A certain amount of time later, Will woke up, feeling an urge to go to the little joey’s room. He was feeling somewhat better than he’d been after the fight, but still tired and still sore. There was no pop-up informing him that he’d healed overnight.

  I’m going to have to move soon. But I think I can hold on for a few more minutes. I’ve got some things to check on, preferably before I get thrown into another life-or-death battle.

  He’d regenerated all of his mana, which meant that he’d been asleep for at least two hours. A quick check of his status screen showed Will that he had a minor wound on his left shoulder, a slight wound on his right, another slight on his back, and a bunch of other lesser and least wounds all over. Least Cure was back to functioning at level three, which meant that Will could reduce both slight wounds by two levels, down to least.

  There was nothing he could do about the minor, unless he was willing to drink another potion, and he had no mana with which to deal with the least and lesser wounds. But he was getting close to the Grasslands again, which would reduce it to slight and let him start to heal it, so he chose to leave it as it is.

  That’s as good as I can get things for now. I’m out of mana, but hopefully I’ll have some time to regenerate it before I need it again. Now, let’s see. That message after the fight said that I gained a skill directly, rather than getting a skill shard. Which is kind of a problem, since open skill slots are going to be important once I’m ready to start merging those resource pool skills. I really would have preferred it if I could keep the shard until I was ready to actually use it.

  A look at his status sheet, however, told Will that his grumbling was unwarranted.

  Wait, nine out of eleven skills? Right, it did say something about my soul getting stronger and another skill slot, didn’t it? That’s going to be really useful. Especially since I should be able to reduce the Mage skills down to one slot fairly easily.

  And it’s even already at level two! So that’s an extra hundred XP. Nice. The one downside is that it already has an aspect attached. On the other hand, it’s Darkness, which can merge with Shadow and then Thunder to reach expert, which means I can use Air on something else. I can probably work with that. Let’s check the skill itself out though.

  Not a bad skill, though I’m pretty sure I can afford to take the damage more than I can afford to lose the mana, most of the time. What else do I need to take care of? Oh, right. I got a new skill shard on the previous space. Resistance. Sounds promising.

  Jackpot! This’ll let me deal with the heat and cold zones a lot more easily. And I bet it’ll help even more if I can get heat or cold related aspects for it. And it’s a Defender skill, so it should merge with Heavy Armor Proficiency, which means it won’t take up a skill slot.

  Going to make both more expensive to level up, but I think that’s a price I’m willing to pay.

  Will used the Resistance skill shard, got the expected synergy message and dismissed it without bothering to actually read it. He was far more interested in the resulting advanced skill.

  About what I’d expected. Not sure Rock is going to be useful on this, since I’ve only seen heat and cold hazards. Then again, I haven’t seen every Space yet, so who knows. I think this is a good time to level the skill up though. That’ll give me both another cast of Thunder Ball or Least Cure, and reduce the environmental damage by a bit more. And I do have the XP for it right now.

  Will mentally chose to level up the skill, noting that nothing in its description changed, and no new abilities were unlocked.

  Makes sense, I guess? Both of the skills already have level dependant effects, so there aren’t any surprises in their growth. Anyway, I think that’s about everything I need to take care of right now. Going to have to get to Fili to clear out my inventory soon.

  Satisfied, at least for now, with his status sheet, Will gave in to nature’s urges and rolled his dice.