Wyatt would be lying to himself if he said he wasn’t excited to use magic. He was also, however, worried that he wouldn’t be able to. He obviously had never used magic before and had no idea how to activate a spell. He thought back to Jesse, his heart sinking for a moment, but he fought back the emotional response to the young man’s death, and instead thought about how he had cast his spell. It seemed relatively second nature to the younger mage.
How hard could it be? I already know the spell, apparently.
Wyatt set his mind to casting Daze. He brought his hands in front of him, torch left leaning against the wall beside him, and he realized that he instinctively knew how to move his hands to cast the spell. It took him exactly two seconds to cast, matching what was denoted in the spell description. At the end, he pushed his open palms towards the closest rat, and it immediately stopped moving.
The buildup of power he felt as he began to cast was indescribable but was nothing compared to the rush he felt as that power was channeled forward and left his body.
The other rats, apparently sensing that something was amiss, turned as one towards the trio. Wyatt immediately began casting again and stopped another in its tracks as the rats began coming forward. As he did, an arrow skidded on the ground just to the right of the stilled rat, and Wyatt realized the archer had begun shooting.
“You know how to use that,” Wyatt told Chuck, looking at the bow in his hand, “Don’t fight it, the system gave you the knowledge you need to shoot it.”
Chuck’s next shot hit the first rat Wyatt had trapped square in the side, and the archer looked over at Wyatt with a smile on his face.
“I got it!” he exclaimed.
“Good,” shouted Brad over his shoulder, as he swung his axe towards the remaining four rats that were approaching, keeping the group at bay. “How about doing that again?”
Wyatt began casting Rock Spike, as Chuck shot another rat. This spell only took one second to cast, and Wyatt punched his fist forward as a small spike shot up out of the ground. It took Wyatt a crucial second to realize it hadn’t shot forward, and he would have to make a second motion to command it to do so. By the time he did, his target had moved, and the Rock Spike shot harmlessly into the far wall.
Realizing the weakness of his spell, he instead cast a third Daze spell at a rat that had begun to flank the barbarian’s left, causing it to freeze in place just before it attacked its intended target. He ran forward, stabbing his dagger into the side of the now frozen rat, ending the effects of Daze, but not quite killing the creature.
The rat turned and bit his hand, and he had to stab the rat again, this time burying his dagger deep in its neck. Blood sprayed out, indicating to the mage that he had hit something vital. The creature collapsed, dead.
Wyatt let go of his dagger and looked at the other two. Chuck had out his short sword, and was swinging wildly at one of the creatures, but couldn’t score a hit. Brad had managed to kill one of the rats, having cut it in half with his massive axe in a clear display of overkill. He moved to help chuck with his, and together they finally managed to take it out.
The last remaining enemy was still dazed from Wyatt’s spell, and he used his last ten mana to cast Rock Spike again. This time after he punched forward – something he did for the second time out of instinct and assumed it was required to cast the spell – he transitioned fluidly into the second punch needed to create the projectile. His fist shot forward, and the spike followed, impaling the trapped rat and sending it sliding several feet across the floor.
As the power required to fuel the spell left him, he felt a peculiar draining sensation, as if something inside of him was missing. He looked at his mana bar, which now read “1/80” after his natural mana regeneration added one point into it. He focused on his body, getting a feel for how draining his mana affected it. He was able to stand and act since his stamina was near full, but he felt similar to how he had felt when he stayed up all night studying for a test, like his mind was in a fog. Wyatt saw another point tick into his mana bar and was grateful for his high willpower attribute.
As combat ended, Wyatt got a notification:
Combat Report
Your party has slain:
Cave Rat x6
Rewards:
Experience earned
Your skill has leveled up:
Enchantment Magic – Level 2
You have gained a new Skill:
Dagger Mastery – Level 1
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“We did it!” exclaimed Brad, pumping his axe in the air. Chuck looked just as excited as he joined in the celebration.
“Are you hurt?” the archer asked as he looked over at Wyatt’s bleeding arm.
Wyatt looked at his health and noticed he had taken five points of damage. He did some math in his head and realized it would take him close to three hours to regenerate back to full health. I really need to invest in more toughness he thought. “I’m fine, it will heal,” he said out loud to the others, “so long as there are no diseases I don’t know about. Let’s see what they were guarding. Chuck, you should try to get your arrows from the rats. There’s no telling how long it will be before we can find you more.”
Chuck nodded and moved over to the closest corpse that had an arrow sticking out of it. Meanwhile, Brad and Wyatt walked up to the chest in the middle of the room, and the bigger man opened it. Inside the chest was a ring, and metal bracers. Brad grabbed the bracers, leaving Wyatt with the ring. As he examined it, a window appeared:
Name:
Ring of Health [Basic]
Durability:
10/10
Description:
An enchanted copper ring.
Enchantment:
+3 Toughness
“It says ‘plus three toughness’,” Wyatt said out loud as Chuck came over beside them.
“That could be useful for you,” Brad said to him.
“Agreed,” replied Wyatt, putting the ring on the middle finger of his right hand. He wondered briefly if the system put this ring in the chest because he had been thinking about increasing toughness but shrugged it off as a coincidence. His toughness increased from 5 to 8 and his HP increased from 50 to 80. The increase in health was pretty easy to understand, but he saw his HP per minute had increase from 0.03 to 0.06. The math on that meant that it would take roughly one full day to heal to full health if health dropped to almost zero. He did more math from previous numbers and realized the math of the HP regen always added up to 24 hours’ worth of healing required to heal to full health, provided the numbers were rounding by the system.
“What did you get?” Wyatt asked the barbarian, deciding the math of HP regeneration wasn’t important.
“Same, with strength.”
“Not bad, and a good fit for you. It looks like there is another door on the far wall.” Wyatt pointed at a patch of darkness near where his first Rock Spike had struck. “Let’s grab the others and bring them here before continuing.”
Chuck ran to get the others as Wyatt took a seat against a wall. Before long the rest of their group was walking into the room.
“What happened here?” demanded Richard as he walked in.
“Killed some rats,” replied Brad, ignoring Richard’s tone.
“Marlene,” Wyatt said to the healer as she stood with the group, “how much does your healing spell heal?”
“I don’t remember,” she answered, adopting an odd look in her eyes as she read from a screen no one else could see. “It’s called Healing Touch. Says it heals 23 HP, cost is 10 MP.”
Wyatt thought on that. With how low Marlene’s willpower, and thus her MP regen was, it would take her too long to recover the 10 MP if she were to heal him. Given that he had 75/80 HP remaining, he decided to let it heal naturally, and he said as much to the others.
Suddenly, they each received a notification.
Quest Complete:
Tutorial Cave
Conditions:
Cleanse all tutorial creatures from the cave (Complete)
Rewards:
Experience earned
Description:
All tutorial creatures in the cave have been slain.
Your class has leveled up: Mage – Level 2
You have gained Attribute Points
“Looks like you killed all the rats,” remarked Angela.
“No,” replied Wyatt, “we only killed these six, and that was a little while ago. That troll must have finished killing the rest.” There was a silence in the room as everyone thought back to Jesse and the troll.
“Does that mean the troll is dead?” asked Richard, trying to muster some semblance of hope for his family.
“I doubt it,” responded Brad.
“I agree,” said Wyatt, “I don’t believe the troll was supposed to be in this dungeon, so I don’t think it counted towards the quest. One bite from a rat only did 5 HP worth of damage to me. That troll ripped Jesse’s head off.”
“Let’s keep moving,” Chuck said to the others, “we need to find a way out of this damn cave before that troll finds us.”
It looked like the only thing to do as far as leveling was concerned was distributing attribute points, so Wyatt had to agree with Chuck.
“Make sure to distribute your points before we go,” he said as he thought of how to distribute his three free points.
His class gave him one point in intelligence and willpower, bringing them to nine and thirteen respectively. He thought back to how he had run out of mana so quickly when fighting the rats, and decided to add another point to intelligence, making it an even ten and his mana pool at 100. Wyatt didn’t think he needed to put any points in toughness now that he had his ring, but they might need to run a lot here shortly and endurance would help him keep up a faster pace for longer. Placing a point into that for a total of seven endurance, and his obligatory point in willpower making that fourteen, Wyatt was all set.
“Is everyone good to keep going?” he asked the group.
“I think we’re good,” answered Richard on behalf of his family. Wyatt could tell he was worried about them, and rightly so. However, there would need to be a time when the kids took part in the fighting. Hopefully, there would be more small monsters, like the cave rats, that they could all practice on. This way, they could level up and become stronger with little to no risk of death.
For now, they needed to keep moving. Brad led the group through the tunnel opposite where they came from. This one was just as narrow as the previous, but much longer. Eventually, they reached a dead end, and Chuck started looking around the door for another lever. Sure enough, there was one, and he pulled it, opening the door.
“I got a new skill!” he exclaimed as he walked through the doorway, “it says Perception.” The archer was reading the skill description, not paying any attention to where he was walking.
Then, in an act of perfect irony, he bumped into the back of the troll.