“That was an experience,” Daniel said, still a little surprised.
“Yeah, not exactly unpleasant, but that will take some repetition to get used to,” Harry agreed.
The forest floor was only scarcely lit by a few strands of light that managed to penetrate the thick canopy of the trees, resulting in a relatively dark atmosphere. It was still enough light for them to see, but details got murkier the farther away they looked. What they were able to see though, amazed them enough already. Several cherry-sized berries that neither Harry nor Daniel had ever seen before were growing on some of the bushes. It wasn’t their size or unfamiliarity that astounded them however, neither was it their blue hue, but rather the faint glow they were emitting. Intrigued, Daniel used Identify on them.
Mana Berry (Common):
- Restores 5 mana on consumption.
He took one and tried willing it into his inventory. When that worked, he took another one to see if they would take up several slots. They didn’t, so he picked up all he could see, leaving him with 5 of them.
A secondary sweep of their surroundings revealed nothing interesting, so Daniel instead turned to experimenting with his skill. It was fairly intuitive and needed no incantation or wand movements as he feared. He simply raised his wand at the trunk of a tree and wished for the skill to activate from his wand, hoping it would work in a similar way as the rest of the system.
As soon as he did, his wand began to glow a similar blue as the berries and a blue bolt emerged from his weapon after roughly 2 seconds. It flew at the speed of a baseball and made a low thudding sound upon impact, leaving black scorch marks in a small circular area.
Inspecting his status, Daniel noted that the spell had cost him 9 mana, which was either 10% of his mana pool, and the wand bonus wasn't big enough to make a difference, or the original cost was higher, and the wand reduced it to 9—probably from 10, either by 10% or 1 flat mana.
While Daniel mused over the cost of his skill, Harry was testing his own. As he prepared his skill, his mace began to glow a dim yellow, and he started to feel a slightly increased strain. Daniel noticed Harry’s skill usage when the tree bark cracked under the force of the attack and the wood beneath was slightly pierced by the flanges of his mace. Evidently, the mace attack was a little more devastating than his spell, although Daniel hoped that was only the case with blunt damage.
The next surprise came when Harry removed his weapon and some sort of yellow-glowing liquid dribbled down the tree. Realizing that he had been neglecting his Identify skill, Daniel proceeded to inspect both the tree and the liquid.
Stargy Tree (Uncommon):
- Produces Stamina Sap.
Stamina Sap (Common):
- Restores stamina based on quantity consumed.
They didn’t have anything to store the sap in, and he figured that a liquid still physically connected to a tree would be impossible to stash in his inventory, so he identified the rest of the trees and other vegetation in their vicinity, to search for other oddities, but they were all common plants he knew from earth with no remarkable features, with the exception of the Mana Berry growing bushes.
Mana Berry Bush (Uncommon):
- Grows Mana Berries.
“Do you see anything we should be heading towards? Or should we just wander around aimlessly until we find something interesting or useful?” Daniel questioned.
“We should probably try to find a water source, right?” Harry suggested.
“Oh, yeah totally forgot that survival should be our first priority with all these game-like features,” Daniel admitted, “let me see what I remember. Listen for running water, check for animal trails and green vegetation.”
After they did not hear anything for several moments despite staying quiet, and the vegetation looked the same all around them, they started searching for animal trails. After 5 minutes of walking, while carefully watching for any signs Harry spotted something.
“Look, I think these are hoof prints, any idea what animal they belong to?” Harry asked.
“The only forest-dwelling hoofed animals I can think of are boars and deer, but this is a pretty otherworldly setting so this could be something else entirely,” Daniel answered.
“Could be, but I think we should still cautiously follow it. Information is key right now,” Harry reasoned.
“Agreed,” Daniel concurred.
They followed the trail for about 300 meters before they could make out the sound of a deer grunting. Slowing down, they cautiously proceeded and discovered a deer surrounded by 3 grossly oversized lizards, in front of a lake. The deer itself also had pretty big and spikey looking antlers making Daniel assume animals had also been changed by this system, which his Identify confirmed.
[Unadorned Thornrack Deer (Level 2, Common)]
[Unadorned Mudscale (Level 2, Common)]
[Unadorned Mudscale (Level 3, Common)]
[Unadorned Mudscale (Level 2, Common)]
It seemed like the monsters had all already gained 1 or more levels. The deer had suffered two long gashes from the claws of the scaled beasts on the side of its belly and one bite on one of its front legs. It hadn’t taken that damage for nothing, though, as one of the level 2 lizards was sporting two large puncture wounds in its chest area, and the other level 2 lizard looked like it had been stamped on rather hard. Several scales were cracked, but it had no trouble standing, speaking in favor of their resilience.
‘What should we do?’ Harry messaged via the system.
‘I think the deer is a lot more troublesome for us than the lizards and it looks like they are winning against it, so we should probably just wait and finish the lizards after they deal with the deer for us,’ Daniel messaged back.
‘But then we would be giving up potential XP gains,’ Harry argued, ‘and it would be useful to know if this system divides XP or gives it to the last hitting contributor.’
‘Alright, how about this, we wait until they skirmish again and then we hit them, you take the level 3 lizard, and I try out the power of my magic against a deer,’ Daniel proposed.
Harry sent his consent to the plan, and they waited for the lizards to make their next move. After circling the deer a few more times the level 3 mudscale pounced on the deer again, swiping it on the side with its claw. The other two lizards weren’t far behind, attacking both the other side and the head of the deer, but they weren’t as successful. The frontal attack was blocked by its antlers, and the lizard that came from the other side received a kick from the deer.
In response, the kicked lizard hissed furiously and flew a few meters away from the fight, blood spurting out of its puncture wounds as the deer grunted from the pain of its new gashes. Daniel and Harry reacted at once and started their attacks.
Daniel wanted to kill the deer in one shot before it could react to its new attackers, so he put his free point into Intelligence and activated his core trait causing a blue glowing crown to manifest on his head. He paid the phenomenon no mind and casted his mana bolt as well, while pointing his wand at the deer.
The charge up was still two seconds though and while the intended target was too pained to notice the third party, the level 3 lizard was not. It charged Daniel the moment he summoned his crown, but Harry intercepted it with a well-placed mace strike, further empowered by his class skill, that smashed the mudscale into the ground and cracked the scales it impacted directly.
Meanwhile, Daniel’s mana bolt had finished charging and flew forth from his wand. Visually, the spell wasn’t noticeably different from its non-empowered state, but it flew at twice the speed and pierced directly through the chest of the deer before dissipating 20 meters behind it over the lake, causing the deer to collapse immediately.
[Your party has slain (Level 2 Unadorned Thornrack Deer). Experience has been awarded.]
Daniel was a little surprised at the difference in power compared to his last use against the tree, although it could of course have just been that the deer had much worse defenses. Plus, the deer had been injured already. Harry’s cry of pain shook Daniel from his thoughts and made him refocus on the battle at hand.
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The relatively uninjured level 2 mudscale had attacked Harry from behind, biting into his leg, after the deer had been killed by Daniel and the level 3 lizard had used that moment to swipe at his other leg. Daniel didn’t want to hit his friend as well, so he repositioned himself to be able to hit the level 2 beast from the side, while already charging up his skill once more and simultaneously notifying Harry of his plan.
‘I’ll take the one behind you, focus on the big one,’ Daniel asserted.
Harry got the message and proceeded to deliver another empowered blow at the level 3 mudscale, while Daniel’s spell made short work of the level 2 lizard.
[Your party has slain (Level 3 Unadorned Mudscale). Experience has been awarded.]
[Your party has slain (Level 2 Unadorned Mudscale). Experience has been awarded.]
[You have gained 1 Level (Level 1—> Level 2)]
His Mana Crown dissipated the moment the system prompt hit Daniel. He ignored both and rushed over to Harry, who was standing over the body of his downed enemy, breathing heavily.
“Are you alright?” Daniel asked, worried. “That bite looked bad. Can you walk?”
“Really? It didn’t feel that bad. My reaction was mostly shock,” Harry replied, panting.
“Still, the blood loss alone should be...” Daniel trailed off as he looked down at the wound.
There was no blood visible at all and while the puncture wounds were definitely noticeable, they weren't that deep, and the scratches were barely discernible.
“Hopefully I won’t need to worry about infections or diseases either,” Harry grinned.
“How much health did you lose from that?” Daniel inquired curiously.
“15,” Harry answered promptly.
“That’s still pretty significant, although I guess you still have more life than me. Let's hope it heals on its own, and if it does make sure to pay attention to the regeneration rate,” Daniel instructed.
“Aye aye, sir!” Harry mocked.
“Speaking of which, mana either regenerates 1% every 100 seconds or 1 flat point every 111 seconds, which seems a little too random,” Daniel informed his friend.
He’d been tracking his mana state since he first used his Mana Bolt spell via a clock the system had provided. It wasn’t visible at first, but after a few seconds of trying to track the time on his own the system spontaneously spawned the clock in his head. Daniel guessed there were other functions like it hidden by the system, but he wasn’t in the mood for a nonsensical amount of trial and error.
“Have you figured out stamina as well yet?” Harry asked curiously.
“I haven’t really spent enough yet to track the progress, I can tell you it's faster than what we spend by walking,” Daniel explained.
“Seems like I get 1 stamina every 17ish seconds,” Harry announced after counting quietly for a few moments.
“What is your maximum?” Daniel checked.
“60,” Harry replied.
“That would be 1% every 10 seconds, so if we assume this system to be consistent health should regenerate 1% every 1000 seconds,” Daniel concluded.
“Damn, that’s over 5 hours for me to get back to full health,” Harry realized.
“Yeah, we should probably be more careful about losing health from now on,” Daniel reasoned.
“Speaking of being careful, what happened to the third lizard?” Harry wondered.
“It didn’t reappear after it got kicked away, so it probably died,” Daniel speculated. “We should check, though; I think it landed in that bush over there.”
Stepping over to the bush in question, the two did find a clearly recognizable landing zone with broken twigs, a lightly dented ground, and a moderate amount of blood. What they did not find was the lizard’s body; instead, there was a faint trail of blood leading away from both the lake and the fight scene.
“Did it really run away in that condition?” Harry pondered, confused.
“Maybe another animal took it,” Daniel suggested.
“Then there should be drag marks,” Harry refuted.
“It could've been carried,” Daniel argued.
“Alright, how about this: there are no footprints along the blood trail, and looking around our little fight scene, the only footprints belong to us or the deer, meaning the lizards don’t leave footprints for some reason,” Harry countered.
“Probably a trait of theirs,” Daniel agreed. “Since their names suggest they live in muddy, dirt-covered terrain, not sinking into it might actually be necessary for them.”
“So, do we follow? It might lead us to their lair and even more experience to farm,” Harry proposed.
“I mean we just talked about acting more careful and you want to chase a hostile monster into a swarm of its kind?” Daniel asked, raising an eyebrow in disbelief. “What about the corpses? If we leave them here to hunt a probably already dead and much smaller lizard, we’ll be leaving behind a lot of perfectly good food, not to mention a water source.”
“Well, first of all, we can't cook the animals, as fire would attract other predators, and I don't plan on eating raw meat. Plus, I'm not that hungry yet anyway. Secondly, this water source isn’t going anywhere, and I’m not suggesting tracking this creature for 10 hours. It’s wounded and shouldn't have gotten far. We can just check out if the lizard hideout is somewhere nearby and if we’ve got any chance of exterminating them or just taking a few of them out on their own,” Harry reasoned.
“I suppose checking out the surroundings is a reasonable course of action, but we’ll effectively be throwing away food while having none. Are we sure we want to do that?” Daniel questioned.
“I’ll be honest with you: we walked for close to an hour, and I’ve used a third of my stamina at once. I’m still not hungry despite only having eaten one sandwich like 4 hours ago. I don’t think food is an actual concern in this game world,” Harry explained.
“Fine, but if this comes back to bite us later, I’m blaming you,” Daniel relented.
Harry waved him off and they started following the wounded animal’s trail. They tracked the lizard for about 20 minutes before they sighted it, during which they found another unique plant indigenous to this new world, although they seemed to be rarer than the mana berries as they only found one, while they had found another 7 of the berries, in addition to the 5 they’d found early on, since leaving their starting area.
Life Mushroom (Common):
- Restores 5 life upon consumption.
The mudscale had led them to a muddy area of the forest which culminated in a large and shadowed mud pit in which it wallowed about along with a dozen of its kind, seemingly healing its wounds at visible speed. In the center of the pit loomed a larger specimen that might have been the cause for the unusual properties of the mud.
[Unadorned Bogshaper (Level 4, Uncommon)]
Daniel's Status:
Status:
- Identity:
-
- Name: Daniel Wright
-
- Race: Unadorned Human (level 2)
-
- Class: Mage (Common)
- Attributes:
-
- Fortitude: 4
-
- Vitality: 6
-
- Strength: 4
-
- Agility: 4
-
- Endurance: 5
-
- Intelligence: 15
-
- Wisdom: 11
-
- Free Points: 0
- Resources:
-
- Health: 60
-
- Stamina: 50
-
- Mana: 110
- Skills:
-
- General Skills: Identify (Common)
-
- Class Skills: Mana Bolt (Common)
- Traits:
-
- Core Trait: Ice Crown (Unique)
-
- Class Traits: N/A
Harry's Status:
Status:
- Identity:
-
- Name: Harold Garret
-
- Race: Unadorned Human (level 2)
-
- Class: Brawler (Common)
- Attributes:
-
- Fortitude: 10
-
- Vitality: 8
-
- Strength: 6
-
- Agility: 3
-
- Endurance: 6
-
- Intelligence: 6
-
- Wisdom: 5
-
- Free Points: 0
- Resources:
-
- Health: 80
-
- Stamina: 60
-
- Mana: 50
- Skills:
-
- General Skills: Identify (Common)
-
- Class Skills: Heavy Strike (Common)
- Traits:
-
- Core Trait: Flawless Body (Unique)
-
- Class Traits: N/A