Gunther hadn’t even walked a single meter, when a message appeared in his vision.
You have created a weapon: Wooden Staff (Crude)
Wooden Staff
A staff grown out of a tree by one connected to the forest. Has pointy ends to stab with, a highly sophisticated weapon.
Can be used to hit or stab enemies
Slightly increases effectiveness of the skill Forest Attunement and its subskills
Slightly increased combat damage
“I just said it is a spear!” Gunther exclaimed “I also really need to find a way to use some sort of identification skill, it’s kinda sad I still can’t see the stats of my items after I close the first notification.”
Deciding he couldn’t really do anything about it for now, Gunther went out into the forest for real now.
‘Besides, a healing skill is more important right now.’ Gunther thought to himself. He was also pretty excited to finally see a bit of this new world. He had been living in a fantasy world for two days and had only seen a single room and a small patch of forest. Granted, the room had contained plenty of excitement for him, but Gunther had still seen way less of this world than he would have liked.
Remembering the bit about getting more powerful by being familiar with the forest he was in, Gunther tried to memorize as much of his surroundings as possible. He paid extra attention to whatever plants he saw around, so that he would not miss any useful herbs. He had only just begun walking though, so he didn’t find anything new.
After about ten minutes of walking, the first thing of notice happened, Gunther got into a fight. He had been distracted by the forest around him and his self imposed task of memorizing it, when he heard a sound to his right. Gunther turned to the source immediately and, to his horror, saw a bunny.
‘Why are there no other creatures here?’ He thought, slightly exasperated. He had almost been traumatised by his first encounter with one of them and now he had to deal with another one. Luckily, perhaps thanks to his Analysation skill, Gunther didn’t panic. He instead got into a sort of combat stance.
He slightly bent his knees and grabbed his ‘spear’ on the middle part with both his hands.
“It’s really a spear, I swear.” Gunther mumbled, not really sure why he was even doing that.
He kept his eyes focussed on the little monster and pointed his spear at its head.
“So we meet again, my arch-nemesis!” He said, in what he hoped was a threatening tone. The bunny didn’t seem to be impressed, or even care about the strange sounds he was making. Instead, it jumped at him. Seeing the bunny jump, Gunther stabbed at it, but he missed because of his inexperience. He had stabbed at where he saw the beast, but when his spear arrived there, the bunny had of course already moved on.
Seeing an opportunity, the bunny adjusted its course slightly and landed on the spear. It then jumped again, straight at Gunther’s face this time.
‘That’s so not fair!’ Gunther thought while hurriedly jumping away. The bunny barely missed him and immediately jumped at him again when it hit the ground. Gunther turned around as quick as he could, but not quick enough. The bunny hit him in the side and tried to bite into him. Luckily, not having expected Gunthers quick reaction, it bit a bit too far to the side.
That mishap was enough for Gunther to regain his composure a bit. He slammed his spear into the bunny’s side. He would have gone for the head, but didn’t want to risk missing it and give his opponent a chance to recover. With an audible crack, the bunny sank to the ground. It seemed it wasn’t actually all that though and that hitting it was the only actual challenge it provided.
Seeing the creature sink to the ground, Gunther sat down as well. The fight had not even taken a minute, but it felt like it had been much longer. Panting heavily, Gunther looked if there had been some gains from his battle.
Skills merged: Melee combat and Dodge become Wooden Combat lv 5!
Plants might seem calm and peaceful, but if provoked, there is nothing that can stop them from taking whoever opposes them down with the full force of nature.
By fighting using a weapon made using Forest Attunement, you have gained the subskill Wooden Combat.
Increases overall combat ability when fighting within a forest.
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Decreases overall combat ability when not fighting within a forest.
At higher levels, the forest will aid you in your battles.
‘This is very nice, but if this goes on much longer, I won’t be able to do anything outside of this forest.’ Gunther thought with mixed feelings. On the one side, having the forest aid him in his battles seemed very promising. On the other side however, there would be major problems for him if he ever got outside of this forest. In the end, Gunther just decided to hope the forest were large in this world. He would just have to solve any problems when they popped up and not worry about them needlessly.
He had also gotten a point in Strength, bringing the stat up to 12. This made Agility his lowest stat, which was kind of bad since the key to defeating the only enemy he had seen so far seemed to be speed.
Having recovered a bit from the fight, Gunther got back to walking. After another few minutes, he noticed some sounds again. Having learned from his earlier mistake, Gunther had been paying close attention to his surroundings while walking. He got into his combat stance again, but decided to hold his spear at one of its ends this time. Gunther reasoned he hadn’t had enough practice with his weapon to be able to stab with enough accuracy to hit anything yet. Slashing his spear sideways would cover a much larger area and thus increase his chances at success.
Gunther had kept his eyes on a bush where the sound seemed to have come from and winced a bit when he saw not one, but two bunnies emerge from it. He had been having trouble with only one of the tiny bastards and now they had also decided to gang up on him.
‘Why don’t you just go and bully someone else?! What have I ever done to you?’ He thought, while looking at the bunnies angrily. The creatures didn’t care about however he looked at them however and attacked. They ran at him and jumped into the air at practically the same moment. Having anticipated this, Gunther had already begun swinging his spear at them. Out of sheer luck, he hit the one to the right. Continuing his movement, Gunther hoped to get the other one too, but that one managed to dive to the ground in time.
The first bunny flew through the air and hit a tree with a sickening crack. It fell to the ground, lying there motionless. While Gunther was distracted by the fate of bunny number one, its friend didn’t seem to share the same concern. It jumped up at him and bit him in his leg. In a reflex, Gunther flinched and ended up stabbing the bunny in its back accidentally. Its grip on Gunthers leg loosened and it fell to the ground, just like his little bunny buddy earlier.
Gunther let himself fall down to the ground and gripped his leg. It was bleeding, just like his arm had after his first fight.
You are bleeding, you will lose 0.05 hp/s
Damage will increase over time if the debuff is not removed
‘So the damage had gotten 5 times worse last time. Good to know I guess.’
Thinking back to the last time this had happened, Gunther took his vest and shirt of and used the clean spike of his spear to cut of a piece of cloth from the sleeve he had left alone then, making his shirt nice and symmetrical again. He had foolishly thrown away the cloth he had used back then, in the hope it would help him forget what had happened. Gunther now realised he shouldn’t ever forget anything that happened, but instead try his best to learn from his experiences. It would have been easier now, if he had done so. The tip of his spear may have been fairly sharp, but spears were not meant for cutting. It had taken quite some effort to get this piece of cloth while he should have already carried one with him to begin with.
Having bound the cloth tightly around his thigh, something which wasn’t exactly easy because his legs were of course larger than his arms, Gunther saw the expected notification.
Bleeding slowed down, damage stopped for now
Damage will return if the wound is not healed properly
‘This is a nice surprise, now I still have some time to find some kind of healing herb!’ Gunther thought happily. He had feared he would just bleed out because he lacked the mana to use his old healing skill. He would still have to hurry now, but he would have some time at least.
Gunther decided to search for the herbs in his current location instead of moving on. By moving on, he would have a reasonable chance to find a decently sized population of flowers, like the ones at his tree, but if those turned out to be the wrong kind of flowers he would be doomed. Searching his immediate surroundings meant he would find the more hidden herbs or flowers, but the quantity would be much lower. Hoping his Forest Attunement skill could help with that problem, Gunther went for the second option.
Thinking back to how he had connected to all of the flowers the last night, Gunther lied down in the most relaxed way possible with a leg which is hurting as hell. He breathed in and out deeply a couple of times to calm himself down and tried to open his mind to the forest around him. Just like last time, he felt nothing at first. He then felt a lot of tiny things around him and realised it was the grass. He inspected a blade of grass as best as he could, but found nothing to indicate any kind of healing ability.
Gunther pushed his mind further outwards and the grass became some sort of blur around him. Afraid he would miss something this way, he tried to keep the grass as focussed as possible while still increasing the area he searched in. It was really hard, since he wasn’t used to processing this much information at once, but his fear of dying was a pretty good motivator. While he was doing all this, Gunther tried to keep as calm as possible so that his heart kept beating as slow as possible.
Just as Gunther was thanking his Analysation skill for helping him keep calm, he realised he had been using its passive part all the time, but had been neglecting the active part. Activating his skill, Gunther noticed everything around him seemed much clearer than before. While still hard, the help of the skill made enough of a difference to make this way of searching look somewhat feasible.
Gunther kept extending this sense of his, until he found something other than grass or trees. It probably wasn’t that far away, but because of the enormous amount of grass blades around him, Gunthers mind was already really strained. He decided to let the grass blur a bit and divert most of his attention, and his Analysation skill on this new plant. The plant somehow felt way more complicated than anything else around it. More complicated than the Luminent Bluebells even. Then, the plant moved, watched in astonishment by Gunther.