After activating the dark art skill, Ken felt a little change in his own mindset, which made him have a thing for killing all of a sudden, just like the system said the dark heart would stop him from getting pulled down by emotions. 

In the past, he has been affected by so many emotions: hate, love, betrayal, sadness, and many more, and they have toyed with him savagely to the point where he didn't even have the heart to live anymore and had the red thought; however, that was when his childhood friend and his best friend Evan came to help him. 

However, in this world there is no Evan, and he was in a bad situation where only his survival matters. 

He looked up and saw the wrapped gift in midair wiggling, and seeing that he immediately tapped it with his finger and immediately it started opening up and what it was as well as his details caused a smirk to appear on his face. 

The active skill (Beast Apprentice) has been unlocked.

[Beast apprentice: grants the ability to control the mind of a demonic beast to aid you with whatever you want. At the current level, it requires a lot of mana, and the effect only lasts for five minutes if you activate it on two demonic beasts and ten if it's on a single beast. Note: This skill can be upgraded to Beast Master, Beast Grandmaster, etc.

This skill is exactly what he needed at the moment, and it will definitely help him escape this place. He immediately accepted the skill to be learned automatically, after which he felt his headache. 

The headache lasted for a few minutes and then disappeared; nevertheless, he has one problem, and that problem is that he does not have mana in his mana core because he hasn't cultivated his mana core before and has no mana reserved inside. 

Fortunately, in this world, Ken is an intellectual genius who has read a lot of books about mana, magic, demonic beasts, and a few history books. 

With the knowledge of magic from these books, he was able to get the means to cultivate and absorb mana, but since he was in a labyrinth, he could only think of absorbing the demonic mana that was emitted from the bodies of the demonic beasts. 

He sat on the ground in a lotus position, maintained a good breathing pace, and ensured that his body was as calm as it should be. 

Then he started meditating on the most basic mana absorption technique, and around his body a dark halo was formed. The dark halo signifies that he was cultivating with dark mana and dark mana absorption technique. 

In this world, before one can become a mage, they first have to pass through the four lower Mana cultivation realms, namely the Mana student, Mana junior, Mana senior, and transcending realm. After the transcending realm, they will be able to become 1-star mages. 

Each of the lower realms has nine levels and three stages: the beginner stage, the midstage, and the peak stage. 

Usually, it might take up to fifty years to become a 1-star mage; that's why those 70+ elders were only 2-star mages.

As a starter, it was extremely difficult to cultivate to the first level, especially when the technique was the most basic of the basics. 

The Smith family has no fire attribute technique and zero dark attribute technique, which made it extremely difficult for a member of the family to find any of this in the book vault.

The two elders outside did not feel the change in mana in the atmosphere because the quality was too low compared to theirs, and because they are light and water attributed, they could not detect other types of mana easily. 

Ken spent up to two days in the labyrinth before he finally managed to reach the first level; nevertheless, after reaching the first level, he still would not have any mana. 

The first set of mana he absorbed was just to activate his mana core; it's like preparing something before the main purpose of it is done. 

Ken was a little bit hungry and thirsty; he is just a normal human tied down with the overall behaviors and nature of humans, thus he could not escape all those. 

Another two days were spent before he finally got the required mana to use the beast apprentice twice. 

"Now it's time to start planning my escape." He muttered to himself and walked towards the entrance of the cave, which was blocked by thick, dark metal that made it almost impossible for those outside to see what was inside unless they had a special eye sight or used mana to improve their sights. 

After walking down there, he looked outside and saw that there was only one of them left there. 

Then he quickly used the beast apprentice skill on one of the demonic beasts, the giant clawed demonic chicken. 

It was large, almost as tall as a seventeen-year-old. Its head was bigger than that of a mature human, and its claws were very sharp and unique. 

After using the beast apprentice, in his brain he started feeling somewhat of a connection to the chicken, and he used his hand to wave at it to stand up, which the giant clawed demonic chicken did without making a fuss. 

Then he instructed that it start digging into the rocky cave with its sharp claws. 

For demonic beasts, especially bird types, the claw is an important part of the body that determines their strength, and they usually don't use them every time.

If their claw is blunt, they will lose it immediately to another of their kind with a sharper one. just like how a swordsman with a blunt blade will lose to someone else with a sharp one. 

Nevertheless, at the moment Ken is in control, and all his commandments are the ultimate. 

And too bad for the giant clawed demonic chicken, other beasts were kind of afraid to come closer to Ken. 

After that chicken was done and his beast apprentice was over, it fell to the ground as though it were dead. 

Ken observed the hole and discovered that it was not enough, so he instructed another beast with a sharp beak to use its beak. 

One can break a brick easily by scraping it with one point or digging a small hole in it; although it's slow, it's the best idea one can think of when there is someone watching after them. 

It's a labyrinth of demonic beasts that mostly hit their peak on the rock, which was one of their behaviors; thus, the guardian did not bother to look inside. They were also far away, and the sound only reached them in a low tone.