As Kelsey left the relative safety of the area surrounding the abandoned cabin, she moved to the nearest Mageblood tree and climbed up. Perched on the branch, she waited eagerly to hear the howls that signaled the presence of a Thorn Wolf. It didn’t take long, twenty minutes at most, before she heard a howl to the east. Wasting no time, she launched herself off the branch, pushing a blast of telekinetic force from her feet, launching herself in the direction of her prey. She fell through the air, moving at dozens of meters per second as she fell towards the ground. When she was close enough, she teleported to the ground, maintaining her momentum and moving forward as fast as her legs would allow her. It didn’t take long for the wolf to enter her sphere of perception, and as it did, she slowed down and lowered herself into a stealthy crouched walk.
Quietly, she moved to where the wolf was feasting on a dead deer and began preparing for the fight. She first ensured that both her body enhancement, as well as her Telekinetic Armor were active, then raised the transparency of her armor until it was invisible to non enhanced eyes. She didn’t know if she should even bother, for all she knew the wolves had Manasight, but, better safe than sorry. Once she was ready, she teleported herself up to the branches of an oak tree, resting her body quietly in between them. For her final bit of preparation up in the tree, she created a half dozen telekinetic spears that hovered around her. Then, she Identified the wolf and waited for her opportunity.
[Thorn Wolf - lvl XX]
She was still unable to see its level, which meant, based on her testing with the rabbits, it was higher than level 26. She figured out that she could see the level of any creature that was
at most half her level plus the level of Identify, rounded down. Her being level 13 and her Identify skill being at 7 meant that she was able to Identify creatures at or below level 26.
Kelsey had studied the behavior of these wolves for several hours over the past few weeks, waiting and watching in trees, much like the one she was currently in. She knew that once this wolf finished its meal, it would lay down and fall asleep. She was waiting for that moment to strike. It was kind of a cheap tactic, but she needed any advantage she could get.
It took an agonizing half hour for the wolf to finally finish its meal and lay down. She waited a few more minutes until she saw the chest of the wolf raising and falling in a clear sign of sleep. Without hesitating any longer, she teleported down from the tree silently, her telekinetic spears following her through the teleport. Took a deep breath, activated Meditation, and focused on dealing the perfect first strike. She wasn’t nervous; she was prepared. She had trained for weeks for this very moment. She simply looked at the wolf laying on the ground, raised her hand, and motioned for her first spear to launch.
The telekinetic spear launched from beside her so quickly it created a small gust of wind as it moved. She watched the spear soar towards the wolf, aimed directly at its head. The wolf must have sensed the danger, because it burst into motion at the last moment, moving its head out of the way as the spear slammed into its shoulder. Shit. They must have some way to sense danger. Oh well. At least this fight will be fun now.
Without waiting for the wolf to get its bearings, she launched the other five spears one after another. Her accuracy suffered greatly every time she tried sending multiple projectiles simultaneously, so she fired each one individually. The spears she launched aimed true, but the wolf’s reaction showed it indeed had some sort of Manasight, dodging all but one of the additional spears. The spear that did hit disappeared shortly after, leaving a gaping wound in the Thorn Wolf's body, from which a sickly green blood-like substance leaked.
Not wasting a moment, Kelsey created two dozen small, knife-sized blades of telekinetic energy and launched them at the wolf like a shotgun while running in a circle around it. Being level 13, she had over 2300 mana, naturally regenerating roughly 35 mana per second. Thus, in the next three seconds, she created and launched over 100 of the small blades at the wolf, using slightly less than a single point of mana for each. As the blades neared, the wolf did something completely unexpected. Instead of dodging the blades, the vines on its back unfurled and stabbed into the ground. The moment they touched the earth, a thin stone wall exploded out of the ground in front of the wolf, protecting it from her telekinetic onslaught. She tried to move around the wall, but the wall simply moved to meet her.
Is this thing trying to force me near it? She grinned at the thought. My pleasure.
Wanting to keep her ability to teleport in her back pocket, she used a blast of telekinetic force to launch herself over the stone wall separating her from the wolf. It looked up in surprise as it saw her and reacted by ripping its vines from the ground, whipping them toward Kelsey's head. She smiled, using her Lesser Telekinesis to maneuver in the air, dodging the vines by the thinnest of margins. Not so fast now are you? She then used another blast of force to propel herself feet first into the back of the wolf. It yelped in pain as its vines lashed out, quicker than Kelsey anticipated. She dodged most of them, but one broke through her armor, leaving a gaping wound across her chest. Wow, that doesn’t hurt nearly as much as before. Thank you Pain Tolerance.
Activating her regeneration, she jumped away from the wolf, gaining some distance to heal and recover mana. That single swipe had taken over 25 percent of her health. Due to her explosive use of mana when pushing herself through the air, she already had less than 50 percent of her mana left. She had hoped to end the fight quickly, but the wolf was significantly tougher than she expected. In fact, she could see in her sphere of perception that it was even healing, albeit slowly.
She, on the other hand, had just taken a full dose of poison, and her insides were burning with pain. The poison wasn't a problem, as her natural regeneration outpaced the damage it dealt by a fair margin; it was the pain accompanying this particular poison, designed to debilitate rather than kill, that was the issue. The pain was by no means debilitating, but it was definitely distracting. She continued to circle the wolf, maintaining a distance as she slowly regenerated her resources. She kept sending telekinetic projectiles at the wolf to keep it on the defensive, but not too many to ensure she was still gaining mana rather than spending it. After a few minutes of stalling for her health and mana to reach reasonable levels, she launched herself back into the fight.
Despite the pain… I think I’m actually having fun with this. She thought, grinning to herself.
Over half an hour of intense combat passed, with the Thorn Wolf and her both trading blows and healing during the lulls in combat while Kelsey regenerated mana. Her regeneration outpaced the wolf's by a large margin, and it was now on its last dregs of health.
Just like every other time they clashed, she launched herself forward using a blast of force to propel herself over the stone wall protecting the wolf. But this time, in what must have been its final moment of desperation, it did something completely new. Instead of launching its vines directly at her, they moved to wrap around her, much faster than she could react. As soon as she noticed what was happening, she tried to activate her teleport, but by that time, the vines had already caught her leg, and her teleportation skill failed as she felt it trying to take the wolf with her.
That's not good… Didn’t know about that little caveat to my teleportation. She thought as the wolf used the momentary lapse in action to slam Kelsey into the ground. The armor surrounding her shattered completely and a small crater was left in the ground where she landed. She could feel that multiple bones in her body were broken, and most of her ribs were shattered from the force of the impact. Worse, her head began splitting in pain the moment her skill was shattered by the impact.
If those were the only things that happened, she would be in a bad situation, but the wolf also howled loudly and she saw mana rush from the wolf into the stone beneath her body. The stone below exploded into thousands of tiny shards that drove themselves deep into her body, launching her 10 meters in the air. Through the blinding pain of her damaged body and pounding head, she could see with her sphere of perception that the wolf didn’t escape from that blast of stone unscathed either as it began limping slowly away.
Oh no you don’t, you bastard! She screamed in her mind as she activated her regeneration, and reactivated her armor skill. She channeled all the mana she could into her regeneration as fast as she possibly could. She had learned that regenerating via stored mana was significantly less efficient than doing it slowly from her regeneration, but sometimes it was necessary. She could feel her bones knitting back together, and the stone shards being pushed out of her body, replaced with fresh, new skin. She wasn’t fully healed, and she was completely out of mana, but she was in much better shape than her prey.
As she fell back to the ground, she landed in a roll and prepared herself to finish the wolf off. Mostly out of mana but slowly regenerating, she moved towards the wolf. The moment she had enough mana, she created a telekinetic saber, it was a long one handed curved blade with a single edge. She had practiced with a variety of telekinetic weapons but had settled on this style as her favorite due to its versatility and ease of creation. She moved up to meet the wolf, nearly halfway out of the small clearing by this point, and slashed down at it as it turned to meet her. She smiled as it weakly sent its vines out to stab at her, and she easily cut them away with her blade. Deciding not to prolong its suffering, she cut away the last of the vines and thrust her sword into the monster's neck.
The sound of dings rang out in her mind as she let the saber dissipate back into mana. Feeling exhausted, she sat down next to the wolf’s corpse and stored it for later investigation. She then glanced around the clearing where the fight had taken place. It looked like a battlefield where small enemy armies had clashed. Dozens of giant holes dotted the ground, the earth was torn up from telekinetic blasts and earth magic, and a crater near the center of the clearing marked where she had been slammed down and subsequently launched by an explosion of earth. She chuckled quietly to herself, considering how much stronger she had become since arriving here. If someone had told me two months ago that today I would be fighting a magic wolf that could use earth magic and that I had the ability to survive… well I wouldn’t have believed them, but damn am I glad it’s happening.
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After waiting around for a minute for her mana to regenerate and to let herself fully heal from the battle, she stood up. As her adrenaline faded, her mind began to feel hazy, and she became dizzy. She couldn't think straight, and her head began to hurt. Then she noticed she felt incredibly thirsty and was starving. She stumbled her way back to the river as quickly as possible, doing her best to stay upright. When she finally reached the river a few minutes later, she collapsed next to the river and drank as much water as she could stomach. Her mind instantly felt clearer, and she could think normally again. Still ravenously hungry, she summoned some cooked meat from her storage and stuffed it into her mouth. She couldn't stop herself from eating multiple portions of meat, consuming at least two or three full rabbits' worth of meat, as well as about a quarter of an entire deer in just a few minutes. Finally, she started feeling better and her body stopped protesting.
Sitting for a few minutes, she thought about what had just happened and came to the only conclusion that made sense to her. Mageblood regeneration must not create matter from nothing. When I lose blood or mass in the form of a wound, it must just be gone for good until I eat and drink something. I got hurt so many times during that fight, it's an absolute miracle I had anything left at all.
Now that she felt better, she stretched her body and looked down at herself. Her clothes, specifically her shirt, were now less than useless, covering nothing important. She was also caked in dried blood. Her skin and the remnants of her clothes were both completely covered . Her shoes weren't faring much better, with deep gashes from the wolf's vines. Deciding to ditch her clothes and shoes for now, she thanked her lucky stars that she could make her Telekinetic Armor completely opaque. It wasn’t a big deal, as she even slept in her armor most of the time. It took so little mana to maintain that it was virtually unnoticeable unless she was in combat.
She braced herself and opened her notifications.
*ding* Warning! You have been poisoned! -0.1 hp/s for 200 minutes
Causes intense pain
Oh wow, I totally forgot about the poison. It stopped hurting after a while. Hell, I think I’m poisoned right now.
*ding* Poison Resistance has reached lvl 7 -> 10
*ding* Poison Resistance has reached level 10 and now has a new effect.
[Poison Resistance]
Decreases damage taken from poison based on level of skill
Immunity from poisons significantly below your skill’s level
Wait, did that take effect during the middle of the battle? I thought changes to skills and level didn’t happen until I acknowledged the notification. Hmm, maybe skills work differently than levels?
*ding* You have defeated a [Thorn Wolf - lvl 31]. For defeating an enemy at a higher level
than your own, additional experience is given.
*ding* Spatial Mage has reached level 13 -> 19 - 60 free stat points have been awarded
*ding* Manasight has reached lvl 5 -> 6
*ding* Pain Tolerance has reached lvl 9 -> 10
*ding* Poison Resistance has reached lvl 7 -> 11
*ding* Lesser Telekinesis has reached lvl 9 -> 10 (Maxed)
*ding* Lesser Telekinetic Armor has reached lvl 7 -> 9
*ding* Short Range Teleport has reached lvl 7 -> 8
*ding* Spatial Perception has reached lvl 8 -> 10 (Maxed)
*ding* Lesser Telekinetic Enhancement has reached lvl 7 -> 9
As she checked her notifications, she felt the now familiar rush of power as she saw how much stronger that single fight made her. I guess fighting enemies much higher level than me really helps boost that experience gain. She then noticed one last notification at the bottom of the list, and she smiled with giddy excitement.
*ding* Class skill Lesser Telekinetic Creation has become Telekinetic Creation - lvl 1
*ding* You have learned the class skill Telekinetic Creation - lvl 1
Condense spatial mana to create permanent telekinetic objects.
Did this skill upgrade because it happens to every spatial mage, or because of the effort I put into perfecting my Lesser Telekinetic Creation. It is the skill I use most often.
Seeing that the skill now had the ability to create permanent objects, she was filled with excitement. This is going to be awesome. Closing her notifications she opened her status screen and quickly distributed her free stat points.
Name: Kelsey Kain
Body: Mageblood Body
Primary Class: Spatial Mage - lvl 19
Health: 2600/2600 [Regen %0.5 per minute]
Stamina: 2600/2600 [Regen %1 per second]
Mana: 3150/3150 [Regen %1.5 per second]
Constitution: 260
Endurance: 260
Strength: 215
Dexterity: 215
Intelligence: 315
Willpower: 315
Free Points: 3
Standing up from her bed, Kelsey moved it into storage and focused on her new skill. She used Spatial Sight as she activated Telekinetic Creation, willing the skill to create a permanent telekinetic saber. An incredible rush of mana left her body as she watched spatial wires, created from mana, warp and begin forming the outline of her saber. Mana continued to pour out of her, creating more wires to fill the inside of the blade and hilt. This mentally demanding task involved moving and condensing the spatial energies to create the perfect structure for her blade. I could never have done this without the assistance of the skill, the complexity of this is unreal. The density is on a completely different level than before.
The process continued until the saber appeared as a completely solid object to her Spatial Sight, and it looked as if a very real sword was floating in front of her. Then, she felt a twinge in the back of her mind, indicating there was one more step in the process. Her skill was still maintaining the integrity of the creation; she had to complete it somehow to make it permanent. Several minutes passed as she studied the weapon, until she identified the final step. At the end of the blade were two spatial wires dangling. She followed those wires through the blade and realized that deactivating her skill now would cause the wires to unravel and dissipate. So, she returned to the ends of the wires and literally tied them in a knot with the help of her skill. Telekinetic Creation then deactivated, leaving her with a telekinetic blade floating in front of her, held aloft by Lesser Telekinesis.
The entire process only took a few minutes, but it drained her mana completely multiple times.
As the creation finished, she deactivated her Spatial Sight and Manasight and looked at the blade with her non enhanced eyes. It was dark purple, almost completely opaque, appearing as a completely solid object. The blade seemed to be made from some sort of smooth, purple stained glass. She reached out, grabbed the blade by its undecorated hilt, and felt its weight. It actually weighs something. It's certainly lighter than any real sword I’ve ever held. Which, to be fair, was only one, at a renaissance fair.
Staring deeply into the blade she could see the spatial mana used in its creation flowing through the sword, even without her Manasight activated. It was condensed enough that the mana became physical. She then tested the edge of the blade by slicing her thumb, causing hot blood to run down her hand. Damn, this thing is definitely just as sharp as the ones that I made before. Quickly activating her regeneration skill, the wound disappeared.
She then spent another 5 minutes creating a second blade which came out exactly the same as the first. As she finished the second blade, she heard a notification.
*ding* Telekinetic Creation has reached lvl 1 -> 2
Nice. Hmm I wonder… She held up the blade she made and used Identify.
[Telekinetic Blade - Rare]
A blade made of condensed spatial energy.
Can be infused with mana to repair.
Oh wow, this skill creates objects that are recognized by Identify? That’s fantastic. I wonder if I can sell them? If I ever find people to trade with that is… I’ll also have to test if it's easier to repair them or just make new ones when they get damaged. The repair function could be super useful for someone who can’t create one on their own though.
The next thing she tried was storing the blades, and thankfully, with a thought, both blades disappeared into her dimensional storage. Kelsey spent the following hours testing everything related to the newly upgraded skill. She tested the weapons on trees and bushes, finding them extremely durable and easy to maintain. She discovered that repairing them was shockingly inexpensive in terms of mana cost, but it took nearly as much time as creating a new one altogether. After that, she created dozens of smaller, less complicated objects like small spheres, rings, earrings, and bracelets. During her experiments with bracelets, she realized she could make flexible objects. This discovery led her to attempt making a shirt, pants, and shoes to solve her current clothing problem. It took many hours and dozens of failed attempts. She spent the entire rest of the day sitting on in a Mageblood tree exhausting her mana pool hundreds of times to finally create a set of clothing that she was happy with.
[Telekinetic Long Sleeve Shirt - Rare]
A shirt made from condensed spatial energy.
Can be infused with mana to repair.
[Telekinetic Pants - Rare]
A pair of pants made from condensed spatial energy.
Can be infused with mana to repair.
[Telekinetic Shoes - Rare]
A pair of shoes made from condensed spatial energy.
Can be infused with mana to repair.
She looked at each item and scratched her head. I cannot believe I was able to make something like this. Deactivating her Telekinetic Armor, she put on the pieces of clothing and looked at herself. The pieces of clothing were made from what appeared to be a smoky purple silk. The material was incredibly soft and more flexible than any textile she had ever worn on Earth. The edges of the clothing waved with an ethereal energy as the mana that made up each item became less dense near the edges. Each piece was completely opaque and fit her extremely well. Not too tight, but certainly not baggy. The clothing was incredibly light, to the point where she had to concentrate to feel its weight at all.
It’s perfect! Or at least as perfect as I can make...
During her crafting spree, her newly upgraded skill leveled up several more times as her understanding grew. She was eager to test the potential of this new skill, already brimming with ideas. But, she was exhausted, and her head was pounding in pain from using so much mana, so she decided it was probably best to get some sleep. Laying down on her borrowed bed, she checked her notifications, closed her eyes, and fell asleep feeling satisfied.
*ding* Telekinetic Creation has reached lvl 2 -> 5