《Mana Rule》 CH001 - How to tame your caterpillar Armin. That¡¯s my name. I am somewhat glad I can recall that at least. I¡¯d tell you that this is my story. A story about my rise to greatness, my conquest of this world, my battle with and defeat of the great demon king. But I¡¯m not psychic and none of that has happened yet. Nor would I need to be psychic to tell you just how unlikely things are to turn out that way. Isekai. A word well known amongst proper anime enthusiasts or just good and proper level 99 geeks for that matter. It¡¯s japanese. The term used for the ¡®transported / summoned to another world¡¯ genre of story. Usually to be the hero. Although sometimes, depending on the story and how twisted the author / audience is, sometimes to be the butt of all the jokes, or just plain ¡®lunch¡¯. I consumed enough Isekai related media to last several lifetimes. From anime to manga, light novels, official novels, to even non-official sources, like amateur novelist websites like RoyalRoad. So I can safely say that I am vastly experienced with all facets of isekai and isekai related concepts and lore. There are many different types of isekai story. They honestly range from wish-fulfillment power fantasy romps, to dark and uber realistic epic journeys of accomplishment, or even the lesser used reverse-isekai. So while experiencing a real live isekai is every proper geeks greatest fantasy, I mean why wouldn¡¯t a social recluse or outcast want to experience an epic journey while attracting an entire harem of underage girls and furries, all set in a fantasy game-like world; the reality of it, however, is likely to be far less glorious. Indeed if any such thing were to really happen, you would have to draw on the more realist and usually far darker kind of isekai story for any kind of actually useful insights. I have consumed many such stories personally and that is why right now, I am scared shitless. Excited yes. But likely to need a serious change of pants in the not to distant future. Armin. That is my name. I can not remember anything else, well at least not of a personal nature. I do not remember where I¡¯m from or how I got here. But I know that I do not belong here. I know that I am from another planet. I know what isekai anime is. And I know that trees are not supposed to be purple. The first thing I did when I got here, aside from stare at the purple trees for five full minutes with my mouth hanging open, oh and then freak out all over again when I realised that I¡¯m also naked. After all that I mean. I did what any self respecting isekai enthusiast would do and verbally commanded: ¡®status¡¯ After only a split second of nothing happening, I had already started devolving into a spiral of emotion that was part embaressment, part freak the fuck out. But I was luckily soon rewarded with the somewhat, more expected response. Sort off. While it was good that all those isekai stories got it right and that upon landing in a new world you could easily access your status screen, usually verbally or instinctively, I had to admit that they mostly missed something rather obvious. Why would you mentally be able to ¡®see¡¯ a blue screen. Heck, why would it be blue in the first place. The information for ¡®status¡¯, instead, flooded my brain. If I had to describe it in words, it was like a page of text quickly scrolling through my brain, like it was some kind of command prompt that forgot the pagination switch. But that¡¯s just an approximation, since I can easily perceive it all and it is not actually scrolling, or something like that. Status: Armin - level 1 Skill points: 0 Gift points: 0 Strength: 8 Constitution: 8 Agility: 10 Charisma: 9 Perception: 12 Spirit: 12 Will: 11 Essence: 100/100 Health: 80/80 Mana: 110/110 Stamina: 100/100 Gifts: Mana sense New hope What the heck are gifts? Skills? Classes? Actually before that what fuck is Essence? I tried focusing on Essence, hoping it would reveal a bit more information, but nothing happened. Neither did anything happen when I did the same thing for HP, MP, or SP. I would naturally have thought that this status screen might be all I¡¯m going to get information wise, were it not for the fact that as soon as I focused on Strength, I received a description proper. I quickly repeated it for each of the attributes in turn, in order to gather my first bits of insight into this game -ahem - I mean world. Strength: Physical prowess Provides more base health. Increases physical strength and related damage types. Constitution: Ability to survive Offers certain types of resistances e.g (curse, poison). Increases Health and stamina regeneration rates. Increased ability to survive e.g. temperature, hunger, etc. Agility: Ability to act Provides more base stamina. Increases movement speed. Increases flexibility, balance and grace. Increases certain damage types. Charisma: Your effect on others Increases your visual and mental appeal. Increases your ability to lead and likeliness that others will follow. Perception: Ability to see and understand Increases the potency of all your senses. Increases your ability to learn and understand things. Spirit: Resilience of your being Increases mana regeneration rates. Increases overall resistance to most forms of magical attack. Will: Dominion over creation Provides more base mana. Improves your power and control over mana. Well that was all rather interesting. Although none of it tells me anything about Essence. Moving onto the gifts then: Mana sense (Tier 1): Ability to sense mana Tier 1: (Description): Ability to generally perceive mana in both yourself and your surroundings. (Unlock Conditions: 1/1 met): Tier 2 - locked: (Unlock Conditions: 0/2 met): New hope (Tier 1): Hope for survival Tier 1: (Description): Increases the likelihood that you will survive in a new world by greatly improving some of the effects of [Constitution] (Unlock Conditions: 1/1 met): Tier 2 - locked: (Unlock Conditions: 0/2 met): Well. Quite a bit of information could be inferred from that lot. Gifts seem to act like something in between skills and classes. Like skills, but much more broad ranging. Hopefully they are not indeed literal gifts, as in given by someone, like the divine for example. That would be a pain in the ass. Although, I doubt this to be the case, cause then there¡¯d be little point to ¡®unlock conditions¡¯. All in all, it seems like I should be able to acquire higher ¡®tiers¡¯ of these gifts through my own efforts. Just have to figure out what the unlock conditions are I guess. Also, given a system like this, I am reasonably confident that it should be possible to acquire all new ¡®gifts¡¯, although that¡¯s just speculation on my part. [New hope] is certainly considerate of who or whatever put me here. I know a lot of gamers would bulk in outrage at such a ¡®useless¡¯ starting gift. But to be honest, given how the more realistic isekai¡¯s go, I am rather grateful for a more ¡®sensible¡¯ gift such as this, since a lot of the possible things in [Constitution] that could be improved by the gift, are things I would likely need for my immediate survival, especially starting out in the fucking wilderness. [Mana sense] on the other hand is a bit more dubious. I¡¯m well aware that as far as isekai goes, it is rather common to receive some kind of cheat ability or other edge to improve your chances of achieving greatness. Since I start with two gifts, one of which directly helps immediate survival, it¡¯s not outside the realm of possibility that this gift would then be for more long term survival. A.k.a my cheat ability. That speculation done, I must say it¡¯s hard to imagine the ability to sense mana as a ¡®cheat¡¯ on any kind of grand scale. Sure you could probably sense the danger and direction of magical attacks or something like that, which would definitely give you an edge in any battle involving such things. But that is A: a limited use ability and B: the description did not really make it sound all that useful for even that. Although the ¡®system¡¯ didn¡¯t explicitly mention it, I could easily assume that [New hope] is a passive skill -I mean gift. And that [Mana sense] is probably a channeled gift. So I immediately tried to ¡®channel¡¯ it.Stolen story; please report. It was much easier than I thought it would be. I was immediately able to sense both the mana inside my body as well as in a small radius around me. It was beautiful. Like millions of tiny motes of light floating all around me and inside of me, only much more compressed inside my body. I marvelled at the scene for a good few minutes before realising that time was ticking and that this was entirely unproductive. As wondrous as the scene was, I was far more excited at the prospect of being able to actually use magic. Unfortunately I did not start with any magic related gifts as far as I could tell. But I also could not be certain that such a thing was a prerequisite for using magic either. After all, why would you be given a mana pool, if you could not use magic. So I tried focusing on a nearby purple rock (yes, even the bloody rocks are purple here) and first moving it, then tried setting it on fire, and finally I tried cursing it into submission. It did not yield, suffice to say. Well that was a bust. It might be quite difficult to do magic without even knowing the basic principles of it. I pondered the problem for a short while, before reaching out once more with my mana sense. The mana in my body obviously was represented by my mana pool stat. The fact that it can regenerate and that there is also mana all around me, likely means that the mana from outside my body would be used to slowly fill up any room for it inside my body, a.k.a, mana regeneration. I felt like these were all really safe conclusions to draw so far. Now for the not-so safe conclusions. If mana enters and is stored in my body from outside, then perhaps mana inside my body isn¡¯t simply ¡®burned¡¯ to fuel spells, but rather ¡®used¡¯ as the spells. Perhaps it needs to leave my body in order to do something. I tried this approach instead. For a while, I simply focused on pushing mana out of my body, and to my surprise, it worked! Well, kind of. The mana was leaving my body at a steady rate and I could even guide it somewhat, but that was all. It wasn¡¯t travelling all that fast and certainly wasn¡¯t achieving anything, save for my steadily depleting mana pool and possibly creating a very slight breeze. I stopped expending mana for now and instead watched as the mana of the world around me slowly flowed into me and pooled in my body. It wasn¡¯t particularly fast, both in terms of the actual flow and of my mana numbers rising back to full. Looks like I¡¯m going to have to use mana carefully in future, it takes a while to fill up. My current estimates just going by what I could see was that it might take as much as several hours to fully refill my entire mana pool from zero. It would probably be the same for my health and stamina just going by their probable relationship to my various stats and the fact that everything seems to be in about the same range, just like my stats. Not that I was going to be intentionally injuring myself just to test out how health regeneration mechanics worked. Although believe me, I was seriously tempted. I mean what can all be regenerated? Can you regrow lost limbs? Fix brain damage? Having my faculties temporarily usurped by the marvel and possibilities of it all, I received a rather rude awakening when I was suddenly overcome with a bone chilling wave of emotion. The kind of foreboding that simply transcended fear. At first I thought maybe I¡¯m going nuts, just projecting. I was naked in a forest likely to be feeling both cold and exposed. Clothes always did give you a sense of comfort beyond just temperature after all. If only that was all it was. No. No amount of denying it would ease the feeling of dread. The feeling of knowing death is coming. It will claim it¡¯s prize simply as a matter of course. I quickly crouched down into the slightly tall lilac colored ¡®grass?¡¯ Hoping to disappear myself, like some great escape artist renowned the world over. In reality I was for more likely akin to an ostrich at this point in time, burying my head in the sand. I searched around me frantically looking for the source of impending doom. It took a while to finally spot the threat, this was understandable given the tall-ish grass and questionable size of the predator. A caterpillar. A caterpillar? was standing up on its ¡®hind legs¡¯? About a dozen hind legs at that. It reminded me a lot of a meerkat. The caterpillar was completely silent and still, staring straight at me. It had an exotic array of colors wrapping around its body, both blues and purples, no doubt evolutionary camouflage for its surroundings. It also had a full set of razor sharp piranha-like teeth. This might still have been classified as mildly cute, were it not for the fact that it was about the size of a full grown cat and the reason for my current sense of dread apparently. I don¡¯t know exactly how I knew that, but I could just tell. I could not look away from it despite really wanting to, the creature held me in some kind of death stare. I found myself just staring back silently, both afraid to continue looking and afraid to turn away. My animal brain was warring with my logical mind. How could a single caterpillar, despite its size induce such absolute terror in me. Why could I even feel this fear for that matter? Like it was something tangible in the air that the creature was giving off. I tried focusing all my senses on the caterpillar, despite myself. This of course included my [Mana sense]. I was desperately hoping to learn something- anything at all. So it was a rather pleasant surprise when information suddenly flooded into me. Carnivorous caterpillar: Level 43 Shit. That might just explain the feeling of fear. Perhaps all living things in this world can instinctively feel the strength of creatures around them, especially when there is such a disparaging gap between their levels. That must be it. I doubted it had to do with my [Mana sense], since when I was first assaulted by the foreboding sense of death, my [Mana sense] had not been active at the time. To be fair, I did not know if it was actually all that dangerous or not. A regular caterpillar from earth certainly wasn¡¯t, probably even if you gave it sharp teeth and blew it up to the size of a cat. But, assuming that anything that came from earth in its known form would be a ¡®level 1¡¯ over here; I mean, I know I certainly was. A bold assumption but better to err on the side of caution. Then, how strong would such a creature be at level 43. Another difficult question to answer. The answer really lies in knowledge of the power ceiling of this world. How strong is strong. In some isekai, creatures could run into the thousands of levels and then they could fight dragons. In other stories, if you reached level 100 you became the equivalent of God. Depending on how the system worked and how you looked at it, I could either be in a fair amount of danger, or I could be waiting for my universally decree¡¯d absolute and final death. I was currently leaning towards the latter, just going off of the feeling this thing was still putting off. And then it happened. A few things happened actually. The first of which, was that the Carnivorous caterpillar slowly and elegantly sank back down into the grass and out of sight. The second was the incredibly wave of terror that washed over me, like some indiscriminate kind of blood lust was being directed at me. The third was that my lizard brain went bezerk, every cell in my body screaming at me to run. I obliged. My logic brain was all like. NOPE. I¡¯m out! And so I ran. I ran through the tall rough grass. I ran around, and sometimes jumped over rocks and boulders, all of which were purple. I ran with every inch of speed my pissy little agility stat could muster. I was too afraid to look back at all, so I just kept running. Deeper into the purple woods, past the oddly structured trees that couldn¡¯t seem to decide whether they wanted to be trees with branches or starcraft-like crystal formations, just purple instead. I was still running with all my might. Despite not once having looked back, I could still clearly feel the aura of danger. It must be following me. I focused my senses as I ran, but could not hear anything except maybe the occasional rustling of grass, but that could just as easily have been my imagination. I knew it was following me, certain of it, but somehow, it did so in complete silence. This just served to compound the fear. Am I going to be eaten? How do I survive this? Should I turn and fight? That last option seemed less than likely. It was likely that the overwhelming aura this thing was putting off, was some kind of instinctual response, or perhaps system induced one, to increase the chances of survival of ¡®lesser¡¯ beings. It certainly wouldn¡¯t be an uncommon trope. But then what? It felt like this thing was stalking me. Like if it really tried, it could catch up to me in a flash. My heart was pounding, my breath short. I could tell, just a ¡®glance¡¯ at my status, my stamina was almost up and I was starting to slow down. It was a weird feeling, watching how your stats reflected how you actually felt. Or perhaps it was the other way around. I needed to do something, or I was not going to survive this. I needed to do it soon. And as if the heavens themselves responded (might have been tempted to say a prayer of thank you if I believed in such a thing), the grass in front of me gave way to a river. It was a fast flowing river of what I hoped was water, but it was hard to tell given the same lilac hues as most of the surroundings. The river was wide, deep and fast flowing. Not so fast flowing that I should not be able to cross it, but fast enough that I felt safe that it might just save me. After all, caterpillars can¡¯t swim- right? Well let¡¯s hope that remains true for carnivorous caterpillars or level 43 caterpillars for that matter. I could for the first time hear my pursuer making noise as it moved through the grass. It must finally be going in for the kill. The fact that it chose to do so now, likely confirms my theory about its inability to cross the river. It doesn¡¯t want to lose its lunch, and knows that¡¯s exactly what¡¯s about to happen. I finally reached the edge of the embankment. The river is a beautiful and magical sight, truly lending credence to the whole ¡®fantasy world¡¯ thing. Its mystical beauty undoubtedly only enhanced by the salvation it offers. Planting one foot down, right on the edge, I launch myself into the air with every ounce of remaining strength that I can muster. My arms and legs are still pumping instinctively as I sail through the air like some cartoon character before gravity kicks in. As I reach the apex of my long-jump, I spin my head around in an attempt to see the caterpillar one last time. To be honest I think I just wanted to see it, so that I could mentally mock the fucker. No lunch for you Bitch! And all that. Reality is seldom ever so kind though. And I guess fantasy-reality even less so. In hind-sight, I realise the only reason I would even be able to see the caterpillar is if it wasn¡¯t in the tall grass anymore. This is exactly why my heart immediately sunk into the pits of despair. Suffice to say, the caterpillar was not in the tall grass anymore. No. Instead the fucker had jumped. I mean how does a caterpillar even fucking jump!? Despair turned to confusion and then back to even deeper despair at the realisations that followed, the order going something like this: The caterpillar Jumps Current emotion = despair The caterpillar for some reason jumped straight up and therefore will not be getting anywhere near me? Current emotion = confusion The caterpillar lands upside down against an upwardly angled tree branch. It had used considerable force in its jump, enough to bend the branch even further upon impact, despite the branch¡¯s thickness and the caterpillars relatively light weight. This display of power alone would be cause for huge concern, were it not for the fact that during this impact, the caterpillar coiled itself up, not dissimilar from a cobra rearing to strike, and used both the energy from the coil and the recoil from the branch to redirect and launch itself straight at me from its elevated position, like a fucking cannon ball! Current emotion = Absolute fucking dread Despite the dread I was feeling while I fell towards the water and the caterpillar barrels towards me like a bullet, I was also left dumbfounded. This thing had elected to jump upwards likely cause it couldn¡¯t see me all that well from the grass. Not only that, but the maneuver it just pulled off! What a ridiculous display of both power and dexterity. Was this what it meant to be level 43? No wonder this thing was putting off such a feeling. This measly caterpillar was a being far beyond my existence. Not just that, but the intelligence it possessed in order to come up with and execute that insane plan in just a moment. This is supposed to be a caterpillar, right? Regardless, I could only watch in dumb-founded horror as it flew straight towards me. Just as I was about to hit the water, I performed a desperate last-ditch maneuver in an attempt to avoid the razor sharp teeth attached to the front of the incoming missile. I twisted my body sideways, trying to angle it outside of the caterpillars path. The monster soared by me only grazing my stomach, but still leaving a nasty gash all the same, but otherwise only taking off about ten of my health. At the same time I finally broke through the waters surface. Instead of giving in to my instincts and swim for the surface, I quickly opened my eyes and looked around to see if I could find the threat, or any other threats for that matter. I had noticed earlier that the water looked reasonably clear, despite its unusual color. And I would probably have much better vision of what was going on from under water than above. My decision to open my eyes to see under water was immediately rebuked with regret. Whatever was in the water, or if that''s what it even was, was burning my eyes really painfully. But I knew I had to bear it, had to risk potential damage, I needed to know where the caterpillar was. After only a moment I spotted it. The monster was a fair distance away from me. Apparently it¡¯s flight-form had allowed it to penetrate the water like an arrow and it had travelled quite a distance before the water resistance finally put a stop to it. The result was one very scary but totally harmless caterpillar monster wiggling about rather helplessly while the water current carried it along. Guess it can¡¯t swim after all. A few notifications then popped up as my vision blacked out: You have suffered damage and have minor bleeding: -2 health / minute Duration: 1 hour Your eyes have suffered extensive damage resulting in blindness: Status: Blinded Duration: 5 hours Oh fuck! Was all I could think as I attempted to swim for the surface sans my sight. CH002 - A fish out of water I, Armin Wright, hereby chronicle my great adventures in a new world. This is day: 0.25. I have just narrowly avoided drowning and am spluttering for air, while I weakly drag myself across the river embankment like a terminally ill snake. My health is slowly dropping from the bleed effect caused by the egregious wound across my abdomen. Oh, and I¡¯m blind for the next five hours apparently. At least my stamina fills up at a decent speed. From the looks of it, filling your stamina from zero to full would likely only take a couple of minutes. That, while useful info, is the least of my concerns though. I lay on the bank for a while yet, simply catching my breath. As soon as my heart and breathing start calming down however, I become acutely aware of just how incredibly vulnerable I am. It is bad enough just being naked, but being naked and blind at the same time¡­ I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve ever felt this exposed before. Every little sound around me. A rustle of leaves or grass, a splosh of the water, or simply some insect or possibly creature related sound in the distance. Everything I was not able to hear before, now much more audibly clear having been deprived of my primary sense, now fills me with fear and only further fuels my feeling of vulnerability. Let¡¯s not even talk about the ordeal I just narrowly managed to survive. It was a harrowing thought just thinking about the fact that there could be any number of dangerous creatures around me some even at level 43 and I would have absolutely no idea. There could be a monster ten centimeters away from me ready to bite my face off and I would not know until it¡¯s too late. A sound that sounded really close, suddenly made me jump right out of my skin. Fuck this! I activated my [Mana sense] immediately. Luckily the gift did not really drain much mana to keep it active. Now I at least had ¡®vision¡¯ for about a three meter radius around me. I use the word vision very loosely though. More like I could vaguely tell whether a given area was empty space or not empty space. Mana did not directly correspond with whatever was in a given space after all. For instance both the water, rocks and air all had mana, with only small differences between them. Like with ¡®air mana¡¯, or I should say mana in the air, seemed to be able to flow slightly more freely. Point is, it was enough to have very crappy, very short range vision of my immediate surroundings. The closer it got to me however, the more clearly I could ¡®see¡¯. Still. I was feeling very exposed and vulnerable. I decided I needed to hide out somewhere and recover first. My general weakness I was feeling (why was I feeling so weak anyway?) and the lack of options, let alone my lack of sight, meant that there were few good options available to me. The only thing I could think of was to try and climb a tree, hopefully keeping out of sight of and / or out of reach of some of the predators around here. Not counting things like level 43 caterpillars of course, but it would be better than nothing. So without delay, I crawled over to the nearest tree that seemed like it might be even remotely climbable and began the arduous and painful process of ascending it. Climbing a tree with only vague vision was rather difficult turns out. Many cuts, scrapes and bruises later, as well as a considerable expenditure of stamina and I was about three meters up in the tree and resting on two or three sizable branches. I know I was about three meters up mostly because I could just barely make out the ground at the edge of my [Mana sense]. Temporarily kind of safe and now resting, I turned my focus inwards. My [Essence] had somehow dropped to 75 and my health, while still high, was definitely steadily declining. No doubt I needed to stop the bleeding or I would likely die, some quick math on my health and the bleed numbers told me as much. But how. I do not know anything about medicine. I also doubted simply ¡®apply pressure¡¯ would stop the bleeding, it was a long wound after all, and I had no idea if such things actually worked like that when there was already such a thing as a bleeding ¡®status effect¡¯ to begin with. Let¡¯s not even mention that I don¡¯t feel like I would even have the physical strength left to keep the needed level of pressure up for any decent amount of time. For that matter why the fuck was I feeling so weak anyway? Yes I¡¯m wounded, but it had not been all that long. I could not have lost enough blood yet to be anemic already. Another look at my status revealed that my [Essence] had dropped to 61. What? It was steadily going down and I was steadily feeling weaker. Perhaps it is your overall ¡®condition¡¯ or something like that. I also noticed that I was shivering. I had been distracted with everything going on and the adrenaline of it all, but now that I thought about it, I realised that it was such an obvious thing. I just took a swim through some cold water and am now wet, while high up off the ground and naked outside, with a light breeze. The temperature in this world had already been a bit on the cold side to begin with, not to mention the fact that night would probably fall soon. No. At this rate I was headed for a one way ticket to hypothermia and the eventual anemia was not going to be helping with that. Shit. As time moved on and I still had no clue what to do, the intensity of the cold started to ramp up. The mana in the air around me changed quality somehow and I could swear that I could no longer feel the light of the sun on my skin anymore. Looks like sunset came sooner than I expected. Both my Essence and surprisingly my health had started to drop faster, lending credence to the idea that Essence was related to your well being. Either way I needed to do something. So I turned my mana sense inwards and tried to move the mana inside my body, or more specifically circulate it. Uncertain of what else to try, I simply focused on circulating it faster and faster in the hopes of pulling off some kind of miracle and maybe even triggering healing or something. This did not happen. What did happen however, was that I could start to feel the slightest bit of warmth inside my body. It was faint, but I was sure that it was caused by the circulating mana. Encouraged by the positive result I ramped up my efforts and circulated it faster and faster. Soon however a new problem befell me. My body started aching and a quick check on my status revealed that this course of action was not only expending a little bit of mana but also starting to drop my health even faster. In short, I was damaging my body. Not really having the health numbers left to be fucking around with this any further, I ceased it at once. Still, I needed to deal with this situation or I would just as soon end up dead. The circulation of mana had started to heat up my body, so I felt like there was something to it. It got me thinking about how heat was normally generated. Molecular vibration. I decided to try applying this principle instead, to the mana inside my body. No more circulating but rather moving the mana while remaining in place. Vibrating the mana. It was incredibly difficult at first even with just a small amount of mana, but I soon got the hang of it. It might be my imagination, but it seemed that mana was easier to control the closer it was to you, hence why your own internal mana pool was so useful and malleable- probably. There¡¯s also the fact that simply doing something with your mana even if it doesn¡¯t leave your body, still seems to use up some of it as the ¡®fuel¡¯ for the action itself. Very strange. Regardless, this course of action seemed to be the correct one, as without any new damage to my body, it started to warm up rather nicely. I kept it up for a while and kept an eye on my status. My Essence had mostly stopped going down, it was still dropping slowly, likely from the bleed status and the same could be said for my health. The drain on my mana was also rather negligable, but I decided to only warm myself up to the absolute minimum needed in order to reduce the mana drain all the same. Who knows how long I would have to keep this up. Having bought myself a little bit of time, I unfortunately was not out of the woods yet. This incessant bleed status was still going to kill me before it finally runs out of steam. What to do. I already had one failed attempt at healing under my belt. I simply sat there for a while pondering the problem while reveling in the comfort of the little bit of warmth I was providing my body with. Then inspiration hit me. What about solving the problem in a more conventional way (albeit by an outdated method), using unconventional means. The flash of inspiration carried me to action before I even realised what I was actually doing. Good thing too, as if my rational brain had a fair chance to process this course of action before I enacted it, I probably would not have gone through with it. I focused as hard as I could on the mana just at the outermost edge of the wound and pushed the vibration all at once to the absolute max that I could manage. The sound of a sizzling barbecue and sickening smell of burnt flesh followed by one man''s girlish scream, before he managed to muzzle it with his own arm. This was the chain of events that occurred directly before I started whimpering at the still ungodly searing pain on my stomach before I vowed that I would never do something so stupid again. The resolve in this newly created vow to avoid future cauterisation, wavered considerably however, when I checked my status and noticed that my essence and health had stopped counting down and the bleed status had disappeared. I revelled in the realisation that for the first time I was actually going to survive this. It was a long night. Uncomfortable up in the tree, constantly having to expend mental effort to keep myself warm and having my abdomen wracked with heated pain, suffice to say that by the time dawn broke, I had not gotten an ounce of sleep. Both my mana and health were at half. The former having dropped to it and the latter having risen to it. My essence wasn¡¯t faring any better and I felt all the more sluggish and tired for it. At least my vision had returned on cue without any lasting side effects, save for some still seriously burning eyeballs that I spent most of my time squinting through now. At least my mana would hopefully now start to slowly fill up, now that I wasn¡¯t channeling it the whole bloody time for warmth.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. A new problem has also arisen, I was thirsty and hungry as all heck. I had a lot of time to think throughout the night, you know, when I was supposed to be sleeping. I had arrived at some decisions about how to go about my survival. Searching for other humans, heck even dwarves or elves would do, or any form of civilisation, was a high priority to be sure. But that could take who knows how long. My more immediate goal was certainly my more immediate survival needs. I needed food, water, clothing, and shelter. Shelter being for protection so that I could actually sleep and clothing for warmth for pretty much the same reason. There was a river right here, so that seemed like the best idea for water at present. Who knows maybe I¡¯ll be able to make some water with magic eventually. As for food. Two options, either forage some or hunt for some. Forage seemed more practical and safer for sure, but I would still likely need to defend myself regardless. So first thing to do really, was make a weapon. All throughout history, mankind had never been meant to engage in unarmed combat. We did not possess claws or teeth after all. No. We used tools and weapons. We survived through our ingenuity and resourcefulness. While I was certain that magic would have skewed that more than a little in this world, I still believed it would likely still be largely true. I had arrived at the conclusion that a combination of a spear and knife would be my best choices. Basically the hunters tools of choice. Both should be practical to craft due to their low level of tech requirements, or at least that was the plan. The spear could be used for hunting by throwing it or for fighting and hopefully using its range to keep a predator out of claws reach. As for the knife, it could be used for all the obvious things you would use a knife for as well as close range emergency fighting. Of course all this was me being totally out of my depth here, but it seemed like a solid enough plan. But first things first, I could at least do something about my thirst. Although it probably wasn¡¯t very safe considering what had happened to my eyes, I took a chance on the river and scooped a drink of it up with my hands. Sipping slowly on the water, very slowly, just in case it was harmful, nothing much seemed to happen. So I did this for a few more scoops, until I was satisfied that I had consumed the bare minimum that my body would need for the time being. The only effect I noticed aside from the funny, almost metallic taste of the water tingling my tongue, was the slight increase in my Essence stat that resulted. With water out of the way, I turned my attention to finding a good stick for my spear. Turning to some of the more unusually shaped ¡®trees¡¯, I found that they tended to have almost perfectly straightened branches. Trying to break one of these branches off, I was also pleasantly realised that they were much sturdier than branches of trees from Earth. Wait, Earth? That was the world I was from. I had not been able to recall that earlier. Perhaps in time I would get my memory back after all. I put the thoughts out of my head for the time being, I had more pressing concerns, namely survival. Eventually I was able to pry off a suitably long and thick branch that I could make my spear from. I say spear, but the reality of it was such that it would be little more than a sharpened stick. Now to make said pointy end, you would have two possibilities. The first would be grinding it against a rock for hours on end until it reached a sharp point. The other was to carve it into a sharp point using a knife. It would be a great time saving if I could do the latter, so for now I turned my attention to making a knife. The way to make a primitive knife, assuming my memory wasn¡¯t failing me or that I wasn¡¯t completely off the mark here, was to basically smash some rocks until you get something generally resembling a knife shape and then do the whole grindy thing until it was sharp. Of course this wasn¡¯t my area of expertise and I could be way off base here, but it seemed like a good plan. I began the process of picking up reasonably sized rocks and smashing them against other reasonable sized rocks. I realised that most of them were going to be too brittle for my purposes. After some trial and error, I found that a certain color tone of rock (those that were more of a mauve color) were a little less brittle and more suited to my purposes. It took a while, but I eventually had my crude knife shaped rock. I began the process of grinding it down. It took yet another long while to get it closer to what I wanted, I quickly ran into a problem however. Once the blade was getting close to being something actually resembling a blade, it started to get too brittle for the grinding process and instead of sharpening further, it started chipping instead. It still wasn¡¯t sharp enough to be even remotely useful as a knife, but I also couldn¡¯t go any further. I pondered the problem for a while, at one point even considering just going all in on the chipping and turning the thing into something akin to a hacksaw. That idea was scrapped though, as the knife as a whole would likely be too brittle for use like that. No, instead I decided to try something else. I already knew that I could expel mana from my body and that said mana could affect things outside of me, why else would it have created a slight change in air currents that one time, unless the mana itself was moving the air particles. So I tried placing my hand over the would be blade and pushing out my own mana, trying to direct it to grind against the edge of the knife in order to sharpen it. It was difficult to say the least, but it did actually seem to my mana sense, to be having an effect. The stone of the blade was definitely much harder to affect than a bunch of loose air particles, perhaps the density of it? Regardless, it was at least offset somewhat by the proximity of the operation, my hand was right against the blade after all. It took a great deal of focus to operate the mana on such a focused scale, so after about an hour and a considerably depleted mana pool, it was finally done. My knife now had a blade that could be used for cutting, kind of. I also noticed that a fair amount of mana now resided in the edge of the blade itself, disproportionate to the rest of the knife¡¯s natural mana density. This mana even seemed to have a different quality to it, although I could not quite tell how it differed, just that it did. With my knife at the ready I started carving my spear. At first I was worried my knife would either be: not sharp enough or too weak and straight up crumble in my hand. But those fears turned out to be unfounded. In fact, the knife was sturdier and working far better than I could have expected it too. Maybe there was something to imbuing objects with mana? Definitely something to explore in future. My spear was finally done, but I could hardly feel happy. Despite the fact that I now had decent tools for hunting and defending myself, my hand was really aching from all the work and in part from using the knife. Gripping it tightly the whole time, it was still little more than a hard and rough stone after all. Not to mention that I was even more hungry now. I sat down on a rock facing the river, just to rest and let my stamina build back up. Plotting my next moves for going gathering / hunting. This place was still scary as hell, but I at least didn¡¯t feel nearly as helpless now. After sitting there for a while, letting my thoughts run around in circles, I found that my current primary problem, that is to say, food, had just resolved itself. There were fish in the water. Not many mind you, possibly owed to the fast moving nature of the water, I couldn¡¯t really be sure, but fish all the same. Why had I not noticed this before? Watching the water more intently now, every now and then a fish would come swimming past. After focusing on a few of them and ¡®identifying¡¯ them, I found most to be around level 10. Not a low number, but not unbearably high either. I think? Regardless, fish seemed like a great target for me, since I doubted their ability to attack me outside of water, and I had a spear! So I followed along the river for a bit, until I found a rock outcrop that gave me a decent enough vantage point over the side of the river and then waited. Multiple times a fish that was close enough came past. I stabbed with my spear, with all my might and lo and behold- I completely missed. This sad scene repeated itself for the next several fish that came by. Over time I got better at it. A good couple hours passed and I could now fairly consistently strike the fish. Problem was, I was only injuring them, not killing them and definitely not impaling them. It seemed like the level 10-ish fish were simply too strong. Despair was starting to sink in, along with the fatigue and aching of my entire body. I was not used to this level of exertion after all. On the up side, at least my stomach wound had mostly healed up and my health would soon top off. The Essence stat on the other hand, was not looking so hot. I struck at another fish and sighed when once more all I succeeded in doing was injuring it. I was seriously about to reconsider this approach when I received a notification: Congratulations, you have slain ¡®Tendon fish¡¯ - level 11 I summarily ignored all further notifications and started running downstream all at once. I was not about to let my meal get away from me. It did not take long before I finally spotted the dead fish being carried away by the river. Catching up to it, I was not really sure what to do. I couldn¡¯t run after it forever. It certainly did not seem like the river was going to be slowing down anytime soon. It seemed that I would have no choice but to jump in after it at this rate. But that river was carrying it along at quite a speed, It would likely flow away from me easily if I missed. I was realistically only going to get one chance at this. To say that I was stressed out about the prospect, would be an understatement. Nevertheless there was no other choice. Do what needed to be done. Once I felt I had the right distance in front of the fish¡¯s path, I threw my weapons to the ground, turned ninety degrees and jumped into the water, in an attempt to intercept the fish. With a splosh, I had timed it correctly and could feel the fish more or less in my arms. I quickly closed my eyes as I was submerged, did not want a repeat of last time. Unfortunately I did not account for the rough change in currents as I broke the water¡¯s surface and could feel the fish slipping out of my grasp. Panicking, I quickly opened my eyes to the burning water, in order to see where the fish was. It was just in front of me. The combination of the slower undercurrents and the disturbance created by my belly flop had caused the flow of water to waiver for a moment and that was all that was needed to momentarily suspend the fish within my reach and keep it there for just a few moments. I fumbled after it like a crazy monkey, somehow managing to snatch back my prize. I also shut my eyes again as soon as I had a grip on it. The exposure to the water should have been much shorter this time, hopefully enough to save my sight. I proceeded to swim to the shore with my eyes closed. Upon hauling myself onto the river bank, I finally noticed a new system message: Your eyes have suffered some damage resulting in blindness: Status: Blinded Duration: 30 minutes Ah come on! Not as bad as last time though, not even close. So for now, I flopped over onto my back and hugged the fish to my chest like some kind of long lost lover. In the meantime, while I waited for my vision to be restored, I used the body heating technique to warm up and dry off. When that was done, I used the crude vision my Mana sense provided me, to retrace my steps upstream, to where I had discarded my weapons. Once my vision finally returned I took stock of the fish for the first time. It was silver, with circular blue patterns on its body and of course a rather nasting looking spear wound. I also took a look at my status. Turns out the notifications I had ignored basically pointed out that I had levelled up from killing the fish (maybe because it was level 11?) and received 5 skill points to distribute. However that could wait, after all, I was currently famished and very eager to reap the fruits of my labour and fill my tummy. I quickly gathered up some small rocks into a ring and filled it with a bunch of small sticks and some dried out leaves. This was my best guess at how you start a campfire. Admittedly you probably didn¡¯t normally then proceed to light it with magic, but hey, when in Rome¡­ It was a bit more difficult generating heat outside of my body, but soon I had a nice little fire going regardless. I used the knife to scrape off the scales, partly helped by the flowing river water, since I doubted it would be very pleasant eating the fish with them. Then proceeded to skewer the fish with my spear and roast it over the fire. As far as the job of cooking the fish went, I don¡¯t think I have ever focused on anything so intently in my entire life to date. The smells from these efforts was both a gift and a curse for me while I waited. CH003 - Sticks and stones, may break my bones Kra¡¯ghe was enjoying a peaceful evening stroll, with a lite breeze tickling his back. He strode forward in the moonlight with regality and power, as was befitting for one such as he. It was a rather curious affair, as no one else knew that his name was indeed Kra¡¯ghe. I mean, how could anyone ever know this, it¡¯s not like he would be able to tell them. And even if he was able to tell them, it would likely be pointless, as he¡¯d just as soon eat them regardless. It¡¯s not like he did not understand the purpose names held. They were instrumental in communication and sometimes identification amongst species that were actually capable of communicating such things verbally. Admittedly those races were few and far between though. Still he had one day named himself such on a whim. Looking back on that time, now he could only find it amusing how foolish and impulsive he was in his younger days. Kra¡¯ghe was however torn from his reminiscing, by a rather delicious smell. He blended in with the shadows as he carefully and silently headed in the direction it was coming from. It did not take long before he found the source of the delicious smell, but it gave him pause. There was a light, a light that he knew well. Although this light was capable of burning things and greatly changing the taste of meat, it was not the light itself that concerned him. No. With such a thing, it was usually the creatures that were able to wield this light that were on occasion, more than a little dangerous. Not because they were overly vicious or physically strong in any way, but rather because they usually also possessed weapons and were more often than not cunning. It¡¯s not like he actually felt threatened in any way, but rather simply that he should be a little more cautious than normal. There wasn¡¯t much in this place that could hurt him, he was old and strong compared to most of his kind. The weapons wielded by creatures like these, however, sometimes fell in this category. After watching the creature for a while, Kra¡¯ghe decided that it did not appear to be a threat. The creature itself was tall and had no fur. It walked upright on two legs and had paws that were clearly the kind not meant for fighting but rather for finer jobs, like crafting weapons. Hence why Kra¡¯ghe believed that it had made the weapon it was currently holding itself. Well it wasn¡¯t exactly a stretch of the imagination, the creature already clearly knew how to change meat with that light, which means it likely also know how to create the light in the first place, among other things. Once the creature was done with the fish that was skewered into his weapon, he began gobbling it down with fervour. He looked like some starving lesser animal to Kra¡¯ghe. He felt almost sorry for the creature. Almost. Kra¡¯ghe cancelled the ability and stepped out of the shadows, confronting the creature head on. The creature was so absorbed in eating the fish that it didn¡¯t even notice him at first. This only served to annoy Kra¡¯ghe as he had only done this out of amusement, to see how this creature would respond to the threat. This was fast becoming a waste of his time, he should just gobble the creature and his fish whole and be done with it. Fortunately or not, the creature soon spotted Kra¡¯ghe and panicked. It jumped back and stared at Kra¡¯ghe with great fear, food still in it¡¯s mouth. The creature simply stared and did not move a muscle. This too was boring, so Kra¡¯ghe decided to spice it up a bit. He slowly prowled from side to side, facing the creature the whole time. It was a pattern that he found to be menacing and often instilled fear in lesser creatures. He was looking forward to seeing how this creature responded. To be honest he was no longer concerned in the slightest. This creature was clearly physically weak and the weapon he wielded, as far as Kra¡¯ghe could tell, was of a similarly poor quality. The creature finally acted. It slowly reached for its weapon, with its second hand. Kra¡¯ghe was almost disappointed when he took this to mean the creature was preparing to fight, likely taking up some kind of stance. So he was pleasantly surprised when it instead, slowly slid the fish off the weapon. Oh. This is interesting. Was it going to pay tribute? Kra¡¯ghe stopped pacing and instead watched the creature expectedly. It reached back and tossed the half eaten fish, which in turn landed quite a distance behind where Kra¡¯ghe was standing. He was seriously tempted to kill this insolent creature on the spot! How dare it mock his intelligence with such an obvious slight! The creature obviously thought that he would chase after the tasty food like some mindless beast, while it could then make a run for it. Kra¡¯ghe stepped forward intent on teaching this flea a lesson. A very final lesson. However after only one step, he paused. While it was true this dumb creature had wounded his pride Kra¡¯ghe also knew that this emotion was normally a pointless one, that yielded no real benefit and often resulted instead in harm further down the line. He had not come as far as he had by letting such foolish emotions dictate his actions. Kra¡¯ghe instead snarled a warning at the foolish creature and then turned to leave. He picked up the discarded fish as he passed by it. It had been burnt by the light just right and was quite tasty. Kra¡¯ghe would leave for today and let the foolish creature think he had outsmarted him. The foolish often don¡¯t know that they are fools. So Kra¡¯ghe would simply have his revenge and enjoy the look on the creatures face when he ultimately returned for his next tribute. After all the only reason for him not to eat the creature was to keep it as a pet. One that needed to make regular offerings, lest he become the next offering himself. Kra¡¯ghe slowly walked away and once more faded into the shadows.
Armin just stood there for a moment, not quite sure how to take all this in. The black jaguar-esque beast with six legs had just left. Although he could not be 100% sure it was actually gone, since during the process of leaving, it also kind of just disappeared mid-way. He would have been a whole lot more heart-broken after losing half of his overly due and hard won dinner, but he simply didn¡¯t have the capacity of mental faculties available after such an encounter to even care much at the moment. No. This jaguar like creature had simply strolled up in a decidedly threatening manner. Armin was of course extremely alarmed and would have been ready to flee at a moments notice had it not been for the fact that he sincerely doubted his ability to escape such a predator. No amount of rivers would have been sufficient to save his ass this time around. What¡¯s worse, he had tried to identify the creature in order to gauge just what kind of level of dead meat he currently was. He couldn¡¯t! It was like there was some kind of resistance to the attempt. Although it mattered little, as he could feel the overwhelming aura put out by the beast just fine enough to be thoroughly terrified. It was a small miracle that tossing his fish out like that had caused the creature to lose interest in him. He was actually surprised that it had not turned around and eaten him straight after. The original plan was of course to try and sneak away while the beast was distracted, but it¡¯s mere presence was so overwhelming that he had found his legs completely unable to move. Armin simply collapsed to the ground and waited for the tension to leave his body for the time being. He was certainly disappointed to have lost half his meal, especially given his current state. But honestly, he would take not getting eaten over eating any day. That said, the little bit of food he had gotten in his system had at least pushed his Essense back up to 83. Just thinking about it, he could identify the level 43 caterpillar quite easily, yet this thing, he could feel he wasn¡¯t even close to identifying. That coupled with the feeling it put off, spoke to just how high a level above 43 this thing must actually be. If such creatures wandered around, he was in even deeper shit than he could possibly have imagined. And that¡¯s saying a lot, ¡®cause he already suspected the neck deep level of shit his situation spelled out after the bloody caterpillar encounter. His plan as of a few hours ago had been to build a camp of sorts. Build a very crude shelter. Get used to hunting and fending for himself. Build a better shelter. Make better weapons, maybe even level a bit. And then after all that, with a proper base of operations, start mapping his surroundings and hopefully find civilisation. As of a few minutes ago, those plans went to shit. If the ¡®forest¡¯ was filled with abominations like this then he was good and truly fucked! Why the heck couldn¡¯t he have been dropped in a fucking starter town or a < level 10 zone or something. Why could he not start in a town, period? What the fuck was with the game balancing in this bloody world?! Armin decided to take a moment to just calm down, the more he pursued this line of thought, the more pissed off he got. Having your average life expectancy cut down by like a fucking 100x over the course of the last 24 hours would do that to you. Come to think of it, had it really been 24 hours since he got here? It felt shorter than that. Actually, one would expect the constant life and death struggle to make time feel more dragged out, yet he was having thoughts along the exact opposite direction. Now that he thought about it, when he had regained his sight this morning, the sun had already started rising. He had lost his vision shortly before the sun had started to set, or at least that¡¯s what it had felt like. Since the blind status had been stipulated to go on for only five hours, that meant the day/night cycle of this world must be pretty short. God, that was really going to fuck him over, like jet lag on steroids.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Regardless, the main problem at hand was that he didn¡¯t expect to have any chance of surviving any real amount of time out here in the wilderness with things like that jaguar running around. He would have to completely scrap his original plan. But what would he do exactly then. The only thing he could think of was that he needed to make finding civilisation a top priority. An unwelcome errand thought suddenly wormed its way into his head: What if there is no civilisation. No. Can¡¯t think like that. If that was the case then he would just end up dead, that¡¯s all there is to it, no point in even worrying over it. Besides, he had not ever heard of an isekai where such a thing was the case, save for stories that were only vaguely borderline isekai. So. Plan of action. He had some basic tools/weapons. He needed to travel and survive on the go, until he could find civilisation. He did not yet know how he would manage sleep, that was a problem for later. But more than anything else he needed to get the fuck out of that jaguars territory. After a deep breath, Armin had managed to firm up his resolve. Standing up, he picked up his tools and looked around. The best bet for finding civilisation, sans any other indicator, was likely to follow the river downstream. Rivers were a valuable resource normally and if it led to an ocean, well there is normally such a thing as a port city. So Armin started following down the river. He of course would keep an eye out for any suitable hills or possibly even small mountains that he could climb for a good scouting advantage. Unfortunately he did not see any such location as of yet, but he could hope. He also needed to review those character traits again, he now had 5 points to spend on them and needed to spend them well. Although he had definitely been leaning in the direction of constitution, for the sake of his immediate survival.
Armin got up and stretched his legs. It had been a relatively peaceful 24 hours. At least compared to all that he had been through the first day. On that note, it had actually been a lot less time than that, he just still couldn¡¯t wrap his head around a shorter day night cycle. He had managed to catch four fish at an area of the river that was slow moving and pooled up thanks to a bend and some kind rocks, earning himself another level up. For the first time he had eaten his fill and was feeling quite satisfied. Heck, his Essence was even up to 91 and now he had 10 points to spend. The only thing he was lacking in was sleep. Still needed to do something about that. If he fell asleep, he couldn¡¯t keep up his body warming technique and this would eventually cause him to wake up again from the cold. So it had been pretty touch and go in the dreamland department. The other problem he also faced, turned out to be water. He unfortunately discovered that the water is indeed harmful, just not that harmful. He had gotten used to the flavour and during his marvelous lunch, drank a bit too much in one go, the result of which had turned out to be a mild poisoning status effect. In the end it had taken off two thirds of his health pool before finally petering out. A good thing his health had been full at the start of it, or it probably would have killed him. Just another thing to add to his ever growing todo list, figure out how to deal with poison. Armin sighed. Survival was a pain in the ass. A noise just ahead of him, suddenly caught Armin¡¯s attention. Looking up, he was greeted with the most unusual of sights. A creature stood there before him, about ten meters away, looking something like a cross between a monkey, a boar and a- geodude? It had a roundish body that looked kind of leatherish, and its head, if it even had one, seemed to be a part of its body, or so far sunken into it that they were indistinguishable. It had two arms, or was it legs- maybe a bit of both that it used for walking, that reached a decent way past the bottom of its body, to the ground. The confusion came from the fact that they were the only two limbs the creature possessed and looked more like a monkey¡¯s arms and hands. Lastly, it had two distinctly boar-like tusks coming out the front of its ¡®face?¡¯ Identifying it yielded: Moonka - level 2 Below his level, and he didn¡¯t even have much of one to begin with. This creature only took him by his chest in height and did not look particularly strong or fast to begin with. Also having only two limbs should be a huge disadvantage. Lastly its skin looked akin to leather. You could make clothes out of leather, right? Pure speculation for sure, but this all seemed like a rather golden opportunity. He should at least try. Armin was definitely more on the pacifist side of things. In fact, he could not remember a single time in his life he had instigated an actual fight. It was simply shocking how circumstances could change a person in such a short amount of time. Armin slowly approached the Moonka, his spear held at the ready in a throwing ready grip and position, should the creature try to suddenly run. He was also ready to switch his grip around, should the creature suddenly charge him instead. The Moonka simply stood motionless, eyeing Armin warily, either sensing his bloodlust or just being a cautious creature in general. Armin could not tell which. Armin had only taken a few small steps towards the Moonka, when it finally reacted. However, it had elected to neither run away, nor charge him. This was the one scenario Armin had not considered. The Moonka deftly clutched some dirt in one of its hands it was still standing on and with a swift motion swung the arm over backwards. It was an almost comical sight, as it meant the creature was now balancing its full body on only one arm. But this is not what surprised Armin the most, rather it was the fact that the Mooka¡¯s arm spun backwards, over the top and down in front of him, a complete 360 degrees, like it was on some kind of a pivot rather the being connected muscle and bone. The result of course was an arm and a throw that would be the envy of every pitcher out there, not to mention the trouble Armin was suddenly finding himself in. The lump of dirt was off course slightly, so despite the fact that it travelled at a disturbing speed it only grazed Armin¡¯s shoulder. This however was still enough to jerk his whole body to the left. The dirt felt more like a solid rock than a clump of dirt, not to mention that it did not break up mid flight, despite the force. The Moonka must be compressing it somehow. The how was irrelevant. The problem at hand was that the Moonka was engaging him in a ranged battle, which Armin was poorly equipped for. The Moonka readied and fired off another salvo, Armin had already instinctively retreated a bit and was able to ascertain the path of the projectile just in time to jerk his head to the side and out of the way. That would have been a direct hit. He was confident the force this thing was putting out, would be enough to do some serious damage if it hits him wrong, not to even mention what it might do to him if the Moonka landed a head shot. Armin responded in the only way he could in such a situation. Before the Moonka could get his next shot off, Armin pulled back, lined up his spear and threw it. It sailed through the air nicely and embedded itself firmly in one of the Moonka¡¯s legs. Armin would proudly claim leet status at this point if it were not for the fact that he¡¯d been aiming for its head. Still a hit was a hit. Unfortunately for Armin, despite the fact that the Moonka was wailing in pain, it was not about to lay down and die quite so easily. The Moonka, despite looking a bit unsteady, balancing on a leg with a spear embedded in it, still managed to fire off another shot. One that did not seem to be diminished in power in anyway whatsoever. Armin desperately dodged out of the way and pulled up behind a tree for cover. ¡°Ah come on!¡± He could not help but cry out audibly in frustration. The situation quickly turned into a stalemate. The Moonka could not really run off with only one good limb and Armin was pinned firmly behind his tree as the Moonka fired off shot after shot, trying to suppress him. Armin of course had already realised that this fight was as good as won though. As long as that spear was embedded in its leg, it would eventually succumb to its bleed status. All Armin had to do was stay behind this tree and not get taken out by one of those crazy volleys. If only things were ever that simple. The pairs standoff was suddenly interrupted by a sound. Armin couldn¡¯t tell which direction it was coming from, but it had the unmistakable drone that you would get from a large swarm of bees, or similar flying insect. He had a really, really bad feeling about this. Even the Moonka, had stopped slinging projectiles at him and was now also looking around frantically, trying to figure out where it was coming from. Armin¡¯s heart sank even further when he realised that the Moonka was panicking in a way that suggested it knew all too well what was coming. Armin for now, just kept dead still, clutching his tree, hoping that whatever it was either passed, or simply did not notice him. Be one with the fucking tree basically. And then he saw it. What should have been a swarm of insects, came from over a couple of nearby tree tops and quickly descended on the poor Moonka. They however looked more like a swarm of purple glowing balls, not that he could tell from this distance and their insect like size. The ¡®insects¡¯ left tiny trails of blue light behind them as they moved and did not appear to have wings, or anything else really that would allow them to fly. So who knew where the bloody droning like sound was coming from exactly. Strangely it did not bother Armin too much, this world had already beat his common sense into submission a few times after all. Armin remained dead still, as he watched the swarm circling all around the Moonka, while it desperately thrashed about, trying to get away or just chase them off. Strangely enough, it did not look like they were doing anything to the Moonka, or at least not that he could see. Armin had of course spoken too soon. The Moonka suddenly collapsed to the ground apparently very dead. Fuck. He still had no idea what they had done to it, the creature was not injured in any visible way, save for the spear still sticking out its leg. Maybe it had succumbed to the bleed status? Desperate or not, Armin of course knew that was truly wishful thinking. He also realised that this question was about to be answered for him, mostly in a way he decidedly did not care for. His ploy to remain hidden had clearly failed. The insects apparently done with the Moonka had made an about turn and were headed straight for Armin now. Armin of course ran. He ran his ass off. But the creatures were far too nimble and easily caught up to him. Armin thought he was going to die of a heart attack when he realised they had surrounded him, despite him still pumping his arms and legs at max speed. Except, nothing seemed to be happening. At least not at first. After a while of being chased like this, he started to feel like his body was hurting all over. Like that really deep kind of bruised pain, except on the inside. Checking his status while he ran, he realised that his stamina was not the only thing busy draining! Both his health and mana were being drained even faster. In fact his health had already dropped to just under 30! He was going to die, and soon! Armin made a split second decision and twisted left, diving into the river. Whatever these things were, they seemed to be using some kind of magical ¡®drain¡¯ ability, that drained both health and mana. He had no other explanation for it. Armin did not open his eyes underwater, not wanting a repeat of what happened last time. He of course only felt safe enough to avoid doing so, because he noticed that as soon as he had jumped in the water, the draining had immediately stopped. The river wasn¡¯t all that fast here, so he couldn¡¯t be sure if it was safe to resurface or not. He doubted he had moved far, so that left, the insects buggering off on their own as the only real option. Armin still could not risk his vision in such a situation, so instead of opening his eyes, he activated his mana sense, to see if he could get a handle on the situation. Much too his displeasure, it worked. He could see the creatures by their mana, just fine. They were directly above him, steadily tracking his position. They may not be able to go into the water or even hurt him while he was under, but they knew he had to come up for air sooner or later. This clearly was not their first rodeo and they would not be leaving any time soon. CH004 - A bad high? Armin had tried swimming, using his mana sense to only just barely avoid various rocks and the river bed itself, enjoying a number of rather harsh cuts, scrapes and bruises for his efforts. The insects were still following him, tracking him from above water. He had identified one or two of them, Spectral leech - level 13. The others he identified were about in the same range. Armin was starting to panic, he was running out of air at an alarming rate, he could feel his body screaming for oxygen, his head now pounding in a dull kind of pain. He knew he could not keep this up any longer, or he would seriously risk passing out, which would be the same as drowning. He made a decision. Armin blew all the air out of his lungs, or at this point, all the carbon dioxide, and quickly stuck his head out above the surface of the water. His health of course started draining immediately. But Armin did not need long, he breathed in the deepest breath of fresh air he could manage, as quickly as he could manage, and once more submerged himself. That one breath of air had cost him several health points, now putting him at 19. He probably only had about two breaths left, before he would inevitably kick the bucket. At this point, Armin was of course really, really freaking out. What was he going to do? Either he would die drowning, or get leeched to death. He could not escape these things, they seemed hell bent on following him. The only option that leaves then, is what? To kill them? Or perhaps chase them off. Yes. This was his most practical option, that is, to chase them off. Of course no physical way would make that possible with creatures like these, even that Moonka was completely helpless against them after all. No. He would have to find a more magical solution to escaping this particular predicament. Armin had only the most minimal grasp of magic at present and the only thing even remotely resembling an attack spell would likely be his ¡®fire¡¯ ¡®spell¡¯. He was hesitant to call it that, since it was neither a spell in any traditional sense, nor was it even really fire most of the time. Regardless, Armin knew this was all he could attempt. He needed to create fire, or at the very least heat, above the water¡¯s surface. The first thing he tried was to heat the ambient mana in the air, above the water, burning his own mana to fuel the change. It was difficult, nay, close to impossible. Even just a half a meter of distance like this was proving too much of an obstacle for him to overcome. Armin tried harder, but no matter how much effort he put into it, he could barely manage anything more than just raising the temperature of the air by several degrees, apparently not enough to even bother the little buggers. Armin could feel his air tightening once more, he didn¡¯t have long before his next breath was required. He needed to do something else. While it was true the distance played a factor in his control over mana, he was also quite reasonably sure that his own mana was much easier to control. With this in mind he tried to push his own mana out instead. He watched as the mana exited his body. He waited until the mana had been guided out of the water and above it, before he started to heat it, there was no point in boiling the water he was swimming in after all. Much to his delight, he realised that it seemed to be working! The air was heating up significantly enough that the bugs were being affected by it. Just not enough. It was clear from the change in their movement, almost more frenzied, and the fact that they had backed off, even if just a little. But this result was not good enough. If he hoped to survive this, he needed to kill them or completely drive them away. Armin was out of time, forced to resurface for another breath of air. He performed the maneuver as quickly as he could manage and was back under water again with a fresh lungfull of oxygen and 12 remaining health. One spare breath. He needed to do something. He needed a drastic change. He just didn¡¯t have the power or control over mana to get out of this situation. Armin then remembered that he had accumulated ten skill points already, and they had yet to be spent. While it was true that he had designs on upping his [Constitution] to increase his general survivability in the wilderness, none of that would matter much if he died in the next couple of minutes. So Armin, without a moment''s hesitation, sunk all ten points into the only stat he thought could possibly make a difference right this moment. [Will]. Now raised to 21, basically double what it was before. He tried once more, streaming out mana to above the water¡¯s surface and then heating it as hard and fast as he could manage. The difference was staggering! The mana that he could only previously heat at this distance, soared in temperature causing the very air around it to ignite, albeit not in a particularly large area of effect, but it was something. Some of the bugs immediately zigged and zagged to get away from the literal fire magic. So Armin, still running out of breath and time, redoubled his efforts. He tried to fan his mana outwards to cover a wider area, as well as push it further out, not attempting to ignite it until he had mana covering a large area. He then tried to ignite it all at once, but failed spectacularly. He still couldn¡¯t cover such distances with his control and also trying to control this much at once totally screwed with the effectiveness of his control. Armin quickly scrapped that idea, and instead focused on bundling his mana just above the water¡¯s surface, trying to keep it in a compressed area. Basically, since he did not have enough control to essentially ¡®propel¡¯ his mana, a.k.a the classic fireball spell, he would try instead to assist said propulsion with some good old fashioned pressure. Once he felt he had enough of his own mana accumulated in one tight spot, he, while still holding the ball of mana in place, tried to ignite it. It was difficult to say the least, but he had kept the ball as close to himself as he could manage and eventually succeeded. As soon as the first bits of mana reached ignition point, it caused something not dissimilar from a chain reaction, that while not strictly igniting the rest of the mana on its own, was somehow egging on his own efforts to do so, all in an instant. The result was of course none other than an explosion of heat and fire. And much to Armin¡¯s pleasant surprise, enough to take down several of the creatures, or at least he assumed so, based on the fact that, to his mana sense, the condensed mana he was using to identify the creatures seemed to disperse into their surroundings. Of course, the notification that he got about another level up, was certainly backing up this notion. Armin was running out of breath again, he did not hesitate for a second and once more sunk his five new points into [Will]. His control once more leapt forward bounds. He was able to pour considerably more mana into the ¡®mana bomb¡¯ before he felt his control slipping. Once more he focused on igniting it and this time the blast radius and force, were considerably more. A large number of Spectral leeches died, enough to give yet another level up. Armin was once more out of breath and had to resurface for more oxygen yet again. He once more did so as fast as he could manage. He was pleasantly surprised to find that this time his health hand only dropped by 3, down to 9. Only half the damage. He had raised [Will], not [Spirit]. Does that mean he had managed to kill half of them already! He can do this! There had been some concerns in the last minute or two about his mana levels. Between the draining from the bugs and his now rampant expenditure of mana, he had been fast running out. Luckily pushing points into [Wil]l had actually given him some more mana to play with. Enough to make a difference, at the rate that he was going. Which was a good thing, since he really didn¡¯t just want to keep sinking points into [Will] blindly, that just seemed like a poorly balanced character after all. Added to this, was the fact that he would likely not be able to use such magical combat techniques in too many situations due to the fact that it took time to charge the ¡®bombs¡¯ and that he was actually being protected by the effects of his own spell, by the water. Armin let off another blast, killing many more. He repeated once more, killing yet more and earning himself yet another level. At this point, what few bugs were left decided that this was simply not worth it and basically just ¡®buggered off¡¯. Armin was internally jumping for joy, yet he remained in the water as long as he could still, more than a little afraid to just resurface and assume they were all gone for good. He really didn¡¯t have the health numbers to play around with, or in his case, health number, as in singular. Armin couldn¡¯t help but shudder at the thought of how close he had come to death. The thought of just how dangerous this world was, was simply bone chilling. Armin, no longer able to hold his breath, finally resurfaced. He took several long deep breaths, trying to stave off the light-headedness. His health, mana, stamina and essence, all in dire straights. Opening his eyes for the first time, he noticed that the surface of the water had what appeared to be some kind of blue glitter floating on it in places. There was considerably more of this blue glitter on the nearby river embankment and tell traces of a much finer version of it floating through the air.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. He could only surmise that it must be remnants of the dead bugs, how that worked exactly he wasn¡¯t entirely sure. On another note, the feeling of light-headedness, that he had assumed to be from oxygen deprivation, was only getting stronger. He idly wondered if breathing in whatever this stuff was, might actually be dangerous? Well, he had not received any status effects from it, so it was probably fine. Either way, he quickly swam to the river bank and got out, lest he end up unconscious or something. Drowning in a river after surviving such an event would be just incredibly sad. Clambering onto the bank, the feeling of light-headedness only continued. His vision was now becoming blurry and he felt like his surroundings were swimming all of a sudden. Nope. Definitely harmful. Another peek at his status only served to mystify him, still no status effects, all good. Well as good as it could be given his abysmal numbers. Strangely he had struggled to pull up his status, it had felt kind of weak, distant almost. He only faintly registered his mana draining on its own for no apparent reason, before the voices started. They were incoherent, chaotic and entirely illegible to his now delinquant faculties. All that was left for him now, were the voices and his now completely indecipherably blurred surroundings. The voices were getting louder and somehow clearer. Yet despite the improved clarity, they were not any less chaotic. ¡°Come on! This way!¡± Someone was calling to him. This voice was crystal clear against the backdrop of chaos. Armin followed the person the voice belonged to. He still could not make out much of his surroundings. There was mist everywhere. He was choking. No- not mist, dust. There was dust everywhere. ¡°Come on!¡± The voice, male, urged him on once more. Armin had tripped and stumbled, slowing down, hence the need for this person to impatiently egg him on once more. Armin was doing a lot of tripping actually. He was running, or at least trying to. The ground was uneven, with constant obstacles, some of which even had to be climbed over. As he progressed forward, constantly chasing the person in front of him, all the while choking on the dust riddled air, he was occasionally blinded by a beam of light peeking out from somewhere up above. His vision had cleared up considerably, yet he could still not see much, this, it seems, was owed to not only the thick dust everywhere, but also the general darkness pervading the entire area. Another beam of light hit Armin¡¯s eyes, causing him to squint in pain. Was he underground? The light rays seemed to be coming from ¡®outside¡¯. Armin tried to squint through the pain to see past the veil presented to him by the contrast between light and dark, maybe catch a glimpse of this ¡®outside¡¯ but failed utterly to do so. The light rays were simply too bright. He suddenly had the feeling that this light could not be natural light from outside. As if to rebuff his conclusion, the man in front of him suddenly pushed a boulder out of the way to reveal an exit into the ¡®outside¡¯. The boulder that crashed to the side loudly, now with fresh light from the ¡®outside¡¯ cast across it, was in fact a huge chunk of concrete. That was huge. How had that man managed to push it aside like that? These thoughts and other questions plagued Armin as he stepped outside. What he saw when he did, however, made even less sense to him. There was no sun, no stars, it was neither day nor night, yet the sky was practically ablaze with light. Armin couldn¡¯t even understand what color the light was, it was simply bright, that was all he could say about it. Looking more to terra firma direction, revealed a wasteland of rubble and concrete. Everywhere he looked, there was rubble, with only the occasional building left standing here and there. Even those that were left standing, were not exactly so. Several of the ¡®intact¡¯ buildings were missing chunks out of them. They looked like some giant had taken ¡®bites¡¯ out of them, with the missing parts more or less spherical in shape. It was actually a small miracle some of them were even holding in their current states. Had this happened to everything here? Looking further into the distance, it appeared that the mass destruction was localised to about a couple of kilometers radius. So¡­ a natural disaster? No, nothing natural about this lot. A war zone? Also didn¡¯t seem to fit very well. ¡°Look out!¡± The man grabbed Armin¡¯s arm suddenly and jerked him to the side. The reason would be the gaping ten meter across hole that suddenly appeared in the ground, the inner edge of which would have been directly under his feet. The force with which Armin was ¡®pulled¡¯ away was considerable, he found himself being tossed to the side and skidding and tumbling across the tarmac for a good several meters before he finally came to a stop. Armin recovered quickly, getting to his feet. It was too little too late however, as soon as he looked up, the underside of a car filled his vision. He did not know where that car came from, or why it was flying through the air from in front of him, like someone had tossed the thing at him. But needless to say, he did not have enough time to react. The underside of the car was the last thing he saw as it drew closer in his vision and eventually covered it. Everything went black. Armin opened his eyes. The light was once more giving him a massive headache. Only this time, it was the sun¡¯s light that was assaulting him via his optic nerves and the pain in his skull was only partly caused by this. No, he was quite confident this headache was of a more natural variety. Well, relatively speaking of course. Armin realised that he was lying on the ground. Had he been dreaming? He had just survived a fight to the death with those damn insects. This was hardly the time to be sleeping on the job. Why on earth had he been asleep? Armin tried digging a little deeper for the answer. His memory was foggy, but it was coming back to him. He had been poisoned. No, not poisoned, not according to his status anyway. Something else had happened to him. Something his status had not been able to pick up. His status! Panic struck Armin full on as he remembered something alarming had been happening to his status, even if he didn¡¯t strictly remember what that something was. Pulling up his status, Armin was even more confused by what he saw there. What? His essence and his health were both full, even though they had been in dire straights before he fell asleep and he could tell not that much time had passed, not enough anyway. Unless he had slept for a full day and night cycle. No, not possible, he would be starving if that were the case and definitely would not have a full essence to show for it. More puzzling still and not a little bit alarming, was that his mana was zero. Zero! And it was staying that way it seems. Either it was no longer charging, or something was draining it constantly, yet there were no status effects listed in his status. Try as he might, Armin could not make heads or tails out of this strange situation. He was scared. Really scared. This situation, this world, it was just all too strange. Even regular isekai knowledge was failing him here. In hindsight of course, relying on standard isekai knowledge put up against the ¡®real¡¯ world was always going to be an exercise in futility, but that did not serve to lessen the weight of everything that was suddenly hitting him like a ton of bricks. Just what had happened to him? What was that strange dream? Was it a dream? Was it a memory? More importantly, how the fuck was he going to survive this place! Armin noticed just then that his hands were shaking. And not from the cold. A good thing too, since he would not currently be able to use his self heating spell at the moment. He realised he was spiraling and needed to ¡®get up¡¯ and get his act together. Giving up or just sitting around would give him zero chance of survival. Doing something about it on the other hand, even if it only gave a one percent chance of survival, something that seemed quite likely at the moment, it was still a chance. But only if he fought for that chance. Taking a deep breath, armin got to his feet, still a little unsteady, more to whatever had happened to him than the fear though. He examined some of the blue dust, but really had no idea what he was looking at. That he didn¡¯t have any mana to use on his mana sense also didn¡¯t exactly help. At least the glittering powder wasn¡¯t in the air anymore so he didn¡¯t have to worry about breathing any more of it in. Without anything else to go on, all Armin could do for now was ignore it and move on. He walked back along the river and located his discarded spear and knife. He then made his way back down the river that he had been running along and attempted to locate the slain Moonka. Unfortunately the Moonka was nowhere to be found. Armin was certain he had the correct spot, well as certain as he could be, but there was neither hair nor hide of the thing, and he had so been hoping for the ¡®hide¡¯ part of this. Just before he was about to call it quits, however, Armin noticed a trail of blood. Something that was not easily spotted amidst the tallish purple ¡®grass¡¯. He was briefly overcome with the urge to follow it and find where his Moonka and gone. Only briefly. Sense at least dawned on him and he realised that the Moonka had been decidedly very dead before he had run away. So only two possible reasons exist for this trail of blood and lack of a fresh corpse. Either something carnivorous in nature had dragged the body off, which is not a good option for his survival. Or, it had become a zombie and walked off on its own, which was not a good option for his survival. Seeing the pattern here? Armin was. So he instead let sleeping dragons lie and rather continued his way downstream. Better luck next time. At least he had managed to level considerably from this entire debacle. Speaking of which, now that he had a moment of quiet time and that his brain capacity was not currently dedicating 99 percent of its processing power to spell crafting, survival tasks and pissing his pants with fear; he still had ten skill points to distribute. The question was now, where to put them. [Constitution] was definitely still high on his list, but he felt it might be a bit dangerous to neglect his other stats too much. He had already sunk a boatload of points into his [Will] stat, which was now totally useless on account of his zero mana situation. It did occur to him that maybe he should just pump the lot of it into [Spirit] to boost his mana regen and ¡®general resistance¡¯ enough to hopefully overcome whatever was inhibiting his mana regeneration. But this was a risky plan, that could in all likelihood result in zero gain. Armin knew that generally speaking, your first levels in a game or isekai were quick and easy to get. He, despite the amount of danger he had been in, was certainly leveling at an alarming rate. But usually as the numbers increase, these levels get much slower, so there was always a limit to how much you could ¡®effectively¡¯ level. That being said, he did not want to risk ¡®wasting¡¯ any points right now. So [Spirit] was out. He also doubted [Charisma] would be of any real help until he found civilisation, so that was also out. In the end, he sunk 4 points into [Constitution] for all round survival. 2 points into [Agility] and [Perception] each, the ability to spot and react to or run away from threats feeling pretty important to him. And finally 1 point to [Strength]. He doubted having some extra Strength to play with could do anything other than aid him, even if it wasn¡¯t his highest priority right now. The effect was immediate. His senses felt ever so sharper, like previously the world around him had a veil pulled over it and now it was lifted ever so slightly. He also felt a little more fit and a bit stronger and healthier. All in all, the differences were not major, but the jarring switch to the improved stats made it feel like a big deal. The novelty would likely wear off with future upgrades, but for now- this shit is amazing! What an experience. Riding the high of his hard won self improvement, Armin didn¡¯t even noticed that he had started gently humming a tune as he walked down stream. CH005 - Cold ambition It had been a full day cycle since Armin had faced off against those bugs and subsequently levelled. He had seriously worried that he would not be able to get any sleep in the less than ideal climate just like before, without his self-heating ability, since right up until that evening, his mana had not once budged from zero. Thankfully, as soon as night time hit, his mana started regenerating once more, albeit at a turtle''s pace, much, much slower than before. It had been just enough for him to keep his self-heating skill up in order to get some much needed rest. The whole problem of the ¡®spell¡¯ not maintaining itself and subsequently being occasionally awoken, notwithstanding. He really did need to find a way to make the ¡®spell¡¯ maintain itself, without conscious effort on his part. Regardless, he could only hope that his mana situation would continue to improve, that whatever those damn bugs had done to him, would wear off in time, certainly seemed to be the case though. Armin was also feeling a bit dehydrated. He had not risked drinking water for a while now, instead waiting for his health to finish topping off, just in case he were to get poisoned again. Although as things stood, he might just be tempted to take a sip or two before then. But first, Armin found that he had to activate his self heating spell once more. For some reason, as he travelled along the riverside the temperature seemed to have been dropping for a while now, despite it being the middle of the day. While it was true that the weather in this place had always erred on the colder side of things, to the point of being uncomfortable, something that he had gotten used to, it was now such that he was definitely getting too cold. Something had changed. It was not any noticeable weather change either. The sky was still clear and sunny. It had been, ever since he arrived here, another thing that he was curious about, was the weather always like this? He soon got his answer. Not to the weather that is, but the unspoken question about the precipitous drop in temperature he had been feeling. In front of him now was a crater spanning about thirty meters across. The fact that there was suddenly this thirty meter crater wasn¡¯t even a big deal to him anymore, god knows, he¡¯d seen stranger. No, the real thing that stood out to him was the fact that this crater was undeniably the cause of the temperature drop in the surroundings. The crater itself, was a literal frozen wasteland. It was covered in a thick layer of ice and spiked icicles, all throughout and even extending out the rim of the crater in a jagged pattern for a good couple of meters, like the ice was alive somehow and trying to literally claw its way out of the giant whole in the ground. Armin tried to get closer for a better look, but even approaching the rim, he quickly stopped, almost gasping at how sharply the temperature dropped the closer he got. You¡¯d swear the crater itself was filled with liquid nitrogen or something, it was nuts. He instead turned on his mana sense, and nearly gasped once more at the sight. He was almost completely blind with his mana sense turned on, the overwhelming abundance of mana in the area completely drowning out his senses. It certainly answered the question about why the ice hand not melted and how the cold was being maintained in such a localised form. Put simply, it¡¯s magic. Crazy unbelievably powerful magic, but magic nonetheless. Armin could only but help marvel at the spectacle of it. What could have caused magic this powerful, or was it simply a naturally occurring phenomenon? He couldn¡¯t help but feel seriously intimidated either way, not quite sure which would be worse for him, a living breathing creature capable of wielding this against him at will, or an equally merciless and uncaring natural disaster. Armin was about to give it a pass altogether and simply go around, figuring there was little to be gained here and plenty of body temperature to be lost. But a thought suddenly occurred to him. This was magic. Different from pretty much the only magic he knew how to use, that being fire. This was ¡®cold¡¯ magic. It had never even occurred to him how ¡®cold¡¯ magic would work. And even thinking about it, he had absolutely no idea how to accomplish such a thing with mana. Heating things he did by basically vibrating mana in place, he assumed caused the mana to heat up, but with further introspection was likely heating up molecules around it to the point of combustion. It is likely possible that the friction between the mana and the molecules around it was causing the heat rather than the mana itself. But this was of course complete speculation. He did know that vibrating molecules caused heat. That much he was certain of. He also knew that the lack of vibration in molecules caused cold. What was cold to a human was simply a lesser shade of hot to the universe, with absolute zero being around -273 degrees celcius. Hence the kelvin temperature measurement which was far more ¡®scientifically¡¯ useful, which put absolute zero at precisely zero degrees kelvin. And everything above that was some form of plus kelvin number. But even with that understanding, he did not know how to do ¡®cold magic¡¯. Moving mana around to vibrate molecules and heat them was one thing, but how would you slow the movement of molecules using mana? This was something he could not understand. Hence the idea to try and examine this ¡®cold magic¡¯ to make sense of it. Of course this was proving to be considerably difficult given the abundance of mana to the point that it was practically ¡®blinding¡¯ him. Armin tried examining the absolute outskirts of the ice on the rim of the crater. This was proving to be far more practical. While it was still crazy levels of intense magic, it was at least doable. At first he did not notice anything. He noticed a lot of mana of course, but it didn¡¯t seem to be doing anything. Inspecting a little more carefully yielded similar results. The mana was just there, unmoving. It was the level of ¡®unmovingness¡¯ that ended up standing out to him as different. He had never seen mana this ¡®still¡¯ before. But it was more than that, the mana wasn¡¯t so much still as it was ¡®frozen in place¡¯. Every bit of mana that he had seen up until now, had always been mobile in some fashion or another. Free flowing if you will. For this mana, it seemed not to be the case. While this was a new and novel concept in and of itself, one that would certainly merit a lot of exploration on his part, in its own right. There was something more to this. While initially it seemed that the mana was frozen in place, or simply not moving, this was not entirely true. After having watched for some time, he had found that the mana was moving ever so slightly, albeit in ¡®chunks¡¯. There were entire formations of mana that seemed to be connected together and ¡®moving¡¯ as one. This was yet another novel concept for him to explore if he ever got his bloody mana back. It unfortunately did not explain yet how cold magic worked. Armin tried to find another more isolated patch of cold magic to examine. When he finally did, something stood out to him. It wasn¡¯t so much that there were chunks of mana that were mana connected together in completely non uniform formations following no discernable governing rule, in a ridiculous level of abundance that overwhelmed his mana sense, but rather that the mana formations present were giving off some kind of aura, or field. This field did not seem to extend outside of any given clump of mana and only seemed to form within. It was just difficult to have discerned it thus far due to the large amount of mana formations in the area. This was yet another concept that instilled wonder in Armin, the fact that the mana itself could generate a sort of field. He idly wondered if perhaps this ¡®field¡¯ was what was causing the molecules in the area to ¡®slow down¡¯ and become cold. Amin continued to study the scene for quite some time. But eventually had to give up. No further revelations were making themselves known and he simply did not have the mana reserves to play around with any of this, or try to recreate it. Armin decided it was time to leave, he had been fiercely burning through what little mana reserves he had to stay warm in proximity to the crater and in spite of that had still been freezing his ass off. The rustling of some grass suddenly caught his attention. Armin had nothing but bad memories and currently really bad feelings of such interruptions. He froze in place trying to make himself small in the face of this new and unknown threat. His back to the gaping crater of frozen death behind him, only helped to cement the feeling of suddenly being trapped. Out of the tallish purple grass, a lone brown creature strolled. It was shaped more or less like a pig or a boar in both shape and size. It even had snow white tusks, albeit four of them and they almost seemed to be glowing. The fact that the creature had six legs only added to its unnerving presence. Armin quickly identified it as a level three ¡®Meezog¡¯. Theoretically well within his range of what he should be able to handle. Wait scratch that, it was stupid to think purely in terms of RPG like levels and guidance said level are in theory supposed to provide players for benefit of threat assessment. Still Armin felt confident. That was only up until two more Meezog¡¯s around the same level came strolling out of the grass and joined their companion. Shit. Somehow a stare down commenced. On the one side Armin, spear clutched tightly in hand and dagger in his left. On the other, three unreadable expressionless faces illuminated ever so faintly by a total of twelve brilliant white tusks. ¡°I don¡¯t suppose you guys are herbivores?¡± No response. Expected, but the real issue here was had he really just talked to a pack of wild animals? Jesus. What solitude can do to you. As if to offer some kind of response to his question, the ¡®leading¡¯ Meezog suddenly charged him. It was strange that only it did and not the others, they had initially seemed like pack animals to Armin. Perhaps it was that they were simply underestimating him. He really hoped that to be the case, ¡®cause if they weren¡¯t, well that would be bad. Armin briefly considered running, but his position was less than ideal for such a thing. He felt he was better off facing the lone charging creature than turning his back on it. Armin waited for the right moment as the creature approached him and just as it was in range, he thrust his spear forward with all his might, trying to make the motion as smooth and fast as possible. The adrenaline was kicking into overdrive and both heat and the sound of his heart pumping were filling his ears. The spear struck true, or at least its path did. The Meezog however had been quite a bit more nimble than Armin had anticipated and sprang to its left to avoid the incoming weapon. Given the speed it had been barreling forward with and its rather rotund body, made this a somewhat awkward maneuver.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. The result was an off kilter boar-like creature and a lot of dirt being kicked up by what appeared to be hooves. The only reason the creature had even stayed upright during its ¡®sidestep¡¯ was likely due to the fact that it had six legs to add to its stabilisation. While the Meezog had indeed managed to stay upright and Armin barely managing to do so himself, given his missed thrust, the meezog however, could do little about his now only mildly adjusted momentum that left him barrelling towards the ice crater behind Armin. Armin was perfectly happy to let this series of events play out while he regained his balance. The Meezog ended up flying over the rim of the crater, not able to slow down in time and was flung right over the edge. Armin watched with a mixture of wonder and horror as the powerful magic froze the creature over instantly like something that had been dunked in fucking liquid nitrogen or something. That was nuts. He was seriously glad he had not tried to tempt fate and get any closer to that thing than he had. Armin idly wondered if there was such a thing as a creature in this place that wasn¡¯t hostile. Serves it right. Armin thoroughly satisfied that the Meezog was now dead, both visually confirmed and by the notification he had just received, then turned back to face the other two that were still waiting there patiently. He could not help a smug look creeping onto his face when facing off with them waiting to see what they will do next. And it indeed took a while for them to make up their minds. This was owed in part to the fact that it seemed they had been waiting for one more friend to arrive, something that had now only come to pass. Armin¡¯s smug smile disappeared rather suddenly. Numbers back up to three, Armin seriously hoped there wasn¡¯t anymore of these things lurking about, waiting for the right time to pop out and ruin his day any further than it had already been. The staring contest only lasted a short while this time. All three Meezog¡¯s charged forward this time, seemingly no longer underestimating him. Armin braced himself wearily for the impending battle, tension filling his body. As scared as he was, there was also something else filling him. He did not quite understand what though. If he didn¡¯t know any better, he might have been tempted to label it excitement, but somehow he expected that wasn¡¯t entirely correct. Meezog ¡®A¡¯, leading the pack, was the first to enter his striking range. Armin wasted no time executing the expected spear thrust, he was quite surprised by how good he was at this, each thrust so far having been decently on target, despite the power he was trying to put behind it and never having done such a thing before. He could only assume it had something to do with this world, having come here, or having stats in the first place. Well he had upped his [Dexterity] and [Perception] a bit? Meezog A lunged to his right to try and avoid the spear thrust. It was not as awkward as the first Meezog had been and found its footing on its altered course a lot more easily, this one with no real risk of overshooting and heading for the crater. Meezog A¡¯s charge had seemed less frantic that the first one. Either it was more wary of Armin, or it had learned from the first ones mistake? The latter was a rather scary thought. Meezog A¡¯s suddenly altered course had put it right in Meezog B¡¯s path and caused the two to collide, leaving Meezog B scrambling off in a different direction, not towards the crater, but still a little dazed and ever so momentarily out of the fray. That left Meezog C bearing down on Armin while he desperately tried to recover from his missed attack. He would have to work on his ¡®footing¡¯ or something in future (assuming he survives this encounter), since he was once more off balance and trying to fight both gravity and his own momentum. With Meezog C almost on top of him now, (it had trailed a little behind the other two), he had little choice but to give up righting himself and instead try to divert out of the way of those rather sharp incoming tusks. Armin pushed off to the side to try and avoid it. The push was clearly not enough and the Meezog had already angled its head to get in a passing jab. Armin did however bring the spear end around, as much as he could manage to try and keep it at bay. This seemed to work partially as the Meezog didn¡¯t lean into the attack as it passed by, nearly as much as Armin thought it could have. The result was a nasty gash across his left leg from one of the tusks, but nothing more serious than that. Armin hissed in pain and then did a kind of ¡®roll¡¯ thing to get back into a ¡®ready¡¯ position. The roll would have been considered really cool if he were still ten, but as it stood, he was older, and it was embarrassing. Not that Armin cared much at the moment, he was simply trying to focus on the fight. Meezog A had already come around for another charge. Armin was still on his knees and did not have the time to get back into position, so he instead braced himself for the charge as best he could and used his spear as a sort of makeshift shield. The Meezog impacted hard and completely tossed Armin to the side from the force as it passed, but the spear had done its job, temporarily lodging itself between each of the Meezog¡¯s two sets of tusks during impact and thus preventing those things from being lodged inside Armin instead. Having stopped most of Meezog A¡¯s momentum Armin had not a moment to spare and had barely gotten to his knees again, his bones still rattingling from the shock as the Meezog turned towards him. Armin struck out with a desperate swing of his spear in a lateral direction, in an attempt to fend off the now close range Meezog A. This was met with partial success, as the spear did strike the Meezog firmly in the head, but since Armin¡¯s spear was never meant for striking, rather jabbing, it did little but give the Meezog a nasty bump on the head. Armin had hoped to use the opportunity to get to his feet, being on his knees in front of these things was extremely unnerving after all, but alas, Meezog B had other plans for him. Having recovered from getting side tracked by Meezog A, it was now charging at Armin once more. Armin did not have any time to spare as he had only now noticed Meezog B bearing down on him, far too late in the game to try to avoid it. Something to work on perhaps, battle awareness? Once more if he survived this that is. Armin did his best to thrust his spear into the incoming Meezogs path, from his kneeling position. Surprisingly, the unexpected and poorly planned attack caught the Meezog by surprise and it was unable to properly dodge out of the way. It veered to the side, out of Armin¡¯s path, with a nasty gash across its left side for its trouble. It unfortunately did not veer enough and struck Armin harshly in passing. At least it wasn¡¯t the tusks this time. But still, the dull impact from a beast of that weight sent Armin sprawling to the ground and grunting in pain. Somehow Armin had managed to retain his grip on his spear, he had no idea how, but this was a good thing, as Meezog A was basically hovering directly above his head at this point. There was the briefest comical moment where the two just stared at each other. Armin looking up lying flat on his back on the ground, and Meezog A, looking straight down into Armin¡¯s eyes, from behind; its teeth dangerously close to Armin¡¯s face. Armin reacted just in the nick of time after the brief moment of confusion, raising his spear up as Meezog A took a snap at his face, instead biting into the flat of the spear that Armin had inserted into its path in an attempt to use it as a makeshift shield against exactly that. Instead of letting go and trying again however, Meezog A simply bit down harder and started thrashing about like some kind of dog with a chew toy. It was taking all of Armin¡¯s strength, holding onto the spear with both hands, to keep a grip on it. Armin suddenly noticed that Meezog B had crept up on his left foot and was about to take a bite out of it. While still fighting with the spear, he quickly pulled the foot away just as Meezog B snapped at where it had been just a moment earlier. As the Meezog looked up to see where its meal had suddenly been retracted too, it received a full force kick to the face from said meal, forcing it to take a step back and look ever so mildly dazed. Meezog A had stopped thrashing and by now was simply applying as much force as it could, bearing down on Armin and his spear, inching its teeth ever closer to Armin¡¯s face. He was in turn having trouble holding the beast back the lower his leverage got. With Armin spotting out the corner of his eye that Meezog B had recovered and with no idea what the status of Meezog C was, he knew his situation was dire. He made a snap decision. Armin let go of the right side of the spear, while jerking his head to the left. The Meezog and the spear came crashing down. The right side of the spear hit the ground and stopped there, while the left was still being held up by Armin causing the spear to be slanted. With armin having pulled his head to the left, it was just enough to lean under the slope, with Meezog A¡¯s teeth only grazing his face as the spear was buckling under the weight and length a bit. Armin used his free hand to reach for his ¡®knife¡¯. The knife had been dropped upon the first attack that had sent him to the ground. Armin had not bothered to retrieve it at the time since it was easier to wield the spear with two hands at times and he had also been a little preoccupied with not dying. Armin grabbed the knife and jammed it into Meezog A¡¯s throat, resulting in a squeal similar to that of a pigs but not as high pitched. Meezog A disengaged and started running around and thrashing wildly and randomly. Armin quickly got to his feet, not wasting the opportunity. He could now see Meezog C charging him. These things really like charging you with their tusks it seems. Armin simply stepped around Meezog B who was not reacting, simply eyeing him warily after Meezog A¡¯s injury. Armin took advantage of this to position Meezog B between himself and the charging Meezog C. Meezog C was forced to break off the charge and instead started trotting to the side, essentially attempting to circle around and flank Armin. Given their new found caution, Armin decided to try and capitalize and see how these things dealt with being on the defensive. Once Meezog C was about to complete its flanking, that is, leave Armin¡¯s field of view, Armin spun around and shot off in its direction. Armin was the one charging this time. The plan had worked. Both Meezog¡¯s had been taken by surprise by this change of pace, Meezog B simply left standing there for a moment, while Meezog C tried to scramble to get out of the way and failing spectacularly to do so. The sudden shift from being the hunter circling its prey to being the hunted had left it unable to react properly and it had stumbled over its own feet in its desperate scramble to get out of the way. This had given Armin just the moment he needed to drive his spear into Meezog C¡¯s side, eliciting another squeal of pain. Suddenly these lowly beasts did not seem nearly as terrifying as they did mere moments ago. Armin did not stop, he kept pushing on the spear, driving it deeper until even Meezog C¡¯s feet were left scrambling and scuffing against the ground from the force. Armin heard a charge from behind him, apparently Meezog B had realized things were going bad for them and this was no time to be cowering. Armin didn¡¯t care. He kept driving into it, pushing along the ground, the spear embedded ever deeper into the squealing, panicking creature. Armin pushed with all his might, a battle cry of effort began gurgling out the bottom of his throat. He roared at the offending monster in front of him. As the two of them approached the rim of the ice crater, Meezog B finally managed to break free of the spear, but it was too little too late. Now standing on the rim of the crater, the temperature easily below zero, Armin did not give it a chance to escape. He stepped in, planting his left leg into the ground, and bringing his right to bear with all the leg strength he could manage. The resultant kick sent the Meezog flying over the edge. He was tempted to yell ¡®this is sparta¡¯. Meezog B, moments away from death and no longer a concern, Armin turned to the incoming Meezog C. It¡¯s charge was a bit on the slow side, likely due to the proximity to the crater behind Armin. This gave him the freedom to swing the spear laterally in an attempt to strike the Meezog instead of impaling it. Armin was confident that such a motion would be difficult to avoid, unlike his no doubt amateurish spear thrusts. It worked. The Meezog had been entirely unable to avoid the strike despite attempting to do so. Such a blow was small fries of course, but enough to force the Meezog off course and allow Armin to evade the charge successfully this time. He wasted no time and took advantage of the Meezogs temporary redirect and daze, a split second was all he needed. Armin launched himself through the air, straight at the Meezog, not even having bothered to regain his balance first. He drove his dagger into the Meezog, having aimed for its neck like the first, now very dead Meezog A, but instead found purchase just above a shoulder blade. It mattered little. His enemy was squealing in pain and would soon be on his way to death¡¯s door. Armin being half on the Meezog and half on the ground from his lunge, would not be able to avoid the Meezog turning its head towards him despite the blade sticking out of the creature, no doubt intent on trying to take a bite out of him. So Armin leaned away from the teeth as much as he could while not letting go of the blade. He reached under the Meezog with his free hand and grabbed a leg. Pulling on the leg and pushing off the ground with his feet suddenly and forcefully, he used his shoulder to push the Meezog over. The creature had been once more taken by surprise and despite having five other legs to counter with, still fell over to the side, effectively negating its attempt to bite Armin. Armin ripped out his dagger and drove it into the Meezog¡¯s body once more. The creature thrashed and squealed, but Armin had already mounted it. Stabbing again and again, sprays of blood adorning his body like some macabre tribal markings. Until the Meezog finally stopped moving. Armin simply sat there for a while, atop his corpsen throne. He stared down coldly at the creature below him, while he caught his breath and waited for the adrenalin to leave his body. So this was the thrill of the kill? He idly wondered while blood dripped from his now coated hand. CH006 - The naked king Armin wiped the sweat off his forehead, leaving a fresh trail of blood in its wake. He was hot and tired and his hands, nay his shoulder, back, and everything else: hurt. His hands were covered in blisters at this point. Turns out skinning animals is a fuck ton of work. Armin laughed mockingly at the fact that he was sweating his ass off despite not being all that far from the ice crater. Upon resting up a bit, Armin had dragged the two dead Meezogs away from the ice crater a bit, just to try and avoid freezing to death while he dealt with what''s to come, skinning them. He was adamant that their hide was something akin to leather or something that would serve as a suitable alternative at the very least. He had only the vaguest idea of what he was doing here, having perhaps played one too many survival games, especially one or two that were quite ¡®literal¡¯ and actually forced the player into the steps of making leather. Well he at least hoped so, since they were games, it was likely to be some approximation of the process, he just hoped it would be ¡®approximately¡¯ close enough to real life, to work. Armin once more could not help but chuckle inwardly at the fact that he was worrying about if his gaming techniques were realistic enough to work in a game-like world. So he had dragged the Meezogs downstream a bit before setting to work on them. Armin had carefully tried to cut their hides off with his ¡®knife¡¯, a job equal parts gruesome and difficult. All he could smell at the time was blood. Different to a humans though, not nearly as ¡®iron¡¯ smelling. He had performed rather well for his first and second time respectively skinning animals. Were they animals? Perhaps monsters or creatures? A quandary for another time. Armin was quite proud of his efforts, although given just how long it had taken him and how slowly he had gone at it, just to make sure he didn¡¯t fuck it up, he kindof thought that a particular saying involving monkeys and typewriters might very well apply here. The only time he had fucked up was when he cut into the underside of the second Meezog, starting out, he had stuck his blade in too deep and too close to the groin. The unbearable smell of shit and rot that escaped from the resultant disemboweling had been so bad it had even made him vomit. Twice. The job had been a gruesome one, that he was thankful for the nearby river to aid in cleaning off his blade his hands and his sanity. Not so grateful for the intensely cold water making his hands go numb and hurt from the cold. Unfortunately not far away from the crater enough it had seemed. Armin had moved on to step two, a step that had proved even more tiring and even more difficult. Cleaning the hides off. That is, scraping all the shit off the hides. This step had been challenging to say the least. It involved normally bracing the hide against a flat surface, underside up and scraping with a blunt edge, all the muck off of it. The problem is that Armin did not have any large, hard, flat surfaces to work from. He had settled for the flattest rock he could find and then expended every little but of mana he had (which was not that much) to try and grind it down and make it even flatter, met with rather questionable success. Luckily, despite the rock not being that flat, the hide was rather tough compared to what he expected it to be and in the process of scraping, he had only torn the first hide in two places and the second in only one place. Amatuer work to be sure, but still a lot better than he had expected to get away with. He had started out cautiously, having never done this before, but seeing as how applying too little pressure was literally getting him nowhere, he had ramped up his efforts rather quickly. His initial worries about how much he was actually supposed to scrape away, were quickly overcome when he realised that there was a membrane near the inner most layer, just before the thick and hardy skin, that was near impossible to scrape off, at least compared to the rest of it. This serving as his natural stopping point, definitely made it easier and had filled him with a tad more confidence. Armin plopped down on the ground, absolutely exhausted, his hands blistered and aching. He was done scrapping the hides, the result pretty damn good if he didn¡¯t say so himself, netting himself two decently sized ¡®rawhides¡¯. He would just have to leave them to dry a bit. He would be stopping here. The rawhides would have to serve as is, as some cavemen style clothing for himself. He would not be tanning them, partly for a lack of knowledge (he was quite sure his survival game knowledge would be too far fetched for this), and partly because he simply lacked the resources to do so. Armin lay there for a while, letting the excess heat leave his body and recouping a fraction of his lost strength, or at least attempting to do so. Eventually he would have to get off his back, either because of the cold that would start settling in too much, or because something might simply show up and eat him otherwise. Armin sighed. Life was hard. As if to punctuate this feeling and address the notion of being eaten, a large black beast suddenly casually strode into Armins line of sight. Armin quickly sprang to his feet, but before he could reach for his spear, the black beast disappeared. Armin scanned around for it, more than a little surprised at that little parlour trick. He quickly spotted it once more, this time directly between Armin and his spear. How had it gotten there and instantly at that. He had not seen or heard anything. Some kind of teleporting magic? Armin was a little at ease, only a tiny bit mind you, as the beast in question turned out to be one six legged unidentifiable ¡®jaguar-thing¡¯. The Jaguar was currently giving Armin a look that somehow seemed to scream: ¡®Try it, I dare you¡¯. After a few moments of nothing happening, mostly because Armin was paralysed with fear, the Jaguar turned around and with its powerful jaw, simply picked up one of the Meezog carcases. Right before it strode off however, it spotted the drying hides spread out on the rock. It examined them for a moment or two and then turned to look at Armin instead. Armin could swear it was giving him a rather judgemental look. Jeez, it was my first time, alright! The jaguar once more strode off with its meal in hand, once more seemingly fading into the shadows. This was going to be a regular thing wasn¡¯t it? At least it left Armin with the one carcass to potentially eat, flavour and a lack of any poison be willing. On the bright side, even though to Armin, it looked like he¡¯d be losing food to the jaguar regularly, at least it seemed like it would not be eating him. Was it really intelligent enough to use him as a food provider? A scary thought indeed.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. After waiting a few moments to make sure that it wasn¡¯t coming back, Armin decided to get back to work. The first order was food. He was getting hungry. Armin started a fire once more and propping his spear up on some supporting rocks he gathered, was able to do his very own rotating barbecue. Albeit with manual rotation. While Armin was waiting for his meat to cook he decided to practice some magic. His mana had started to recover a little quicker by now, the rate of which was about half of what it had originally been, before the damn bugs had messed it up. He was at least confident that it would not be long before it was back to normal, able to confirm now that whatever they had done to him to be a temporary thing. Armin tried to rotate the spear, or more specifically the Meezog by controlling the mana around it. This did basically nothing. His control was not really good enough for this. Yes he could push the Meezog with mana, but it was more like an air current, and could not really affect something heavy. Armin switched instead to using his own mana. Drawing it out of himself and then pushing it against the Meezog. This as expected did a little bit more, having better control over his own mana, than that outside of his body. It still was not nearly enough though, succeeding in little more than nudging the beast ever so slightly. Armin sighed. It felt like the mana could wield a decent enough force if it didn¡¯t simply flow around the beast so readily. Armin also tried controlling the mana inside the dead Meezog, even though there was very little present. He was surprised to find it was almost impossible to exert any kind of control over it. Interesting. Was it because the mana belonged to the Meezog? Although it was dead now, it certainly wouldn¡¯t be needing it anymore. Armin was stumped. It looked like he would have to keep manually turning the thing, which was a bit painful, since the Meezog was heaving and his spear did not exactly come with a turning handle. Armin decided to try one more thing. He focused on not just a small patch of mana, but rather the mana in the entire area around the Meezog and tried to move it in concert, all at once. It was too difficult, so he quickly tried again, this time filling the area with his own mana, albeit sparsely and then trying to move that all at once. It worked for the most part; that is, moving a large amount of his own mana at once. As he rotated his own mana around the area of the Meezog, it did seem to exert some kind of force on it. It once more just wasn¡¯t enough. Armin sighed, running out of ideas. He thought of the ice crater. While he didn¡¯t exactly know how to replicate that, nor did he have any reason to, it did give him an idea for an experiment. Should he really be experimenting with magic on his food? Seems like a ¡°don¡¯t shit where you eat¡± kind of deal. Whatever, he was bored and hungry and tired of turning the meat. Armin tried to exert as much control over his mana that he was rotating around the Meezog as he could manage, to basically force it perfectly into ¡®formation¡¯ while it rotated. Something changed. The quality of the mana seemed different, it seemed more powerful? No that wasn¡¯t quite right. It did however actually start rotating the Meezog. Strangely enough, at a slower speed than the speed the mana around it was rotating at. Armin was thoroughly impressed with himself. Examining his mana a little more closely, he realised that it had formed the same kind of mana field he had seen at the ice crater! Armin was all at once thrilled at the idea of cold magic, before he realised that he was trying to cook food here, not freeze it! Panicking for a moment, armin quickly pressed his hand against the cooking meat to check if it was freezing. This was in hindsight a really dumb idea, not only because if it had been freezing he might have frost-byted his hand or something, but also because it wasn¡¯t freezing and as such he instead scolded his hand. Fuck! Armin quickly went over to the river and dunked his hand in, too cool it down and try to keep it from blistering. At least he did not have to worry about the meat burning. He was still able to control his own mana from this distance, albeit with some effort, and keep the meat rotating. As far as he could tell, the mana field looked identical to the one at the ice crater and yet his did not freeze anything. So there was something else to that? He didn¡¯t know, honestly speaking the field may look the same to him, but in reality it appeared as little more than a haze to his manasense in the first place. Maybe once he upped his [perception] or [will] or something, he would be able to tell more. For now, he simply tried to puzzle out the mechanics involved. The ¡®field¡¯ being generated clearly exerted a force/pull/attraction on anything inside of it. Although, it was far more likely that it was instead exerting a force on the mana inside the Meezog. The interesting part was that the force exerted was not at ¡®full strength¡¯, so it was more like it was ¡®influencing¡¯ it rather than controlling it. Of course this could be any number of factors ranging from ¡®that¡¯s just how it works¡¯, to Armin¡¯s control not being good enough or the stability of the mana generating the field not being perfect enough. There also seemed to be no way for him to know at this point in time. Armin tried a couple different things, but try as he might, he could not improve upon the result, or make any further advances in his knowledge. After having calmed his hand and finished cooking his meat, Armin sat down to enjoy his dinner. The Meezog meat was definitely on the tough side of things, but tasted good to his empty belly all the same. Now thoroughly satiated, it was time to once more get moving. Armin considered taking the meat with him, since there was still a lot of the Meezog left to begin with, but this plan fell apart on two fronts. One, he would have to carry the thing with him and that seemed like it would be far too heavy, especially over the long distances he would likely have to travel. The second problem was that the meat would undoubtedly rot. If he could keep it isolated from the air, or simply freeze it, it would be a different story. Although he did have some ideas of things he could try of the magical variety in order to make either of those things happen, he did not. For anything he could think of currently, he knew he did not yet have the skills or stats to pull it off. So, with a heavy heart he decided that he would instead just cut off a limb or something for a snack later. Then it would have to be back to fishing after that. But first things first. Armin looked over to the now decently dried out hydes. He needed to make some kind of clothing out of these two, but he did not have the means to easily transform them into such. No sewing equipment around here. No DIY solutions like clamping or gluing either. Armin stood there for a while pondering the solution. One possibility might be magic, but he could not currently think of a way to achieve a magically related solution here at present. In the end, there was only one thing he could come up with. Since either hide would be a bit on the small side on its own, he needed to utilize both of them somehow, but without being able to attach them to each other. This left him with only one option that he could think of. Armin cut arm holes in the top left and top right corners of both hydes. He then proceeded to put one on the front half of his body, and one on the back side of his body, feeding his arms through both. Sort of like a poncho, but supported only by his shoulders and being derived from two seperate pieces instead of just one. It was by no means a perfect solution, heck, far from it. Since any wind would still penetrate his defences quite liberally, not to mention the couple of holes he had in the hydes to begin with. But it was a massive upgrade from ¡®naked¡¯ both in terms of temperature and sanity. He tried moving around a bit in it. It was actually a bit on the heavy side and more than a little stiff to move around in. The hydes took him down, close to his knees, so were pretty decent on the coverage range. Despite the drawback of the extra stiffness and weight, he was rather pleased with himself for having come this far. ¡°I will take your life! I will take your experience! I will take your flesh! I will take your skin!¡± Armin performed a glorious speech to no one in particular. ¡°And I will be king of this wilderness!¡± Yep. He was definitely losing his marbles. Also if we¡¯re talking about king here, the Jaguar thing definitely comes to mind. I mean, he was already practically paying fucking taxes to the thing! CH007 - When nightmares dont know when to quit Two days passed, and without any incident in the slightest. It seemed like heaven to Armin, especially after all the events that had transpired, the constant danger, the constant things wanting to eat / maim / maul / claw / drain him. He knew that even thinking about this wonderful reprieve, spending his days peacefully following a soothing stream, while eating cooked fish that he caught with his own skill; would be jinxed and endangered just by the very act of him acknowledging the tranquility of it all. But alas, he was human, and such was the cruel humor of the gods he did not believe in. Unless of course one such god happened to be named Murphy, that is. And indeed, it would seem that Murphy had at some point ascended to divinity, as there could be no other explanation for how he could fuck Armin this hard! The sheer cosmic power that would be needed to make his life this fucking miserable was on a big bang fucking scale! Armin panted heavily as he raced through the less than forgiving deep purple brush and dove between lethally hard and sharp purple trees, or at least things that resembled trees. His lungs were doing their utmost to try and close off any room for the offending oxygen he dared to breath to replenish his poor red blood cells. Every breath he drew at this point was a small inferno being birthed in his chest. His legs felt like the bones inside had all but dissolved and now he was simply flopping his fleshy dangling limbs forward one after the other while all sensation in them threatened to disappear altogether, as if in protest of their over working. ''Sorry, but cheers, we¡¯ve had enough of this shit, we¡¯re out''. Despite all this, Armin found the will to keep running. As his entire body is about to shut down on him, as the sharp protrusions from the passing trees that he did not see in time, cut into him, weather it be due to his exhausted lack of attention or the poor lighting given off by the two moons in the sky. Armin kept running. The will to live was a marvelous thing. The fuel that made it possible, namely adrenaline, even more so. It was precisely these two things that kept Armin alive right now. These things that kept him from being consumed by the nightmare made real that relentlessly pursued him. As the sound of bushes rustled below Armin and the sounds of his own heart beat thrumming in his ears, at some point merged with the constant dull thudding of his frantic footsteps. None of it could sufficiently block out the sounds of his pursuers. The pitter-patter of their tiny feet. The occasional sound of a wing beat here and there as they support themselves and their frantic movements. Armin dared not turn back. What he had only caught a mere glimpse of, had thoroughly etched itself onto his brain. A deep chasm of a scar on his psyche that he was certain he would never forget, never heal from. There was no amount of horror video games or movies that would ever prepare him for something like this. Armin despite his desperate flight and fading, weary mind, could still see in vivid detail of his mind¡¯s eye, the abominations that pursued him. Pitch black creatures as big as a large breed of dog. They had six ¡®legs¡¯ similar in length and posture to that of a spider, only with beetle pincer-like feet on the ends and some kind of bat-wing like webbing between the limbs that while they didn¡¯t allow them to fly, certainly gave them a good boost when they wanted. It was a good thing that design was the way it was and not really meant for running speed, otherwise, Armin would likely had been caught a long time ago by them. The nameless nightmare creatures (nameless because Armin could not; and would not focus on them long enough for ¡®identify¡¯ to kick in), each had two ¡®arms¡¯ that extended off the top of their backs and bent forwards. These arms ended in several very fine tentacles with nasty looking hairs sprouting all along them. Their heads were rather small compared to their bodies but still housed a vicious grins worth of razor sharp teeth plastered onto a chitinous bony face complete with two shiny ferocious looking mandibles. The main body that housed all these appendages, was almost oval / tear-dropped in shape and for some inexplicable reason beyond making him soil his pants, had thousands of little ¡®things¡¯ attached to it that rattled about making an almost insect swarm like sound. Just remembering that one part of these hellspawned abominations was enough to make Armin want to whimper and die. As another sharp ¡®tree¡¯ protrusion grazed open a fresh cut on his right arm, he could not even be bothered to feel the pain. He was too tired, too mentally consumed to pay it any heed. All he could process was the dozens of these things already chasing him. Armin was getting slower and slower, and they were getting more numerous. He had been running at full throttle for what was likely an hour already, his pace rather slow and lethargic, due to the continuous depletion of his ¡®stamina¡¯. Armin suddenly jerked to a stop, almost dislocating his shoulder in the process. He gasped for air as something wrapped around his throat. Shit! It was the same webbing like material that he had been caught in a couple of times already. Armin quickly worked to untangle his neck and the rest of his body from it. He had to hurry, the creatures were gaining on him rapidly now. This damn web like substance littered throughout this portion of the forest. Every here and there, there would be a web of this strand-like material; like something had set traps to ensnare prey all over the place. The strands that made up the ¡®traps¡¯, were difficult to spot and once they ensnared you, difficult to break free from. This was owed largely to their surprising strength. The strands were not sticky or poisonous or anything like that, but they were quite strong and almost completely translucent. At least they were not so thin that they would cut into his flesh as he struggles against them. Honestly he could break only a few strands at a time and there were alot of them that went into making one of these snares, so he was left with no choice but to try and untangle himself instead. Armin managed to get himself almost completely untangled, with the exception of his left leg, by the time the first monstrosity caught up to him. He ripped at his foot with all his might, sheer panic and terror overwhelming his reason. He simply could not face one of these things. If he had a sword or an axe on his person in that moment, he might have even been tempted to cut his own foot off, the loss of it feeling like a negligible price to pay in order to escape these things. As the soul rending sound of a cacophony of thousands of rattles drew up on him, their host preparing to strike him in some fashion or another; Armin desperately lunged his spear in the monsters direction, all the while screaming like a desperate mad man. ¡°Aaaaaaaahhhhh! Stay away from me! Fuck off!¡± Armin¡¯s screams alone would be enough to scare most creatures off, but nightmares themselves surely have little to fear. The nimble monster easily evaded successive strikes from Armin¡¯s spear thrusts. All the while, he had not remained idle. Between trying to keep the monstrosity at bay, he had worked desperately to free himself. His attention being divided however, it had not gone well. And his attention had not exactly been divided 50 / 50 either. How could it be in the face of such a thing.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. More of the others were approaching too now, they would soon catch up to him. The monster gingerly side stepped another spear thrust as Armin pulled more desperately to free his ankle, now feeling like he was at risk of ripping it off all together. As the monster moved to the side of the spear, it did so in an unusually unbalanced and lopsided fashion. The purpose of this strange posture soon became clear. It allowed the monster to lean forward despite having dodged the strike, just enough for its tentacles to lash out at Armin¡¯s spear hand. Armin jerked back mostly in time, two of the tentacles only lightly grazing him. Still those two that did touch him stung like hell. But he could not risk a moment to spare for the pain though, so he left the forefront of his mind in the dark about the condition of his arm and instead focused on his next spear strike. He could tell his ankle was almost untangled now. If only he had is trusty knife with him still! Unfortunately it was lost in the first snare he got caught in. He of course had used it to cut himself free, but a monster had reared up on him, almost catching him and he had dropped it during his rushed escape. Something that he was regretting more and more with each passing moment. Armin thrust his spear forward, still trying to ward the monster off, feeling his ankle finally come free. This would be his final defensive thrust. The spearhead finally intercepted the path of the monsters face. Finally! Armin was momentarily filled with the satisfying taste of victory, with the certainty of wounding the foul monstrosity, at least once before he ¡®legged it¡¯ out of there. His adulation of his own ¡®spearmanship¡¯ quickly turned bitter when the spear bounced harmless off of the creatures right mandible. It was hard like metal! He cursed his luck as his momentum still carried him forward, closer to the gaping maw of this hellspawn. A moment of clarity struck him though. The way the creature moved, it was as though it expected this! No way! It did it on purpose! Armin despaired as the teeth closed in on him, at his own lack of power, at the monsters adept prowess. He did his best to shift the handle of the spear, that he had been holding near the end, formerly in an attempt to get as much reach as possible when trying to keep the beast at bay. Despite his forward momentum that he could not do much about, he had relative success shifting the spears shaft between himself and the monsters hungry mouth. Armin had already abandoned any notion of getting out the way and gone ¡®all in¡¯, forgetting any thought of stopping himself from falling forward and instead bringing his left hand up in an attempt to grab the head end of the spear¡¯s shaft so that he could use it as a makeshift shield against the monster, similarly to how he had that one time with the Meezog. The creature seemed somewhat offended by the shaft that was now just getting in the way of it¡¯s dinner. It unceremoniously lashed out in the form of biting down on the shaft with a powerful crunch. Armin was left stunned as it bit right through the shaft with such ease and force that it sent literal wooden shrapnel flying. Unfortunately Armin cried out in pain as one particularly large piece struck him and dug into his side. ¡°FUCK!!¡± The creature, uncaring for his plight dashed at him, and barely managed to duck to the side of Armin¡¯s desperate gambit. Despite his spear having been shredded in half and being knocked back on his arse by the sheer force of the disarming, he had managed to retain a grip with either hand on the two remaining ends of his weapon. He of course immediately lashed out with his left hand that was holding the spear end of the former weapon. The monster, despite its charge and proximity, still successfully dodged the ¡®strike¡¯. Being his left hand, it was a rather sad strike after all. The monster changed course in one swift motion and the steel mandibles hit his left hand hard, sending a jolt of pain through his already injured arm and causing him to lose grip on the spearhead. He watched helplessly as the spear head went flying. He knew it instinctively of course, but it was still soul crushing to see how poorly matched he was fighting such a thing at close range without the support the range of a spear offered him. Apparently disarmed, the creature stepped forward, now looming over him, clearly intent on finishing the job. In it¡¯s haste it had forgotten about the other end of the former weapon Armin still possessed, or perhaps it sensed no real threat from what amounted to little more than a left over stick. This would of course be it¡¯s mistake as said stick had been brutalised by the initial decapitation it had suffered and left it with a rather jagged edge. One that Armin plunged deep into the underside of the beast as it loomed over him. The monstrosity let out a soul shuddering screech of pain, as it reared up and away from him a bit. It was clearly injured and clearly really pissed off. But it was not enough. Even as Armin tried to scramble back, away from the thing, the assault had not inflicted enough damage to buy him the time he needed. Armin cursed inwardly as the annoyed creature reared up on him once more. The monstrosity leaned over him, as it bared shark like teeth seemingly intent on biting his head clean off in a single moment. As the teeth were about to close in on his face, he dared one last gamit. If he was going to die and be eaten, he may as well go down swinging. There was this strange sense of calm certainty he was experiencing in the face of his immediate and certain death. Which was strange, as he was quite sure that he should have instead been pissing his pants. Regardless, his mind was clear and focused and as the teeth bore down on him, he ripped the large splinter out of his side, with a shocking amount of pain, and brought it around right into the path of the monsters face. Between his own sudden movement, the creatures bloodlust for vengeance and its own momentum, it could do little to avoid the pointy piece of bloodied wood from penetrating right into its eye socket. The creature abandoned all notion of lunch and lurched backwards, thrashing madly and screeching in pain. This was too much for it. Armin wasted no time. He quickly got up and made a run for it, the rest of that things pack almost on top of him now. Although he could almost swear they were chasing him a little less eagerly now. It was of course hard for him to tell through the haze of exhaustion, spent adrenaline and blood loss. He knew he was getting close to collapsing. Armin closed in on the river once more, that he had been more or less running along all this time. He truly never let it out of his sight, lest he get hopelessly lost. Drawing up on it, he hoped he would be able to quickly swim across this time, if his luck held, these things would not be able to swim well, if at all. He registered of course, somewhere in his overtaxed brain, that this was probably wishful thinking, but nevertheless he had to try, especially at the end of his rope now as he was. Alas it was not meant to be. He could not simply dive in now, just as he could not dive in back when he first encountered his current predicament. There was a large shadow following along from below the water¡¯s surface and it instilled him with a deep sense of fear. Whatever was in there it was keeping an eye on him all this time and powerful enough to make him instead choose to face these landborn nightmares thus far. Armin immediately gave up the notion and simply kept running. The creatures continued to pursue him for another ten agonizing minutes, the one he injured, nowhere in sight as far as he could tell. Not that he could really tell in his completely addled state. He was truly lucky so far. He had not run into another snare, for with his energy as spent as it was, completely unarmed and the proximity of his pursuers it would certainly have been the end of him. Not just that, but had the monsters been chasing him as fiercely as they did at first, they would have caught him by now. They were never fast to begin with, but it seemed that injuring one of their own like that, had done a number on them. They were being far more cautious. Armin was not about to look a gift horse in the mouth and finally scrambled out of what he was now calling the jagged forrest. He ran into a clearing and continued running. The forrest had ended rather abruptly and much to Armin¡¯s surprise, with it, the sound of his pursuers footsteps. Armin continued to run, but dared to look back over his shoulder and was shocked to find a full complement of monstrosities simply standing within the edge of the forest like it was some kind of invisible sacred boundary, all watching him leave with undisguised bloodlust and seething rage. Talk about fiercely territorial! Armin was already starting to black out, constantly fumbling over his own feet. He willed himself on, he could not afford to pass out here, no matter how tired and anemic he was. If those things saw him collapse they may just change their mind about going after him. Armin kept fumbling forward like a clown until he was well out of sight. His limbs finally gave out, crumpling like a wet towel and he slid across the ground, quickly skidding to a stop. He tried to move any one of his four limbs but found he was completely unable to do so. 100% spent! As his blurry vision began to recede to darkness, he made one last great effort of will and charged his mana up just enough to sear and cauterise the wound on his side, lest he bleed out. The smell of burnt flesh was the only indication he had that it had worked, as he was cold now and could not even feel the pain that that should have caused. Finally he succumbed to his fatigue and everything went dark.