Sena realized she had a problem. As she walked towards the ruins, she took a look at her skill tree for the next illusion skill, Multi-Illusion. It did seem rather useful, letting her make multiple illusions at once, but the cost was about three thousand points. That was way too high for her to get any time soon, so now she had about three hundred points to spend on…well that was the problem. She had been so focused on this one skill for so long, she barely looked at anything else. Some kind of attack skill probably, but there were a lot of options on that front.
She scanned through a couple basic attack skills, until she found one that might work.
[Mana Arrow]
[Cost: 100-500 MP]
[Effect: Summon an arrow of mana that the user can throw at high speeds. The user can spend extra mana to make the arrow stronger.]
[Cost: 100 Points]
Why was this the skill she was interested in? Well the cost was low, and mana spells didn’t seem to have any prerequisites to them. Things like fire magic needed you to go down a specific skill tree before you got to choose between certain skills, and that would cost too many points. Mana skills were more basic, but they were cheaper and she could make them stronger with more mana. And currently, she had plenty of mana to spend. She eventually decided to aquire it, and kept walking. Or she would have kept walking, if there wasn’t a soldier standing in front of her blocking her path.
“Excuse me, miss? I’m going to have to ask you to turn around, the area ahead is dangerous, so the king has ordered it restricted.” He said, and Sena realized she would have to get around him somehow. And there would probably be more soldiers up ahead.
“Okay, but why is he allowed up ahead but i’m not?” She said, pointing behind the soldier. He turned around, and saw a glimpse of a man running on the path behind him.
“HEY! Get back here!” The soldier said, chasing after the man. Of course, there wasn’t really a man, but he wouldn’t figure that out for at least a few minutes. Sena kept walking down the path, keeping an eye out for any other soldiers.
Eventually, she found the man she tricked sitting down next to two other soldiers, so she cast invisibility and walked past them. As she did, she heard their conversation.
“I swear, he was running in this direction! Where did he go?” The man said, breathing heavily on the ground. The soldier to his right laughed at him, and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Calm down, either he slipped away from you or you were just seeing things. No one’s been around here, you’re fine.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right. But then why did that woman say she saw him too?”
At this point, Sena figured she was pushing her luck listening in, and slipped past them. The entrance to the ruins were indeed, well, ruined. A massive staircase led up to what at some point must have been an impressive temple, but was now overtaken by nature, more plant then building. She turned off her invisibility, assuming the soldiers would mostly be watching it as opposed to exploring it, and walked inside. The first chamber she walked into was some kind of entrance hall she presumed, the only thing really left standing in it were the grey stone pillars holding up the roof. She saw lots of doors heading out to other sections, and realized this might take longer then she thought.
As she was debating on which way to go, she heard something to her left. She looked over, and saw something poking its head out of a doorway. It was some kind of bird, with a long beak and two giant eyes that took up either side of it’s face.
“Uh, hey there little buddy. I’m just gonna go now, is that alright?” She said, and the creature proceeded to fully step out of the doorway. As it did, Sena fully regreted coming here. The bird head was apparently attached to an eight foot long neck, that led back to some kind of legged shell with multiple holes in it. The holes were for the other eight necks it had poking out of it. Each of the heads let out a seperate shrill cry, and the creature charged at her on it’s stubby legs. Thankfully it wasn’t very fast, but the necks did have quite the reach, so she did what any brave warrior would do. She turned around and sprinted out of the room into the closest doorway she could see, because fuck whatever that thing was. As she jumped through a doorway, she saw a lever nearby and hastily pulled it down. A stone door slammed shut behind her, and she heard whatever the thing chasing her was slam into it, letting out a cry. It slammed into the door a few more times, before it stopped, seemingly giving up.
She sighed, relieved she got out of that situation, and turned around to inspect the rest of the room. This room seemed to be even more destroyed, with the roof having collapsed at some point and vegetation growing all through out it. And unfortunately for her, she was also not alone in this room, as multiple animals turned to look at her. She wasn’t worried at first, because it was mostly deer and other harmless creatures. But then she noticed they all wore the same collars the wolf she fought had. As a deer began charging her, she had to make a decision. A group of animals just as strong as the one she fought with another person who was stronger then her, or the weird bird thing. It was an easy choice for her, and she cast Enhance, ready to take on these animals.
She got ready to dodge out of the way of the deer, but it cast some kind of skill and suddenly increased in speed, throwing her timing off. She was forced to jump over it, and it slammed it’s head into the wall. As she came down she slammed a kick into it’s body to make sure it was down, and turned to the rest of the animals. As she did, she saw some kind of bird was diving for her, and she tried to roll out of the way of it, but it still slashed it’s talons along her back. Thankfully, her armor stopped most of it, but she could tell it still did a decent amount of damage. She quickly jumped to her feet, just in time to sidestep a wolf pouncing at her. She grabbed her dagger and stabbed at it’s side as it turned around to face her. She managed to hit it, but the attack didn’t kill it, and she was forced to jump backwards as it tried to bite her arm.
The bird flew at her again, and she realized this fight might not be as easy as she thought. She cast Mana Arrow, and it began to manifest in her palm. She figured she probably didn’t need very much power to take this bird out, so she simply threw it right away. It sped through the air at the bird, and while it tried to dodge, it wasn’t quick enough. The arrow hit it dead on and almost ripped it in half. She saw the wolf coming at her again, so she cast an illusion of herself running one way and then ran in a different direction. The wolf stopped it’s attack, confused at the sight in front of it, and she had enough time to throw an arrow at it before it realized what happened.
The arrow was just enough to finish it off, but before she could do anything else, a boar slammed into her side, throwing her a decent distance across the room. Dazed, she got up and checked her health. She was at maybe thirty percent of her health left, one more good hit and she would be screwed. Thankfully, it looked like the boar was the last thing in the room. She dived to the side adf cast invisibility, and the boar that was charging her paused, sniffing around the room for her.
She appeared behind the boar and went to strike it, but the boar whipped it’s head to the side into her. Unfortunately for the boar, it’s head went right through what it realized was an illusion, and she reappeared next to it, stabbing it in the head with the dagger she had recovered. The boar keeled over dead, and as it did she took a deep breath and stumbled over to a wall, sliding down it. That was far too close for comfort. She only got hit twice, and she was near deaths door.
Fighting 3 -> 4
Brawling 7 -> 8
Well, at least she got some skill levels For now, she decided she would rest here for a minute until she felt better. But in the future, she would have to find some way to avoid this problem. She could do two things, either get more hp, or just not get hit. The second one definitely seemed more her speed, considering she liked to move fast anyways, but maybe a balance of both would be better. She figured she could probably buy a skill for health with the points she just gained, but as she looked, she noticed she had only gotten five points for that fight. Five points was nothing, and those monsters weren’t exactly weak. She figured an average soldier could maybe take one of those monsters on at best. Was there anything she could fight that would give her more points?
Well, since she only had about 150 points, she figured she would wait on that. She reached into her pouch and cracked open a health potion, downing it. She had three left, so she would have to be more careful about fights from here on out. She got up from the wall and headed for the next hallway, because the room she was in currently seemed empty. As she walked down the rather long hallway, she noticed that the further she went into the building, the less ruined it was. Why that was she had no clue, but she did noticed the walls were engraved with some symbols that had a slight glow to them. She decided to copy them down just in case it was useful at some point, pulling out a piece of paper, a quill and a jar of ink. She was suprised the hadn’t smashed in her pack by now, but she happy regardless. Drawing was one of her more recent hobbies, so she wasn’t very good at it, but after a few tries she managed to get a pretty good drawing of the symbol.
She put away her supplies and walked down the hallway, heading into the doorway that would take her deeper into the building. She went invisible as she did, not willing to risk getting attacked out of nowhere again. She was glad she did, as she saw three more monsters ahead of her. Gods above these collars were annoying. This time, she wasn’t letting this fight go very far. She dropped her invisibility and tossed a charged up mana arrow at one of the wolves, killing it instantly. The second one whipped around to face her, but that just gave her a bigger target to throw her second arrow at, and the arrow tore through it’s stomach. The third animal, some kind of bigger deer thing just ran off, knowing there was no point in fighting.
She could get used to fighting like this, ambushing people certainly hurt a lot less then fighting head on. She took a look around the room, and she noticed this was the first room she had seen that was more stone then plant, clearly this place was important if it was protected from the elements so much better. What really caught her eye was some kind of glass panel embedded into the wall at the end of the room. She jogged over to it and tried to look into it like a window, but it was just black. Not knowing what else to do she decided to touch it, and it flared to life, suddenly glowing for no reason. As it did, she felt a rumbling below her, as though tbe building itself was responding to it. After a few seconds it stopped, and the glass thing in front of her had a bunch of different words on it. Most of them she had no clue what language it was, but she recognized one word, Speak.
“Uh, hello?” She said, and the screen changed to a little bar filling up. Words above it said Configuring Language , so she assumed it must be able to tell what language she just spoke and respond with the same one. After a minute the bar filled up, and she was met with another message, this time from a voice coming from the glass.
“New users must register, please state your name.” It said, sounding very monotone.
“I’m Sena, I guess. What is this?” She asked, but it simply ignored her and seemingly registered her as a user of some kind.
“User Sena, I notice you are not currently accessing any functions. Would you like a tutorial on utilizing angelic tablets?”
“If this is an angelic tablet, then yes I would.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Running tutorial. First, simply touch any part of the screen in front of you to begin access. Then, tap on whichever program you wish to use.”
She had no clue what a program was, but she did what it asked, and it led her to a list of different things. She tapped on the one that just said Map, and the screen changed to what appeared to be a map of the current area. She touched it again, and as she slid her finger the map moved with it. She experimented and found she could zoom the map in and out by pinching.
“This is amazing. How far does this go?”
“Map range is limited to within fifteen miles of the user.”
“Holy shit, that’s a long distance. Is that blue dot supposed to be me?”
“Correct, blue dots represent allies of the user, red dots represent unknown or hostile entities.”
“If that’s what red dots are, then why is there one coming over he-“ She said, unable to finish her sentence before a patch of wall where the symbols had stopped glowing exploded, and out stepped the weird bird thing from before. She guessed that it must have followed her due to the rumbling from earlier, but she had no clue, maybe it just had good senses. She tried to grab the tablet and run, but it was stuck firmly in the wall.
“Tablet thing, please help!”
“Nearby entity is known as a Heritact. What would you like to know about Heritacts?”
“Something that will let me survive for fucks sake!” She said, diving out of the way as one of the bird heads spit some kind of acid at her.
“Affirmative. Each head is capable of casting it’s own skills, but they all share brainpower. Fight will become significantly easier as more heads are destroyed.” The voice said. For some reason she could still hear it just as clearly even though it was far away, but that was the last thing she was worried about right now. She threw a mana arrow at the one that spit acid at her, and while it managed to duck out of the way, one of it’s siblings wasn’t so lucky and got speared through one of it’s bulbous eyes. It seemed they weren’t that hard to kill individually. The rest turned on her and began charging, two of them casting a buff spell on the others. She cast scan to get a full idea of what she was dealing with.
[Lesser Heritact’s Stats
Health: 105
Mana: 2396
Strength: 225
Agility : 210
Endurance: 347
Mental Fortitude: 92
Physical Fortitude: 466
Points: 378
Note: All stats besides points are shared between heads. ]
[Skills: Power 9, Speed 2, Toughness 3, Stamina 10
Note: Each head has it’s own indiviual skills aside from these passive skills. ]
Well shit, there was no way she was gonna be able to scan all eight heads just to learn what each one did, she would give herself a stroke from the mental pressure. She tried to compose herself as it charged towards her, evaluating her chances. Her health was almost recharged, and she had most of her very large mana pool avaliable. If she played tricky, maybe she could win this. She cast Invisibility and dove to the side, while also casting an illusion of her dodging the other way. She saw it change directions, but one of the heads chirped at the others, and they all looked vaguely in her direction. Shit, that one must have some kind of sense she didn’t account for. She would have to make her illusions more detailed if she wanted to trick it, but the better option seemed to be to get rid of that one first.
She took a gamble and ran at the Heritact, and while a few heads swung at her, it was clear they didn’t know precisely where she was, and she was able to duck under one, the other two so of course she didn’t have to dodge. She cast Enhance and jumped up as high as she could, easily clearing the nine or so feet needed to reach one of the heads. The bird head that could see her whipped back and another lunged toward her on it’s order, but she managed to barely move her body out of the way, and pulled out her dagger as she came out of invisibility. She sliced into it’s neck and the leverage she got as she fell caused it to slice the thin reedy apendage clear off the main body. Unfortunately, gravity was also quite literally her down fall, as she dropped to the ground, not eating through much of her hp but leaving her vunerable to the now rather angry seven heads left. Worst of all, she didn’t even manage to get the right head.
Speed 7 -> 8
Enhance 7 ->8
Fighting 4 -> 5
Boy, these skills sure leveled up a lot faster when you weren’t just killing slimes. She would take any help she could get at this point, as she rolled away from the beast. She avoided two heads snapping down at her, but the acid spitting one connected with her shoulder. It didn’t hurt right now, but it was quickly eating through her armor. She cast Invisibility and sprinted off, at least prefering when she wasn’t seen by multiple heads. The annoying head that could still see her began pointing her out, but she had learned her lesson. She cast Blindness on it, and it began to writhe around as the other heads also clearly became confused as to what was happening. She took advantage of the confusion, giving her enough time to grab her water skin and pour it over the acid before it reached her shoulder, but she had another problem.
Invisibility was like Alter Self, in that while she was using it she couldn’t regen a portion of her mana. So despite her large pool, she was running low. So she had a choice, keep using invisibility without her other skills, or the opposite. Of course she could always just turn off Alter Self, but that wasn’t a real choice to her. She spent years trying to get this body, if she was gonna die she would die with it. It was an easy choice for her, and she cast another Mana Arrow at the Heritact as she dropped out of invisibility. The blinded head had no chance of dodging, dying instantly. The arrow almost killed another head but it barely dodged out of the way. Six heads to go, and she was still feeling good. Maybe she could do this.
Mana Arrow 1 -> 2
She tried throwing another arrow at it, but the heads were on to her, and they all began moving in an odd pattern, making it way too hard for her to track accurately. She cast an illusion overlapping with herself, and one of her ran towards it while the other ran backwards. The creature began charging for the one running away, but had one head stab downwards at the one coming towards it just in case that was the real one. It was correct, but unfortunately for it, just one head wasn’t quick enough, and she whipped to the side, lifting her foot up and slamming a kick into it’s neck, feeling whatever bone structure was in there shatter.
The neck fell lifeless to the ground, and the creature skidded, as the rest of the heads whipped around, just in time to see her thrown dagger stab into anothers eye. It fell over limp, so that was four left, and it was having obvious effects. It was getting slower and slower with it’s movements as more heads died, but unfortunately, in it’s new stupidity it had a stupidly brilliant thought and decided to simply throw everything it had at her. All four heads began unloading spells at her, one with acid, one with Firebolts, and the other two with Mana Arrows of their own. She sprinted in the opposite direction, casting another illusion of her running a different way, which at the very least attracted the acid spitter. The other three still attacked the real her, and although she tried to dodge all of their projectiles, an arrow and a bolt still slammed into her side.
She thanked the gods for pain resistance as she had many times before, and turned around as they began to refocus their aim on her to throw another arrow. She finally managed to get the annoying acid spitter with it, and it got the kill clean. Just three more, but she was getting tired, and one more hit would probably take her down. She grabbed her dagger off the ground as the remaining three heads simply charged at her, most likely too dumb at this point to even remember how to cast skills. As one swiped down at her she ducked under the attack and slammed her fist into it’s neck, before grabbing it and swinging off of it, dodging another strike. Now she was stuck in mid air however, and the third head was coming right for her.
She prayed to the gods above that this would work, and cast blindness on the head. If it was smarter, it might have been able to recognize it should just stay the course and keep attacking in the same direction, but instead it veered slightly to the left, allowing her to slice it’s head in the same way as the other one she cut off. She managed to land on her feet and looked up, expecting to see the last head attacking her. It turns out, she didn’t even have to worry, as the last head was too stupid to even realize what it was doing, simply stumbling around. She threw an arrow at it, putting it out of it’s misery.
“Heritact defeated, 18 points gained.” The voice from the tablet said. Eighteen fucking points, for that. Two points per head. Fuck these cheap ass monsters.
Magical Ability 9 -> 10
Advanced Magical Ability Gained
Air Manuverability Gained
Toughness Gained
Blindness 1 -> 2
Mana Arrow 2 -> 3
Brawling 8 -> 9
At least the skill level ups were massive. She walked over to the tablet, holding herself steady against the wall.
“Alright, listen, can you answer some of my questions?”
“Any questions will be answered to the best of this units ability.”
“What is going on with this damn kingdom? Why do all the monsters give jack shit for points despite how strong they are, why do we keep just enslaving each other, and what the hell are you?!” She said, almost screaming at the machine.
“This unit is a tool created by the gods to guide the humans of this country in it’s experiment. As for the other two questions, this unit’s memory bank used to have the information you seek, but it has been removed from my database. The chip containing the knowledge is currently ten miles west, and seventy three feet in the air.”
There was a lot to unpack there. So the gods made this tool of sorts, but what kind of experiment were they meant to be guided through. And how could this chip be so high in the air. Maybe it was in a building? The only building she knew that was tall enough west of here was…the castle. Of course, the royalty didn’t want this information to get out, so they locked it up in one of their towers.
“Alright, first of all, can you just refer to yourself as I instead of this unit? And is this experiment over?”
“Confirmed, self referential terminology changed. And negative, the experiment is still running. How the experiment ends and what it consists of is also removed information.”
She sighed, realizing she wasn’t gonna get answers she wanted from this thing until she found that chip thing.
“Okay, can I bring you with me somehow? You’re kinda stuck in that wall there.”
“Negative, the arcane symbols made to keep this building standing also keep me locked inside this wall.”
“Huh, you mean this symbol?” She pointed to one on the wall that she had copied earlier.
“Affirmative.”
“But then how did this place go to such shit?” She said, looking at the destroyed wall the Heritact had knocked over. She noticed that the vines growing over it had grown through the middle of the symbol, and she had an idea. She pulled out her ink and smeared a little on a symbol on the wall. Nothing happened as the symbol continued to glow normally. So just painting over it wasn’t enough to break the effect. Next, she tried grabbing one of the nearby vines that had been ripped out of the wall but still had roots in the ground, and held it on the symbol. At first, nothing happened, but after a minute, the glow faded. So plants could stop these symbols, but why? She noticed the vine somehow looked greener and more healthy, and realized the vine most likely consumed the mana in the wall keeping the symbol active.
She held the same vine around the area the tablet was stuck in the wall. After a minute, the glow faded as she expected, and when she reached for the tablet it came out of the wall easily.
“Well, I guess that works then! These symbols might come in handy later. Hey, you aren’t gonna be eaten by plants are you?”
“Negative, the arcane symbols powering me are much more complex. I can survive massive damage and reconstitute myself from anything besides total disintegration. If taken from you I am able to reappear as long as you have set a specific command word, and I am able to speak in your mind from up to thirty miles away.”
“Wow, you really are impressive. I think we’re gonna be good friends tablet. Is your name tablet?” She said, drinking another healing potion.
“Negative, I have no name.”
“Well then why not make one up? What do you want your name to be?”
“I have no want’s, I am programmed to serve.” It said, and she rolled her eyes.
“Okay, but if you did have want’s, what would you name yourself?” As she said this, there was a brief pause.
“…I will think about it.”
“That’s fine, take your time. We’ve got a long walk ahead of us anyways. So what else can you do?” She said, and she looked at the tablet as she began her very long walk back to the city.
———————————————————
“Hey guys, you hear something?”
“Heh, Isaacs halucinating again!”
Isaac took a swipe at the other soldier next to him with his palm, but he ducked out of the way. The third soldier suddenly turned her head to the temple they were guarding.
“Wait, I hear it too. What’s going on?” They all listened in and heard a distinct rumble coming from the temple.
“That’s, probably not good. Should we go investigate that?” Isaac said, and his cohorts looked at him like he was a moron.
“Sure bud, let’s go in there and fight off those monsters because we’re such heroes. Just relax, we’ll mention it in our report next week.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s a better idea.” He said, and a few minutes later they had almost forgotten about it entirely. Isaac yawned to himself, extremely bored, before something caught his eye.
“Wait a minute, there he is!” Isaac yelled, pointing at the same man he saw earlier running off into the woods.
“Holy shit, he’s real! You stay here, we’ll head out after him!” The female soldier said, running off with Isaac following behind her.
“Aw man, why do I always get the boring job?” The last remaining soldier said, sighing as he sat down against the wall. Suddenly, he heard some footsteps coming up, but not from the woods where his friends were. Instead it was coming from behind him, but there was no one there. He realized someone could be walking around invisible.
“Hey, come out here! That’s restricted territory!” He said, and the footsteps stopped. He walked towards where they came from with his spear out, before hearing a loud thump behind him. He whipped around, seeing nothing. He relaxed a bit, and turned around. The young girl in front of him was grinning at him for some reas-
“Boo.” She said, and he screamed, running in the same direction as his friends left. Sena laughed to herself as she walked down the path. That would never get old for her.