Second Realm

by Michael Chatfield

  Mana veins could be seen on his hammer as he uppercut a humanoid-looking golem, smashing it apart.

  “These things don’t have monster cores. That big bastard must be controlling them!” Rugrat yelled.

  Erik turned toward the massive thirty-meter-tall golem and rushed forward. He didn’t care for the smaller golems that now littered the ground. His Strength and Agility gave him faster reflexes and explosive speed with each step and movement.

  The golem had recovered. It had a humanoid appearance, made from dark granite with obsidian eyes that focused on Erik.

  Erik fired out Mana bolts. The Mana heart was damaged more, breaking away from the monster core.

  Erik landed on the golem and slammed his fist down at the golem’s heart.

  The golem seemed to be waiting for this as its massive hand swiped across to grab Erik.

  Erik gave up on his attack and jump down and away, missing the golem’s grab; the golem’s other hand turned into a fist and shot forward.

  Erik rushed to meet it and jumped upward. He was about to land on the golem’s arm when it smashed into the ground. The speed and strength sent rocks flying that hit Erik in the back and sent him off his trajectory.

  Erik backed off. Using Mana to strengthen his body and using the Growling Tiger techniques took their toll, and his Stamina Regeneration was just about able to keep up.

  The golem grabbed a handful of the golems that were rising out of the ground or had dropped from its body and tossed them in its mouth.

  “Shit, that doesn’t look good,” Erik said. There was a glow around the golem’s chest as its Mana heart started to recover.

  Erik heard Rugrat pulling out his rifle.

  Erik could dodge the golem spawn and kill them with a fist, but Rugrat’s close combat abilities were lacking. He’d poured healing powder on his wounds but they were severe and took time to heal. His rapid movements weren’t helping, opening up different wounds and making it harder for them to heal.

  Erik pulled out another batch of three grenades, with one a copy of the one that had worked the first time. “Don’t fail me now!” Erik ran forward again as the golem raised another handful of its spawn to its mouth.

  “Come on, Patriots! Frag out!” Erik yelled as he pitched grenades at the golem. Its normal head was much smaller than the original trap head, but it was still a forty-meter-tall creature. Its mouth was nearly two meters wide and a half meter tall, the grenades went right down the golems throat.

  The grenades went off, or at least one did and made the others explode.

  The golem’s arm dropped as its eyes looked at Erik and Rugrat.

  The smaller golem spawn started to fall apart and crumble.

  The golem dropped forward, slammed into the ground and gave rise to a dust cloud. A tombstone appeared above it.

  Erik shot over Ranged Heal at Rugrat a few more times.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Erik yelled. Roars could be heard in the barren stone land. He accessed the golem’s tombstone, selecting Take All.

  It started to dissipate as Rugrat met up with Erik and they ran.

  Rugrat drank down a few healing powders. The two of them kept an eye out for anything else as they left the stony area and headed back out into the desert.

  After about five minutes of running, Rugrat started laughing—well, coughing up a bit of blood and laughing as they were running away.

  “What are you laughing about?” Erik said, unable to hold back his curiosity.

  “I’m just wondering. We were in its mouth, right? And it didn’t do anything at all, till I let out that nasty fart this morning. Like, it had to have taste buds!” Rugrat fell into laughter.

  Erik wanted to rebuke him, but with the adrenaline bleeding off and just having nearly died, Erik started laughing with Rugrat. They continued running far away from the golem’s home and toward where they thought the dungeon was.

  ***

  Erik and Rugrat jogged through the desert as night started to fall.

  Once they left the rock outcropping, a new notification appeared.

  ==========

  You have left the event area Rock Golem Nest.

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  “Events? Like how there are random events in video games?” Rugrat said.

  “That would explain it,” Erik said back.

  “Cool!”

  With their Stamina and Stamina Regeneration, although it wasn’t easy, they didn’t need to stop once to rest.

  “This looks like a good place to make camp,” Erik said as one of the Second Realm’s moons started to rise up.

  Rugrat was in much better condition, having healed from his injuries fully. It was only afterward they found out about his crushed ribs and bruising. Thankfully Erik’s Simple Ranged Heal combined with quick self-aid helped him before they could affect him too much.

  They broke down tasks and quickly got a tent erected and went inside.

  “If I just had a few more months,” Rugrat said to himself as he looked at the armor he was wearing.

  “The armor works well, Rugrat. Plus, we need to get that dungeon core as fast as possible.”

  “Yeah. Could use some goddamn padding.” Rugrat winced as he continued to use healing spells on himself to fix the last of the damage. “If I could make some Journeyman armor, then we could increase our combat power. That reminds me, do you know which of the grenades worked?”

  “I think it was tester Three C and Four One,” Erik said, checking his storage rings.

  “Right.” Rugrat pulled out a notepad and started to write on it. “Failures?”

  “One A and B, Four A and Three D,” Erik said.

  “Okay.” Rugrat checked out his chart of combinations. “The Two B and C should be effective as well. Need to test them first, though.”

  “Right.” Erik nodded. He had only used the grenades because he needed something that packed a powerful attack but didn’t rely on his Mana because he wanted some left in case of emergency.

  “As much as I want to test them out, it doesn’t make sense to do so now.” Rugrat opened up his notifications. “Though it looks like I just got a level up, so that’s pretty damn nice!” Rugrat’s eyes shined as he ran through his notifications. “Hey! What loot did you get?”

  “Give me a minute.” Erik opened up his storage ring and looked to the pile of items off to the side.

  “Got something called blue rock dust, purple veined amethyst ore, powdered lightning rock, and then a variant monster core, Earth grade,” Erik said. The dusts and ores didn’t really interest him, but when he looked up, Rugrat was shaking.

  “Something wrong?” Erik asked.

  “Enhancers,” Rugrat said. Erik only had a blank face at Rugrat’s outburst.

  “Those are all enhancers that one can use with different metals to increase their innate abilities and increase the strength of the formations that are placed upon it. The one you’ve mentioned, blue rock dust, allows the material to be malleable but not lose its strength. One could make a metal whip with it. The purple veined amethyst core is a combination enhancer. When used with a powdered monster core, it can increase the affinity and the success rate of the monster core being absorbed into the metal.

  “The powdered lightning rock is a material to be used in formations. I’m not sure about its exact uses but based off the grade of the other materials, it shouldn’t be something low grade,” Rugrat said.

  Erik’s eyes moved to the variant monster core. It had an Earth variant monster core, though Erik couldn’t figure out what grade the variant core was, whether it had the power equivalent to a Common or a Greater monster core.

  “Damn, I love loot.” Rugrat laughed.

  “Not so much the shit we need to go through to get it, though,” Erik said.

  “Well, we need to take risks to get rewards. Still, in some regards, we think too much like people from Earth compared to people from the Ten Realms.”


  “Yeah,” Erik said, feeling the weight of responsibility that lay on their shoulders.

  They had taken in the people of Alva, creating Alva Dungeon, and promised to protect them. So far they couldn’t even protect themselves. Fighting was a good way to increase their strength, to test out their theories and ideas. They could turtle themselves away in Alva Dungeon, but that wasn’t living. Erik and Rugrat were lying to themselves in one way. Yes, they needed to go and get the dungeon core, but they also wanted to see more of the Ten Realms—they wanted to do more! On Earth, they had been limited, only feeling like they had a purpose, a challenge when they were on the battlefield and they could see the results of their actions.

  When they went back home, they were lost among the sheep, the people who couldn’t complete a task in a set period of time, the bureaucracy that kept people safe but never seemed to do anything but slowly churn over, not producing anything but remaining the same.

  Here they could directly change themselves, through stats, through weapons and armor, and change the world around them through their actions.

  No one was there to tell them what to do. Fortune favors the strong, so they needed to become stronger.

  Thinking on this, a fire burned in Erik’s chest. Others might have a grand goal to save as many people as possible, to build a grand empire. Erik had no idea what the future would hold, but he was sure as hell going to take it by the horns and hold the hell on.

  “If you take first watch, I’m going to rest first, boost my stats and then I can condense my next Mana drop easier. Not sure if it’ll work but worth trying,” Rugrat said.

  “Go for it.” Erik opened up his notifications.

  Rugrat took out the sleep aid that Erik had made and drank it down.

  Erik pulled out his cauldron and a few ingredients. Silently he started to combine the different ingredients. He tried seven times before one was a success. A gray and green powder was created by Erik.

  ==========

  157,969/225,000 EXP till you reach Level 17

  ==========

  ==========

  Skill: Hand-to-Hand

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  Level: 28 (Apprentice)

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  Attacks cost 20% less Stamina

  ==========

  ==========

  Skill: Marksman

  ==========

  Level: 41 (Apprentice)

  ==========

  Long-range weapons are familiar in your hands. When aiming, you can zoom in x2.0.

  ==========

  ==========

  Skill: Throwables

  ==========

  Level: 14 (Novice)

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  No bonuses at this time. You must prove your skills first.

  ==========

  ==========

  Skill: Alchemy

  ==========

  Level: 33 (Apprentice)

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  Able to identify 1 effect of the ingredient.

  ==========

  It had been some time since he had seen his fighting skills. He had been too focused on building up the dungeon and then increasing his skills to create concoctions to increase their funds to buy information on a dungeon.

  His skill in healing and Alchemy had grown in leaps and bounds but it made sense.

  “With healing and Alchemy, I’m combining my previous knowledge with that of the Ten Realms. With throwables, I guess I’m using what I knew from baseball and football when I was a kid and the grenades I’ve thrown over the years. Hand-to-hand, we did some but using a gun is faster than punching someone to death, so it’ll be harder to increase my power that way.” Erik looked over to Rugrat, who was sleeping.

  It would be a lie if he said he didn’t want Rugrat to make him updated firearms as well. But Rugrat was already hard-pressed to complete the projects he was working on, from armor to grenades, rounds, testing it all and using the data to improve. Every single item he created was done one by one. Erik, on the other hand, if he wanted to make one powder or fifteen portions of it, he would need to adjust his actions slightly and just increase the ingredients.

  “Plus, I have Mana bullet and bolt.”

  Erik closed his eyes as he thought of Mana bullet. His focus turned in toward his own body. The Mana in his body circulated through his Mana channels slowly. In the Mana drop formation stage, the vapor-like Mana had become thicker. On the outside, it was thinner than at his core, where two Mana drops waited. Around them, the vapor was thicker; it was like a mirror after one had taken a shower but before it made water droplets.

  Erik raised his hand and activated the Mana bullet sequence. The thinner vapor in his outer Mana channels compressed and circulated quickly, their motion pulling on the thicker and denser Mana closer to his core.

  The Mana was compressed and hurtled down the Mana channel in his arm and hand.

  Erik dissipated the Mana, decreasing the pressure and allowing the Mana to lose its power.

  “The compression isn’t enough, the speed too slow,” Erik muttered. He could fire about seventy Mana bullets a minute if he went all out; at that rate of fire, his velocity would sharply decrease and the compression of the rounds wouldn’t be as high, decreasing their overall power.

  “When I increase the density of Mana by compressing my Mana core, or opening up more Mana gates, the rounds will have a greater Mana force associated with them. Then I just need to speed up the rounds.” Erik rubbed his face, finding stubble there. In the Ten Realms, razors weren’t hard to find but as with most military personnel, Erik and Rugrat hated shaving with a passion.

  Erik started thinking of the new pathways that the Mana could move through to increase their speed, thinking of it like how cars would slingshot in NASCAR, or satellites would use the gravitational pull of planets to increase or decrease their speed.

  “Taking the mechanical approach to spells.” Erik snorted. Just as a smile was spreading over his face, his expression froze and his eyebrows pinched together.

  “Spells?” If I was able to use spells to augment it, wouldn’t that make it easier? Quickly, a new thought rose in his mind, the kind of thought that could change one’s future thoughts and theories. I’ve been thinking that spells are these overly complex and annoying damn things to deal with. I kind of equated it to electricity and computer coding. But I’m no coder. If I think of Mana as a power source or something that’s needed, say a blood bag, then the blood is the energy, the bag is the container, the tubing and needle is the tool, or spell, and then me putting that needle into someone’s arm is the action; that completes the circuit. Who says I need to understand the spells fully? They’re too complicated for me, but what if I treated them as the components of a weapon system? I could create a spell that increases the speed that the Mana flows in my body. Maybe one right over the Mana channel in my arms to increase speed, another to increase the density. Spells become components.

  Erik felt goose bumps rise on the back of his head. There was nothing saying that someone couldn’t activate multiple spells. He used Simple Organic Scan and Focused Heal all the time—hell, he had used Simple Ranged Heal and been firing Mana bolts at the same time!

  He had thoughts of trying to learn how to break down spells then figure out their essential coding and then rebuild them. But that would take time and he knew that he would struggle. This method, however, would allow him to use multiple spells in concert with one another to amplify one another and increase their overall effect.

  “What...What if I was able to chain cast spells, to increase my physical attributes when fighting?” Erik’s voice died away, the wind outside the only noise in the tent.

  Chapter: Compressing Last Mana Drop

  Rugrat woke up to see Erik in a daze. His eyes were looking up at the top of the tent while a flame of Mana moved through his right hand as if it were some kind of snake instead of fire.

  Rugrat
was surprised at Erik’s control over the flame but with all of the strange things that he had seen in the Ten Realms, he quickly adapted to it and simply sat up, checking over his body.

  His power had increased again with his stat points going into Stamina, Mana Regeneration, and then Agility and Strength, in that order.

  He needed the Stamina Regeneration to work in the smithy longer, Mana Regeneration so that he could continuously pour Mana into the items he was working on, from formations to his hammer and the metal he was working on and power the forge. Agility so that he could increase his reaction time; it also improved the speed that he could aim and adjust his body when shooting. Strength helped with his smithing as well.

  Neither Erik nor Rugrat relied on the stats. Coming from Earth, they relied on increasing their own strength through various means: increasing the number of Mana gates they had opened and using the Mana gathering system, or using their healing and poison to temper their bodies.

  This allowed their basic stats to increase at an alarming rate and fight creatures like the golem that were multiple levels higher than their own.

  Erik seemed to come out of his daze. His flame ran up his arm and appeared on his shoulder. It was night now and the red flame illuminated the tent without ruining their vision.

  “We need to get night vision spells,” Rugrat said.

  “That wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Erik agreed. “I, well, I had an idea—chaining spells together. Think of it kind of like slotting in new components to a machine but using spells.”

  Rugrat took a moment before replying. “Well, yeah, it makes sense. Like if I was to use a formation on a barrel to increase the velocity, then a formation on the bullet to increase blunt damage, coat it with poison and then also cast Explosive Shot on it, then the striking power of that all combined.”

  “Right! But I was thinking for just like regular spells, like my Mana bullet, purely Mana based, but with a compression and an acceleration spell, I could hit harder and faster,” Erik said.