I use my new skill Blend, and instantly feel the effects. All the energy is sapped from me, and I feel like I have weights on my ankles. That has to be the result of the stats reduction, this sucks so bad. I feel like I’m too weak to walk almost. With a huff I turn my attention to my perception and watch myself change. Let’s see, I can feel the skill, what is available, what is possible. I choose human, and instantly my form starts to shift. My skin starts to lose color turning white, then slowly fades into a tan color. My ears shift, slowly rounding out to look human. My front teeth shrink slightly and lose their sharp edges. The vines in my hair start to recede into my scalp until they are gone completely. The hair itself remains green, which is a little concerning but maybe I can get by if everything else is normal. Giving myself a final once over, I look human enough.

But Petal isn’t exactly a human name is it? Hmm, I can select the name I can display to others but cant change it once selected. Hmm, Alex is a regular name so maybe the naming styles are the same or similar enough to my home world. I want to go with something easy to remember. Lets see, how about Nina?

Name: (Nina) Petal

Race: (Human) Masquerade Willow Dryad: Level 10 (Rare)

Class: Novice Paladin (Rare)

******************************************************************************

Health: 650/650

Mana: 593/2958

Stamina: 663/663

******************************************************************************

Strength: (33) 66 (+)

Agility: (13) 26 (+)

Endurance: (25) 51 (+)

Magic: (58) 116 (+)

Fortitude: (25) 51 (+)

******************************************************************************

Good news is looks like the stats reduction does not affect my health and mana totals. Thank God for that. Something tells me I am going to need all that health if I want to get out of here. Alex is still asleep under the pod petals, and will hopefully be out for a while longer. I put the final touches of the first part of my plan into action. I order my pod to go mobile, instantly I feel the network start to recede and the pod starting to shift and shrink. But there’s one major problem, it's so slow. It’s going to be at least four hours before it’s ready. Speaking of getting ready, I reach back and disconnect my tail, sending it back to the pod. Packing it up while attached to me won’t do anyone good. Since I have time to burn until Alex wakes up I decide to practice my swinging skills and test the durability of my new toy, I mean weapon, by smacking a tree.

I walk over to the nearest tree, rear my arm back, and smack it as hard as I can. The resulting shock knocks the mace out of my hand and sends a tingle up my arm. Ouch that hurt! I guess that’s what I get for smacking a tree full bore. It just shows I have no idea how to swing a mace, or any weapon for that matter. After my arm decides to stop tingling, I reach down and pick the mace back up. OK, I need to be a lot more careful about how hard I swing this. I line myself up again and give the tree another good whack. This time I only use half my strength and manage to just barely hold onto the mace. Minor improvement, but I need more practice. I keep going at the tree for the next four hours, slowly increasing my hit power until I’m able to keep a hold on the mace. Then I work on my technique, trying to swing the mace with more efficiency than power.

Finally, my pod is finished packing up. I look over to see a small compact green bulb. It looks exactly like a flower that hasn’t bloomed yet. All the petals have turned pure green and it’s locked up tight. I walk over and pick it up, only to find to my surprise that the roots have intertwined to form little backpack straps. It’s so cute, my own little green bulb pack. A little conspicuous, but hopefully in this world with monsters and magic it will be not suspicious enough to draw major attention.

Bulb Pack: It’s a pod in compact and mobile form, great for picking up and on the go lifestyles. May take several hours to deploy once placed back down, once deployment starts it must finish completely before the pod can be repackaged.

Oh that might be problematic, I cannot let other people see this description. Well maybe someone who has no idea what they are looking at might pass it off. But Alex seemed to know. Wait, I haven’t seen anything outside of everything I currently know about, and I remember one of the race traits specifically saying I know about plants, and the triage says my own knowledge affects what can be recognized. I have a sneaking suspicion, so I walk over to Alex. He is still fast asleep but now just laying off center in a barren dirt patch in the middle of the glade. Careful to not wake him, I start to pilfer his pouch for items I know nothing about. A knife, no, some random ass book, ah here we go little bottles. I carefully pull out a little bottle, it's blue in color, approximately one inch tall and half an inch wide. I stand corrected, the bottle is clear, but the liquid inside is blue. So, I focus on the bottle until I get a notification.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

???:????

As I suspected, since I don’t know anything about it I can’t, what’s a good word, inspect it? Yea inspect sounds good; I can’t inspect it. I suspect it’s that way for all items in the world, expect for maybe stupidly obvious stuff. I think this is a mana potion, but I can’t be one hundred percent sure without drinking it, which I don’t want to do right now. Who knows what problems that could cause among other things. I dig another bottle out of his pack, this one the same size as the previous blue one but contains a puke green liquid. Ew, what the hell is this thing? I hold the two potions close together and inspect them.

Mana Potion?: Restores Mana?

???:???

Definitely based on what you know about the object, well that makes things a lot easier and safer for carrying my pod pack around. I carefully place the bottles back in his pouch, I need him as undisturbed as possible for this next part. I put my pack bulb on my back, and do a double check of the glade. It’s almost like I was never here, the corpse flowers are gone, the trees have recovered and look normal. The berry bushes are a bit janky, but stuff grows weird in nature all the time right? My pod is gone, only a dirt patch with a jackass sleeping in it left in the center. The sun is about to reach its peak, meaning it’s close to midday. Alright it’s show time.

I take a deep breath and prepare myself for the next part. I really hope my disguise holds up. Well, this is a good test. If Alex sees through my disguise, I need to make adjustments, and he can be …. disposed of. I don’t want to but I will if I have to. He deserves it if he suddenly gets smart enough to see through my disguise after being a dumb ass and trying to burn my house down. I’m surprisingly calm and straightforward about this, must be the dryad part doing the thinking.

I walk over to Alex and do one more check of myself to make sure everything is in order. Yep, fake name, fake look, it's trolling time. I reach down and pull the gag off, then shake Alex as hard as I can while yelling at him.

“Hey! Wake up! Are you ok?!”

“Nnnggg, ugh, what?”

I keep shaking and yelling at him, putting some urgency in my voice.

“I said wake up! Why are you tied up?”

It’s at this point he snaps fully awake and begins to look around frantically.

“Dryad, there is a dryad here!” he screams.

“A what? What the hell is a dryad?” I ask.

“What the hell are they teaching these days, it’s a monster!”

“I got that, but there is nothing else here. I already checked for monsters.”

“What do you mean, its pod is right……” he trails off.

We both look to the center of the glade where there is nothing but a sad little dirt patch.

“Man, I am telling you, there is nothing here but dead wolves and you.” I say.

“But, but it was right here! It was right in the middle of that dirt patch! Look at all the wolves around, it killed them!”

“Are you sure that whoever tied you up didn’t kill the wolves?”

“It was the dryad, she tied me up!”

“So a monster tied you up? Then proceeded to up and vanish leaving you and the corpses behind? Did you get hit in the head or something?”

I guess this is the point where Alex realized he sounded crazy, meanwhile I was trying to pull off his restraints but doing a poor job of it.

“Hey, got anything for these, are these branches?” I ask, feigning ignorance.

“Yea in my side pouch is a knife, the dryad tied me up with them.”

I give him an incredulous look while fishing the knife from it’s hold. After pulling it out I manage to start sawing through the restraints.

“Shit, what happened to your leg? Are you going to be able to walk back?”

“No, my group got jumped by some wolves and we got separated, my leg got bit bad in the commotion. That thing did something to stop the bleeding.”

“So, it healed you too? No way you’re talking about a monster, you must have gotten hit in the head.”

“I’m telling you it was smart, it knew how to communicate! It understood what I was saying and tried to reply with gestures! It probably wanted to keep me for food later!”

“OK man, sure. We need to get you some help.” I reply with a hint of concern.

“I’m telling you it was here!”

Finally, I mange to finish sawing through the leg restraints so Alex can stand up. He is a bit wobbly and clearly favoring his only good foot. But we might just be able to make it to town before nightfall, assuming it’s not super far away. I start on the hand bindings and our conversation continues.

“So do you remember the way back to town, because I got myself a little lost.” I say.

“How are you lost? Town is just a ……” He trails off.

“Yea, quit complaining. I only stumbled across you because I was trying to find my way back. Do you remember or not?”

“Yea I think I remember, just have to retrace my steps.”

“I hope it’s not too far because you are in no condition for a long trek.”

“Yes unfortunately, wait aren’t you a paladin? Can’t you do something about it please?”

“I got this class yesterday, literally. I don’t know how to cast the spells yet.”

“You don’t know how to cast the spells!? Just think about it like you’re using a skill.”

OK that makes that a lot easier. As long as I remember I have the spell I can cast it by thinking about it like a skill usage, according to Alex. You know, the guy who has a track record of not helping his savior. The big problem is my mana, or lack of.

Health: 650/650

Mana: 508/2958

Stamina: 374/663

I’ll have to at least give it a try. I crouch down next to Alex. I start thinking about healing his leg, the muscle and tendons being repaired, the blood vessels coursing throughout, the bone whole as it should be, cells dividing to fill in the missing tissue. Slowly a light engulfs my hand and instinctively I know I need to direct the energy at the area I want to heal. The light starts flowing from my hand to the wound on his leg, causing a very slow but noticeable regrowing of tissue. It would take a few hours of magical therapy to make the leg look whole again, no idea if it would actually work.

“Holy shit, that’s some good healing.” He says.

“Um thanks, but I don’t have enough mana to make it whole again.” I reply

“That’s fine, as long as the wound gets sealed up I’ll figure something out.”

And with that statement my mana had reached zero and the healing stopped. OK, so that’s how a spell works, good to know. With an empty feeling I stand up and look at Alex.

“We should head to town, think you can make it if I support your bad leg?”

“Yea, we need to head that way until we hit a large stone, then turn and head back to the road.”

Alex pointed in the direction he had wandered into the glade from. With that I moved myself to support his injured side and we started walking off to town. Alex completely unaware that the very dryad he claimed existed was the one helping him. It takes everything I have to keep the shit eating grin off my face.