Ethan wasn’t sure how it happened; he hadn’t been paying enough attention. He simply vanished from the large white room he’d been in, and reappeared standing up in the middle of a forest.
He had almost nothing on him; his olive t-shirt, his cargo pants, and a pair of flip-flops. His phone was in his pocket, which would be useful until it died. Gadget wasn’t in the vicinity, and fear clutched his heart, but he pushed it down.
‘Need to remain calm. Panic will only worsen Gadget’s chances. I need to come up with a plan.’ Ethan thought to himself.
As he tried to figure out what to do, he scanned his surroundings. He was standing in a small clearing, the sunlight barely able to break through in significant quantities. There was no grass, and the dirt was grey. Thousands of roots covered the ground in a thick blanket; it would be impossible to move more than a single step without having to step over or around one. The trees themselves varied hugely, but the most common type, and the one that surrounded him, was a large, seemingly normal oak tree. Green leaves, brown bark, lots of branches.
Behind those, though, were trees that Ethan had never obviously never encountered before. There was one type that looked almost identical to the normal oak trees around him, but had what must’ve been a hundred shards of sharp, twisting metal jutting from their surface. Finally, there was a third type that looked like a six foot tall and thin, branchless birch. A blue mist clung to their surface, and he saw one of them simply vanish in his periphery, leaving behind only the thin blue mist that had clung to its surface moments before. A second or two after that, he saw more clearly another one disappear.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Ethan thought. Even the trees were magical.
He hadn’t seen any animals in the vicinity, which was either lucky or horrible. He really didn’t want to be ambushed by something stealthy enough to hide on the ground despite the lacking bushes and grass.
Ethan almost decided to take a risk and call out for Gadget, but then realized that the forest was completely and utterly silent, aside from the gentle swaying of the trees.
Adrenaline burst through his body, and Ethan struggled to calm down. He needed to remain calm. His hands were trembling, and he forced them to still by clinging onto one another. He took a deep breath and exhaled deeply.
‘The forest being this quiet means that something dangerous is probably in the vicinity. I can summon a goblin, I think, but it’s going to take me a minute to figure out.’
Could he afford to spend a minute on summoning a goblin when Gadget was out there all on his own? He shook his head; it was the same thing with his mom. There was no point in trying to rush to save Gadget when he didn’t even know where the old dog was. Having a second pair of eyes would help the search as well, and enable him to protect Gadget better once he found him.
He remembered the System telling him that the Impartment would be imparted upon entering the Tutorial, but nothing of the sort had occurred yet.
Receive Impartment? The System asked, and Ethan realized that it’d just been waiting for him to want it. That made sense; it would suck if it was granted to him while he was in imminent danger… which he was currently in, now that he thought about it.
Rather than instantly respond, he instead suddenly lay prone against the ground in order to make himself less visible and then sent the text a little mental push of affirmation.
For a second, nothing happened… and then, he felt knowledge flowing into his brain. It didn’t hurt, but it felt weird beyond belief, and there was a lot of it- enough that Ethan knew it would take a few minutes to understand it all.
He didn’t need to understand it all, though; only some of it. He rapidly parsed through it all, locating only what he needed to know.
The mana core was both the container and generator of mana, and he needed to manipulate the magical fuel within. He needed to bring it out of his body, clump a bunch of it together, and then infuse it with an extremely exacting formula that he didn’t understand in the slightest in order to cause the mana clump to turn into a goblin.
‘Fuck… this is going to take a while.’ Ethan thought.
He had at least been smart enough to recognize that he needed to control mana, and had paid rather intense attention to that bit of information.
Controlling mana was meant to be like controlling any other part of your body; it was meant to be instinctive and easy. Actively trying to do it would only make it worse, just like how you would throw a crappy punch if you focused on deliberately moving each and every muscle in your arm. He needed to just… do it. Draw it out of his body with ease.
That was, of course, easier said than done. He was under a lot of pressure, and very desperately wanted it to work. It’d be easier once he figured it out, but that wasn’t now.
He tried to push the mana control thing into the background while he instead thought of how he’d go about finding Gadget. Once he summoned the goblin, there would be several options. He could have it come with him and guard him as he searched for Gadget, or he could-
The mana in his core twitched when he’d tried to move it without thinking, and he had to struggle to keep his attention away from what he was actually trying to do.
He could shout for Gadget and hope that his goblin thing would be strong enough to fight off whatever had scared the forest. He wasn’t sure if it was possible, but he might be able to split up and have the goblin search elsewhere. Maybe, if the goblin was capable of complex speech, he could have it run a few hundred feet away and then shout for Gadget.
The mana in his core started to flow out of it and through his body, toward his hand. Excitement surged through him, and he almost lost control. Now that he understood the sensation of moving his mana, he was able to move it with greater ease, without having to try to move it with his subconscious desires.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
It got to his hand, and he frowned when it couldn’t get through his skin. He almost tried to push, but quickly stopped that when the mana threatened to fall apart. He returned to thinking about other things while his subconscious guided the mana.
Once he figured out how to get the mana out of his body, he would need to ball it up and then do some crazy shit to turn the mana clump into a goblin. His first goblin was probably going to be a deformed mess, but that wasn’t too bad.
For most magics, you’d only need to infuse the mana with a bit of direction and have it do the rest, but summoning was far, far more complex, apparently. He would need to direct his mana, which was even attuned to summoning, quite a lot. It would also be a constant balancing act between not pushing too much and losing control, and pushing enough to guide it into doing what he wanted it to.
The best way for someone of his skill, it seemed, was to use his hands to throw magical gang signs in order to shape his subconscious, as each of the gang signs would have a meaning useful to the shaping, and he’d subconsciously understand them and what they meant.
‘That’s such a roundabout way of doing it,’ Ethan complained.
He decided to practice the magical gang signs while waiting for his subconscious to figure out how to make the mana escape his body, which he only now recognized to be an incredibly amusing term. Apparently, that amusement helped him to get the mana past his skin, because even as he tried not to chuckle his mana wriggled out of his body through his pores. His control over it became significantly weaker when it left his body, but he left his subconscious to deal with that.
He had to push himself up and into a crouch in order to use his hands properly, and once he was, he started. He pushed his right hand out- yes, that was part of it- and wrapped his middle finger around his index, before pushing his thumb underneath his pinky and ring finger. It was only a crude imitation of what he was meant to be doing- his thumb was meant to be held a bit tighter in his pinky and ring finger than he was capable of, and his middle finger only just barely managed to get itself around his index, but it was enough to direct his thoughts.
That ‘magical gang sign’ was meant to push his subconscious towards clumping the mana up, and it had, although not enough. He unfolded his hand and repeated the motion, a bit more smoothly this time, while flexing his left hand in preparation of what it’d need to do next.
The mana sufficiently clumped, at least for now, he moved onto the next step, where he’d form the skeleton of the goblin. He thrust both hands out to either side of him and tried to reenact the first Form- that was what the magical gang signs were actually called- the best he could. It involved a lot more movement than clumping the mana together had, and required both hands. His fingers had to twist in ways he’d never even thought to try to make them, and he did so poorly on both sides that he was pretty sure his goblin was going to come out as a hunchback or with glass for bones. The clump of mana looked more like a solid, spherical ball once he was finished.
He began the second Form, which was meant to create the goblin’s muscle, blood and flesh. It involved almost solely his voice, which was worrying; he didn’t really want to make very much noise, but thankfully he was allowed to whisper.
The sounds he made were sounds he’d never had to make before, but he turned out to be pretty decent at pronouncing what felt like gibberish. He was a bit worse at making them quietly, but he realized that the forest had begun to make a bit more noise; the bugs were making their sounds again and the birds were occasionally tweeting. Whatever had been around must have moved a bit away, which gave him hope for avoiding confrontation.
The ball of mana looked like it was made of a dozen ropes wound together now, sort of like a dog toy. That wasn’t really what it was meant to look like at that stage, but it should work, albeit only because his mana was attuned towards summoning to begin with.
He had the bones, flesh, muscle and blood dealt with. Next, Ethan needed to create its organs. The third Form involved both speaking and magical gang signs, but the latter were at least easy. The former were harder than the third Form’s, but at least he was pretty good at them.
When the third Form was finished, the knotted ball of mana was pulsing, like it had a heartbeat. Finally, he moved onto the fifth and final Form, which would create the goblin’s consciousness and turn the ball of mana into an actual flesh-and-blood creature, as well as make the goblin he summoned obedient.
The fourth one seemed almost impossible, but he tried. He thrust his hands out to either side of him and then brought them together directly in front of where his mana core should’ve been in his chest. The two hands separated and fell into a tremendously complex dance that he was certain he messed up on every level with. At the same time, he tried to intone words he’d never spoken before, messing up the pronunciation frequently. Because of his frequent mistakes, it took a full minute longer than it was meant to, and only barely made the cut.
The knotted, pulsing ball of mana gradually turned into a goblin. First, its skeleton formed, and he couldn’t help but notice that it was, indeed, a hunchback. Next, its flesh, muscle and blood were formed, almost at the same time as the organs. He could tell that one of its lungs was smaller than they were meant to, and that its left arm had extremely atrophied muscles. Finally, the goblin became ‘aware’, and it staggered a bit before falling over.
The goblin was clearly a male- he could tell because of its unfortunately visible junk- and was only two and a half feet tall, due to its hunched back. Its hands looked like shit, one of them missing its thumb, and it had a bump on its forehead.
It was at least green, and had pointy ears. Its feet seemed okay, and it seemed to at least be able to move.
‘Was this really worth it?’ He wondered. The goblin didn’t look very dangerous; it had sharp teeth, and he could see dull, misshapen claws on its fingers, but he somehow doubted it’d be able to kill anything larger than a... maybe a coyote? Not to mention that the goblin had cost half of the mana in his core, and the cost of maintaining it was equal to the amount he gained.
Although… he supposed that the mana hadn’t been doing any good just sitting around in his chest, anyway. He’d considered what to do with the goblin ahead of time, but he’d never actually decided, so he just stared at it for a few seconds.
It was having a hard time standing up, and he only then noticed that one of its legs were longer than the other.
“Just bend the longer leg, so that you can stand straight,” Ethan advised, and it did. Its longer left leg was at a bit of an awkward angle, but it was at least able to stand.
“How smart are you?” Ethan asked, “Uh… what’s one plus one?” He asked it.
Its face contorted strangely, and he wondered how much of its weirdness was because of the flaws in its creation and how much of it was because it was a goblin. After a few seconds, it barked out a sound that wasn’t in English, but that he understood nonetheless.
“What!?” It’d shouted.
So… he reckoned that it wasn’t very smart. “Can you… climb that tree?” He asked, pointing to one of the regular oak trees surrounding the clearing. It stared up at the tree and then slowly hobbled over to it, and Ethan was a bit impressed by how rapidly it scaled the tree. Its claws were misshapen and a bit dull, but they were clearly sufficient to allow it to easily climb the mundane tree.
“Get as high as you can, and see if you can find anything of note. In particular, please look for Gad- please look for my dog.” Ethan asked, pretty sure that the goblin wouldn’t know who Gadget was.
It barked out an affirmative sound and climbed higher, until Ethan couldn’t see it through the leaves and branches. Its dark, forest-green skin color likely played a helpful role.
A few seconds later, it climbed back down to where he could see it and barked out a few things; that it could smell a dog, but not see it, and that it had eaten a bird. At least, he was pretty sure that’s what the second part had been.
“Lead me to it,” Ethan told the goblin, and its face contorted strangely again; confusion, he assumed. After a second, it pointed to its stomach, and Ethan let out a heavy sigh.