Sam woke the next day with the sun illuminating the forest on her side of the river. She noticed the woods on the west side of the river had become considerably less gloomy as she progressed farther down the river. At the same time, the gloom remained almost unchanged on the side of the river where she had fought the Deep Hunter. It was almost like the river was a border between two distinct forests.
It took Sam nearly an hour to get over her initial fury and frustration at herself over not identifying the vials of ink in her inventory the previous night. An act that would have saved most of her potion supply from being consumed. Even now, she was still kicking herself for not checking the ink vials in her inventory, which were the cure for the Deep Hunter toxin. Reading her notifications after her initial anger helped her calm down, especially the message telling her she had gained poison resistance and leveled it up to level 3, which was reassuring. As she yawned and stretched in the morning sun, she went back over her notifications from the night before to make sure she hadn't missed anything.
'Bing' Congratulations! You have gained Poison Resistance [Level 1]: You are now slightly more resistant to poison due to your willful consumption of a highly toxic substance. Good job?
'Bing' Poison Resistance has leveled up to Level 2: You are slightly more poison-resistant.
'Bing' Poison Resistance has leveled up to Level 3: You are slightly more poison-resistant.
"Not surprising when you eat something that can kill you three times over. That notification was just ridiculous, though, 'Good Job,' really? Fuck off System." Sam couldn’t tell if the System was being snarky on purpose or if it genuinely thought that’s how she wanted it to sound…she was still leaning toward the System being a general dick though.
That particular notification hadn't been the one that got her out of her bad mood last night. However, the following notification of a new skill had her perked up. She pulled that notification back up to ensure she had caught everything it said the previous night; she hadn't exactly been in her right mind when she read it after all.
'Bing' Congratulations! You have learned a new skill, Mana Repair [Level 1]: By repeatedly using your mana to supplement your natural regeneration efficiently and in a controlled manner, while under duress, you have developed the skill Mana Repair. All mana costs for healing will be decreased when using this skill. Channeling mana into this skill will recover your health and/or stamina. Channeling stamina and/or health into this skill will recover mana. Warning: The user can completely exhaust all health points (HP) with this skill; use wisely.
"So basically, I can burn mana until my stamina is full while also healing myself, then switch to stamina to refill my mana reserves and continue healing and building more stamina," Sam tapped her chin. Now that she wasn’t still furious, she understood the implications of the skill, “what's the catch? I wonder. It can't be that easy. I bet it's not a 1:1 ratio."
Sam decided to test the Mana Repair skill before doing anything else now that she was fresh and could focus on what she was doing. Quickly creating a blade construct, she cut her arm, exactly as she had done outside the blue grass clearing, and activated the Mana Repair skill to heal the wound. She immediately noticed how much less mana it took to heal herself; she also felt or rather sensed a detailed understanding of what part of her body was damaged and how to heal the wound most efficiently, “well this is interesting,” she thought as the shallow cut on her arm closed almost instantly using virtually no mana. Checking her mana reserves, Sam cursed quietly to herself, "shit, I'm already full again; this skill is way more efficient than I expected! And I am not complaining about that!"
Next, Sam checked the transfer ratios of her new Mana Repair skill by burning a prodigious amount of mana using several gigantic shield bubble constructs to expend almost all her mana reserves. Once her mana was mostly depleted, she refilled some of her mana reserves by converting her stamina first. After refilling her mana by channeling her stamina, Sam found it to be a 3:1 ratio, stamina to mana. She had to stop channeling when she started to feel so exhausted she was afraid she would pass out. She looked at the mana she had recovered and thought, "So I can get a little over 100 mana from my current staminal pool; not great, but I guess it’s better than nothing. I'm not sure I would use it in battle, though; it felt like if I had kept going, I would have passed out from stamina exhaustion.” During the transfer, the feeling had been weird, as she had channeled her stamina into mana; Sam felt like she was getting more exhausted by the second, like when she used to run at a dead sprint uphill when she trained for marathons in college. Refilling her stamina with Mana Repair resulted in a 3:1 ratio of mana to stamina, which didn't surprise her. She wasn't disappointed either, “I can fully refill my stamina if my mana reserves are high enough. Hmm, it could help if I’m running away and need the stamina more than mana.” She decided she was pleased with the stamina and mana transfers her new skill offered.
"Okay, so let's see what the health-to-mana ratio is," Sam burned a little more mana. With a thought, she started channeling her health, converting it to mana but immediately stopped letting out a scream as soon as the skill activated, falling to her knees, her hands clenched so hard her nails were digging into the skin of her palms. Sam collected her thoughts to get her panicked breathing under control. “What the fuck was that?” The second she had activated the skill, her vision had gone red around the edges, and she felt something very wrong had just happened to her. It was as if her entire being had rebelled against what she was doing, “was I just draining energy from my soul?” Sam wasn't sure what the feeling was, only that it was telling her what she had done was hurting her in a way that wasn't natural. And she should never ever even think of doing it again. She almost decided to call it quits, too, but it was a skill she could use that may very well save her life someday. So, hoping the System wouldn't give her a skill that could cause permanent damage if she used it, and after a short mental struggle, she decided she had to know how the skill worked and resolved to try it one more time to get the ratio. "At least this time, I'll be prepared for it," she thought, but being mentally prepared as she was, the feeling wasn't any easier to manage. What she felt when the transfer of health to mana started wasn't pain; it felt…wrong…like she was taking something from her soul that was not easily replaceable. She got the transfer ratio by gritting her teeth and fighting the awful 'wrong' feeling. She was surprised when it wound up being a 1:1 ratio for health to mana, "still not worth it, though," she thought as her breath was coming in short, pained gasps, “it will have to be some seriously desperate circumstances for me to convert health into mana.” She immediately refilled her health with mana using Mana Repair. Sam frowned deeply when the skill told her exactly what had happened to her, and as she suspected, she found she had indeed damaged her soul, her life force. The thing that bothered her the most, though, was when she instinctively understood the damage; what she had done to her soul could not be healed by any other means than using her Mana Repair skill to transfer the lifeforce back, “a health potion wouldn’t work,” she thought with trepidation, “this is a good way to do some permanent damage to my soul, I think.”
She continued channeling her mana into health until she completely repaired her damaged soul. Sighing once she was back at full health, Sam still felt like she had done something terribly wrong to herself even several minutes after her health was fully recovered. She vowed to not do that again unless there was no other choice. Even then, she wasn't sure if she should or would, "What in the hell did I take from myself when I was converting my life force to mana? Apparently, there's more to my health stat than I realize. It was like I stabbed myself in the soul with a straw and tried to suck it dry…ugh," she shivered just thinking about it and blocked the thoughts for the moment. What made the whole thing even worse was the ridiculous 5:1 ratio of mana to health it took when she healed the damage to her soul, “even more reason to not use my life force for mana!" She thought empathically.
Overall, Sam was a little disappointed by the results of her tests but figured she couldn't bolster any of her attributes without a potion before, so something was better than nothing, even if one of the transfers came with some pretty severe downsides and the others weren't useful outside of a desperate need. "Now all I need to do is get Mana Repair leveled up enough to make the ratios better…at least, I hope that's what leveling up the skill will do."
Deciding to think of ways to use her Mana Repair skill later, as she traveled, Sam moved on with her review and continued scrolling through her notifications from the previous day. Surprisingly, she found she had indeed missed a notification the night before and eagerly read it.
'Bing' Congratulations! Your Racial Skill Recovery has been upgraded to Resilient [Level 1]: You have been on the brink of death more than you can count in the past 72 hours; it has been six times, but who's counting? Someone is, apparently. In every instance of impending death, your tenacity for clinging to life against all odds has shown in your recent experiences! Each time death has tried her best to claim you, you have managed to pull yourself from her grasp! Because you seem to enjoy laughing in death's face, you have received an early upgrade to your racial skill, Recovery to Resilient; good job! Your new skill, Resilient, maintains all recovery abilities at level 10, along with the added benefit of a ten percent bonus to the base value of vitality and endurance!
“I’ve nearly died six times in three days…holy crap! I guess I am pretty resilient!” She looked at the message again, "Who is counting? Is the System trying to be snarky, or is there a planetary administrator counting my near-death experiences, or is the System controlling this entire verse counting how many times I nearly die? It would have been nice to arrive with a guidebook on how this 'System' works, maybe titled something like "A User's Guide to Interdimensional Travel." Sam chuckled at the thought, "I guess I could write one if I survive long enough to find a pen and some paper," the thought of her writing a guidebook about interdimensional travel made her laugh out loud, "I would title it, The Book of SAM; How Not to Die When Traveling Between Dimensions and Other Fun Facts!"
After a good laugh, Sam cleared her campsite. She tried to put the lean-to directly into her inventory, which worked! Staring at the empty space where her shelter once stood, she said, "Now that is freaking convenient!" She tried the same with the firepit, but unfortunately, she could only add one stone at a time, which she did, "Oh well, at least I tried."
When Sam was finished, she checked her map and, with one last look around to ensure she had caught everything, set off down the river.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
***
Sam continued traveling, following the river downstream as it made its slow winding path through the forest. Still, even though the trees were getting thinner and spread farther apart, her travels didn't get any easier because the underbrush was getting thicker, in contrast, forcing her to hack her way through in places and, more importantly, limiting her visibility to a few meters. She was always keeping her Mana Sight active now, afraid something would surprise her if she turned it off. Walking through the forest, she noticed it became less ominous. She found with the brighter surroundings she could enjoy the smell of the fresh foliage drifting off the surface of the slow-moving river as she made her way slowly through the dense underbrush.
As Sam was hacking her way through the thick bushes and vines that were becoming more numerous in the thinner foliage of the forest, she looked at the machete she had constructed. It was an exact replica of the machete she had bought herself from an army surplus store and it was working like a charm. She was proud of the machete construct. It had taken her quite a few tries before she had gotten the shape and weight just right, but once she had got it perfect, the construct proved more than sufficient in removing the pesky limbs, grass, and vines of the underbrush in her way. The only drawback was keeping the construct at the exact weight and sharpness required for the work drained her mana at an insane rate. Fortunately, the mana drain slightly tapered once she received two levels in Mana Crafting back-to-back, bringing it to level 7 and lowering the amount of mana she needed to maintain constructs.
As Sam continued making her way slowly down the river, she calculated her route was bringing her to the foothills of the mountain range or at least within a few kilometers of it by her estimation. The farther she moved south and west, the more sounds of wildlife she heard around her, in the form of bird calls and the calls of other small forest creatures. A few deer-like creatures with glowing horns and sporting manes like a horse darted across her path on more than one occasion, none of them even slowing down at the sight of her. She was a little disappointed at this development because she was itching for a fight that would give her a chance to try out some of the higher-level mana constructs she was toying with at her rest stops.
Sam had been creating mana constructs of every shape and size she could imagine as she traversed the forest. She kept trying to imagine using them in a fight against the creatures she had already encountered. She made everything from spikes that protruded from everywhere on her body to magic baseballs she threw at nearby trees; sadly, the baseballs she made didn't explode on impact as she had hoped and only hit the trees with a light thump knocking some bark off before they dissipated. One exciting discovery was any constructs she created would dissipate within three seconds after she stopped channeling mana into them, regardless of whether or not they were in direct contact with her body. Given what she had been through, Sam thought it was good information to have, especially in a fight.
Sam continued following the river, toying with her skills, ensuring she never let her mana fall below half. The last thing she wanted was to get ambushed with low mana reserves.
***
Midday found Sam sitting on a log near the bank of the river, meditating as she munched on some cat steak left over from the night before. She was impressed her inventory had kept it warm and juicy, precisely as it had been when she stored it the previous night. Her Meditation skill was now at level 6, allowing her to perform simple tasks like eating while still being able to actively channel the skill.
A twig snapping behind her got Sam's attention. Instead of jumping up in reaction to the sound, she only stiffened. Not being able to see behind her, Sam had ingeniously created an early warning system out of the six mana threads she could currently control by weaving the threads through the trees behind her like a web of tripwires. It took almost no mana to maintain the threads so long as she wasn’t using them for something strenuous. With meditation active, she could keep the threads up and her mana sight on indefinitely. She could 'feel' the area around all her mana threads, which was a feeling she could only describe as 'interesting.' She was surprised when she first used the threads, and her ability to 'sense' the area around them felt almost entirely natural, and acclimatization was swift. It was as if having six extra appendages, and being able to partially see out of them was the most normal thing in the world.
Sensing the area around her threads for threats when the twig snapped, Sam thought, “I must have been a spider in a previous life. Wait, not a spider; I technically have ten appendages right now…what has ten legs?" She thought for a while, and when nothing came to mind, she gave up and went back to thinking of herself as a spider in a previous life to amuse herself. Having sensed nothing, she continued listening. Not hearing any other sounds or sensing anything from her threads, she resumed munching on her cat steak and watching the river flow slowly, carrying the occasional branch or leaf litter. She wasn't being careless; snapping twigs and falling leaves were common in the forest. When she had started her journey, she had reacted to every sound or change in the wind with fear and worry. Still, having spent enough time in this wilderness, she felt comfortable enough to ignore what she considered the usual sounds of a forest as they frequently occurred around her. That is until she felt something tug on one of the mana threads behind her. The tug came from the same direction; she had heard the twig snap.
Sam jumped up and whipped around, ready for a fight. "Ha! You can't surprise me, you little—oh shit," she stared open-mouthed at the creature that had touched one of her threads, and what stood in front of her made her suddenly very nervous. The enormous creature in front of her was the largest dog she had ever seen, “not a dog, a wolf,” she corrected herself, “holy crap, I could ride that thing!” Recovering from her initial surprise, she identified the creature.
‘Bing’ Great Timberwolf [Level??]; Hostile; Affinity: Earth
“Nice doggy,” Sam softly said as she backed away slowly toward the river's edge, holding her hands out in a placating gesture to the enormous beast. "How is something so large able to be so quiet? That thing must weigh a metric ton!"
The massive wolf raised its head and sniffed the air, its enormous snout sounding more like a horse than a dog. It then lowered its head and stared right at Sam, "No, not at me, at my hands," that’s when she remembered she was still holding the half-eaten steak in her hand. "Way to go, Sam; just bait the entire forest full of predators straight to you by eating a delicious steak in dangerous monster-filled territory like you're on a freaking camping trip back on earth!" She berated herself for her own foolishness.
While she was backing up, Sam was weaving all her mana threads between the trees in front of the wolf to create a barrier. Her actions proved useless though because in a single leap, the beast jumped through the woven threads, snapping like they offered no resistance. The sudden breaking of her threads caused a sharp pain in her temple, but thankfully, it wasn't so bad she lost her focus on the wolf. The leap carried the wolf half the distance toward Sam as it lowered its head to glare at her. A deep growl rumbled in its chest as it curled its lips in a snarl, exposing white fangs as long as Sam's pinkie finger.
Sam tossed the steak toward the wolf with as slight motion as possible. The beast wasn't stupid and didn't snatch the steak out of the air, instead letting the meat fall to the ground in front of it, cautiously sniffing the offering before swallowing it in one gulp. The wolf looked back at Sam expectantly.
Sam took the look as a sign and tossed a raw piece of cat meat to the wolf. This time, the wolf didn't hesitate and snatched the juicy morsel out of the air. The motion had almost been too fast for Sam to track, “it’s fast, probably faster than the Blade Tail.” Sam mused to herself. She was calculating her odds of surviving if the beast decided to lunge at her, and she wasn't happy with the results. Given how fast the wolf closed the distance between them and its quick motion to snatch the meat from the air, Sam knew she could not entirely dodge an attack from the animal, not at this distance anyway. When she didn't immediately produce another piece of meat, the wolf began growling again and took a menacing step toward her, causing her to take a step back reflexively, saying, "Hey, I'm not going to give you all my food if you're just going to eat me any way you overgrown house pet." As she spoke, Sam got an idea, "Do you like a fish, big boy?"
Sam summoned some Deep Hunter meat and threw it at the growling beast's muzzle. Like the previous piece of meat, the wolf snatched the offered morsel out of the air, swallowing it whole before immediately beginning to gag and try to hack it back up. It was too late, though; the wolf stopped mid-hack as the paralysis effect from the poisonous meat took effect. “Now is my chance!” Not wasting a second, Sam attacked with her four remaining daggers, using them at the ends of her mana threads with two daggers snaking in from each side of the animal's body to strike it just behind its rib cage.
Sam had hoped that feeding the wolf would make it less hostile toward her, but the 'Hostile' tag hovering over its head had never gone away as she fed it, so, knowing there was no way she could outrun the beast, Sam devised a plan to take the wolf down with as little danger to herself as possible. Even as the wolf ate the poisoned meat, she was already acting out her plan, summoning the daggers at the ends of her mana threads, a convenient trick she had learned traveling, stabbing them at the animal's exposed sides even as it tried to hack up the Deep Hunter meat.
Each of the daggers found their mark in the wolf's thick hide. Sam twisted the daggers using her threads as she ran up to the large creature's head, which was thankfully lowered enough to reach its ear, readying a thin mana blade on the end of her fist to attack. Arriving where the wolf was frozen mid-hack, Sam thrust the long, thin mana blade into its ear with all her strength. The blade slid only a few centimeters into the ear before striking something hard and coming to a halt. Putting all her weight behind the blade, Sam tried to drive it into the beast's brain, but it was useless! She didn't have enough strength! Her efforts weren't even causing the beast to move or sway away from her, pushing against it because its body was incredibly dense.
Cursing, Sam abandoned her attack with the mana blade. She ran to where one of her daggers was protruding from the wolf's side and jumped up; she grabbed the dagger's hilt with both hands and yanked it down. It took two jerks with the full weight of her body behind them. Finally, the blade started moving, sliding down through the thick skin and muscle of the wolf's side, opening a large gash in its stomach. A torrent of blood sprayed from the wound into Sam's face.
Sputtering and spitting at the hot, coppery-tasting liquid in her mouth, Sam yanked the dagger free and grabbed the other dagger buried in the wolf's flesh. She tried to repeat the process, but her bloody hands slipped off the dagger's hilt when she yanked down on it. Sam tumbled to her butt but quickly wiped her hands on the ground and jumped back up, grabbing the dagger again. She was running out of time, and she knew it; even her own low level and stats had shortened the time the toxic effects of the meat lasted, so she knew this wolf would feel the effects for an even shorter time. Her theory was proven correct a moment later when her hands wrapped around the dagger's hilt again; she was knocked back and away from the wolf. Flying through the air, she slammed into a tree nearly three meters away with a wet smack and the loud crack of some of her ribs breaking.
Sam rose dazed and unsteady to her feet at the tree's base, her vision blurring a little, "fuck, that wasn't nearly as long as I had hoped. Damn thing must have poison resistance, or maybe its high vitality helps with poison. I hope I did some damage and the health-draining effect of the poison wasn't fully negated." The wound on the wolf's side was still bleeding profusely, which gave her some hope, and as it turned to her, she could see it was a little wobbly on its feet, too. She readied herself, “Okay, now for phase two.”
Sam had no more time to think, only to act. The beast lunged and was upon her in an instant, but thanks to the lingering effects of the poison, Sam could dodge to the side, barely avoiding the jaws as they snapped shut with a loud snap bare millimeters from her body. However, she could not dodge the lightning-fast paw swipe the wolf followed up with when it missed biting her.
Sam again found herself flying through the air; this time, she trailed a red mist behind her from several large gashes in her back. Hitting the ground hard, she rolled to a stop at the river's edge, a few loose pebbles dislodged by her body rolled into the water with soft splashing sounds. It was hard to focus; pain screamed as her many wounds demanded her attention. She knew she didn't have time to process the damage she had just taken, and sensing what was coming through her mana threads, Sam quickly rolled out of the way! The massive paws of the wolf barely missed her head and left a deep indentation in the riverbank at the point of impact. Her roll took her into the river's dark waters, where she quickly sank out of sight. Phase two of her plan was now in progress.