“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” Ember berated herself in frustration. She has spent the last hour and a half chasing jackalope through the forest to no avail. Each time they would find a way to out run her or lose her by running through a bush. Now she is attempting to sneak up on an unsuspecting duo of jackalopes. She caught sight of them while they were eating some purple and red cluster berries, looking similar to the black berries she loved to eat back home, off of a bush. Luckily for her she didn't make too much noise when she came to gather some of the berries for herself and willow after she had them identified back at the guild. While she was picking berries and filling her front hoodie pocket with them she heard some rustling mixed with squeaks and chirps a few bushes away from her. She stopped collecting berries so she could be as sneaky as she was capable and began to investigate the noise. She found the two jackalopes and began to formulate a new plan.
‘I really miss Thorn's paralysis bolt right now, but I'm going to do this on my own so I can build my own skills. If I recall correctly Granny Willow said our actions determine our growth, and I don't want to grow lazy or dependent on others. I want to hunt with people because I like them, not because I need them.’ She took a slow deep breath and released it quietly. ‘I'll sneak up on them then blast them with a full powered Rot Aura. Metatron shorthand vitals please and thank you’
[Lifeforce: 50
Mana: 48/80
ki: 50]
‘Thank you’ she thought while smiling. ‘So, just over half, I can do twenty points of damage safely. I don't know how strong a jackalope is but I bet it's health is lower than mine. If the Aura can't kill it out right I can still try my whack'n stick.’ She smiled, tightening her grip on her staff.
About twenty minutes passed before Ember found any signs of the jackalope. While she was doing her best to stay hidden she began to approach the jackalope by skipping from tree to tree. Getting closer she noticed the rabbit was eating what looked like an apple that was laying on the ground. It was about halfway through eating when she got close.
Ember's eyes grew wide as she encountered the biggest flaw in her plan. ‘How close do I need to be? I don't know my maximum range…’ She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Urgh,” she grumbled quietly. ‘I'll just get as close as I can.’
Holding her staff tightly and crouching low to try and stay unseen, Ember managed to get behind a tree just to the side of the fallen fruit. She was no more than five feet from the Jackalope when she pulled up her vitals to make one last mana check before launching her aura.
[Lifeforce: 50
Mana: 51/80
Ki: 50]
‘Good enough.’ She thought to herself. With her eyes locked on to her target she activated her rot aura at full blast.
[Rot Aura: Active 5MP/S]
When the aura hit the jackalope, its head shot up and it started to look around it in a panic. After its search bore no fruit it darted forward, not realizing the direction chosen was the same direction Ember was hiding. As the speeding ball of pointy fluff ran in her direction Ember’s heart started to pound harder and faster in her chest. She tightened her grip on her staff so tight that her knuckles started to turn white.
‘I can do this.’ She thought to herself. ‘Now!’
She swung the staff forward in a low sweeping arc as if she was swinging a golf club. When the staff made contact it caught the rabbit in the face, the staff caught on the underside of the critter’s horn which then guided it right into the bridge of the nose and eye sockets. She heard a sickening crack when the wood and bone made contact. The sensation of the rabbit's skull cracking ran up the staff while the force from the impact nearly ripped it from her grasp. The jackalope started tumbling across the ground before coming to an abrupt stop when it crashed into another tree.
Ember refastened her grip on the staff without letting the rabbits tumbling body out of her sight. She turned to chase after it when she saw the rabbit's body collide with another tree. She hesitated for only a moment before continuing her approach. When she arrived at the scene of the crash she could see blood staining the once bright white fur on its face. The face of which looked to have caved in on itself from the impact of her strike. The jackalope look to be dead if not for the occasional twitch or spasm. She drew close while keeping her guard up, unsure if it could still fight or flee after taking the impact of the staff and tree. The closer she got to it the larger the rabbit started to grow. Seeing this the first thing that popped into Ember’s mind was that the rabbit was using a rage or growth skill so she lifted her staff into the position she saw a monk use in an old kung fu movie and readied herself to strike at the first sign of movement. Luckily for her the jackalope remained still, the only movement she did see was the sight of its lifeless leg flopping over its now noticeably swollen stomach.
“No! No, no, no, no, no.” She started to scream, while doing an abrupt about face when she realized the cause of the swelling. She lifted her right leg off the ground to start running but before it could contact the ground once again she heard a stomach wrenching, wet popping sound. She wouldn’t let that stop her from trying to escape so she continued to run away as she heard plops and thuds from stuff falling from the sky.
‘Oh no… I think I’m going to be sick. Why is this what my aura does when something dies around me?’ She questioned as she started slowing her pace and coming to a stop. “Aura off! Aura off!” she shouted in frustration.
[Rot Aura: Passive]
‘Thank you’ she thought as she exhaled a long sigh. ‘This is stupid, the log I used my aura on turned into mush but nooo the rabbits just have to explode.’ She turned around not looking forward to the sight she would find behind her. When she did the first thing to grab her attention, besides the blood spatter on everything, was the state of the body. Its head was thrown backwards from the force of the blast embedding the tip of the horn into the dirt. Everything else below the neck was much more difficult to recognize. The stomach had torn open from the pressure that had built up inside of it. The force even blew the front left leg completely off and she even noticed some fragments of what she could only assume to be bone stabbed into the bark of the tree it collided with.
“What the heck?!?” She exclaimed. ‘Are those the rabbit’s bones? Just how powerful was that boom? I should warn Thorn about that before I forget and he gets hit by bone shrapnel while we’re fighting something.’ Ember thought to herself as she crouched down and leaned in closer to check out the bone fragments in the bark. With a closer inspection she was able to recognize some of the bones or bone fragments. The most notable was the bone embedded the deepest in the tree. She was able to tell that the bone was a rib bone after she compared it to an exposed rib still in the body.
‘This is getting easier to look at and be around at least, though I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.’ she pondered. ‘At least I didn't puke this time.’
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While she was going over her moral dilemma in her mind she also started to remove the horn from the jackalope's head. With only a few tugs and a good whack from the end of her staff the horn finally broke free. She then wiped the horn and her hands in the grass to clean them as much as she could until she made it to the pond. After she put away the horn she collected she started back on her way to the pond.
‘Metatron, vitals please?’ She asked in her head.
[Lifeforce: 50
Mana: 26/80
Ki: 50]
‘Okay, so it looks like I only used twenty five mana points. That's what, five seconds?’ She asked herself. ‘I don't know how much damage my staff did to it but my aura should have done about twelve points of damage to it.’
While she was walking along the forest edge she started to grow bored without any more jackalope showing up. The path she took was void of any life but her own and a family of squirrels she spooked. Without having any luck spotting anymore movement she continued back to her line of thought from earlier. ‘When I made it close enough to see the bun- jackalope’s face after it hit the tree the thing was still twitching and squirming, so it should have still been holding on with a few points of life at that point. It just makes me wonder if the explosion is only caused by the creature dying directly from my aura or is it like I thought earlier and my aura somehow boosts the speed of decomposers? That would also explain the crazy stomach rotting mushroom’s growth and the log’s disintegration. But then why doesn't the swelling start before its lifeforce hits zero?’ She pondered.
A few minutes later she threw her hands into the air exasperated with her inability to answer her own questions. She knew it wasn’t something she would be able to work out on her own in a reasonable amount of time. ‘I’ll just ask Willow if she knows anything about how skill effects work. Maybe she can even show me a new book on skills and the theories people have come up with for them.’
While she was distracted with her own thoughts she didn't notice the obstacle growing closer on her path. Without even seeing what it was she stepped on an almost perfectly translucent blob of goo the size of a cantaloupe.
“Eeeek!” Ember let out a shocked yelp while she jumped backwards. Pulling her foot out of whatever she stepped in. when she looked down at what it was she stepped in she was stumped by what she saw. In the middle of her path lay an almost clear pile of goo. To Ember’s eyes the consistency of the blob looked to be somewhere between that of a jellyfish and clear hair gel.
Once she was able to look away from the glob of monster snot she stepped in she turned her attention to her own foot. “Gross, gross, gross!” She complained. Her foot had a film of slime surrounding it that fully encased her shoe and just barely touched the ankle of her socks. She started to shake her foot around, kicking it back and forth to little help after the thickest globs slung off. She gave up on that method when no more came off of her even after she kicked a tree. She then rubbed the sides of her shoes against the tree bark to try and scrape off the slimier layer that clung to the leather and cloth of her shoe and upper sock. With that removing the majority she took her gross shoe off and shoved her hand inside of it so she could get a grip on it without touching the goop. She ran it through the grass multiple times to wipe off the last of it finally achieving a result she found suitable for her to put it back on.
After what ended up being a ten minute cleaning spree she finally put her shoe back on, doing her best to ignore the slickness still remaining on it, she lifted her eyes and glared at the glob of goop that caused her this trauma. “You! Stupid! Bahh!” she yelled at it. While she was berating it she noticed that it was begging to take on a more consistent shape. Going back to an appearance of a jellyfish that washed up on the beach. “Nooo…” She whined. “How are you alive, you went splat!” She yelled, gesturing to her soiled shoe. “I’m the proof.”
At that moment all the puzzle pieces in her head fit together. She lifted her staff to point at the blob threateningly. “You're the crystal jelly!” A smile started to form on her face. “That means that it is my job to kill you.” She let out a menacing chuckle while she walked closer to the slime monster. She lifted her staff up above her head extending as far as she could to get the most force behind her impact. When she brought it down it sank straight into the crystal jelly’s goopy body with a wet shlurp sound. The only damage that she inflicted on it wasn’t even noticeable, as only a few globs of slime splattered away from the main body with the impact. This minor detail didn’t impede her onslaught in the least as she continued to strike the slime with her staff. She tried hitting it from above, jabbing it with the tip of the staff, she even tried to swing her staff at the blob like a baseball bat. None of her strikes appeared to be doing much damage to the thing, if any at all. “Why… Won’t… You… Die!” She screamed at the monster speaking a word each time she made an attack. Soon she stopped the overhead attacks and jabbing it and focused solely on swinging at it. This method had the most effect that she could tell, every third or so swing she made on it would take a large clump of the thing’s body out with it when the staff would break through the outer membrane creating a short lived exit wound before more slime would move in to fill the gaps.
After about two minutes of her relentlessly swinging her staff at the crystal jelly she decided to stop and take a short breather. While she was catching her breath she tried to determine if she was even doing any real damage to the slime monster. By her best judgment the monster looked to have lost about a third of its original body mass from her constant attacks.
‘Vitals’
[Lifeforce: 50
Mana: 29/80
Ki: 35/50]
“Spores!” Ember exclaimed while stomping the ground. “I only regenerated three freaking points.” she grumbled to herself. She then walked back up to the now grapefruit sized jello mold. ‘Screw it, I'll put my trust in my aura. Rot aura 2 MP!’ She commanded her skill.
[Rot Aura: Active 2MP/S]
She felt her skill activate as it began to gently pull on her mana. Right after she noticed the mana drain stabilize its pull on her reserves she heard a gurgling and popping noise start to emanate from the blob at her feet. When she looked down to see the results of her magic attack the effect took her by surprise. The crystal jelly had drawn its body mass up into a tight ball-like form while the outer membrane started to quiver and ripple. She then noticed that the sounds were coming from small bubbles that were forming inside of the slime's body like it was boiling alive from the inside.
“Ha!” She hollered at it. “Take all twenty nine points of mana and die!” Even though she knew it would have zero effect on her skill she still thrusted her arms out at the blob as if she were directing her auras flow. When her arms reached their fully extended length she boosted the mana draw to five.
[Rot Aura: Active 5MP/S]
At the first second the bubbling in the slime sped up in its ferocity going to a slow pop pop pop to a full on roiling boil. By the second the grapefruit sized crystal jelly had swollen back up to its original cantaloupe size. Then everything turned to chaos. Right before Ember’s mana hit zero the pressure building up in the crystal jelly reached its breaking point, causing the mass of slime to explode out in all directions. The area all around where the jelly monster was once squatting was now drenched in a layer of thin slimy goo. When the crystal jelly’s slime was no longer connected to its host core it shifted from its usual semi solid globular mass into a much more liquid-like state similar to the consistency of school glue. Then in the third second, the last point of Ember’s remaining mana was converted into fuel for her aura, which caused the world around her to shift from vibrant colors to a muffled grayscale before eventually fading to black. ‘Please… don’t land… in the goo…’ Was the last thought to cross her mind before her body collapsed in a heap on the ground.
[Mana Levels Critically Low]
[Mana Depletion Limit Exceeded]
[Shutting Down All Unnecessary Bodily Functions Until Sustainable Mana Levels Have Been Recovered]
[Entering Mana Exhaustion]
[Experience Values Have Reached Threshold For Advancement]
[Congratulations Ember Abiss: Level 1 > Level 2]
[...]