Denise pulled a carrot from her bag and we all walked back to the fenced area where the pitch black horse was circling. When he saw us, he moved back to the far side of the area, looking as if he might charge. Denise gave one last look to me, like she was making sure I was still here, and then had the stable master open the gate for the fence, essentially walking into the lion’s den alone.
All I could do was pray and have a spell ready at the back of my mind, ready to use Reinforce on Denise at a moment’s notice. But the horse wasn’t responding yet, simply glaring at Denise as she slowly, cautiously approached. When she was within ten feet, Midnight let out a warning neigh, and Denise startled. She stopped at that distance, and held out the carrot in one open hand. Moment of truth..
“Come here, boy. I’ve got a yummy treat for you..” Denise smiled to the horse, waving him forward with one hand. The horse shook its head with a whinny, taking a couple small steps forward. “There, that’s not so bad. Just a little more. Trust me, I’m more scared of you than you could ever be of me.” I smiled a bit at that comment, but stayed ready to support her with my magic if I needed to.
The horse took that last step, and slowly lowered its mouth to nibble on the carrot. “There, you’re not such a mean boy, are you? Just a little flustered, is all.” She gently brought up her spare hand and stroked the top of Midnight’s face, down along its snout. “You just want to get out of here like the rest of us, right? Well, tell you what. Why not come with us?”
Quest completed!
Taming Midnight
Denise has successfully managed to tame the mustang Midnight. The stable master will never forget how one woman accomplished something he could never do.
Reward: Midnight is now a valid mount
“I can’t believe it. She really did it..” The stable master was dumbstruck, but was pleased by the whole event. “A deal’s a deal. You got him to calm down, so he’s your’s. I’ll go get the gear and then you can get the nightmare out of here.”
How bad must he have been before for this guy to call him a nightmare? “You did good, Denise. You did very good.” I smiled to her, and she slowly led Midnight over. He glared at me, as if to say ‘this is my human, back off’, but Denise lightly swatted his side.
“Enough of that. Jin is good.” She smiled to me, and it left me with a question.
“Did the horse just talk to you?”
“Huh… I guess he did? I thought it was like you with your summoned animals. Maybe I can talk to things I tame?” She shrugged, like when she did it it was no big deal. I shook my head and grinned.
“Well, if it’s alright with you and Midnight, I can put a binding on him. Then, we can both talk to him.” I said that, while looking at the horse in question. Denise relayed my question, and we got a head shake and a whinny in reply.
“He said sure, but if you use him as a shield, bad things will happen.” She then looked at the horse as it glanced to her, “No, I’m not going to tell him the full thing. And neither will you, okay? Please be nice, Midnight.” I swear, I had never seen a horse pout before now, but apparently it’s possible.
Bringing my hand up to Midnight as if I were going to pat him, I nodded. “Binding.”
You have successfully bound Midnight
There, happy now, human?
“Why, yes I am. I do hope we can get along. Denise and I are kind of a package deal.” I was talking to a horse… and he was being stubborn. Why did I have a straight face?
Get along or not, you guys are getting me out of this dump, so I can put up with you.
“I guess that works for now. Deal.”
But if I hear one horse pun out of you…
Well, I decided not to look this gift horse in the mouth. “Yeah, I figured. I will restrain myself.”
Midnight whinnied and shook his head again, and a few minutes later we had him loaded up with his saddle and feed. “Now, how about we get you out of here?” I smiled to Midnight and Denise as we all walked towards the city gates together. “Even with all the detours, we’ll definitely get to Coatin faster now.”
“Agreed. But you said you wanted to test some new spells..?”
“Oh! Right. You mind waiting for a few more minutes?”
“Treat me to an interesting show, and sure.” She grinned to me, and I laughed. I wasn’t quite sure how this would turn out.
“Okay.. first..” I opened my grimoire to have the spells I needed listed out for me. Even if it was just for the feel of it, I liked reading the chants like a real mage. “Armies of empires past, ghosts of fallen kings, imbue these beings with your power. Fusion summon!”
Given that I only had two current summon contracts--aside from Midnight-- the targets of the spell were the Forest Ape and Angry Wolf. What came out… is not what I expected. The normal blue circle of light appeared like always when I perform a summon, but just outside of that was a green circle that quickly formed, and a red one beyond that. The red one rose to about waist height, while the green one rose above my head. Inside the circle was filled with a convulsing light, and then a great bestial roar was emitted from within. When the light faded, I had only one thought..
That’s a fucking werewolf! I just created a goddamned wolfman! Nearly seven feet tall, hunched over with bulging muscles, furred, with clawed hands and a wolf head.
“Uhm… Jin… I hate to mention this… but I don’t think we ever fought that…”
“No… I think we’d remember fighting a wolfman. This is a fusion of the ape and wolf I caught.”
Midnight suddenly turned to glare at me. Don’t you dare do anything like that to me!
“Don’t worry… wasn’t planning on it. Okay.. next spell.. well, this’ll be a doozy. Forgotten gods, nameless tales, show me the wisdom of another. Merge!” My mana plummeted, and my eyes unfocused as I felt my body flung towards the werewolf. The last thing I heard was Denise’s startled gasp, and then everything became black and white. Looks like it kept the wolf eyes.
You have taken the form of a Werewolf!
Health + 500
Strength +150
Agility +100
Attack +50
Defense +30
In this new body, you have gained several traits specific to the Werewolf.
Looking down at myself, I first noticed that I was now naked. Of course, I was covered in fur and looked like a horror movie werewolf, so nudity wasn’t at the top of the concern list. When I spoke, my voice came out grating, this form making it difficult to speak. “So… is this… enough.. of a.. show?”
“Jin... ? Is that you?” Denise took a careful step forward.
“Yes.. feels weird.. ending now.” As soon as I cancelled the spell, and the summon to go with it, I fell to the ground in my own body, and Denise was beside me before I even noticed she moved. Huh… guess she can use her speed after all. “Okay… let’s reserve that one for when we need to hit something big. Deal?”
Denise choked out a laugh, “Deal. You worried me, you know?”
“I worried me too, Denise. I worried me, too. Just one spell left, and then we can get going. This one I actually think will be pretty useful..”
I slowly stood up, with Denise’s help, and noticed that my mana was still entirely tapped out. I guess that possessing something that powerful requires a lot of energy, so I just waited a few minutes for it to catch up with me.
“Okay.. here it goes… I really hope I don’t grow a tail from this. Eyes of the eagle, soul of the wolf, grant me the strength I need. Summon Aspect.” I closed my eyes, focusing on the wolf, more specifically on its eyes.
When I opened my eyes, I noticed that everything looked the same as when I was possessing the werewolf. Instinctively, I looked down to make sure I was still wearing clothes. Thank the lord for small mercies.. I was indeed still in my normal form… but with wolf eyes.
“Okay, this feels
weird. I’ma stop now.” I cancelled the spell, and almost collapsed against Denise.
Magical Talent has gone up to 12
Due to extreme usage of your mana pool, you have become exhausted. -75% to all stats.
Exhausted… no shit. I was panting a bit just to move, and Denise helped me up onto Midnight, who even seemed worried. “I’ll be okay. But next time I try to cast a spell when I look that bad… Smack me. Please. I’ll thank you.”
Gladly.
“Ohgod, not you Midnight. I wouldn’t survive.”
True.
“You two.. get along.”
“Hey… he’s keeping me from having to walk. Right now, he’s my favorite animal in all the worlds.” I leaned forward onto Denise as she got on in front of me. Let the woman drive. “This is comfy. I’m just gonna stay like this till I have the energy to do more than complain.”
Denise laughed in front of me. “There there, the big strong archer is here to protect you.”
“Good. I couldn’t magick up a puppy right now.”
And with that, we set off on Midnight towards the southwest. Thankfully, the wild dogs seemed to remember us, and didn’t feel like attacking as we passed. “I wonder what would happen if I fused two wolves… gotta test that some time.”
Chapter 8
The next day, I called Rusty again like I had said I would. It’s getting hard to remember what time of day it is in the real world, but thankfully he hadn’t logged off for breakfast yet. He told me that Kevin would be heading for Coatin like we said, but it would take a week on the other side for him to get there, thanks to his schedule. Since he still has to attend classes, I can’t really blame him.
It figures, but as soon as we were too far from Rosenheim to turn back, I started getting ideas for new spells I wanted to try. I would have loved to make them myself, but even my Spell Knowledge skill wouldn’t let me create spells without some starting point. And since I’ve never tried any enchantment or item creation magic, I was out of luck.
Hope Coatin has a Mages’ College. Or at least a store where I can buy the books. Denise and I had talked, and decided that we’d help out the villages we passed along our way however we could. Even if we could live off the land, that doesn’t give her an unlimited supply of arrows, and we can’t rely just on my ability to solo everything. As such, we needed money.
Woe be to the poor adventurers. They have fallen on hard times. Well, I have. Denise still has some money left from when she ran the inn, but it would be nice not to have to rely on her for cash all the time.
As we drew nearer to the village, the creatures we encountered grew steadily stronger. It turns out, in the wilds the stronger creatures like Dire Wolves only appear at night, but along our way we saw some large snakes, horned rabbits, and overhead we saw giant eagles.
Due to our current lack of experience, we wanted to wait to fight anything too dangerous looking until we were more sure of ourselves. As far as we knew, we each only had one life now, so we had to play it safe. In other words, we left the big birds the hell alone.
Shortly after lunch, we saw the next village in the distance, neighboring a vast forest directly behind it. Hopefully we can learn a bit about the forest from the village, because it would take far too long to go around.
The village itself was small, with just a few wooden huts and a flimsy looking defensive wall. When we got closer, we saw only a few villagers wandering about, mostly tending to the fields to the east of the village. There aren’t even any guards… if I were to plan an invasion event, I’d put it there. But it’s still too early in the game to have any major plot events, unless a player initiates it.
And I had no plans of starting any invasion events. This village was kind of nice, and I thought it would be a shame to turn it into a battlefield. After we entered past the wall, Denise and I got off Midnight, and walked a ways until we found someone that looked like a village elder.
“Good day, ma’am.” I bowed politely as we approached her. “We are travelers passing by, and were wondering if your village had anything that we could assist with.”
The old woman turned to me and raised her eyebrows. “Well.. why are you asking me? Go ask the chief, you damned fools.” She pointed off towards the center of the village, where who I would have guessed was a hunter stood watch, facing the forest.
“My apologies.” I nodded to her and proceeded towards the indicated chief, having thoroughly made a fool of myself. “Sir, are you the chief of this village?”
When he nodded silently, I continued. “Apologies for disturbing you, but we are travelers passing through, and we were wondering if there was anything we could do to help while we are here.”
Slowly, he turned his head to look at me directly. “You are warriors, yes? Versed in combat?” He looked back to Denise and nodded towards her bow.
“We are adventurers, yes. And we can hold our own in battle. I take it that there is something we could do for you?”
He nodded, and returned his gaze to the forest. “Our young hunters went into the forest three days ago for their initiation hunt. They were meant to return the next day. Older hunters left the next night, still not return. The forest has taken them.”
I nodded to him, looking back to the field. That probably won’t support their village too long. Is this a life or death quest for the entire village? It’s a good thing a player came before it was too late.
“So, you want us to go into the forest to find them?” After he nodded, a quest window appeared.
New Quest!
Chioatl Hunters
The hunters of this tribal village have seemingly been abducted by the neighboring forest. The village chief has tasked you with entering the forest to determine their fate.
Reward: Increases for each rescued hunter
Difficulty: D
“I understand. Is it alright if we leave our horse in the village while we do this? I promise we will find your hunters and return them to you.” When he nodded, a message appeared acknowledging the quest was accepted. “Also, any information you could give us about what lives in the forest would be helpful.”
“Many things live in the great woods. There are bears with stone armor, birds with steel wings, and many hunter spirits. Young hunters are tasked with entering the woods and killing one animal before returning. This is to show that they are adults.”
“I see. We’ll find what happened to them. If the forest has done harm to them, then we shall grant justice. If not, we will return them to you.” The chief nodded, and we were off. Denise instructed Midnight to stay near the village, and if we needed him I could summon him.
“So.. armored bears… steel birds… I’m starting to think we should have trained on those eagles.” Denise smiled meekly next to me.
“We’ll be fine… we should be fine. So, ape or wolfman?”
“We haven’t tested the wolfman yet, so let’s go ape. Though, you should try to grab some of these animals if you get the chance. They sound a bit more useful.”
I nodded, and before we went too far, I summoned my Forest Ape. He seemed happy to be back in the woods, even though they were different woods. “I’ll scan to see if I can find anything.” I focused my eyes and activated my scanning spell.
The Dive: Birth of a Wordsmith Page 13
