by Kyle Johnson
He went back to the original spell, but this time, he tried to solidify the ball of mana and hurl it. It, too, crept forward. Was it a function of solid mana, that it moved slowly? Frustrated, he released the sphere of power – and it streaked forth, slamming into his mental construct and exploding in a blaze of force.
He blinked and repeated the spell. When he held the shape solidly, it moved at a snail’s pace; once he released it, it raced outward. Excited, he began again with his arrow-shaped spell. He formed the arrow in his imagination, holding it firmly until it solidified, then released it and hurled it toward an illusory enemy. The arrow’s shape began to lose coherence the moment he stopped holding it, but it still held its form well enough to punch into the imaginary foe and explode within.
He ran the image through his thoughts again and again, slowly adding SP to it. It was a more difficult construct, and he had to stop and regenerate his SP once before it finally coalesced within him. He had never formed or modified a spell outside his mindscape before; he realized that he had taken the bonuses from Instinctive Meditation for granted. However, this wasn’t the best place to retreat into his mindscape, and besides, he wanted to see how difficult it was to forge a new spell outside of his mind. A blinking notification had appeared in his vision, and he eagerly checked it:
Yes, he cheered silently. That was a major upgrade! The damage had more than doubled, and with the Enhancement to the spell, it could punch right through armor. Granted, it cost three times the SP, but that was a resource of which he had plenty right now.
He couldn’t wait to test his new spell upgrade. He quickly checked the area to make sure nothing had crept up on him while he was engrossed in his magic before climbing cautiously down from the tree. His Tracking senses told him that nothing was close, so he cautiously began to follow the scent of the great wolf. The trail led deep into the forest, backtracking and looping occasionally as if the wolf knew it was being hunted and was trying to throw off pursuit, which was possible, he supposed. His Trackless ability hid the noise and signs of his passage from others, but it wouldn’t necessarily replace a Stealth Skill. Great wolves are cunning, he reminded himself. They like to attack from ambush. If this one knows you’re coming, it’s probably waiting for you.
Jeff slowed his approach and looked around. Thanks to his Peerless Tracker ability, he knew roughly how far ahead the wolf was, but he couldn’t get an exact fix on its location. That might change as he got closer, but he didn’t want to count on it: if the wolf managed to get the drop on him, he might not get a chance to use his new spell, especially if it got through his armor – which he hadn’t even bothered to summon, he realized. A little embarrassed, he cast the spell and surrounded himself in hardened mana before abandoning the wolf’s trail and moving off at a right angle.
Thanks to his Tracking skill, he still had a sense of where the great wolf was, even though he wasn’t following the trail. Using that sense, he walked a wide circle, keeping the feel of the wolf’s presence to his left the whole time. The wolf stayed relatively still, so he guessed that the creature wasn’t actively hunting him. In fact, he was fairly sure that his Trackless ability made that impossible, meaning that so long as he wasn’t directly trailing the great wolf, it would have no idea where he was.
As he walked, he began tightening the radius of the circle, spiraling closer to his quarry. The sense of the wolf stayed more or less still; it was likely either lying in wait for him or hiding, since it had probably lost his scent. As he drew closer, though, he began to feel nervous. If the wolf was lying in wait, would he spot it? His Perception wasn’t that high, and he didn’t have any Skills that could really help him. He stopped and pulled up his status, going back through his Skill list until he reached Herbalism.
Speak with plants? he mused, considering. How would that work? Could a tree see the wolf? Or anything, really?
He crouched behind the nearest tree and laid his hand on the bark, concentrating. At first, nothing happened, and he started to wonder if the Skill only worked with specific plants, but slowly, he felt a strange awareness in his mind.
The tree seemed to have been slumbering and was slowly waking at his interruption. He gained a sense of long ages, of time immemorial passing in brief moments. His mind reeled at the immensity of the tree’s existence, and he almost broke the connection. Instead, he formed an image of a great wolf in his head, pulling from Lythienne’s memories and hoping it was accurate, and projected it to the tree with a sense of questioning.
The tree immediately flashed an image to him: a large, gray-black wolf crouched beneath a thicket of brambles. The image faded quickly, but it was enough for Jeff to get a better sense of the wolf’s position. He scanned the area around, looking for a convenient climbing tree: he needed elevation if he wanted any chance of surviving the coming encounter. As the desire flashed through his head, he heard a creaking sound, and the lowest branch of the tree he was touching suddenly drooped until it was low enough for him to reach.
He sent the tree a flash of gratitude and scrambled up onto the branch, pressing his back against the trunk and scanning the forest below. It took him almost a minute to spot the flash of gray crouched beneath a covering of thorn bushes, and he again sent the tree a sense of thanks. Had the tree not given him the image to follow, he probably wouldn’t have been able to spot the wolf, and he guessed that its trail led right past the ambush spot. Even now, having seen his quarry, he was still only getting the sense that it was in front of him and nearby from his Tracking Skill. That’s probably what happens when your Stats and Skills aren’t equally leveled, he realized. Normally, he was certain that getting Tracking to the Master level would have also pushed his Perception to lofty heights, so the Skill didn’t grant him bonuses to spot his prey. It was probably assumed he wouldn’t need them.
Now that he had the wolf sighted, he concentrated on his new Mana Arrow and forged glowing, white shaft in front of his hand. He pointed his hand directly at the wolf, but as he did, his body insisted that his aim was off, and his arm tried to shift slightly to the left. Confused, Jeff jerked his arm back into position and released the arrow, which promptly bounced off an intervening branch and struck the wolf just above its right hindleg. The wolf howled as the arrow buried itself into its flesh and then ruptured, widening the wound just as Jeff had imagined. It leapt to its feet – the three working ones, anyway – and turned to glare fearfully at its attacker.
Not gonna get me up here, Jeff crowed. Especially not with a hurt leg! Confident of his victory, he began to summon a second arrow while glancing at his latest notification:
Deflection? Was that because it had hit the branch first? Good to know that physical objects can reduce my spell’s… Jeff’s thoughts were interrupted as something grabbed his foot and dragged him from the tree, slamming him to the ground. His vision was filled with a huge, shaggy head, snapping and tearing at his face and throat. Only his armor had kept him from being killed instantly, and in his panic, he flailed at the beast with his fists, striking its head and muzzle to seemingly no effect.
The wolf grabbed one of his arms and shook it, flinging him to the side and out from under it. Jeff rolled across the ground, smashing into the trunk of a tree, and quickly fed some SP to his armor, hoping to repair some of the damage the wolf had done. The wolf was limping but crouched, gathering its feet beneath it, and with a yelp Jeff rolled to the side as it leaped. He almost made it, but the wolf clipped his side, knocking him down once more as it landed with a pained yelp before hobbling around to face him.
Jeff scrambled to his feet just as the wolf leaped again. He fell backward, holding up his hand and summoning a mana arrow. He formed the arrow just as the wolf crashed into him, knocking him onto his back and pressing him down into the forest floor. He quickly brough his arm up, trying to protect his face, but the wolf lay still on top of him, unmoving. He heaved and twisted, trying to roll the animal over, but his Strength wasn’t up to the task. After some wiggling
and shifting, he finally managed to squirm out from under the creature’s bulk and rolled to his feet.
The wolf lay on its side, facing away from him. He quickly summoned his staff and moved cautiously around to the front, keeping his weapon between the beast and his body. When he finally saw the animal’s chest, though, he lowered the weapon and sat down heavily on the ground. The wolf’s chest was burst open where it had apparently impaled itself on his arrow, rupturing its heart and, from the looks of it, killing it instantly. Jeff quickly brought up his notifications, focusing on the combat log:
He scrolled quickly through the red notifications, noting that his armor had gotten dangerously low before he repaired some of the damage, until he got to the final one:
So, when it landed on me, it impaled itself with the arrow and doubled the Critical damage, he thought quietly. If it hadn’t done that, it might have ended up killing me. I kinda got lucky, and I can’t count on that. So, what could I have done better?
Obviously, his biggest mistake was getting distracted and underestimating the wounded animal, he realized. If he had been paying attention, it might not have pulled him out of the tree, and the whole fight could have gone very differently. He also realized that he had never bothered to summon a weapon and that even if he had, most of his weapons would have been kind of useless once the wolf had him down like that.
The thing that most bothered him, though, was how his arm had tried to move of its own accord when he was aiming at the wolf. Maybe, if that hadn’t happened, his first shot would have done more damage or even critically hit the wolf from the start. Is it a Dexterity thing? he wondered. Shouldn’t be; my Dex is decent. Maybe a Perception issue?
Curious, he formed another arrow and aimed it at a nearby rock the size of his head. The arrow flew exactly as he intended, although it failed to penetrate the rock and simply burst on the surface. He tied again with a tree several feet away, but again, everything happened as he expected. The wolf was kind of covered up, he reminded himself. Maybe that had something to do with it? A concealment bonus or something?
Continuing the experiment, he looked around and saw a slim, white-barked tree partially concealed behind a spreading bush that was maybe as tall as his head. He aimed the arrow through the shrub at the tree – and as he did, he felt his arm wanting to drift a little up and to the left. Frowning, he forced it back in line and released the arrow. The projectile glanced off one of the branches of the bush and zipped past the tree, burying itself in the earth beyond and exploding.
Huh, he pondered, his mind making a connection. The arrow I shot at the wolf deflected, too, and both times my arm wanted to aim a different way. I wonder… He aimed at the tree once more, but this time, he allowed his arm to move as it seemed to want. His aim was obviously off – again, it was high and left, aimed well past the tree – but when he released the arrow, it deflected off the brush and plunked solidly into the center of the tree, exactly where he was aiming.
It’s my Archery Skill, he realized excitedly. It’s improving my accuracy for me, and I was fighting it! Aargh! He smacked himself in the forehead in frustration. The first shot had been poorly placed, and he had no one to blame but himself. Had he realized the Skill was guiding him, he might have crippled or even killed the wolf on the first shot. He swore silently for a moment before sighing and setting his anger aside.
The encounter had ended well enough for him, he decided. He didn’t need to beat himself over doing things wrong, he just needed to learn from them and improve. Wasn’t that the whole point of being out here, after all: to improve his Skills and Spells? He wasn’t going to get better without making mistakes; what mattered was trying not to repeat them.
He decided that, perhaps, going after opponents that many levels higher than him wasn’t the best way to level. After all, he barely got to use his spells – although he noticed his Mana Armor had gone up by a level, which was nice – and that was the whole point of being out in the forest. He’d need to go hunting smaller game, to practice his aim and grind without having to worry about being torn to pieces.
First, though, he needed a knife. Having one would solve two problems at once: first, it would help him with in-close fighting, and second it would allow him to skin the wolf in front of him. His Survival and Leatherworking skills were both telling him that the wolf could provide plenty of fur and meat. He didn’t need the meat, but he might be able to turn the fur into something like a bigger pack or a cloak. Fortunately, knives were simple and common enough that he could picture one easily. It took only a minute or so before he was holding a glowing, double-edge knife with a slim, 10-inch blade. He dismissed it and reformed it several times until it was fairly simple to do before turning and kneeling over the wolf.
He realized that he had no idea how to skin an animal: he had never been hunting, and even if he had, the laws were pretty strict: any game you hunted was marked and left for the Park Service to harvest and distribute. Very few people were allowed hunting licenses, with the food shortages, and those who got them were usually professionals, highly trained and contracted by the Park Service to bring in a specific amount of game per season. Overhunting had already pushed hundreds of species around the world to the brink of extinction or beyond, and the nations had finally taken measures to crack down on it.
He hesitantly cut into the wolf, grateful that the system assisted the process and spared him the blood and fluids he would normally have been spattered with. When he was done, he had harvested several large swatches of fur, each about a foot square, and a couple pounds of meat that he set aside. He scavenged in the forest until he found some tough, flexible vines. He used his summoned knife to strip the vines, destroying about half in the process, then exchanged the knife for a quickly imagined mana needle and attempted to sew the squares together into sort of backpack. The result wasn’t anything he’d want to show off, necessarily, but it seemed functional enough when he examined his notifications:
As Jeff watched, his pack subtly altered and shifted. His meandering seams straightened; gaps in the fabric closed; loose knots tightened. The entire pack looked more professional and neatly done, although the rough furs and vines it was made of still gave it a savage, barbaric appearance. Even so, he was excited with the result: he had completely forgotten about his Greater Creation Perk. He decided he’d need to grind crafting along with his other skills, just to take advantage of it.
His new pack came in handy as he spent the next day ranging through the forest, hunting small animals like foxes, rabbits, and a strange, white raccoon that proved particularly crafty and a little bit of a jerk. It seemed to take great glee in leading Jeff into places where other, more dangerous predators lurked. It placed little balls of what he sincerely hoped was mud in places where it could dislodge them as he passed under. It even managed to cling to the bottom of a log bridge he was crossing and leaped out to grab his foot as he passed, causing him to plunge into a small river below.
Fortunately, his armor protected him from the fall, and his Peerless Tracker ability meant that the evil, little monster couldn’t give him the slip, no matter what tricks it pulled. When he finally cornered it, the animal fought with a ferocity that shocked and even terrified him, and if he hadn’t been practicing summoning his mana knife, the beast might even have managed to kill him. Fortunately, he had, so now its pelt was shoved in with the rest in his pack, and its meat had made for a decent meal. Jeff didn’t really need to eat in the forest, of course, thanks to his One with the Land ability, but this was something of a revenge dinner, and Jeff served it nice and hot.
All the while, he practiced his Skills and Spells as much as he could. He had gotten a few new Skills for his trouble:
He had also spent a bit of time trying to turn his gathered hides into various items, with limited success. He had made a vest, a pair of pants, and a cloak, all Shoddy quality and all of which were stored in his pack. He spent some time with his Herbalist profession, as well, and his belt pouch was
currently full of poultices and bandages, all of excellent quality:
However, the only time his Greater Creation Perk had kicked in was when he decided to try his hand once more at fashioning a staff. This time, he had used his Speak with Plants ability to find a sapling that was suffering from root rot and would be dead within the year but still had a solid heart of dense wood. He used a mana-forged hatchet to chop it down and trim off the branches, then his mana knife to remove the bark and smooth it down. He had spent over an hour working on the staff, even with the system assist, trying to get it as perfect as possible. When he finished, he examined the result:
Jeff was amazingly happy with his new staff. It felt sturdier and moved more easily than the one he had gotten from the elves, and the damage upgrade to it was incredible. Having it made his hunts much easier: he could save his SP for his attack spells and armor and only worry about using Forge Mana to create small, useful items. He had also realized that, while the Climbing Skill was great, his mana platforms made it kind of unnecessary. He could lift himself up on a mana disc just about as quickly as he could climb a tree, and with much less risk of falling onto his backside.
He finally decided it was time to head back to the Trials and face the last part of his Quest. He had leveled his Spells significantly: Mana Arrow was up to Novice 9, Mana Barrage to Novice 6, Mana Armor to Novice 8, and Forge Mana to Student 2. Empowerment hadn’t leveled, yet, because he was a little nervous about using it, based on Lythienne’s warnings, and he hadn’t found a situation, yet, that really warranted the risk.
The trek back to the giant tree probably should have taken Jeff a bit less than an hour – he hadn’t really roamed that far, after all – but he decided to spend the trip grinding his Stealth and Camouflage Skills. He wasn’t sure about the difference, at first, but Veronica had informed him that Camouflage was a subskill of Stealth that involved using bits of the environment to decrease your visibility and thus made Stealth easier. Jeff had gotten it when he was trying to ambush the white raccoon – he had buried himself in mud hoping to blend into the riverbank and finally get the little creature; all he had gotten was wet and dirty – and getting that Skill automatically gave him his coveted Stealth Skill. He guessed he could be thankful to the raccoon for that, but he decided he would rather be petty. The stupid thing had knocked him into a river, after all.
