle appeared in it's hand.

Without waiting for it's attack, I quickly closed the gap, only side stepping to avoid the flying ice javelin.

To test it, I first thrust out a hand and tried to rake it with my claws, but as with the phantom before, my hand simply passed through it's body.

The ghost started to fade, but I could sense it's presence well enough that it's actions were a waste of effort.

Instead of waiting for it to reappear, I simply lunged at where it was and sank my teeth into it's body. The moment I could taste it's essence through my fangs, the ghost reappeared screeching.

It seemed like I had bitten it's arm, and although sucking it's essence from there was slower than the neck, it was still more than fast enough, and it didn't take long before the shuddering ghost lost all it's energy and lifelessly collapsed.

Or rather, it was pretty lifeless in the first place, being a ghost.

Now that it was empty, I dropped the transparent husk, and it disappeared, leaving a gem and tattered magical rag which I tossed into my bag before continuing.

Like before, I turned left into the room on the side. There wasn't anything waiting there this time, but I could sense two presences through the broken wall on my right.

Unlike before, this time I could vaguely feel that there were two presences. If they weren't on opposite sides of the opening, I probably wouldn't have been able to tell them apart.

When I passed through the gap, they both started moving as if they were one.

The one on my left moved to my rear, but the one on my right immediately approached me.

The monster on my right was a skeleton wearing heavy black robes and wielding a scythe. The left was invisible, but unless if it was also a new monster, it was probably the same as the first phantom I fought.

Since it was already visible, I concentrated first on the robed skeleton, stepping in and thrusting my claws at it as it prepared to swing it's weapon at me.

To absolutely zero surprise, right before my attack connected, the monster faded into nothing, though it's presence suggested that it was still there. There was no sensation of touching anything despite my claws clearly going through the location I could feel the monster's presence.

It's characteristics seemed to be a little different from the other ghost monsters, but it relied on the same principals.

Rather than do something about this slow monster, I turned to face the one that was getting ready to attack my back.

It had already materialized and started it's attack. Reading the predictable trajectory, I closed in while avoiding it's claws and bit it's neck, draining it quickly.

The other monster had moved closer before stopping. As expected, it's attacks were slow, so I could leisurely drain the phantom as it wound up.

Before any attack could connect, I swung an arm behind me and sent mana out to become an ice wall right behind me.

There was a clink as metal met ice. I could see the tip of the scythe poking out from the ice wall from the corner of my eye. Immediately after, I dissolved the wall back into raw mana. With a quick back step and twist right as the first monster grew dry of essence, I bit into the skeleton's neck and drained it as well.

With that, the fight came to a quick conclusion as the skeleton convulsed before all the energy left it's body.

The fight was only as easy as it was thanks to my magic. If not, I'd have had to find a way to separate the two and deal with them individually, or deliberately taken a blow away from my vitals.

The only reason why I didn't start with an offensive spell was because I wanted to learn a little about the robed skeleton.

With the fight over, the monster corpses disappeared, leaving me with more inconsequential drops.

On the other hand, draining the phantom gave me [Spirit Perception]. The skill allowed me to sense the presence of spiritual entities. At rank one, [Spirit Perception] didn't change anything for me. [Sense Presence] was a higher rank and did mostly the same thing on this floor.

Since it was limited to spiritual entities, it seemed like a degraded skill, but the thought that it might work different at higher levels prevented me from completely dismissing it.

I exited through the door and back to the hallway's continuation.

After a short walk and a turn, two more monsters showed up in front of me. This time it was the magic using ghost and the scythe wielding skeleton.

I opened up with a fire ball at the ghost and charged at the skeleton. The fireball exploded square in the ghost's chest, ending it instantly, while I lept at the skeleton and bit into it's neck as it winded up it's scythe.

I sucked out it's essence then turned to the ghost and bit into it's remains, sucking it dry as well.

It wasn't like I was attempting to use a particularly strong spell, but it seemed like these monsters were a lot more vulnerable to magic than I thought.

Maybe it was a balancing factor since they had physical immunity.

Still, it being easy wasn't a problem for me, and gave me an excuse to practice with my magic even more. And unlike a normal person, I didn't have to worry about running out of MP here, since I fully recovered it all from just sucking out my enemies' essence.

On top of that, the ghost gave me a new skill: [Spirit Form].

My new skill's description said that it allowed my body to become like a spirit's temporarily, but actually trying it only allowed my body to slightly fade. It was only good enough to cosplay as a ghost if I wanted to.

But it was pretty interesting, and I wanted to see what it would be like at higher ranks.

A bit further in, my next encounter was against a pair of those invisible phantoms.

The thought of fighting a pair of invisible monsters that kept trying to attack me from behind was annoying, so I just fired off a wind blade horizontally.

The compressed air flew out, almost touching both walls, and with a flicker, cut through a pair of entities before continuing as if nothing significant had happened. As the air blade impacted some debris and dissipated, a pair of bisected ghost bodies appeared on the ground.

I happily hopped over to them and sucked their essence out with the feeling of enjoying a few pieces of cotton candy.

With this fight, I had acquired a third skill on this floor: [Manifest Body]. My latest skill allowed it's user to turn a part of or whole spiritual body into a physical form.

I tried it out immediately despite my low [Spirit Form] skill rank.

My body first turned transparent, though only barely. Next, by activating [Manifest Body], I made one of my hands turn back into physical form, losing it's transparent properties.

Activating both skills wasn't difficult and I admired the effects of them both working in tandem. It made me think that I could use this to simulate a similar effect as the phantoms. The thought of being an invisible assassin was quite amusing, but for me, it paled in comparison to being a mage.

Then again, it wouldn't hurt to become skilled at both. The skills on this floor were a bit unusual, and I really wanted to spend time raising them.

With a bounce in my step, I continued to farm up the floor's skills, occasionally returning to drop off my loot and go fill up on fresh blood.

By the time I decided to move on to the 28th floor, my [Spirit Perception] skill reached ran 7, and my [Spirit Form] and [Manifest Body] skills reached rank 5.

At rank 3, [Spirit Perception] had finally started to show features that [Sense Presence] didn't offer. Not only had the feeling of spiritual creatures had become clearer and more precise, but I had become able to even see the ghost monsters when they would normally be invisible. At this point, they were still pretty faint to my eyes, at rank 7, it was actually getting more difficult to notice them transitioning to spirit forms. I hoped that I wouldn't lose the ability to tell the difference at all if the skill reached max rank.

At rank 5, [Spirit Form] seemed to make me virtually invisible, though by the time I got the skill that high, I was only able to confirm it by wandering around floor 26 to see if the lizardfolks noticed me or not. Any further benefits seemed to be reducing MP cost while transformed, though I suspected that there were some things that I could only do in spirit form that I hadn't gotten my rank high enough to discover.

[Manifest Body] effectively just reversed the spirit form effects more completely as long as it's rank was equal to my rank in [Spirit Form]. The only way I was able to realize this was when I tested the skill when [Manifest Body] was a rank lower than [Spirit Form]'s. That time, my hand didn't become completely solid. The effects were quite disturbing, and I was glad for my [Manifest Body] skill to rise soon after.

In addition to the new skills, my [Mana Manipulation] and [Mana Perception] skills reached rank 2. It was nice to see my skills go up without relying on [Blood Sucking], but at the same time, I came to realize just how slow raising skills normally were. Though I couldn't discount the possibility that vampires simply had slower skill acquisition rates.

 

Stepping onto the 30th floor was a massive surprise. I had arrived on a beach. On one side was a sheer cliff, and the other an ocean. In between was an idyllic sandy beach, with the water softly lapping on it's shores.

There was very little to the floor beyond the beach and ocean from where I stood. No monsters, no treasure chests, no seperating walls and rooms. At the far end of the beach, I could see that the cliffs intersected the ocean, bringing an end to the beach. Behind me, the same thing happened. But otherwise there wasn't anything there. Not even a boss, or a way to the next floor.

I casually walked across the sandy beach. The almost ivory sand was soft and fine, giving away to my steps easily. It made walking a little awkward, but not too difficult. On occasion, I stepped on something hard buried in the sand. When I bent down, I found I stepped on some sort of clam as it wiggled to bury itself again.

After a lengthy walk, I reached the far cliffside. There really wasn't anything dungeon-like here. The beach was nothing more than a normal beach, but that couldn't be the case. Every floor had a boss along with a staircase down to the next floor. It was doubtful that this was the last floor.

If it wasn't, then that meant that there was a way to the next floor. I just had to figure out where it was, and beat the boss guarding it.

But I was surrounded by cliffs on three sides, and an endless ocean on the fourth.

Theoretically I could scale the cliffs to see beyond them, but it didn't feel like that was the right way. The environment itself pointed to the water instead.

(The water though...)

I hadn't fought in or under water yet, so the prospect was a bit unnerving.

But I did have magic to help me.

I used wind magic to create a bubble of air around my head and connected it to the surface to get a continuous supply of fresh air. Then I stepped into the water, wading out until the water rose to my chest, where I dove under.

With my head underwater yet paradoxically dry, I swam around, exploring this new place.

The monsters weren't as difficult as others I've fought, but due to the nature of the environment, the fights were much harder than the previous floor.

Sharks charged at me head on, giant jellyfish would creep up from odd angles, and big squids would grab at my body with their long tentacles, making me instinctively grip my pants tightly with one hand to avoid them from being pulled off, even though they never actually attempted to.

Aside from the monsters, there were tons of sea creatures swimming around or crawling on the ocean floor. No matter how I looked at them, they weren't monsters, but instead just normal fish and shellfish.

Eventually I found a small hill in the water with the usual gate for the stairs to the next floor. The boss was swimming around it like a guard. It was a giant shark that tried to swallow me whole the second I got close. I surrounded myself with ice spears, letting it impale itself.

The floor was quite interesting, but it was a shame that I couldn't enjoy the extravagant seafood buffet. I did enjoy the skills that the monsters gave me though, including [Swim], letting me move around in the water as fast as a fish by the end.

What I didn't enjoy was the thorough cleaning my clothes needed to get the salt out afterwards.