After the excitement of the previous night, I kind of assumed that the entire journey would be perilous, but it was largely peaceful. Sure, Affinitied Monsters were supposed to be rare, but I didn’t think that it was so rare that I’d see less than one a day.

By noon I’d encountered a few animals, and a squirrel had even scurried close to me whilst I sat down to eat, but nothing that actually attacked me. Technically that was a good thing, but I couldn’t help but think that it’d be much easier to level up Lightning Generator if I was attacked.

My internal musings were cut short as something rather curious happened. My feet were getting sore, so I adjusted them slightly in an attempt to ease the pain. After taking a few steps to a little success I actually got a new notification.

Proficiency Gained Would you like to take the General Skill [Walking]?

“Oh, interesting,” Walking seemed like it would be pretty useful right now, but even I could figure out that skills should be chosen based on how you could use them in the future.

Hmm. Well, when am I not going to need to walk? I’ll take it!

Skill Gained

Existing Proficiency Detected

Altering Level

General Skills [1/5] Walking 3

Immediately the pain in my feet lessened, and after paying close attention for a few seconds I was moving noticeably faster than before.

“Nice!” I’d read a lot of books suggesting potential General Skills, but for some reason none of them even mentioned walking, even though it seemed really quite useful.

Not my problem, this is great!

At this point, I wondered if it would be possible to level it up again by replicating what I did to learn it, so for a few dozen minutes I tried subtly altering the way I walked. Eventually, as I was beginning to tire from all of the strange movements, I remembered that I wouldn’t be getting any notifications for level ups and realised that I could have gotten a level without realising it.

Why don’t I get level up notifications anyway? That’s annoying.

General Skills [1/5] Walking 4

I should have been excited, but mainly I was annoyed at not even knowing what I did to earn the level up.

Instead of dwelling on my annoyance, I chose to do something semi-productive and began to “test” my Lightning Bolt by shooting at smaller and smaller things.

Shooting at a tree was no problem, likewise with shooting a particular branch, but the problems began to arise when I tried to hit a single leaf. Namely, that the shots arced to the closest thing more often than not.

This could particularly be an issue if I had to fight alongside someone else. The chances of me needing to do that were pretty slim, but I had no idea how dangerous the world might be, or how often I would actually need to fight. The situation with the wolf made me think it would be often, but that could have easily just been incredibly bad luck so it was hard to say.

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Eventually, despite Walking being at level 4, I began to get tired of walking. It must have only been a few hours since midday, but I had very rarely walked for even close to this long so I was simply not used to it.

I soon came across a nice clearing by the road, and decided enough was enough. I was going to take a break from walking and focus entirely on practising Lightning Generator for a while. Whilst walking I had been shooting a few bolts every now and again, but I had yet to gain another level, so I obviously needed to use more of my Mana Pool at once. That was what had gotten me Level 4, after all.

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Okay, here goes.

I took a deep breath and started charging Lightning Generator, cyan light glowing from my right hand. I pointed my finger at a tree and, after a moment, lightning seemed to blast randomly from my hand, hitting nearly every tree in the clearing apart from the one I pointed at.

“Ah,” Then I fell to the ground, realising that using so much mana so suddenly might not be a great idea. That ethereal place that my Mana was stored in was contracting and expanding erratically, almost in tune with my heartbeat, each time sending waves of pain through my skull, “Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea,” I spoke whilst clutching my skull, attempting to stave away the pain.

Once it began to fade and I could focus again, I was on the ground and the sun was suspiciously close to the horizon. I must have been out of it for hours. I closed my eyes and looked inwards, trying to see if it was possible to check on my Mana Pool. Thankfully I could sense something after just a few minutes, unthankfully it was not doing too good.

It was close to half full, which meant that in all of these hours it had barely increased a fraction of what it should have. During my walking I managed to get a rough estimate of how fast my Mana Pool recovered, and I placed it at around half an hour to completely fill up. I must have damaged it, but I could only hope that it wasn’t too bad.

Hoping to have at least gotten something out of this, I decided to check my status.

Robert Zeneki Lightning Adept 18 Level 2 Willpower 8 Wisdom 3 Strength 5 Agility 6 Path Skills Lightning Generator 6 General Skills [1/5] Walking 4

My Willpower went up? And two whole levels in Lightning Generator? Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all…

All it took was one thought of the pain to cross my mind and the idea of recreating that feat went completely out the window. It just wasn’t worth it, not at all.

And now it’s too late to start walking again. Dang it.

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I ended up turning in for the night, and slept peacefully in my tent with no monster attacks this time, though I was strangely conflicted about that for some reason…

Regardless, I slept quite well and woke up better rested than I expected to in the middle of the wilderness. In fact, it was rather pleasant to be able to get out of bed and immediately see the trees and birds. I almost wish I could have gotten some kind of life adept path. Maybe Forest Adept? I’m not sure how the naming works for these things.

Packing away my things took only a few minutes and, after a quick breakfast of whatever I still had in the pack, I started day 3 of walking. It was starting to get boring, but I kept myself occupied by practising magic as much as I dared. By now I had much better control over the lightning that I Generated, although strangely I didn’t notice any improvements after levelling my skill. I guess it just didn’t come with control for some reason.

A few hours later I was trying, and failing, to get a single streak of lightning to circle my arm. I’d gotten close, but it just didn’t quite last long enough. I was getting frustrated, but that didn’t deter me… not too much at least. There was some kind of trick to it, like it had its own little Mana Pool that needed to be filled some more.

I really must be an idiot.

This whole time, I’d been simply forcing the lightning to last further, and been met with some success at the cost of the integrity of the lightning. It would become dimmer and thinner the longer I got it to last, but I could never get it far enough. If I just gave it more Mana to work with at the start of its journey then surely it would last a little longer.

I wasn’t exactly sure how to empower a single bolt without having it zap me. All I’d managed previously was basically creating multiple bolts at the same time to create the effect of one larger one, and I hadn’t even considered that it may be possible to make each individual arc stronger.

Eventually I did what I was sure was the magical equivalent to throwing water into a bucket from the roof, but what mattered was that it worked. A few sparks were let off around the starting point, but it actually did manage to circle my entire arm, though only barely. And my Mana Pool had been depleted a lot more than I would have liked from that too.

Proficiency Gained Would you like to take the General Skill [Condense Mana]?

Reached Level 4

Is that what I was doing then? Also, Level 4? Did I skip one?

I accepted the skill absentmindedly, reasoning that Condensing Mana would likely be quite useful for anyone wanting to use powerful spells, and opened my entire status.

Robert Zeneki Lightning Adept 18 Level 4 Willpower 8 Wisdom 4 Strength 5 Agility 6 Path Skills Lightning Generator 7 General Skills [2/5] Walking 4 Condense Mana

1

“Wow,” Looking at it here, I’d made so much progress in only a few days of dedicated practice. Even my Wisdom increased, which is incredible. I couldn’t help but wonder how much faster other people must be able to progress, like nobles and those who are groomed to replace the queen in the event she is somehow killed.

I walked without thinking for what must have been at least half an hour, before I was startled out of my stupor by the first sign of the city so far. It wasn’t much, just a farm several minutes off the side of the road, but it must have been built relatively close to the city, whatever it was called. I couldn’t be more than a day away by this point.

I grinned, since I would finally be getting started on my new life soon, and it was sure to be better than what I had before.