As I lay flat in the dirt trying to suck in enough air to sate my burning lungs I reach down and tear a strip of fabric off my knee length white skirt. Tying it around the hole in my hand to stem the bleeding.
“Ouch, fuck!”
I grit my teeth through the pain, I can handle this much after all the training my father put me through. I was raised to be a weapon, someone who would advance in Class quickly and bring prestige to the family.
I spent my entire life in this world doing nothing but fighting and studying everything I needed to become strong. I barely ever left the house and certainly never got to make any friends. Not that the part of me that is from earth did any better in the friends department.
I begin to spiral a bit as I remember both my lives, but the pain in my hand, and well frankly everywhere else, brings me back around.
Turning towards my wildly unhelpful AI I grumble out my most important question. “Hey, is there any way I can heal myself?” With all the damage to my body I am likely to die within a day or so even without another monster attack.
Alice looks me over for a short while before speaking. “As I said I am only here to provide assistance related to The System so if you are asking for the location of a flowing river filled with magical healing water, you are shit out of luck. However, if you are wondering how to acquire a skill that will heal you, I also can’t help you with that.”
“Wait, why not?!” I had my hopes up for a moment but she crushed them immediately.
As it turns out, due to my broken connection with The System, many of the normal features are disabled. Alice wouldn’t explain the exact reasons for this but hinted that it is because The System needs access to my mind for things like that.
Mulling her words over I try to think of how to phrase my questions in a way that will get me information about how to learn skills without buying them.
However, as I start to ask my question, something different occurs to me and I can’t help but ask about it. After all she said she couldn’t provide assistance unless it related to The System, but when I asked where I was Alice said I was in The Sea of Trees, and more importantly told me that the wood here is stronger than enchanted steel. If she had not told me those things I would never have thought to use the stick I found to kill the goblin.
When I do ask her however, she seems to avoid the question.
“Well, I only responded to your question with a random guess of our location based on the given information, and a bit of trivia about why your magic didn’t affect the tree. That can’t really be considered assistance, not that such things matter. You have more important things to worry about at the moment, don’t you?” And with that obvious technicality I had to refocus on my original question.
How do I learn a skill to keep myself from dying of blood loss, internal bleeding, or a horrible infection? I can feel my eyes starting to droop shut from the pain and blood loss, the adrenaline of a life and death battle no longer keeping me going. I don’t have a lot of time to figure this out...
I start to panic a bit and try to sit up, but the pain in my stomach keeps me down. I need to think of something, anything.
Looking up I see small beams of sunlight flitting through the mass of leaves reaching towards the clouds. With my mind fading I reach my arm out towards a ray of light and try to grip it. Light beam has this particular feel of gripping the light that I could sense. Now with that same sensation I try to reverse the process.
Mana leaks from my fingertips and wraps around the bits of light within my grasp, pulling it inside my hand. It feels strange, like the tingling sensation you get when your arm falls asleep. I recognize the warm buzzing sensation, I have felt it before. I can't pinpoint it though as I am having trouble recalling anything with the pain and my already jumbled memories.
“Ah!” Sitting straight up, and grinding my teeth as hard as I can to force myself through the pain and back to reality. I remember! That sensation is the feeling when your nerves stitch themselves back together. I have been healed many times in my combat training so the buzzing is something I could hardly forget.
My head hurts still. I feel cold and tired from the blood loss and sitting up just now filled me with more pain that I have ever experienced. I can't stop now.
I reach out for the beam of light once again and this time focus all my mana on it, opening myself up and trapping the light within. The tingling sensation switches to a burning one. I feel like my insides are on fire. Forcing my mana to control the light that continues to enter my body I find myself unable to hold back from screaming out. I know I will just attract more monsters from that but the pain is too much to bear.
I continue holding the light in, letting it fuse with my body as the burning sensation on my wounds increases in intensity until all at once the pain stops. Or at least the pain from the magic experiment I was doing on my self, I can still feel the sharp throbbing pain from the actual wounds I have.
That stabbing pain however is starting to lessen and the feeling of pins and needles gets stronger along with a small warm sensation in the wounds.
Opening my eyes I see a small orange-ish yellow message appear in my blurry vision.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
[You have learned the skill [Passive - Solar Regeneration]!]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Nice. I try to stand up only to feel the sharp throbbing pain knock me down again. “Urgh… How long will this skill - ow - take to heal me?” I am clearly getting better, but the rate at which I am healing is unclear. Getting no response for my question other than a disappointed glare I try again, this time with an acknowledgement of my actions. “I know it was stupid to stand up like that, I was just excited... Can you answer my question please?”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Alice's glare softens as she uncrosses her arms. “Sigh. While I am impressed with your ability to learn a rare skill like that so quickly, I am far less impressed with how impulsive you are. Clearly talent does not save one from stupidity.”
“Hey!” Ignoring my complaints, the little villainess continues on.
“That skill of yours will not heal you immediately. In fact at its current level It will take you about a month to heal, and that is provided you are in direct sunlight for the entire day.”
“What?! Then it is fucking useless, I will bleed out and die of an infection before then!” Once again little miss drills pretends I said nothing and finishes her speech.
“However, because the skill is a passive regeneration skill, It should take care of at least replacing your blood and cleaning out infection just fast enough to keep you alive until you can level it up and the regeneration outpaces the loss.”
Feeling a bit lame, I awkwardly ask for proper advice to distract from my pointless interruptions. “Oh… And how do I level it up?”
“Stand in the sun and heal, dumbass.”
I try and respond, but can’t find anything to say that will make my feel less stupid. I end up just letting my mouth hang open for a bit before deciding I should really try looking at my other skills.
“Status.”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
[Status]
-Lua Knight-
Species: Human
Level: 3
Class: 1
Magic: Light, Golemancy
Skills:
[Lesser Identification]
[Lesser Clean]
[Lesser Repair]
[Light Beam] Lv-2
[Create Golem] Lv-1
[Flash] Lv-1
[Passive - Solar Regeneration] Lv-1
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
“Oh, right I have [Lesser Clean] and [Lesser Repair]. Totally forgot about those...” Feeling annoyed and embarrassed at my forgetfulness, I decide to just move past it before Alice has a chance to comment. I use the skills immediately to repair a bit of my shirt and remove some of the gunk from my hands and wounds. Nice and barely cleaned up, I turn towards my snarky companion.
“Don’t even say it.” I would prefer to pretend like none of this just happened. Evidently not caring for my embarrassment, Alice proceeds to ignore my plea and berate me anyway.
“You have Golemancy that you have not even touched yet, try using it. That pointy stick won’t protect you forever.”
I had thought she would call me out for the clean and repair skills, but forgetting one of my two magic types feels worse. I am about to argue that I have been too focused on not dying but realize that would only waste more time.
“[Create Golem]”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
[Use of skill failed]
[Missing 1 Golem Core]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I stare at the error message with annoyed squinted eyes.
After getting a now common disappointed glare from Alice, my unasked question is answered with another question. “You do know what a Mana Core is, correct?”
I roll my eyes at her not wanting a lecture on mana cores. I had enough of those as a kid. A Mana Core is the little crystal you have buried in the base of your neck within the spinal cord that connects you to your mana. The Mana Core getting to a certain size is what gives humans access to The System and connects them to the Mana Plane. Not everyone is lucky enough to have their Mana Core reach the proper size. Some people never get access to The System because of this. However there are other ways to gain power outside of mana and skills.
“Yes that is the basics of a Mana Core, congrats for knowing the same things as any 5 year old not dropped on their head repeatedly would know.” Alice once again proves she has a way with words as she insults my intelligence. I however, being the kind soul that I am, choose to let such biting remarks slide as she stars a her lecture.
After sitting through said long and boring lecture from the AI who refused to put on a teacher's outfit when asked. I began working on digging out the Mana Core from the base of my least favorite goblin's spine. I flip over the goblin with several unhelpful comments and quips of Alice, and after a few blood moments manage to dig out the Mana Core. Apparently the knife could cut through the goblin now since the thing is dead and whatever skill it was using to make itself so durable stopped functioning.
Holding the small crystal in my hand I flood the core with mana, and eventually I feel a connection form. The glittering brown and jade stone shines for a brief moment and then returns to normal which indicates the conversion to a Golem Core. Getting the go ahead from Alice once she inspects the core, I bury the marble sized crystal in the ground and chant my skill once again.
“[Create Golem]”
With a tiny rumble the ground begins to pull in towards the Golem Core as if it is iron sand being attracted to a powerful magnet. Slowly the golem starts to take shape, and within a few seconds the process reaches its end and the little golem stands up facing me with a blank look on its nonexistent face.
“Well, it is kind of cute, but I am not sure how much help it will be.” Standing before me is a three foot tall stubby legged and vaguely humanoid clump of dirt that looks like it would fall apart from a single hit.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
[Dirt Golem - Lv : 3]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
“How am I supposed to fight with this when it looks so fragile and can’t even hold a weapon with its hand stumps? And why is it only level 3 when the goblin was level 9? That seems kind of unfair.”
Clearly exasperated Alice reminds me once again that I am expecting far too much from level 1 skills. And while I get that, I don’t understand how I am going to level up my skills or survive when my only attack option remains a single pointy stick.
Once again I receive a disappointed glare. “If anything you are lucky that the core is level 3 after The System transferred some of the power to you, otherwise you would have had a very difficult time controlling it.”
Making an O face I form a fist and hit my open palm, only to wince as I put pressure on my wound. "I uh, totally didn’t think about that.” At the current level of the skill It is more like a remote control toy than anything else. I can order it around with my mind, which the resident AI girl finds strange considering The System can’t touch my mind for some reason.
To my surprise, moving the golem around it is quite intuitive as it more responds to my will rather than explicit commands. Sure I can say “jump” in my mind and it will jump but I can also just feel like it should jump three times and spin around and it will do it exactly how I had envisioned it.
After about an hour of playing - I mean experimenting - with the golem, it begins to slow down and eventually comes to a stop with its head hung low. It looks a bit like a robot that has entered a lower power mode, which according to Alice is a mostly accurate description. And rather than refill it, I simply flip a switch in my mind that connects to the spell and let the dirt crumble.
Moving over to pick up the stone, I absentmindedly stare up at the breaks in the distant canopy. It was rather early in the morning when I woke up in this forest, but now it is almost past noon and I need to get moving, food, shelter, and water are my primary focuses now that I understand my skills enough to avoid dying if I run into something.
At least I hope.
Picking up my pointy stick, silver knife, and dusting off the golem core, I quickly refill the crystal with about half my mana then shove it in my pocket. “So, uh… Which way to civilization?”
“You know my answer to that.”
“Right, System assistance only. Shit.”
Alice is once again being no help so I decided to pick a random direction and start walking while mumbling to myself.
“Today has been one suckfest after another.”
