“Ah, bacon with a hint of wand,” she proclaimed as she bit through the rind of charcoal covering the meat. “Hey, did you notice we’ve leveled? Oh, and I got an extra point of Constitution. Must be thanks to my footrace with Piggly Wiggly.”
Bringing up the HUD—heads-up display—I noticed a flashing exclamation point in the bottom-left corner. Accessing it presented a list of notifications.
You have acquired a new Class Skill: Dual Casting!
You have acquired a new Basic Skill: Small Blades!
You have slain a Wild Boar — Level 3 for 42 Experience Points!
Congratulations—you have reached Level 2!
You have 3 Attribute Points to distribute.
You have acquired a new Basic Skill: Butchering!
You have acquired a new Basic Skill: Cooking!
Huh. I guess I had been dual casting. I should have been more excited, but honestly the pile-up of notifications that were, for all intents and purposes, useless to me was salt in a wound. Gaining a level was much more exciting.
I looked at my Character Sheet. Three points available.
“What are you thinking?” I asked. “If we add points to our Int and Wis right now, we might lose the scaling advantage on leveling them. It’ll start taking days to level them with just regen and casting.”
Mac nodded. “I guess I’ll trust you on the numbers. No, I don’t want to give that up yet. Especially not on my Int. Maybe something to make my dagger useful? I mean, you’re a fucking mana battery. Tell you what, how about I put 2 points into Strength and 1 into Dexterity? That way I can be more useful while all we have is the dagger. But in return...” she got a crafty gleam in her eye, “...you’ll need to fill my mana so I can level my Int.”
I had to laugh at the absurdity of our situation. Two baby mages alone in the woods with only a dagger between us. We were both at least reasonably knowledgeable and experienced, but circumstances had brought us to such an absurd level of impotence that there was nothing for it but to laugh. All our planning and all our scheming, and what did we have to show for it? We were a Rube Goldberg machine set up to summon a momentary puff of flame.
“Why don’t we both save our points for now?” I countered. “My Int should level in about an hour and a half, but yours should come even faster, now that you can cast. If we get into a scrape during that time, I’ll add the Strength and Dex points. You’d be more useful casting spells.”
In agreement, we doused the fire, and Mac pocketed several of the remaining briquets of meat. It wouldn’t be fine dining, but we would at least have something to eat for a while. Cautiously, we moved back to the path and fell into a routine. With my surplus mana, Mac would cast Fire, and then we would spend a minute or so regenerating before repeating.
“I’m going to have to be careful once I can cast more often," Mac commented offhandedly after an early cast. Her eyes were distant, and she waved a hand in my direction to indicate she was sharing the UI. She had accessed the tooltip of a debuff.
Kindled (5 sec) — Self
Chance to become Ignited when next Kindled is 50%.
“Wait. That’s from your Fire spell, right?” I gawked. “So every time you cast, you have the possibility of setting yourself on fire?”
“Pretty insane, right?” she confirmed. ”I’ma need Fire Resistance gear like cra-zy!” She sing-songed the last words, but it didn’t turn out to be much of a laughing matter. We both kept close attention each time she cast, and even so, she scored several good burns before we could swat the fires out. It was death by a thousand papercuts for her health too, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her. Instead, she simply kept an eye out for the next stream we passed.
“That’s dedication," I commented—in awe or bemusement, I wasn’t sure. Mac had waded directly into the stream and was methodically dousing herself from head-to-toe. Still, she did acquire a Drenched debuff that protected her from setting herself ablaze, even as it became Soggy, and then Damp. There were plenty of streams too, so she was never dry for long.
“You’re going to get trench foot," I grumbled as I listened to her squelch beside me.
“You’re going to get a hotfoot, if you’re not careful,” she responded cheerfully.
As expected, Mac’s Int shot ahead, and before the sun indicated it was noon, her mana pool was equal to mine.
“God, this feels like cheating!” she announced as her Intellect hit 5. “That should have taken me three times as long, right? Are you sure you’re alright with this?”
I nodded the affirmative. “I’m pretty sure the mana I funnel you counts toward my Int, so it’s not like it’s any skin off my back. Plus, I spent half the morning draining your mana. Turnabout is fair play.” I didn’t add that I was pleased I could help her. Seeing her excitement as her mana pool grew was gratifying, and helped me feel useful. It wasn’t going to be sustainable though. With the exponential growth of requirements for leveling this way, getting from 5 points unaided would take more than five hours. Leveling past 6 would take almost thirteen. I didn’t expect either of us would have the patience to push too hard for those levels. Eventually we would need a goal—some actual gameplay and some actual gear.
Mentioning all this to Mac, I was shocked to hear that she at least had a goal. “Yeah, I’ve got a quest to travel to some village and meet with the mayor. “Kalsip.” The map shows we’re about halfway there. He should give us some money, too. I sure as hell hope so.” She side-eyed her dagger pointedly. “You’re saying you don’t have the quest either?” I shook my head, deflating. “Jesus," she breathed, “you really did a number on yourself, didn’t you.”
She quickly shook herself out of our shared reverie, unwilling to wallow. “Whelp, there’s nothing to do but to move forward. Just think, you’ve got two kickass spells I guarantee no one else has yet, and paired with a functioning caster you could even be a powerhouse, right?” She nodded, resolute. “Alright, then, let’s get this shit-show on the road!”
And a show it was. Mac began to spend her minutes of regeneration in a game of “find the most fun thing to burn.” I’d say countless leaves and twigs went up in flames, but to be honest, I was counting them carefully in order to mark the time. As her thirty-second victim disappeared in a cloud of black smoke, she turned to me.
“Fire II, baby!” she crowed.
Accessing her Spells interface, I saw that she was right.
Fire II
Cost: 25 MP
Range: Touch
Cast Time: 1.5 seconds
Duration: Instant
Description: Creates a mid-sized flame in the caster's hand.
Effect: 5 Fire Damage + 3 Fire Damage over 3 seconds if Ignited.
Requirements: Fire I
Additional Effects:
Playing with Fire: Casting Fire spells causes both target and caster to become Kindled.
This spell is learned.
Running the numbers, I quickly found the pattern. “That was 100 casts," I announced. “How much do you want to bet the next rank is 1000?”
Mac moaned in horror. “25,000 mana?! Where am I going to get such a thing?” She eyed me luridly up and down, and I put on my most prudish face, pursing my lips in disdain before we both broke down in fits of laughter. It had been a long day.
As expected, gaining a rank of Fire brought a selection of new spells, two of which were interesting enough to get details on.
Distant Flame I
Cost: 25 MP
Range: 30 meters
Cast Time: 1.5 seconds
Duration: Instant
Description: Creates a small flame at a distance.
Effect: 3 Fire Damage + 2 Fire Damage over 3 seconds if Ignited.
Requirements: Fire II
This spell is learned.
Hearth I
Cost: 5 MP per second
Range: 30 meters
Cast Time: 3 seconds
Duration: Channeled
Description: Increas
e the temperature in an area.
Effect: 1-degree Celsius temperature gain per second to an area 1 meter in diameter.
Requirements: Fire II
This spell is learned.
The third spell, Thaw, seemed situational. Perhaps I could have used it that morning as I’d shaken off the chill of the night.
“Not so helpless anymore, are we?” I grinned. “We’re not quite boar fighters yet, but we could sure make one think twice about messing with us!” Recalling my previous night of shivering, I eyed the Hearth spell longingly.
“Fuck. Yes," responded Mac. “Burn us a pig. It might get so hot in here, we’ll have to take off all our clothes."
I sputtered for a response. Mac really never missed an opportunity to shock.
Noting that she’d achieved her desired response, she patted my red cheek. “Don’t worry, Zen. I wouldn’t let anyone besmirch your virtue,” she cooed, before grinning and sauntering away down the road, leaving me scrambling to catch up. My gain of a point of Intellect soon after was nowhere near as… impactful.
Chapter 8
We didn’t make Kalsip that day, mainly because Mac was having too much fun finding new things to light on fire. She stuck to casting her improved Fire spell for the most part, but several times there was something at a distance that was just too tantalizing and needed burnt, including several unfortunate birds and rodents. Mac claimed she was going to attempt to skin them, but I couldn’t imagine the singe marks would make the furs very valuable. It meant another level, however, and I was glad of that. We gained levels in Wisdom as well, though because of Ether’s boost to Mana Regen, I managed to gain 2 to her 1, and we gained 1 Int each, though we had paid for them with monotony.
Mac resolved to throw in the towel on leveling this way once she reached 7 points in Wisdom and Int. She wasn’t patient enough to wait the 21 hours I calculated it would require, and I for one couldn’t blame her. The day had been long, and it had gone from terrifying and exciting to dull and uninteresting. Only the beauty of the forest and Mac’s occasional pest-control efforts made it bearable.
That night we gave the push-pull routine a break. While Mac flayed the pile of carcasses she had collected, using her tongue as much as her dagger, I moved away from our camp, scouting for firewood and taking in the mana-laced forest. I hadn’t released Ether since noon, and was becoming accustomed to the double vision of viewing the world and its mana together. While I gathered, I kept an eye out for likely sticks: sturdy, not too long, etc. All in all, I gathered a couple dozen in addition to the firewood.
Back at camp, I dumped the wood next to the fire and settled between the roots of a tree with my branches.
I was going to make a wand.
Listening to the mellifluous curses coming from Mac’s charnel house, I selected the first branch and cast Flow. I was hoping to replicate what I’d seen in Mac’s wand and layer the branch with mana-rich channels. Coaxing a flow from me to the branch, I pushed.
The twig exploded like a firecracker. Mac jumped and spun around. “Jesus! Cut that shit out!” she hollered. In consternation, I read Flow’s description again.
…
1 mana flow per target Quality/sec (objects)
...
That’s right, the poor branch could probably only handle a single mana at a time. Thanking my lucky stars I couldn’t transfer more than 6 mana at a time to Mac—I didn’t want her to pop—I reached for a second branch.
As evening wore on, I worked my way through the stack of twigs, poking and tweaking with flows, trying to mimic what I’d seen and sensed in Mac’s wand, and wishing that I still had it as a template. Some of the sticks split or warped, but fortunately no more exploded. Mac prepared and ate dinner, and then strolled the perimeter of the camp, leaving me to focus on my work.
The first success was barely noticeable. Upon removing my spells from a branch, I received notice that I’d gained a Handcraft skill. Looking closer, I could see that the branch now had item info attached to it.
Branch — 2/2
A branch.
I scoffed and threw the branch over to Mac, who was now warming herself by the fire and casually searching for the next best thing to burn. She guffawed at the description and tossed the item back to me.
My second successful attempt came from trying to modulate the flow of mana from me with the flow of mana within the branch, strengthening flows rather than creating them. The branch brightened, brightened, brightened, but when I removed the flow, it immediately began to dim, and the extra mana inside leaking out and away to join the ambient mana around it. Still, I received a new skill for my efforts.
You have acquired a new Basic Skill: Enchanting!
Recalling how the mana in Mac’s wand had seemed to loop back in on itself at the edges, I once again affixed a flow and began to modulate it with the branch’s natural flow. As the branch steadily brightened, I applied several tiny flows within the branch, one after another, trying to gently train the mana to cycle within the branch, and to carve new grooves for it to flow through. After I released the flows, the branch stayed bright with mana, but I watched as the paths I’d created unraveled one after the other, and the branch returned to uniformity with the background mana.
You have acquired a new Class Skill: Static Flow!
Static Flow (???) — Rank 1
The Flow spell can now create lasting flows, with a 10% initial chance of success (+10% per rank).
The sky was darkening swiftly when I went stalking out into the night to find more branches. “Don’t stay up too late!” Mac called out to me from the fire. “And don’t do anything I would do, like lead a herd of pigs through camp!” I gave what I hoped was a reassuring smile and ducked out of the circle of firelight.
Perhaps I did stay up too late that night, because I managed to gain new levels in Int and Wis—and a new rank of Ether—before I finally settled against the trunk and fell asleep.
I woke up warm. Sometime during the night, Mac had awoken and cast Hearth into the crook of roots I was nestled in, and the heat had baked into the ground around me.
Chapter 9
When we set out on the path that morning, our lot didn’t look quite as bleak. Mac estimated that we were a two-hour walk from the village, and at that point we were warm, well-fed, and no longer too worried about running into any forest nasties, created by the game itself or otherwise. Once we reached town, Mac hoped to sell her bundle of ragged and scorched pelts and hand in her quest, and I could, well... I was sure I would figure something out.
Our technical support ticket still hadn’t been answered, but I hoped we could find more information in town. That did seem to be where most of the other players has been headed. We had avoided several more groups the day before, including a pair who had been jogging—to level their Constitution, I was sure. It was enough of a pattern that I was sure the quest Mac had received was universal. It was likely a breadcrumb quest, meant to lead players into major plotlines within the game.
On top of my hopes for getting my character situation remedied, I was optimistic about the handful of branches I held at my side. Mac kept eyeing them inquisitively, but I was feeling coy and wanted to keep her in suspense. Without my say-so their details stayed hidden from her.
Well before we reached town, the forest gave way to pasture land, and Mac and I were notified that we were finally leaving the PvP zone. Attacking other characters would not be allowed. Upon seeing the text, I could tell that a weight had been lifted from Mac’s shoulders. She and I had developed a fair rapport over the course of our day-long hike, but that didn’t mean she was overflowing with trust for me. Sure, we had relied on each other heavily during that time, but it could easily be seen as a matter of necessity on both our parts, rather than a true companionship
“Hey, Mac," I ventured, “thanks for letting me tag along with you.”
She humphed, and then sighed. “Look, running into you was a trade up from that piece-of-shit wand. We we
re both in a bad spot, and we helped each other out, but really you could have just looted my corpse and run off.” She winked at me and I could feel myself turning red. “You’re not half bad, kid.”
Uncertain, but gratified, I followed her down the path, which was widening as other forest paths joined it. Ours was certain not to be the only starting area, and sure enough we soon shared the path with other adventurers traveling in front of and behind us. Some talked and laughed in groups, occasionally stopping to cast starter spells or practice weapon skills. Others had a look I recognized from spending the previous day with Mac, skittish and subdued—if you could ever call Mac “subdued.” They were also more likely to be traveling alone and gave the more jocular crowds of adventurers a wide berth.
As the walls of the village came into view, players let out whoops and cheers, and a good portion of them broke into runs, excited for their adventure to truly begin. Mac and I maintained our pace and gave ourselves time to take in the sights, savoring our arrival to this beacon that meant so many things to us both. The farmer NPCs that dotted the farmland encircling the road only rarely glanced up from their work at the crowds of adventurers. I got the sense that they were a little exasperated at the traffic, but none were close enough to the road for us to really get a good idea of what demeanor they had been programmed with.
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