“What the hell was that?” I demanded of Naea as I cleared away the System prompt and threw myself to my feet, stamping over to her position. Sitting casually, an eyebrow beginning to arch as I approached, Naea looked the picture of peace and tranquillity. Then she began to look like she was moving into the sky, but I realised it was myself falling face first as my chin collided with the hard ground.
“The muscles lock up a little bit after an illusion,” Naea advised belatedly. I tried to speak but the paralysis was coming in waves and my whole body seized with pain. I heard the buzz of her wings before feeling Naea land atop my head and sit on my shoulders. “You seem upset, so I hope it makes you feel better to know that I have no control over what you see once you’re inside my Phantasmic Trick. Also, also, illusions don’t work if you know they’re coming. Or not as well, at least.”
She was by no means forgiven, but any murderous impulses had at least been toned down to simple violent thoughts. There was a panic in her explanation which suggested she was expected me to be upset. I growled and Naea moved from my back which was relaxing by the second. “That… does help,” I admitted. My voice was muffled by the grassy dirt my face still pressed into, but I got my point across. She hadn’t somehow delved into my memories and acted out the worst shadows of them specifically to hurt me. It was enough to cool my anger from magma to a hot stove emotionally.
Showing more wisdom than I expected of her, Naea said nothing for a while and we simply sat in the silence of the dungeon. I struggled to activate Meditate but once I did, I slowly recuperated from the mental battle. My health and mana were full long before I opened my eyes and felt ready to face the world again. My world. The dungeon was my world and though it was a small one, I had still yet to explore it even slightly. It was time to change that.
“Practice is over now, right?” I side-eyed the fairy as I asked, and felt a little bad at how much her expression lit up at my attention. She really did remind me of Sinéad. I pushed the emotion down and stamped on it. My family would be fine. The Kaerons could look after themselves. They always had before. “We should get moving.”
A sheepish look appeared on Naea’s face. “Oh, that’s…” she said slowly, “I can’t help you fight.” I smiled at the joke, impressed at how genuine she seemed, but the mood became awkward. I frowned as I considered the last day or so. She seemed to read my thoughts and chuckled, though there was bitterness in the noise. “This doesn’t count as me helping you fight the other creatures in the dungeon. If you and I fight and neither dies then so be it. I’m good at bending the rules but breaking them isn’t an option.”
I almost wanted to argue, all of my expectations about the upcoming exploration of the dungeon becoming amorphous. However, I kept my mouth shut and simply nodded. There was nothing to argue. Naea had already done more than enough for me, more than she needed to. “So, what? You’re going to stay here and spruce the place back up?” I was still a little unsure of Naea’s place in the dungeon’s ecosystem beyond her being important. Perhaps that was why her level was invisible.
“Not quite,” Naea answered, a hungry look in her eyes, “I’ll be joining you, I just can’t help.” I laughed at that and could only shake my head at how ridiculous my life was. Sighing, I gave my System Windows a final once over before heading out. There was nothing to do but progress, after all. If Naea had nothing more to teach me then it was time to put the training to work.
I looked at my attributes and progress with more than a little pride.
Character Window
Name
Grant Kaeron
Race
Earth Human
Title
Dragon Slayer
Level
9
Health
55/55
Mana
75/75
Attribute Window
FP:0
Strength
7
Recovery
7
Resilience
7
Dexterity
6
Agility
7
Perception
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
7
Power
11
Regeneration
9
Command
15
Health
55/55
0.7 per minute
Mana
75/75
09 per minute
Skills
Mana Bolt (Level 2)
Common
Manasight (Level 1)
Common
Heavy Blow (Level 1)
Common
Sprint (Level 1)
Common
Meditate (Level 2)
Common
Stealth (Level 1)
Common
Tracking (Level 1)
Common
Mental Fortress (Level 1)
Uncommon
My illusory battle with Naea had started at some point in the middle of our fight, and I still wasn’t sure when. My skills had progressed a little from the initial combat, though not enough to gain many skill levels. The real gains came from the mental workout Naea had given me. A new skill and an attribute in each of the three attributes which governed magical ability. I hadn’t levelled since fighting the two Attack Animals, but I had gained more than two levels worth of strength from this time alone.
I was grateful to Naea in a way I couldn’t express. Even if she was able to get on my last nerve with unerring precision. “Hey, listen,” she began and my eye twitched, “I’m serious. I can’t help you out there. Even this training montage was pushing the limits of things. If you fall, I can’t pick you back up, Grant.”
“How do you know what a training montage is?” I asked, unable to think of anything else until I knew the answer. I understood what Naea was saying, and it was serious, but it was no different from when I first wandered into the woods. The fact Naea could reference movies was what really threw me for a loop.
“Your world is hardly the first to understand culture, Grant,” Naea said with a patronising pat on my head. I sent a trickle of mana into my eyes as I glared at her. Hopefully one day I would truly unlock a withering gaze skill, but it was not this day. After some deliberation with myself, I decided to drop the subject as I was unlikely to get an answer that didn’t make me roll my eyes anyway.
“Fuck it, let’s go kill some weird turtlemen.”
—————————————————————————————————
As luck would have it, the first enemy I came across was new to me. Using my new Stealth skill actively, I slipped through the forest with a much more soundless ease than before. Not every lesson Naea had given me ended with a skill, but the hours of manoeuvring around on the uneven ground around Clive’s had been a massive boon to my balance. This in turn meant that my Stealth was more effective than it would be if I were still a clumsy lump like I had been yesterday.
However, I was barely a novice when it came to being sneaky and as luck would have it, I met a master of the art. The forest had changed in the time I had been training. There had been many battles here, as the trees and other plants fought for dominance. The familiarity and similarity underneath the gloomy canopy was gone, and the trees began to warp as they fed on the ambient mana in the ground. I could see the faint draw of their roots through the ground when focusing. The clearing which the ambush was sprung from was innocuous enough that I sensed something was wrong before danger struck.
That was likely the only reason I survived. As I leaned against the thin tree, a subconscious instinct screamed that it didn’t feel right. Everything happened in a single second. Manasight, almost constantly in use, allowed me to notice the mana which gathered quickly in the tree beside me. The draw of analysis was my final warning that this was an enemy. I threw myself hard to the left as branches to my right slammed down. Long spears of wood shot into the ground and back out again as the roots joined in on the attack.
I had been expecting to find a lumbering Attack Animal or two. When the wood around me started its assault, I found myself wishing I had looted an axe instead of a hammer. I continued to use Manasight, which stole some of my mana regeneration per minute and paid the cost to find out my enemy’s name. My total mana dropped to sixty eight. That should be more than enough.
Monster - Silver Birch Ent - Level 9
I was half-tempted to just run away as this creature’s defeat wouldn’t add to the tally of my Aspect quest and would likely give me my tenth level, making it harder to complete the task in the future. However, a less pragmatic part of me rankled at the challenge cast my way. The bloated feeling of being nearly at the next level was uncomfortable, and the stats would be nice, so I stayed.
A tree had tried to kill me. The world was so far gone, I lamented, drawing the Sorehammer from the Xaverweave Pouch. It wasn’t an axe, but it would work if I caught the spindly thing’s trunk with a solid hit. The choice to leave was abandoned, and I fell into the rhythm of combat. With Manasight helping me keep track of where the danger came from, I weaved between the spearing strikes of the Ent.
Once battle started in full, the creature pulled itself from the ground. Two wide feet stamped angrily out of the dirt and enough of the foliage moved aside for me to see a face within the wood. Two angry, yellow eyes of sap glared at me as an opening tore clear into the trunk and a baleful roar emerged from the thing. My entire body rumbled, and while it didn’t do enough to hurt me, I wondered if that was meant to be an attack. Every movement the thing made was done through mana, as far as I could tell, so it might have just been shouting very loud.
My approach was flighty, retreating the full distance available to me in the wide clearing if I thought I might take a hit. Mana could recover in seconds once I was calm, but damage wasn’t just painful but it debilitated me for longer. Better to be safe than sorry. Two dense, well-aimed Mana Bolts, each carrying the new limit of fifteen mana and spinning with penetrating force, were enough to blow away the two largest clumps of branches. While the Ent wasn’t very humanoid, it now looked like an amputee, and I wanted to put it out of its misery. Its cries were pitiful.
Overall, it was an easy battle against an enemy which was supposed to be on my level. I avoided a few more spears of roots by following the flow of mana and used the momentum of a spinning dodge to create a swing. Heavy Blow activated almost instinctively as the hammer collided with the Ent. I barely resisted the temptation to shout “timber” as the enemy collapsed.
Ding! Level up! +5 Attribute Points
The tree fell in the woods and it made a loud bang. I looted the body, pleasantly surprised to see a new entry into the Xaverweave Pouch which simply said “lumber” and found a spot to meditate before moving on. During the battle, I had been paying a heightened amount of attention to the flow of mana within the forest. The Ent was the pressing issue, and I had needed to ignore a blazing flare of power in the distance to focus. As my mana refilled, I activated Tracking and reattached my perception to the bonfire.
It was time to find my first claimant.