by Kyle Johnson
Grinning, he walked back to the start of the passageway and dropped his staff on the ground before returning to the entrance to the bats’ room. He concentrated and fired a single Mana Bolt at the ceiling, dislodging the swarm in a wave of shrieking and flapping. Instantly, he turned and sprinted down the hallway, gathering SP into his arms and counting under his breath. When he reached the entrance to the passage, he stopped just short of the main room and spun. The hallway behind him was filled with shrieking, swooping stone monsters, all barreling down on him as he muttered, “Three…four…FIVE!”
With a shout, he brought his hands up and fired the first blast of his Mana Barrage at the incoming swarm. The ball of tumbling energy streaked into the midst of the bats and exploded with a flash and a load roar, hurling stone bodies across the passageway. Most of the fallen remained still, but a few still moved feebly, crawling toward Jeff as he formed another ball of power between his hands.
The next blast hit the wave of creatures just as the hall refilled, again clearing a 10-foot diameter space with a roar that was strangely muted and a brilliant flash of light. The swarm continued to surge down the corridor as Jeff hurled blast after blast into their midst, the explosions becoming muted and dull as his ears started to bleed from the repeated roars. When his last blast was released, the roar was no louder than distant thunder, and only twenty or so bats remained in the passage.
Jeff stepped out of the hallway and grabbed his staff, hoping that the creatures would not follow him. For a moment, it appeared his assumption was correct: the bats hung back in the hallway, facing him but not attacking. Then, he heard a high-pitched wail that sounded like a distant scream, and he realized that the remaining creatures were using their sonic attack.
This time, though, he was oddly unaffected by the assault, so he charged into the passage, hefting his staff like a blunt spear. He attacked the remaining creatures with swift, short strikes and swift thrusts rather than large, sweeping attacks. The monsters attempted to swarm him, but their number were insufficient to overwhelm him. Though he gained several new wounds across his arms and back, he finally managed to swat the last one from the sky and crush it beneath the butt of his staff. Collapsing to the ground, he leaned back against the wall, absently kicking a weakly moving bat with his boot and ending its struggles, and focused on his notifications. He was interested in how well his spell worked and why the bats’ attack had no effect on him:
In the midst of the damage notifications, he found a red box that explained how he survived the Sonic Scream:
That was useful…and pretty lucky, he thought ruefully, rubbing his ears and finding his fingers sticky with blood. Not that I think it would have mattered in the long run: I don’t think the bats would have chased me into the main room, even if I was stunned, but I’m glad I didn’t have to find out!
Wiping his hands off on his tunic, Jeff rose to his feet and trudged back down the hallway to the green orb, his boots crunching on the stone bodies littering the floor. The orb beckoned him as he walked through the now-empty room, and he moved swiftly to it and placed his hand upon the surface.
Instantly, he felt the familiar sensation of falling as he was drawn into his mindscape. He opened his eyes and was unsurprised to see Lythienne standing before him, glaring.
“So, you made it through the next Trial,” she rasped at him, looking him up and down. “Pretty quickly, too. I figured you’d take a day or so to rest, get some food. No need to do these all in one go, you know.”
“I didn’t think I could leave until I completed the Trial,” Jeff replied slowly. “I thought that if I left, it would be considered giving up the second part of the quest…I mean, Trial.” He quickly corrected.
“Tcch, you think I don’t know what quests are, boy?” she snapped at him. “Lythienne completed more of them than you’ll likely ever see! Especially if you die from some Thirst debuff because you didn’t find something to drink!”
Jeff quickly glanced at his status, but his Effects section was empty. “I don’t see any debuffs,” he said slowly. “But, it might be that dying resets the clock on things like hunger and thirst for Travelers? I really don’t know. Even if I was thirsty or hungry, though, I’m not really sure how I’d find anything to eat or drink; I don’t even know where I am!”
“You’re in the middle of a forest,” the old woman said slowly, “and you don’t know where to find food and water? Are you an idiot, child?”
“No,” he replied defensively, annoyed. “It’s just that, in my world, our forests aren’t as wild as this one. There are places designated for eating and drinking already set up. I’ve never had to actually find it myself.”
“What a strange world you come from,” she sighed. “If only there were someone you could ask about such things, I guess. Speaking of which, as before, you get one question and one spell. Which would you like first?”
“Umm, could we do the spell first, this time?” he asked hesitantly.
“Is that your question for me, child?” she replied in disbelief? Seeing his stricken face, she laughed and waved her hand at him. “No, no, don’t bother yourself,” she assured him. “I’m not one of the Fay, twisting your words and looking to harm you however I can, child. It was only a jest. Of course, you can learn the spell first, if that is your wish.”
She stepped back from him and held her arms out to the side. Swirling mana erupted from her body, wrapping around her and enclosing her like a membrane. After a moment, the mana shivered and seemed to harden into a nearly transparent, crystalline substance. When she lowered her arms, though, the shell of mana flexed smoothly, not seeming to hinder her in the slightest.
“This is Mana Armor,” she informed him, turning slowly around so he could see that she was fully encased. “It is a Sorcerer’s most basic form of defense. It will turn blades, arrows, and even damaging spells.
“Every spellcaster can perform a similar magic,” she continued, “but our version has some advantages…and disadvantages. First, when a Wizard casts the spell, they put a certain amount of SP into it, and it can withstand a specific amount of damage. Once it reaches that limit, it collapses. If the Wizard wishes to renew the protection, they must cast the spell all over again, using the same SP as the first time. A Sorcerer’s armor, on the other hand, is tied directly to our mana, and we can recharge it by pouring more SP into it.
“Second, while this armor is unaspected, once you learn how to grant aspects to your magic, you can make the armor aspected, as well. That’s a potent benefit, child, as certain types of magic are naturally better at resisting specific elements of magic. If you know you’re going into a den of Aziz, for example – creatures that perpetually burn and do fire damage with every attack – you can go in with ice or stone armor and basically shrug them off.”
The ancient elf gestured, and the armor vanished. “The downside,” she finished, “is that our armor takes a bit more SP to create and maintain than the armor a Wizard or Cleric casts, especially at the earliest levels. As you advance the Spell, the inefficiencies drop until, at the highest levels, it all basically evens out.”
“That sounds useful,” Jeff agreed, nodding. “So, how do I create it?”
“As before, it is a matter of visualization,” Lythienne replied. “You must feel the mana flowing out to every portion of your body. Imagine it erupting from you to surround your body. Feel it curling around your skin, the pressure of it on your flesh. Hear it crackle as it rises over your head. Don’t forget to wrap it around your back and underfoot, as well. The better you can visualize it, the more potent it will be.”
Jeff settled himself on the floor, once again vowing to make a comfortable chair for his mindscape, and closed his eyes, attempting to feel the armor in his imagination. It was much harder this time: he tended to focus too much on individual parts of his body when he was pulling mana out of his center, leaving other places only thinly protected or even completely bare. After several tries, he could almost feel the
armor pressing equally against him in all directions, and he felt ready to begin the process of imbuing it with SP. It took far longer to empower the spell than his previous efforts, and he was beginning to feel his SP flagging when the spell finally snapped into place in his mind.
Sighing, he opened his eyes and stood up, noticing as he did that his mana spirals were thin and barely connected to each other. He glanced at his status and confirmed that his mana was down to 20%: he had forgotten that his increased spell creation speed came at the cost of zero regeneration while he was doing it. It would be easy to drain his SP completely while powering a spell if he wasn’t paying attention, and he didn’t want to deal with the effects of Mana Deprivation again.
He wanted to test his spell, but he knew that his SP needed time to regenerate, so instead he turned back to Lythienne. “Okay, my question,” he said hesitantly. “Can you…I mean, how do I survive in the forest by myself? Can you teach me?”
Lythienne eyed him for a moment and sighed. “I can, child,” she said, with no trace of her usual harshness. “The question I must ask is, will I?” When Jeff started to protest, she held up a hand. “It is possible for me to give you what you ask,” she explained, “but doing so requires a sacrifice from me.
“You see, child,” she went on, “as I told you, I am the sum of Lythienne’s memories…at least, many of them. The Sorceress did not see fit to leave behind all her memories, but I do possess many of her learning the ways of the forest. Here in your mindscape, I can gift those memories to you.”
“What does that mean?” Jeff asked, confused.
“It means, they will become your memories,” she replied heavily. “It will be as if you were the one learning to hunt, to track, to find food, to divine water. You will gain hundreds of years of proficiency at once.”
“Okay,” Jeff said hesitantly. “So, what’s the downside? You seem really reluctant to do this.”
“The downside,” she snapped, “is that I will lose those memories: they will be gone, forever. And, as I am nothing more than a collection of memories, what I am suggesting will diminish me. Perhaps not significantly, but the thought of it unnerves me.”
Jeff blinked as comprehension dawned. What she was suggesting wasn’t teaching so much as it was offering to donate a kidney. A person would be fine with only one, but you would have to go through the rest of your life knowing that something had been taken from you and that you were incomplete. He wasn’t sure if he could do bring himself to do that, much less ask another.
“Okay, we won’t do that, then,” he said quickly. “I’ll figure it out on my own eventually, don’t worry. Once I get through the Trials, I can just get the elves to train me, I suppose.”
Lythienne looked at him silently for a time. “You could demand it, you know,” she said quietly. “I am bound to answer your question to the best of my ability. So far, I have chosen to focus on your second question – can I do it – but if you insisted, I would have no choice.”
Jeff blinked. “I wouldn’t do that,” he said firmly, setting his jaw in determination. “It wouldn’t be right. I don’t want to take something so important from you, especially not if you aren’t willing to give it.”
The specter of a long-dead elf stood silently for several moments before nodding her head. She held up one hand, and suddenly, Jeff found himself standing underneath a canopy of ancient trees. “The way of the People is to live with the Forest, Aranos,” he heard a voice say, and he looked up to see a kindly looking elf crouched next to him. “We do not take from it; it gives to us, and we give in return. In this way, the Forest makes the People strong, and the People make the Forest safe…”
Jeff stood, stunned, as the scene played out. Immediately after, a new image appeared, followed by another and another. The visions flashed through his mind almost faster than he could perceive them: learning how to set snares; discovering the secrets to finding safe, clean water; hunting for game of all sizes; foraging for berries, fungi, and leaves while learning which to avoid. Tens of thousands of memories played out in his mind, and after each, his understanding of and respect for the Forest grew.
Finally, the images stopped, and Jeff found himself back in the dojo of his mindscape. “What…what happened?” he stammered, confused. “That felt so real...”
The spirit of Lythienne nodded, looking somehow less substantial than before. “To you, it now was real,” she said simply. “As far as your mind is concerned, you have had hundreds of years of practice in surviving in the forest. You will likely now rank as one of the top trackers and hunters in the Elven Realms, if you train your body to learn what your brain already knows.”
Jeff stared at the woman for a long moment. “Thank you,” he said simply. “I know what doing that meant. I don’t know how I can repay you.”
“Make good choices,” the old woman replied with her usual snap. “You can repay me for all of this knowledge by using it well. Now, go off and practice in the forest before taking the next challenge. Best way you can show gratitude for a gift is to use it.”
Jeff found himself rising from the mindscape before he could form a reply. When he opened his eyes, he sat quietly for a moment, hesitating to open the flashing notifications in his vision. Before he could do so, though, a twitch of motion caught his attention. He turned toward the movement and saw one of the stone bats started to shift, its stone body liquefying and rejoining until it rose, completely healed, and flapped unsteadily in the air. The clicking of stone on stone filled the room as, to Jeff’s horror, each of the destroyed creatures began to rise into the air, orienting directly on him.
He tried to summon his new armor, but in his panic he couldn’t summon the concentration to cast the spell. He gathered mana into his arms, but the bats gave him less than a second to summon his Mana Barrage before they swarmed over him, biting and scratching. Desperately, he ran into the passage, hoping to make it to the end of the hall and escape, but he had forgotten that he destroyed almost the entire swarm inside the passage. As he slammed into a wall of stone creatures, he realized his error, just as blackness stole over his vision and he found himself slowly coming to awareness in front of the obelisk.
That was pretty awful, he thought grimly. Maybe if I had time to cast my new armor spell, though, I would have been able to escape. That doesn’t seem like a “Traveler-only” Trial… He trailed off as he glanced back at the passage and saw that the entrance had vanished, sealed behind the stone wall. Or, maybe I wouldn’t have escaped, he admitted slowly. I guess, no matter what, I was respawning. This Trial sort of sucks.
Part of his frustration, he realized, was guilt: guilt over the gift Lythienne had given him He didn’t really understand why the old woman had given him those memories; he specifically said he didn’t want to take them from her. Which is probably why she did it, his mind whispered quietly. The best person to hold power is someone who doesn’t want it, right?
After a minute, Jeff shook himself from his introspection and opened his notifications:
Jeff blinked, overwhelmed by the barrage of notifications. Lythienne’s memories had given him 5 new skills: 4 at the Master level and 1 at the Expert level, not to mention the chance to take 2 new Professions. Before he could decide about those, though, he needed more information.
“Hey, Veronica,” he called out to the air. “Can you explain Professions to me?”
“Certainly,” her voice spoke calmly in his mind. “Professions and Classes are opposite sides of a coin. A Class is who you are; a Profession is what you choose to do. Unlike Classes, Professions are usually focused around one or more Skills and grant bonuses to the usage of those Skills. So, for example, anyone can grab a bow and hunt, but a Hunter can bring down larger game and produce vastly more meat and hides from the same animal.”
“Can you change Professions?” Jeff asked curiously. “So, if I became a Hunter, would I be stuck as one, or could I give it up and become a Blacksmith?”
“You can change Prof
essions freely,” she assured him. “However, Profession XP degrades slowly when the Profession is not active. You could advance to level 10 in Hunter, for example, switch to Blacksmith for a year, and come back to find your Hunter level is down to 3. Just like in the real world: if you don’t use it, you lose it.”
“Okay, that’s reasonable,” he nodded. “So, if I pass on a Profession now and decide I want to switch to it later, how can I do that?”
“Simply focus on the word ‘Profession’ on your status screen,” she informed him. “It will bring up your current profession as well as any available professions you could adopt.”
“Got it,” he replied, focusing on the tab and setting his Profession to Herbalist. A blinking dot appeared in his vision, and he focused on it:
With his new Profession set, Jeff turned away from the obelisk and headed out of the Trials, eager to use his new Skills and Profession in the forest above.
Chapter 6
The forest felt wholly different to Jeff in the light of his new Skills and memories. As he stepped out from the enormous hollow tree – a wyynorn patriarch, he corrected himself mentally using his new memories, known for their longevity and enormous girth but also extreme susceptibility to fire-aspected damage – he could feel the energy of the forest flowing around him. It was an actual sensation: his skin tingled as the Nature-aspected power flowed over and through him, revitalizing sore muscles.
He reached down and touched the loamy soil, running his fingers gently through it. He could sense the tiny life forms beneath, insects and worms that churned the earth and revitalize it. The ground was filled with energy and nutrients, and he gently drew those into himself, instinctively stopping before he could leach too much from the soil.
