P-03. Trial By Magic, page 12
part #3 of PrimeVerse Series
Madison and I spent the next few days running classes to broaden the skill sets of everyone in the tribe.
As an experiment one night, Madison tried to teach Piper the Magic skill, and much to our surprise, it took! Afterwards she gathered all the kids and they were all able to unlock their Magic skill, too. They didn’t learn the Mana Orb spell, though, when their Magic unlocked. Instead, they got a spell called Cantrip.
The spell allowed them to do all kinds of annoying things, much to the tribe’s dismay. They could make small sensory effects, like handheld fireworks, or, what was used often by the boys, the smell of a fart. They could make small noises or the feeling of a puff of air. The spell also allowed them to move objects around, floating them through the air. Nothing much larger than a few pounds, it seemed, but suddenly there were things floating around all over the place.
The kids loved it and were constantly discovering clever and annoying ways to change the taste of someone's food, or color of their hair. They came up with endless games and ways to keep themselves entertained and the adults at their wits end. Finally, Graham had enough after the 42nd fart- sound and smell- came out of him, and he started putting the kids to work with their magic.
This ended up helping tame the chaos quite a bit. When the kids were given jobs and ways to be helpful instead of mischievous, the general morale of the tribe jumped. It was great to have food that could be magically made to taste better, even if the textures might not match up all the time. When it was discovered the Cantrip spell could even be used to clean small areas, chores became a daily habit.
Things were running smoothly. Arnold was a good administrator, getting the villagers to collect efficiently. With the village utilizing Tim and his zombies, we came up with a myriad of ways to accomplish a goal with minimal effort. It was really something watching Tim direct a team of zombies harnessed together like horses in the old days. They did everything from hauling logs to plowing fields. No food or bathroom breaks, no breaks period. The things were creepy and, of course, potentially lethal, but Tim was right- they were super useful.
It felt like hardly any time had passed before we had collected everything we needed for the enclave except the Bonded Mana. Arnold had left it entirely up to Madison and me. He said he thought it would better service to everyone if the rest of them continued to work on advancing the village.
We were in a rut with figuring out just what the heck Bonded Mana was, though. We tried everything we could think of to find, get, or make the Bonded Mana- whatever it was.
We tried casting spells at the area of collection, dumping cores, even having Kai try his new cultivation thing, all to no effect. I even stretched my arms into the air and asked nicely for the digital universe to just give it to me. Spoiler alert; it didn’t work.
Madison thought maybe to get to the ‘essence’ part of the magic, we needed to do fancy spells. So after another frustrating- not to mention embarrassing- attempt at casting spells in the most fru-fru manner I could imagine, I threw my hat, the magical kufi I had obtained from a glob, in a huff, onto the ground. Madison was reading the blueprints for the infinityieth time and suddenly jumped up.
“What did you do!? The number went up!” she yelled as she danced. “It went up! Hudson, we made Bonded Mana!”
“What?” I said. “I didn’t do anything! Well, nothing we hadn’t tried before. I unloaded my Mana bar into the air...”
“No, you did that,” she said and pointed at my hat on the ground next to the pile of other items we had collected. I looked at it, then looked at her, then looked at the hat again.
With a sigh, I unclasped my boarcupine cloak, another magical item I had picked up in the forest, and dropped it in the dirt next to the hat.
“It went up again!” Madison shouted. “It’s working! We did it!”
I picked my cloak and hat up and put them back on.
“Oh. It's back to zero.” Madison sighed heavily. “I guess we found out what Bonded Mana is.”
I nodded at her, a huge smile on my face. She cocked her head at me. “What?” she asked.
“I’ll tell you what... it’s time for a treasure hunt!”
Chapter 15
While it was great watching the tribe grow and advance, and playing around with my skills was fun and all, I was ready to get out and find some loot.
“Phat lewt!” I shouted again as the four of us- Kai, Ryan, Madison and myself- left the bustling village.
“You know, I really don't get you sometimes,” Madison said as we walked. “You don't get most of my old school references, but then you throw out old slang like that.”
I laughed as the skip in my step had me moving quickly. “It comes from having to play older games, I guess.” I shrugged.
“Yeah, I think it's more likely that you’re just weird,” Ryan said.
“I agree,” Kai chimed in.
“Hey now, let’s not go picking on me, Mr. Hermit. You’ve been so secluded I half expected to need to climb a mountaintop to find you. I was surprised you even agreed to go on this little adventure,” I shot back at Kai.
“Har, I have been wanting to get out and test my abilities. Meditation and Cultivation is fine for a while, but I find my patience for it has reached its limit. I need to test myself now.” Kai flexed his bicep.
“What the heck is cultivation?” Ryan asked.
“It is a skill I learned. It allows me to condense my Mana into myself, to strengthen aspects of my body or any of my attributes.”
“Like, a buff?”
Kai shook his head. “No, the changes are permanent.”
“Well that sounds awesome, sign me up!”
Kai only smiled at him. “It is not a skill that can be taught. At least not currently. Perhaps as it levels I will have the ability to.”
“Ah. Well, that’s okay I guess, I have my own new things I want to try out,” Ryan said. His bow appeared in his hands, and he pulled back on the string with no arrow knocked. Taking in a huge breath that puffed out his chest, he exhaled it slowly and an arrow made of crackling lightning appeared from his fingers. He released the bow string and the arrow shot out in a streak of light, hitting a rock and sending tendrils of electricity over it before leaving a scorch mark.
“Impressive,” Kai said.
“That was awesome, man! How did you get that to work?” I asked, intrigued, feeling like a kid watching a magician perform a trick.
Ryan shrugged. “I was just practicing with the spell while holding my bow one day, trying to see if I could alternate between casting the spell and firing an arrow. After a few attempts I got a system prompt asking if I wanted to make the bow my spellcasting focus and I said yes. This was the result.”
He held his hand out and cast his lightning spell, Spark, and the small bolt of lightning snapped out from his hand a short distance, the way I had seen before. “I can still cast the spell like normal, but also the lightning arrows. It’s awesome. I don't have to worry about running out of arrows anymore.”
“Unless we run into something immune to lightning damage,” Kai said.
“Yep,” Ryan said, “but hopefully that won't be for a while.”
I was happy that Ryan had found another tool he could use, now I just needed to figure out how to get my own spellcasting focus.
I shook my head and brought my mind back to our adventure. “Okay, so we need to find magic items. We have a couple options: we can go back toward the glob forest, where we know they drop magic items and even had a set that could be collected.”
“That brings us a lot closer to Cora, though,” Madison said.
“Right, so that could be a problem,” I agreed. “If she sees me, she’ll get all hot and bothered and...” Madison shoved my shoulder.
“It could also be helpful,” Kai said. “We could...”
“I don’t see how Cora taking me as her arm candy would benefit the tribe, Kai.” Three blank stares. At least I thought I was funny.
“As I was saying,” Kai continued saying, “it could be beneficial to learn more about what she is doing and how to combat her.”
“True,” I said, “but it’s not really the mission, and I think we need to focus on getting the enclave built right away. Which brings us to the other option: we go explore in another direction.”
“Just wander around blindly, hoping we find some place with creatures that will drop magic stuff?” Ryan asked.
“Well, yes and no, I mean, we know that creatures drop things, we got this cloak,” I pointed to my cloak, “from a boarcupine in the forest on the way back. We know the globs drop stuff, and the Tutelar did as well. I think we can reasonably assume that monsters drop loot.”
“Okaaay so we wander around,” Ryan said.
“If we decide that's what we want to do. I do have a trick though, I’ve got my Hunch skill, so we could use that to help.”
“Well, let’s figure it out,” Madison said. “I for one, want to avoid Cora and that whole area. I wouldn’t want one of us to get captured.” She winked at me.
“That is a good point,” Kai said, “I am fine with whatever we choose.”
Ryan shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind seeing more of what's out here.”
“Okay then,” I said. “We’ll avoid Cora’s direction. Ain’t nobody got time for that. Let's go through the hills where the Lumberjacks have been going. They’ve run into bears up there, so maybe if we keep going that way we can find some stuff.”
With our course set we headed out, our party up and running with my mini-map displaying at the highest zoom level. We made it to the hills in decent time, taking a break before continuing into uncharted territory.
“Okay Ryan,” I said. “You’re the ranger guy, go track us up some things to fight!”
Ryan rolled his eyes dramatically. “Scout, not a ranger. But yeah, I’ll go check stuff out, give me half an hour.”
“Sure thing. While you do that, I’m going to perform some experiments with Hunch.” Ryan nodded and faded from view in a show of scoutiness.
“Show off,” I said.
“Experiments?” Kai asked, an eyebrow cocked.
“Yeah, that sounds a little worrisome honestly,” Madison said.
“Nothing too dramatic, but now that we’re out of the village I wanted to try infusing my Hunch skill with Dose of Chaos.”
“If it’s nothing too dramatic,” Kai said as he took a step back from me, “why did you need to be out of the village?”
Madison chuckled. “I think I’ll just take Kai over there,” she pointed to a grouping of trees that stood a way, far away, from the area we were in, “And watch from a distance.”
I shook my head. “Whatever floats your goat. I really don't expect it to be-” but they had already moved away.
Without any innocent bystanders nearby, I concentrated on my Hunch skill, closing my eyes to see if I could feel anything interesting near. Feeling nothing, I activated Dose of Chaos and put a small 10 points into it towards Hunch. I concentrated again, bracing myself.
I figured with a skill like Hunch, that had very few variables- either you detect something or you don't- there wasn’t much danger to it. Binary.
10 points was a flop. I tried again, this time upping the spend to 20 points. Again with no result. I opened my eyes and blew out a breath. I checked my character sheet to examine the skill and saw that I’d decreased it by 20 points. I was about to try one more time when Ryan’s voice interrupted me.
“Hey boss, I found something. Uh... why are Madison and Kai way over there?”
“They're just afraid I'm going to explode or something,” I said and waved them back over to me. “What did you find?”
“Tracks, big ones. Bear tracks.”
I pumped the air. “Phat lewt!”
“Hey,” I said as Madison and Kai got back within talking distance. “Ya’ll ready for this?”
“Duh nuh nah nah nah nah nanana.” Madison danced. She was my favorite.
“What is going on,” Kai asked, the typical edge of annoyance in his voice.
“Ryan found us something to hunt!” I gestured towards where Ryan had come from. “Lead on!”
Ryan snorted and led us deeper into the woods. We all stealthed up at a motion from him and moved more slowly. Occasionally Ryan would point to the ground where he saw something, tracks or a broken twig or something, like I had done when leading the team through the dungeon. I paid attention, but most of the time I was wondering how he knew that a broken stick and a few wayward blades of grass meant a bear. Couldn’t anything in the forest snap a twig?
After some time, I got a system message.
Congratulations! You have learned the skill Tracking!
Audeo has increased your skill to level 10!
Now as we walked Ryan didn’t have to point out everything, several times I would see a print lightly indented in the ground, a scratch on tree bark, or some other sign that I just focused in on and knew it was from our prey. It didn't happen as often as Ryan had been pointing things out, but of course he was better with a higher skill.
After a while we found our prize: a cave on the side of a hill, with the tracks leading into it. The cave itself was pretty standard. A smallish, round hole formed amongst the jagged rocks. What didn’t feel very standard, was the sheer amount of tracks leading into said rock hole. My juvenile tracking skill showed multiple sets of prints, I couldn’t tell yet from how many different animals, but there were several sets that were larger than the prints we had been following. Much larger. I opened my mouth to say something when a familiar feeling overtook me.
You have a hunch something is nearby.
Ryan shushed me with a finger to his mouth, then made shoeing motions, sending us back the way we had come and continuing angry “shush” gestures whenever one of us tried to talk.
After we had gone several hundred yards back from the cave, he stopped and finally spoke in a low voice. “Okay, so there is like, a lot of bears in there.”
“How many?” Kai asked. “I could not tell, the tracking skill we learned was not high enough to discern.”
Ryan paced. “By my estimation, there are half a dozen sets of different prints we had followed. But that wasn’t what worried me.”
“It was those giant monster prints, wasn’t it?” Madison asked. “Those were huge, I think twice the size? There is some kind of giant monster bear in there.”
Ryan nodded.
“How should we approach this?” I asked. “We can’t leave all those loot boxes alive in there.”
“Damn, I wish we could tell creature’s levels,” Ryan muttered.
Madison nodded in agreement, “Me too, I still don't know if that sort of thing is in the game or not. Maybe I just don't have the system skill high enough, or it's some other skill entirely.”
“My bet,” I said, “is that there are probably a ton of ways to find that information out. Skills, spells, whatever, we just haven't discovered them yet.”
Kai folded his arms across his chest, “This is a fine conversion, but perhaps we could narrow it down to how we will be successful in the fight against this enemy.”
“You’ve already decided it’s a fight, huh?”
Kai simply looked at me, deadpan.
“Anyway, how should we do this? Stealth? Charge in? Lure them out?” Madison asked.
“It would be foolish to attack them on their home battlefield,” Kai said. “We don’t know the layout of the cave, we’d have no way to retreat. We must lure them out.”
“Could we jury-rig some traps or something?” Madison asked, looking around at all the trees.
Ryan gave a funny look, then studied the area. “I don't know, we don’t have any proper tools with us- that would make any kind of trap setting difficult. Besides, I don't have that kind of skill, do any of you?”
“Yes, actually, although of course, not very high. We aren't that far from the village if we die,” I said. “Let’s just hide near there and see if we can pick off a bear coming or going. That way we’d at least have an idea how tough they are.”
“That would be optimal.” Kai nodded. “Study the enemy before attacking.”
Ryan shrugged. “Works for me.”
Madison gave a little laugh. “If we do somehow get in over our heads, we can always throw you to them as a little snack!”
“Hey! Just because I can death teleport doesn’t mean I like dying!”
Chapter 16
We sat about twenty yards from the entrance to the cave, waiting. I had summoned Marle and Lucca, who were thrilled to be out climbing trees and foraging while we waited. I knew I’d probably have to summon something different when it came time to fight, but for now the two flunkies were good lookouts high in the trees. Plus, they occasionally brought treats they found.
After using Mystic Sense to summon my two pets in the village multiple times, I found the standard interface was somewhat of a crutch. Using Core Manipulation, I could form a more personal, empathic bond with the flunkies when I summoned them. I got glimpses of the things they were feeling- usually hunger, boredom or joy- and I could send my commands through that bond, as well.
It didn’t allow me to do anything more than what the command interface allowed: Guard, Attack, Flee, Follow, etc., the basic commands that pets follow. But it did allow me to issue those commands faster. I couldn't form that bond yet with the wolf core I had and didn’t know if it was level related or what. Regardless, when Marle spotted something by the cave and became hyper-alert, I knew something was up.
“Something’s happening,” I whispered to my bored companions. Everyone sat at attention, instantly more alert. My skin pricked with anticipation.
Sure enough, we watched as a bear nearly identical to the one I fought with the lumberjacks came out of the cave and lumbered away from us. We slowly moved back further into the trees, being careful of our footing, and circled around to meet the beast far from the cave. We finally caught up as it was scratching its back on a tree.
