the following hours passed in relative silence as the princess set up her 'tent' in front of the cave while I was attempting to skin and prepare the horned rabbit using the sorry excuse for a dagger. Having come from a modest background it was not the first time I had dressed an animal but much to my surprise the interior of the creature was different from a normal rabbit.
It contained a webbed network of veins like organs that contained no blood leading to a semitransparent red stone located beside the heart. I had received knowledge about mana crystals but had never actually encountered one. I expected such a valuable object to be rare given the multitude of ways I knew it could be used. I placed the stone aside in preparation for my next exploit as I considered how to cook the meat without informing the princess I had mana control and thus access to basic magic as well as my healing specialisation.
The answer to my question was as simple as it was amusing. I asked the princess to bring me some materials. It dawned on her that since I was unable to leave the cave she would have to supply me with such necessities if she intended to use me as a healing station and it dawned on me that by some twist of fate the princess had become a kind of work slave to my needs.
It was clear to see that this girl had never learned to fend for herself because after a moments pause she brought in a small tree. Not a dead log or some fallen branches but a ripped straight out of the ground trunk as thick as my leg living tree.
I didn't know if I should laugh or cry because from one perspective she had just supplied me with what I would need to exploit the system but on the other hand, it was useless for starting a fire. After explaining the situation to the somewhat red-faced princess she started to remove the tree from my cave. “please leave it as I can use it as furniture” I quickly replied afraid I would lose the materials and have to risk letting her know I could leave the cave to gather more.
She cast me a look that was a strange blend between amusement and sympathy before walking out of the cave and returning with a small rectangular stone. “here use this because I couldn't be bothered collecting any more timber” she spoke with a somewhat disgruntled tone before she clicked its centre and threw it to the ground. It expanded into a perfect circle of red rock with a flame sustained in the centre. “but don't you need this?” I asked before she replied that “it was a spare and no real princess would go out into the wilderness unprepared.” in truth I wondered if even her fire pit was magical what was her tent like?
After cooking the somewhat tough horned rabbit and enjoying the first hot meal in a year I set to work on my next task, a wreath. Unlike normal wreaths that were woven of flowers, this particular wreath could be woven of any living plant material however it had to be woven in a particular pattern.
I had to strip long sections of fibre from the tree using the knife which required many attempts to get both the correct thickness and length before weaving a 3 strand braid and finally weaving these into a five-strand braid. While not overly complicated it was a test of patience. The princess appeared more than once, staring at me like I was a monkey in a zoo when I told her I like braiding materials and working with nature to appease her curiosity.
It took what I could only guess was hours due to the lack of a clock to complete the task and I needed to act quickly lest the material die and render the creation useless. I found two moderately sized rocks which was rather easy given my current location and crushed the mana crystal into a powder. After adding my blood to the powder I smeared it onto the wreath and watched as it was absorbed completely. after a moment small flowers began to bloom along its length. Knowing I had succeeded I looked at it with inspect.
Visible
A wreath of flowers
A wreath made by a bored human
Hidden
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Bonded wreath of growth
Doubles stat gain for bonded being between levels 1-5
This was the first of many pheonixian objects designed to be simple to create in case of an instance where they are reborn on a barren world. I had access to hundreds of such recipes with materials ranging from volcanic glass to gold. Though beneficial they came with both limitations and safeguards. To begin with, they were all bonded to a hidden system so that no one but the creator would gain any benefit and those without the pheonixian version of 'identify' would never see them for what they truly are. The other limitations being that their use doubles the experience required to level as a trade-off and that only one such object can be used at a time.
About three seconds after placing the wreath on my head and feeling a certain amount of smugness about my creation I heard a boisterous laughing from behind me. There stood the princess in open laughter with a finger pointed at me. “monkeys really do like playing with flowers, with that crown are you a prince or princess?” for the first time in my life I felt like digging a hole and hiding.
Looking back a skin and bones human dressed in rags, covered in dirt and wearing a floral crown with a self-satisfied smile would have been a rather funny sight. After several seconds of strange quiet from me and laughter from her I finally decided to ask some of the questions that had been bothering me.
“Why are you not afraid of me? Hell, why did you not eliminate me when you first found me but instead woke me up and helped me?”
she looked at me as one would a drowned cat and replied “why would I be afraid of someone that poses less threat to me than a horned rabbit? As for awakening you, call it curiosity. Anyone that found a level one human on a world with no non-slave humans would be interested in finding out why one would appear. In regards to keeping you alive do you have any idea how rare the healing affinity is? It's a literal one in a million occurrence and any who are found with it are taken in by the order of salvation. You being a human however means I can have a healer as a servant free of all their politics. In truth, if you were not useful to me I would have killed you after finding out how you got here. So remember despite being unable to brand you, that you are my slave. A slave I will look after but a slave none the less.”
I quickly realised how truly lucky I had been. Despite the laughter, my life had been hanging by a thread the entire time. This also reinforced the conclusion that not everyone got access to the entire statistics menu as I had. After a tense silence I strengthened her belief that I would accept my place “then since you are to be my master may I have the honour of knowing your name?”
“know this” she replied with a sense of grandstanding “you will be the slave of Emily Von Silva, first princess of the wind spirit kingdom!”
the next week passed in relative quiet as I was bound to the cave and princess Emily would frequently enter the forest to hunt for whatever she was required to find before returning with small monsters for me to kill. Despite gaining experience from this I only levelled twice and since I purposely had not chosen a class yet I gained no stats. This discrepancy would be corrected when my class was chosen but to obtain what I desired I would need to obtain a dungeon core and several other items.
I had spent the majority of my incarceration crafting small items from the mana stones such as a torch, fire starter and blink talisman. The last of which was a short-range escape tool formed by placing an advanced space spell inside a mana stone using the Triggered Spells skill. It effectively allowed me to exceed the number of stored spells in exchange for expendable materials.
The small mana crystals could only maintain a low mana spell and deteriorated after 30 days even if not used. Speaking of mana crystals I discovered that the people of this world treat the small ones as trash and use the large ones as a simple mana battery to power their devices. The worst part is that in modifying them to be used for this purpose they destroy any ability for them to be used in any other way essentially wasting 90% of their potential.
A prime example of this is when I snuck out of the cave while princess Emily was away to look at her campsite. She had a spatially expanded tent containing a king-size bed, a refrigerator, a shower and the whole thing was temperature controlled. The worst part was the whole thing was run by a golden colour completely transparent crystal the size of my forearm. With such a crystal I would be able to craft a growth booster that would last all the way to level 15, unlike the wreath I currently had.
During the second week of the princesses stay she finally discovered what she sought, a nature elemental that she sought to take as a familiar. With the target found and her vast resources, she managed to form a connection relativity quickly before she once more tried to remove me from the cave to a less than stellar result.
She informed me that she would return in two weeks after claiming the throne and would bring with her a magician to break the binding spell before setting up a shielding glyph to protect me from any wandering monsters and depositing a large amount of dried food in the cave entrance. After packing her entire camp into a space warping tool she wandered into the forest without so much as looking back.