The first enemies me, my familiar and Sock found was a group of 3 spiders. They were about the size of a small dog, so slightly smaller than Sock. I already infused both my swords with magic so I'm ready to go. I increase the size of my wooden sword to around the size of a longsword. It's still easy enough to wield since it's wood. My family sword is infused with freeze magic. I don't want to accidentally burn my wooden sword or catch to forest on fire.
The metal training sword is my backup. The spiders seem to have noticed us. I charge in swinging both my swords at once and both hit the same spider. I back away just to avoid 2 of their attacks. My familiar is getting the attention of the other 1 while Sock bites and attacks the spider. A few more hits and the first spider is dead.
I just focus on dodging the other spider until my familiar and Sock kill theirs. 1 spider left, I start weakening it. I've tried a few times to tame it but it just wont work. Just as I think I have the upper hand the spider shoots out a webbing that entraps me my left arm. It's completely locked to my body the freezing sword touching me, so it's starting to freeze my leg. Shit! I'm in a bad spot! I swing with my free hand frantically trying to hit the giant spider. The wooden sword is to clunky to swing if I don't have proper balance.
Sensing my fear, both Sock and my familiar stop going easy and try to kill the spider. The spider uses another attack the other 2 didn't. He spits out poison that hits my familiar in his eyes. My leg is starting to feel really bad, my health is dropping because of myself. I grab out a scroll from the pouch on my right side and cast a flare at the spider. It bursts into flames, it seems to be it's weakness. The forest also catches fire which I was afraid of but is the least of my problems right now.
The spider dies shortly after being caught on fire. After focusing on just getting the sword to stop touching me, I free it from my body. I cast a small fire with elemental magic. No reason to go overboard with flare to burn the spider silk off of me. I manage to put out the fire with water pulled from the ground with elemental magic again... Brick has already saved my life a few times… After the battle was done a few notifications popped up.
Blue mage skill gained String attack- able to shoot out webs to entrap your enemies
Blue mage skill gained Poison spit- able to spit poison that causes burning to anything it comes in contact with
Sock “Petty wolf” has evolved into wolf
Master of learning 7 to 8
Familiar is permanently blind
Knowing the enemies weakness from now on, I'll only fight them after I've chanted ignite magic onto them. It should kill them fairly quickly. To stop my familiar from being in pain I unsummoned him. He wasn't any help blind. He did manage to take a few of the worst attacks, so I'll be thankful to him for that. "Thank you." I think to myself.
I summon a new familiar that is an archer to back me up. I put my wooden sword away for now and pull out my crossbow. I sacrifice some of my fatigue to restore all my mana. Then I spend it all summoning a skeleton to help fight for me. I've tried using them on the road but the sun weakens them to the point where they're far weaker than a slime. He should be fine in the forest though.
If I haven't said yet, fatigue is reset once you go to sleep. It is the measure of what you can do throughout the day before you get tired. Everything you do removes from your total fatigue for that day. My fatigue is extremely high because I've trained every single day and that is a way to increase your total amount.
We move forwards more and fight another set of spiders. Proper planning this time and they weren't a threat at all. A few more sets of spiders and we kill them relatively easy as well. Then we see something different. A new enemy appeared in the forest. Its a goblin, a lone goblin by himself. Its probably around level 7, they've never been very strong but they tend to overwhelm groups with numbers.
They have a bad habit of abducting women and raping them. Killing any I see as long as I wouldn't risk dying should be the manner I take with them. I pull out a bolt and infuse it with poison magic. The goblins hit and falls to the ground unable to move or even cry out. I move forward and slice its throat, sneak attacks are amazing! I kill a few more goblins before I hear a bell being rung. Probably the alert of an enemy I retreat for now.
I test out both of my new skills I got from the spiders. The string shot and poison spit are both instantaneous. I touch the poison with my hands but it doesn't hurt me. I take a big risk and taste it as well, not much to the taste but I wasn't poisoned by consuming it. The silk is extremely sticky to everything but my hands. I can freely pick up the silk with my hands.
I test out climbing the city walls with it. I manage to make it 10 feet up the wall before I consider it a success. If I took my shoes off, I could probably scale the 20 foot wall in a few seconds using the silk to hold myself up. The biggest problem I see is now their is sticky silk all over the city walls. I tried infusing the metal sword with the string attack and I wasn't able to. The poison I could though.
A third slot added to my bolt pouch for poison enchanted bolts. I haven't been thinking about it but it might be smart to infuse the arrows of fire with an extra element. Sort of like a double enchant! But it seems like a waste of mana for 1 attack when I get 3 hours out of melee weapons. So I decide against it. It would consume too much of my time and mana without much of a reward to it. Besides for sneak attacks that is. The poison I had was numbing poison, I think I can learn more than 1 poison based attack.
I try a few more things with the poison and silk before I figure out I can make the silk not sticky by covering it with the poison. I go back to the walls and spray the silk with poison spit to clean them. I now had as much silk as I can carry back to the town. I check to see if its worth anything and I guess its valuable enough to sell. But for how much I'd need to get a silver coin it's not worth making for a living.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
I start to play around with the silk. With tailoring I could make a few things with it but for now I'll just use it as lining for my armor. It's very comfortable and lining the inside of my armor was very easy to do. Then I think of something. I could enchant the silk before I add it to the gear to give even more effects.
My whole set of armor now consists of double layered defense magic. Wardens shielding magic doesn't last long enough to use for anything besides enchanting. At least I get some use from it. I enchant the plates that are protecting the vital spots as well with magic defense skill called shell from warden magic since it's reached level 10.
The next day I spend it scouting the entrance to the goblin fort. It has around 4 sentries watching from towers so it will be difficult to kill any of them without the others being alerted. The amount outside compared to before is far less.
I decide to shoot 1 with a poison enchanted bolt that has poison infused onto it as well as being covered in poison spit. 3 staged numbing poison might be able to stop weak enemies hearts. I make 4 bolts all together taking around an hour to make even using some of my fatigue to restore mana.
Drawing mana from nature is slower than darkness. So my mana recovery from none to full is around 30 minutes. I shoot an arrow, it hits the 1 in the far back. He falls from the sentry post and the sound alerts the others. While they're figuring out what just happened I fire another arrow hitting another unsuspecting 1. He doesn't fall but he might be dead anyways. The other 2 start ringing the bells in their towers and I retreat again.
The next day while heading into the forest to where the goblin fortress is I fight a few more waves of spiders. I make it to the goblin fortress and I'm surprised to see the guards there are wearing armor now. There is also twice as many, 2 at each tower totaling 8 goblins guarding.
I think they're preparing against me. I wont kill any for awhile, only the ones I see on the outside. I head back to the guard at the entrance of the city and ask about the goblins. She explained that while there are goblins close to the town they're too weak to put an extermination request against. It wouldn't be worth many peoples time to kill them.
Before I call it a day I go to the stables and look at the monsters there. What the beast tamer there said is while forcing monsters to become your pets is possible. Increasing every time you learn a skill. You can also bond with the monsters increasing the number you have without reducing the amount you can forcefully tame.
From the few that have been abandoned you can purchase them. The few times I've tried to tame them with bonding I couldn't. I think it might be tied to my beast tamer level so all the beast tamer pets are far too high level for me. 1 in particular went up for sale recently. A ferret like creature about the length of my hand, was abandoned by his owner.
The beast tamer who tamed her thought she was useless. So he sold her to the stables for a single silver coin. I haven't been able to tame any so far but I give it a shot and finally she bonds with me! I tamed the ferret. I pay 5 silver coins for her. She's worth it just to have a secondary pet. She's also small enough to take into town so I can keep her around me. I decided to name her Pokodo. I don't see any fighting potential but I'll think of something she can do.
The new school year starts tomorrow. The last free day I have I spend it relaxing and showing off Pokodo to everyone in the school. I'm not very liked by many people but Pokodo seems to be changing that opinion of me just from her cuteness. I went and bought a little collar for her and Sock and let them play with each other for a bit.
They both seem to like each other which is good. It might be because they've been near each other for a few weeks before I bought Pokodo. I try to figure out what Pokodo can be useful for but cant figure it out. I go to sleep that night thinking about something she can do.
The new school year is starting and the first day is orientation for the new students. Normally you can join the school anytime of the year except during the last 2 months of school. A few dozen students have built up waiting for the new school year to start.
I'm taking second year time magic. Some people are confused since I took 3 different classes already and they were in the lessons with me. I make up a lie that I'm going to be a teacher in the country I'm from so knowing about the basics of each class would help me tutor the new students. I've been seen casting at least 4 different types of magic so far so it's only a matter of time before they find out.
Even so I want as much of my class to remain a secret as possible. Second period I'm taking a free period where I can jump around the lessons being taught to increase the levels of each of my classes and jobs. Third period I'm taking a mana recovery lesson. Once I learn the skill I should be able to regenerate all of my mana 10 minutes faster. Fourth period I'm taking a synthesizing lesson.
It's 1 of the few jobs I still need. I also need detective but they don't teach it here so I'll have to find another way. From what I understand Leaf skipped another year so she will finish school this year.
It's been around a week since school started again. It's going well and I've fallen into a similar routine again. Waking up in the morning and jogging through the forest. Then I go through school like normal. I should be able to get the synthesizing job soon. Jobs level faster than classes so I already have most over 10.
My highest being enchanting at 15. I also summoned another bird familiar to scout for me. It flies above the path and guides me towards enemies to fight. The archer familiar I have has a finite number of arrows. I enchanted his and he picks the used arrows up trying not to waste any. All his arrows are enchanted with poison. Even though he's so weak the poisons extremely effective against most enemies.
The spiders seem to have an immunity though. I throw Pokodo onto enemies and she goes for vital spots on them like their eyes. She's actually useful in fights so she's leveling up steadily. I also found a lot of stolen items under my bed recently.
She's been stealing from everywhere I guess and has collected enough stuff to make the school think it has a bandit. I give all the stuff back and tell Pokodo not to steal unless I command her to. Not using her abilities would be a waste so I'll have to remember that.
A month and a half has passed since the school year started. I got a letter from the postman. It was from my grandfather Grey. It plainly said
“The village was overrun by bandits. There were no survivors.”
…I missed school that day. For the second time in my life I cried.