“Huh?” I sat up from where I was slumped against the rocky wall of the mountain and looked around in a daze.
What happened to the storm?
The sky was completely clear, where seconds ago it was a raging storm. There was even lightning striking… me. Yeah, that was it. I got struck by lightning. There might have been a system message about an unusually high Lightning Affinity before I passed out.
It was at this point that I finally noticed the vague feeling of blue light flashing in the back of my mind, and as soon as I acknowledged it I felt something expanding until it finally filled my vision.
Choose Your Path Charcoal Burner Courier Lightning Adept
I thought there were supposed to be at least 5…
At least, that’s what the books I’d read told me. Even the most lazy and underachieving dunce would qualify for Paths like ‘Worker’ or ‘Wanderer’, but I didn’t even get those. In fact, my choices are so strange, why do I only have these out of everything I could have gotten?
Well, I was no scholar, so the choices got that right at least. Deciding not to bother thinking about this any further I took a good look at my Choices and realised that there was only one real option.
Lightning Adept has to be a Mage variant, so it’s probably the only one that would make use of my Activated Mana Pool.
As soon as the idea was cemented in my mind, the screen changed to signify my decision, as I’d sort of expected.
Lightning Adept Chosen
Robert Zeneki Lightning Adept 18 Years Level 1 Willpower 7 Wisdom 3 Strength 5 Agility 6 Path Skills Lightning Generator 1 General Skills [0/5]
Looking at what I had, I couldn’t help but feel somewhat disappointed. Of course I wouldn’t have any general skills, you only start getting those after Awakening, and I would only have one Path skill, since those are given every 5 levels. What really bothered me was the stats.
I read that 5 is the average for an adult, which I now am, so most of these are pretty decent. But my wisdom is surely too low. I thought I was pretty smart.
The screen winked out of existence as I stopped thinking about it, and I got ready to climb back down the mountain. I noticed that the rocks were actually nearly completely dry already, so I must have been out for a while. I hoped no one back home worried too much, if they did at all.
The trip back home was largely uneventful, the ground was still muddy, but there were no more howling winds or pelting rain, so it wasn’t so bad. There were even some animals around on the trail. I smiled, seeing the transformation this forest had been through.
That smile dimmed as I finally arrived back at Mantlemount. People were once again bustling around, working on this or that. It was nice that the storm hadn’t caused any particularly severe damage to the place, at least.
Soon I stopped in front of a small cottage, no different from any of the dozens of other homes in the village. Apart from the fact that it was my home, or at least it was where I lived.
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I walked through the door casually, not even announcing my presence, before being stopped by my mother.
“You’re back,” She didn’t phrase it like a question, so I didn’t treat it as such.
“My awakening went well.”
“Oh was that today?”
I thought that she might have been at least a little worried about me, or glad that I’d come home, but I guess not. Honestly, I wasn’t even mad at this point, it was just the final coin on the scale that tipped it to the other side. I was going to leave the village.
Everything that I needed was already prepared, so I simply took the bag from under my bed and wore it on my back. It had all of the essentials for travelling on the road, non perishable food, a water skin, camping supplies, a knife, and a few silver that I’d saved from some odd jobs. The cloak that I’d been wearing on my awakening was still serviceable, if a little charred on the area around my chest, so thankfully I wouldn't need to replace it for now.
I also made sure to wrap up the blanket and pillow from my bed and shove them roughly into the pack, just in case the one I already had in there wasn’t enough for whatever reason, and not because I didn’t want to leave too much behind for my ‘parents’.
“What are you doing?” Oh, so now she thought she could tell me what to do? She didn’t stop me from going out into the storm, so she wouldn’t be stopping me here.
“Leaving,” She tried to say something in response, but I barely heard it as I simply walked out the door and didn’t stop.
The village only had one actual exit, since the mountain kept it penned in from the other directions, which made deciding where to go pretty simple. A few people gave me odd looks, but I ignored them and just kept walking. The ground was still muddy, so I walked back onto the grass to hopefully keep my boots somewhat clean for a while. It didn’t work too well but that was fine, I didn’t care that much anyway.
Walking through the forest always calmed me down, there was something about it that made it hard to stay in a bad mood for long. Soon I even found myself beginning to smile. Leaving as soon as I came of age might have been impulsive, but I couldn’t bring myself to regret it.
The only problem I had now was figuring out where to go. I’d prepared the supplies that I’d need for the journey, but I didn’t seriously think that I’d be leaving so soon so I never bothered to decide where I’d actually be going.
Hmm, I guess I could always go to Ironhold. That place is apparently pretty friendly to adventurers, which I might as well be now. Hopefully that’ll change once I figure out a way to get a stable job.
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Just a few hours out from the village the ground slowly transitioned into hard, dry, dirt. By that point I must have been outside of where the storm managed to reach already, which is pretty decent progress in my opinion.
Whilst walking I realised that in my haste I’d completely forgotten about my new Path, and neglected to check the skill it gave me.
Path Skills Lightning Generator 1
Using a skill was supposed to be as easy as thinking when you used them enough, but for now I was inexperienced and had to fully stop walking in order to produce my first sparks. Within a minute I’d managed to ramp it up until my hands were coated in crackling cyan light, but as I did so something inside of me began to feel hollow. It felt kind of like being hungry but more… ethereal I suppose.
I stopped for now, worried about what it could mean, as I’d never felt anything quite like this before, but then I realised that those 3 points in Wisdom were deserved. It was my Mana Pool. Obviously, I would need to expend my mana in order to use magic. I don’t know how I forgot about something so important, but at least I figured it out relatively quickly.
Worries assuaged, I immediately started conjuring more lightning. I couldn’t stop myself from staring into the arcing sparks. This was something that I was able to create from my own two hands, and maybe even other body parts too. I quickly threw out a spark from my foot to check, and yep I could generate from there too.
I grinned, this was why I tried so hard to get to that flower, even though it nearly killed me. I could use magic. I didn’t know why, but for some reason I’d always been more fascinated by magic than the other kids.
Well, I know why I’m so interested in it. The real question is why they aren’t.
When my Mana Pool ran out I realised that I’d just been standing staring at my hands for Gods know how long in the middle of the road. I quickly checked to make sure no one was around that could have seen me before hurriedly continuing on.
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Around an hour, or what may have been an hour judging by the sun, later my Mana Pool was comfortably full and I could continue practising. I’d gotten pretty good at calling up the lightning quickly last time, so now I decided to try generating whilst I was walking.
I paused and charged up fully before cautiously taking a step, and it was embarrassingly easy. I probably could have been walking the entire time I was using the skill before but I was too enraptured to think about that.
Moving on from that, I continued walking and thought about what else I could potentially do with the skill. Trying to force it to move away from me didn’t seem to result in much. I also couldn’t form it into shapes or use it to pull my own limbs along, which was admittedly a bit of a stretch but could have been cool.
The first success I found was when I tried to shoot a bolt at a nearby tree. That isn’t to say that I managed to shoot a bolt, but I was able to force a small line to arc to the tree for an instant.
“Yes!” I waited a moment for a notification but nothing appeared, so I checked my skills.
Path Skills Lightning Generator 3
“Ah,” For some reason I was disappointed that I didn’t get a notification on every level up.
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After my Mana had recovered twice the sky began to darken and I realised that I’d need to set up camp soon, whilst I could still see.
Fortunately, I’d reached a section of the road where the trees were a few metres away from it on one side, so I had plenty of space to set up a tent. I’d been snacking on the food for most of the journey so I decided against having a meal for now. Perhaps I’d think differently in the morning but at the moment my legs were tired and I needed to rest.
Just minutes after I was wrapped in my blankets in the tent my mind drifted off and I fell asleep.