I was attacked moments later.

  First I heard a sound like a sail makes as it fills with wind, subtle and high above me. Knowing what it meant, I spun, wound my legs into the many vines around me, and looked up into the clouds to see a dark shape diving toward me, a huge reptile with a wingspan of perhaps eighteen feet that was covered in luminous markings like warpaint.

  Dread filled me, but it was only a passing thing: a necessary emotion at the sight of a mid-sized aerial predator. It flared its wings as it approached, making a wave of wind that threatened to knock me flat against the cliff face, but I pressed into the rock with my heels and lunged with my spear, catching the beast in the groin so as to keep its talons at bay.

  It let out an ear-splitting cry, beat its wings—but when this blast of air failed to dislodge me or the spear I was holding, it beat its wings a few more times to rise above me and fly away, leaving me to my business.

  I watched it go with frustration: my spear had held it at bay, but barely pierced its seemingly-soft flesh. Like most of the creatures in this place, it was too high a level and with too much of the [Aegis] attribute for me to kill.

  It would be the same with prey animals. Whatever levels they had would go into survival and means of escape, making them poor targets even if they were less dangerous.

  I continued with my descent. With luck, the cat wouldn’t have the power to heal its wounds completely—it would be a hurt animal, waiting somewhere safe for its [Regeneration] skill’s [Life Pool] to replenish.

  Its share of essence would likely be enough to grant my first five levels. I needed those levels: I didn’t know this place or its wildlife, and sooner or later something that came along to eat me would be too strong for me to kill or fight off.

  Below me, the cliff broke off into a tumble of stones that ended in a small valley hemmed in on all sides but one, a ledge that was level with the crowns of the great trees I’d seen from above.

  I looked down into the small valley with disappointment. A dark stain amidst crushed ferns marked where the cat had fallen, regenerated, and then left.

  That, or something else had picked it off. Neither option was ideal.

  I scanned the darkness of the vines and tangled bushes. My eyes, like my ears, were far superior to those of most elves, but I still watched the wilderness with uncertainty. If the cat had lived, there was a good chance it was still using the [Wild Bond] skill to track me and waiting for the right moment to strike. I couldn’t sense its mental presence on my mind, but it had been so light and soft earlier that it was possible I simply couldn’t notice it anymore—not without the added sensitivity of having the [Wild Bond] skill myself.

  As I watched, I began to notice the motions of many black beetles, each with yellow and blue markings on their backs. They were marching to and fro on the vines, some of them carrying little white pieces of moist fruit.

  I saw many tiny rodents with long tails and mottled brown fur, blending in well as they leapt from vine to vine like small squirrels. As I watched, one of them leapt to a vine below it and ambushed one of the beetles, using its ribbon-like tail as a tongue to wrap its prey up before stuffing the beetle into its mouth.

  “Beautiful,” I whispered, watching the creature leap away into the trees with bulging cheeks, demonstrating all the wild grace that I would expect from a squirrel with a prehensile tail.

  I could kill it, but it would be a waste of an arrow. This place was teeming with essence, but not so much that a beetle-eating rodent would be carrying any significant amount. Killing a creature granted around a tenth of the essence it had spent on levels. Very little, even to a level 0 like myself.

  There was a scuffle in the vines, and my eyes darted over—but I saw nothing save for a rustle of leaves and one of the ribbontails retreating further down the cliff. I watched the stirring of the leaves, peered at them, then realized that something was wrong: there were still two beetles sitting on the shaking vines, unmoving, apparently not frightened away by the noise.

  I made a noise of curiosity, then stepped nearer, looked closer. The beetles seemed like beetles, but were really colored, knobbly protrusions—fakes attached to two long, slender black legs that disappeared beneath the vine cover. With my gaze, I could detect a small burrow made in the stone cliffside. Another ambush predator.

  I drew my knife as I moved to poise myself above the vines, then very gently prodded one of the fake beetles with the butt of my spear.

  Instantly, a black shape rushed forward, headed by a nasty-looking pair of mandibles. I brought my bootheel down on the creature, pinning it with surprising difficulty, then knelt and stabbed it many times through the gaps in its glinting insectile shell.

  Soon it had gone limp beneath me.

  + 52 Essence

  I smiled at this as I pulled the creature from its burrow—it was long, twelve-legged, almost like a cross between a spider and a centipede.

  “Gorgeous,” I whispered, breaking into a smile as I held up the corpse, rotating it to see its pale, segmented underside. These things ate birds, had to: they were too large, their mandibles too great and powerful, to eat nothing but the ribbontails. I wondered if they made their own burrows, or if they inhabited holes made by other creatures—they didn’t seem like they could burrow through basalt, or even tuff. I pushed the carcass back into its burrow, then continued down the cliff.

  Once I had 500 essence, I’d have enough to level up or to coalesce a skill key. Skill keys were coalesced out of the environment, combining an aspect of its nature with essence. They could be fused with skill cores to create skills—and I already had a starting skill core, a [*Primeval 5] to combine with it.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  A skill would be much more useful than a level. I just needed 500 essence. With luck, I could stay on the cliff and kill these massive beetles without attracting any more deadly predators until I’d gotten stronger.

  An [Air] or [Earth] skill key should have been easy enough to coalesce, given that air and earth were everywhere around me—and a skill like [Earth Magick] or [Air Magick] would greatly heighten my chances of survival.

  In fact, [Air] and [Earth] keys were so common that both my weapons were affixed with small bands of air and soapstone sealed in metal so that they could be moved around magically, once I had the skills.

  At that thought I glanced at the skies, then glanced at the overgrown cliffs around me, still searching for more flying reptiles or the ominously absent cat. I saw neither.

  I made my way down the overgrown cliffs, extending my gaze to search for more of the bugs. Many of the dark burrows that I sensed were empty—but I could spot the false beetles they used to bait other creatures with my eyes easily enough.

  Soon I’d found and killed a second one much like the first.

  + 41 Essence

  “A few more,” I muttered.

  But I’d only killed six more and gathered a total of 381 essence when the cat came back.

  Slowly, I distinguished the rustling motions of something coming toward me from the sounds of the dark jungle below. My head snapped toward the noise—and I saw the cat some thirty paces to one side and above me on the cliff face, a dark figure clinging to the vines and stones, muscles bulging under its sleek coat of fur.

  “You got above me,” I whispered, breaking into another smile. It is no easy thing, sneaking up on me. Even with the noise of the wilds around us to mask its motions, this cat had gotten within thirty meters of me before I heard it.

  Then it moved, and so did I: both of us leaping down the cliffside in sinuous bounds, my own path a frantic set of drops toward jutting stones or easily-grasped vines, each slowing my fall just enough before I dropped to the next until—

  The last outcrop of rock I landed on gave way as soon as my feet touched it, tearing itself free of the vines and tumbling to the small clearing below, taking me along with it. I struck the glowing ferns, rolled to a halt on rocky soil, came up with my spear pointed upward… only to find that the cat hadn’t pursued. I looked at the slope of fallen rocks in front of me, then up the cliff wall above it—nothing.

  I tried to focus… but there were too many insects chirping, too many birds calling, too many scrapes and hoots and alien sounds coming from the great forest behind me. I couldn’t hear the creature’s breathing, or its footfalls, or see the stirring of bushes where it had undoubtedly leapt down into the overgrowth to stalk me through the brush.

  But why hadn’t it pounced on me?

  The leaves of the ferns and trees around me were high enough to block my sight, and the undergrowth was thick enough to hinder mobility. It was a poor place for fighting.

  But there was another cliff behind me, one leading down into the forest of great trees. I began to back toward it, slowly, trying to make as little noise as possible while I listened for the cat, hearing only birds instead.

  As I backed up, I untied the leather lace that held shut the quiver on my hip, then drew out an arrow. I crouched low into the ferns, looking beneath their uppermost leaves and not seeing the cat, then lay my spear down and unclipped my bow from my baldric.

  I reached the spot where the cat had clearly fallen—blood stained the rocks and crushed ferns, seeming black in the dark, eerie light of the red cloudlayer above. I nocked my arrow, still backing away.

  Then, listening for the cat, I sensed a sudden magical pressure pushing against the soil beneath me—another creature’s magical claim. At the same time, I heard a scraping noise coming from the rocks at the base of the cliff.

  My heart began to pound as fear spiked through my gut.

  Claim was what you had magical grasp of, and gaze was what you had magical sight of. While the gaze of two creatures could overlap, their claims could not. Skills, such as [Earth Magick], could allow one to extend their claim and gaze much further through substances that matched the skill. Whatever had made that noise at the base of the cliffs, its claim was strong enough to push against my own even at this distance, but only through the earth. It was quite literally threatening to steal the ground out from under me—something that meant almost certain death against any earth mage.

  I reached out with my own magic, broadening and strengthening my claim in case this new enemy tried to shift the earth beneath me. Through the ferns, I could see something move in the overgrown rockpile at the base of the cliff—a long white limb that emerged to slowly grope its way over the rocks, looking very much like a malnourished finger. It was followed by a second, then several more.

  I kept backing away as the creature emerged and I saw it in full: a round, white blob at the center of nine or more pale, slow-moving limbs. It was translucent, and I could see long, thin bones through the flesh of its arms and a dark collection of objects that might have been organs in its lumpy, unformed center.

  It moved up the stones at the base of the cliff, away from me, seemingly paying me no heed.

  But I wasn’t fooled. This was why the cat hadn’t followed me—it had feared this thing. I watched carefully for the slightest burst of motion from the creature….

  Then, at a sudden lurching of its central mass, I dove to one side just in time to avoid a fist-sized slug of stone that hissed through the air where I’d been and kicked up a gout of soil where it struck the ground. I ran hard through the ferns while I heard the hiss-and-thud of the creature’s shots tearing through plants and striking the earth behind me.

  I dove for cover behind some fallen stones at the edge of the valley, still pressing my claim as far as I could into the world around me. I heard a few stone slugs shatter against the other side of my rockpile, then silence.

  Then I felt a powerful presence push against my claim in an attempt to steal the rocks beneath me. Instinct guided me to lash out at the creature, to push back and hold my own magical claim over the space around me.

  It was a mistake. Even at this distance the creature overpowered me with magical brute strength, stealing the stones beneath me. I leapt back just as the stones where I’d been standing suddenly shattered and began to churn, swallowing the twigs and pebbles that rested on their surface.

  I cursed my own foolishness as I tried to back further away from the creature, along the edge of the cliff and out of view, but the shelf of rock continued for another twenty paces and then ended, falling away to form more of the sheer cliff face that led down into the great forest below. I stopped at the edge, then waited—but apparently the creature couldn’t reach that far with its claim.

  Still, I was in a bind—soon it would either round the corner to shoot me or come into range and try to suck me into the ground. The crowns of a few great trees were nearby beside me, but the closest sturdy branch was more than forty feet away—barely out of leaping distance if I had a running start. The cliff that rose beside me was climbable, but only just: fewer vines, fewer cracks, fewer ledges. And it offered no protection from my pursuer.

  So I stood still, my eyes scanning the distant branches of the great trees, my face lighting up in a smile as I found what I needed.

  Then I heard a cascading sound of disturbed pebbles, snapping vines, and hissing leaves from above me, and I threw myself to one side as the massive bulk of the black cat came down on the ground where I’d been standing.