After waking up from my meditation I decided to make dinner and do a little night studying. After all, I need to get stronger, strong enough that others won't look down on me anymore. Dinner consisted of pan-fried boar, some nonpoisonous mushrooms, and an arel for dessert. While eating I was flipping through one of the beginner books I had found. Now that I had my soul palace established, I can now work on my mana.
According to the texts, I can understand mana is generated from all living things. All living things can store mana but most do not do it because they lack either the knowledge or the means to store it. Beings that can store mana will often expel the excess they can't store as well, with all these combined that is how mana is found in the world just like air. To train my mana I will first have to learn how to feel it then I will need to learn how to move it throughout my body. It seems that those that are training in mana are labeled as being in the Mana Refinement Stage. There are five stages to the mana refinement stage and once you complete them you are a Tier 1 mage, and that rank goes on up.
I go and sit on my bed in a meditative pose. I close my eyes and try to feel the world around me trying to grasp the concept of mana. Since I don’t have a formal teacher, learning how to do this will probably take a while. Several hours passed by and I decided to take a break and get lunch. Grabbing my equipment, I go out to hunt for some food.
It wasn’t even about 20 min before I came across the trail of some kind of creature. I follow the trail stealthily as I can with my spear ready. A few more minutes and I come across the said creature or rather creatures. There were three that looked like short bipedal lizards, probably a little shorter than me. They had on some crude leather armor, it didn’t cover too much, but it looked much better than mine. They also had stone and metal weapons; the spears were stone but one of them had a metal sword of some kind. Using my appraisal ability, I scanned them to see what they were.
Kobold
Level 1
HP: 15/15
Str: 4
End: 3
Agi: 7
Int: 2
Wis: 5
Ok so I have run into my first fantasy creature, I guess. Now the next question, do I attack them or try to see if they are friendly. I decided to have my spear ready and try to communicate with them. I would lose the surprise but I didn’t just want to slaughter what could be good creatures. I step out into the little clearing and greet the kobolds, and as fate would have it, they were hostile.
They immediately drew their weapons and one with the spear came charging directly at me with an amateur skill level. I immediately sidestep him and jab my spear into his unprotected back. With no time to check for a kill, I withdraw my spear and try to parry the next attack. Blocking the spear was easy, but the other guy with the sword got a decent hit on my back. Gritting through the pain, I drop my spear and I grab the spear of the one kobold and pull him with all my strength towards me. In that same motion, I draw my knife and stab it into his throat. I push the dying kobold into the remaining one and pick up his spear.
Now it is just the two of us, I have the advantage of reach but he can also just chop through my spear. We circle each other at a standoff waiting for one to attack first. Seeing how he isn't attacking; I try to use my reach to my advantage. I give a quick jab forward as a feint, then quickly swing the butt end of the spear up and downwards towards his head. He blocked it with his arm and I can feel both his arm and the spear break. He gives a quick stab with his short sword, I was barely able to avoid it, taking a somewhat shallow gash to my side. In a panic, I deliver a kick to his groin...It was super effective. The last kobold was on the ground making what I could only assume were agonizing cries, I put him out of his misery. I collect all the belongings of the kobolds and decide to call a day, I guess I'll just eat some fruits today.
Once home, I quickly take off my makeshift leather clothes and make some more healing salve. The cut on my back was the hardest one to get to. At this point, I have decided that pretty much any monster looking creatures were enemies and I would kill them all without hesitation next time. The rest of the day was spent meditating.
It was two days later I discovered mana, now I was at the first level of the mana refinement stage. I now needed to practice absorbing mana from outside and moving it through my body. This needs to be done so my body can instead naturally replenish its self with the mana I produce. Once this happens, I will finally be a Tier 1 Mage. But I first have to create the mana pool within my soul palace, this is where my mana collects inside of me. I just have to figure out how to create my mana pool.
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My mana pool is supposed to be some object, figure, or other representation within one's soul palace, which represents their total mana. I am currently looking around the bedroom of my soul palace trying to figure out just what I could use.
“Maybe I could use a fish tank?”
“Nah, can't do that. If my mana pool got too large it would be like having SeaWorld in my bedroom.”
Looking around, my eyes came to stop on my computer, then my eyes lit up.
“Yes! Of course, I will have my mana pool be my hard drive. The more mana I got, the bigger the hard drive.”
With that, I truly began my mana refinement. It wasn’t until five months later that I was able to break through to Tier 1 Mage. My time spent training went by pretty smooth. I learned how to make traps finally so hunting for food became a lot easier. I eventually was able to make a bow and I got plenty of practice with that as well. The sword I got from the kobold lasted a little bit, I got some training in with it, but without proper care, it eventually broke. My meals started to become more lavish as well, I found some herbs and spices growing in the forest that I would use.
I have also had the occasional conversation with Teona. She would always complain about how I wasn’t misfortune enough lately. So, to appease her I would go out of my way and bring some misfortune to some kobolds. I also found that they tasted like garbage. After my breakthrough, I decided to pull up my stats to see what had changed from a few months ago.
Name: Allynna Vassedras
Level: 13
Race: Human
Class: Ranger
--------------
HP: 154/154
MP: 168/168
Str: 10
End: 21
Agi: 14
Int: 12
Wis: 16
-----------------
Skills:
Climbing: lv 3
Throwing: lv 4
Stealth: lv 5
Survival: lv 5
Crafting: lv 3
Alchemy: lv 3
Spear Lv 4
Sword Lv 1
Archery Lv 4
-------------------------
Titles:
Bane of Kobolds
“Holy crap! My stats have jumped!”
Looking at my stats was a shock compared to what they were when I first started off. I still don’t really know just how strong I am compared to people in this world. For all I know I could be weak but at least now I seem to be able to take care of myself. Even got a title for harassing some kobolds.
With my initial training complete, I can now finally get to learn some spells. While looking through the beginner books I found that spells are classified into two different major elements Nature and Neutral. Nature elements include Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth, while Neutral elements are Light, Darkness and Space.
I think I will start off with some nature stuff first. After deciding which element to start off with I eventually chose water. Mainly because I didn’t want to burn down anything also it was said that water is easier to learn. I decided to start with a water spell, Water Bubble, it was useless except for providing fresh drinking water. To cast the spell, I have to channel my mana to the origin of the spell and speak a chant. To be honest a chant is only really necessary to help with the image of the spell but I am going to try it a few times without. Because saying some chant along the lines of O’Water come forth and form unto a ball is a bit cringy. Yeah, not going to do that unless I have to.
Luckily, I didn’t have to chant, after a few failed attempts, I realized that modern knowledge of water helped out. Thank you, science class, for teaching us how molecules bonded. From there It became easier to cast different water spells. Shooting a high-pressure blade made of water became no problem. The first time drained me but the next day I was able to minimize the drain by instead of creating water, I just used what was in the air.
After I was done with water, I moved onto earth magic, mainly for its defensive properties. Earth walls, trenches, even some furniture, I could do a lot with earth magic. My only real limit to all of this was my mana, I would need to work on increasing it later. After some trial and error, I managed to get some basic spells down. From what I was reading, it seems most people prefer to make their own spells rather than learn from someone else.
After being in the forest for about 9 months, hard to know for sure, I decided to test out what I learned. I will temporarily leave my home and go out for some training. I can't use the kobolds now because they run in fear of me, I will need some other animals or monsters. With that, I packed up my satchel filling it with various foods, healing herbs, and my waterskin. I wore my leather armor I got from the kobolds, though I modified it so it covered more skin, even have shoes too. Got my bow and quiver of arrows, spear, and my knife. Before I leave, I erect some earth walls around the house to prevent intrusion while I am out.
I have been walking for a few hours now, carefully marking my path so I can find my way back home If I need to. Feeling a bit hungry I stop for a quick lunch of some arels and dried boar meat. Took me a while and some bouts of food poisoning to figure out how to properly dry the meat. After lunch, I continue on my way. After about 30 or so minutes I came to a clearing in the forest. In the middle of the clearing was a suspicious cave that seemed to just rise up from the ground.
Cautiously I head towards the cave entrance. Inside the walls seems to glow with a faint light. On the far side of the cave is a set of stairs going down, and in the middle of the room is a pedestal with a ruby red orb hovering above it.
“Is...this what I think it is?”
I believe I had just found my very first dungeon.