There was something oddly fascinating about watching Cuby stab something to death.

After all, wasn’t this what I’d done a dozen times before in many a video game? Schwing go the weapon sound effects as it flashes forward for the killing blow.

But as Cuby slid her knife easily into the neck of the 0-HP jawspray, then worked it around, opening up the neck of what had once been a mountain goat and spraying gouts of blood everywhere, I couldn’t help but feel that this was different. My arms were bloody from releasing the slashed-open corpses from my inventory, and it was all over my simple boots. It was unnerving, watching them twitch and die, not the least because Cuby herself seemed to have no compunctions about the gore at all.

The jawspray fell still, joining the dozen or so of its kin that we’d killed over the last twenty minutes.

You have gained 2 experience points.

Congratulations, you’ve leveled up!

You are now a level 2 Mage.

You have gained a new Spell slot. Open your Ability Selection pane to choose a new Spell.

Your Hit Points have increased by 30 and your Mana has increased by 70.

Human Adaptability increases each of your Strength, Agility, Focus, and Spirit by 1. You have 1 stat point to distribute.

“Congratulations!” Cuby said. She’d leveled up on the previous monster, having killed a beamling or two more than I had before we met. “What’d you get?”

“Well, let’s see,” I said. First, leveling had restored all my mana and HP, which saved me having to drink one of my two mana potions—it had been getting close. Second, I had a new skill point to put into my spirit stat.

But she was really asking about the abilities, so I opened up the ability pane and engaged the flashing button which I found there.

Ability Selection

Choose a new spell to learn. You may replace this spell with any other spell you are eligible to learn by consuming its spell card or using a spell book.

Spell - Elemental Weaponry

Cost: 12 Mana + 12 Mana / Hour

Cast Time: 8.6 Seconds

Range: 5 Meters

Effect: 5.7 Damage Throughput

This spell enchants a weapon to deal extra damage on each hit. The damage is typed according to your elemental affinity.

Spell - Rune Bomb

Cost: 3 Mana + 1 Mana / Minute

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Casting Speed: 4.3 Seconds

Effect: 35 Damage

When you cast this spell, you leave a barely-visible arcane rune on a surface that you touch. When enemies come within 2 meters of the rune, it explodes, dealing damage to everything within 3 meters.

You may have 2 Rune Bombs placed at a time, and they cannot be placed within 6 meters of one another.

“Okay, good,” I muttered, looking over each. “How do I show you these?”

“Just think about it!” she said. “It’s not hard.”

A little self-conscious now, I concentrated on each ability—then saw my system messages send her little links to the panes in group chat.

“Seems like a pretty easy choice to me,” I said, wanting to seem anything but clueless. “The trap rune is good burst damage but the elemental weaponry is cheaper, more sustained, and probably stronger with you around.”

“My thinking exactly,” she said, grinning. “I’m taking a thrown attack this level, but with your weapon buff, I doubt you’ll need to cast anything but Mana Shield! Throughput adjustments are extra-strong on rogues!”

“Throughput adjustments?” I asked.

“Your spell adjusts based on how fast a weapon is so that it adds the same damage throughput to everyone,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. “DPS.”

“Hm?”

“Damage per second.”

“Oh,” she said, nodding. “Exactly that, then.”

“But if it adjusts, wouldn’t that… not make a difference for a rogue?” I asked.

“It wouldn’t,” she said. “Not because of the faster attack speed. But smaller weapons have lower damage throughput and higher precision, which means they hit and crit more. And that means that even the adjusted damage bonuses are better on small weapons than big ones!”

She was still smiling. She smiled a lot—sometimes it felt natural, and sometimes it was obviously an expression she was just sort of trying on.

“Okay,” I said. I put my other point into spirit. “Let me buff your weapon,” I told her. Five damage a hit would be no joke: the enchantment on her knife could probably out-damage my Magic Arrows.

Cuby presented her dagger, and I spent a rather long casting time placing the enchantment on it—at which point it began to glow blue-white. “Is there a way to get that element to change to something else?” I asked, thinking of the resistances again. Right now, a single resistance was mitigating all of my damage—surely we’d run into a monster that made me ineffective sooner or later.

“Sure,” she said. “Get a fire staff or something. Mages come with magic as a base element, but gear and other abilities can give you new elements. You mix equal elements into a new type, like magefire, and if one element exceeds the others it dominates—get two fire element on your abilities and they’ll all just be fire, even though you’ll still have one magic affinity.”

“Oh,” I said. That wasn’t quite how I thought it worked.

As if seeing what I was thinking, Cuby spoke again. “Mixed affinities like magefire target the average of the target’s two resistances as if it was a single resistance. And right now, because we haven’t got any good gear or abilities, all of the primal elements—Fire, Frost, Lightning, Nature—are more damaging.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because our primary stats give resistance to the other elements,” she said. “But we have no resistance at all to the elemental ones. The same is probably true for monsters, so if we do find you a fire staff, it’ll be a nice boost.”

“Great,” I said. “I’m glad your here to explain things to me, Cuby.”

Cuby laughed. “I’m glad your here to dispense Mana Shields and weapon buffs, Alatar. Anyway, let’s go kill stuff—I hate standing around with full resources—it’s a waste of regeneration.”

I laughed. “Right,” I said. “Let’s go.”