Elaria woke slowly. She felt groggy and all her muscles ached. The air was uncomfortably hot and she could feel a thin layer of perspiration already forming on her forehead. Opening her eyes slowly, letting them get used to the light, the first thing she saw was a huge toothy maw and a large tongue that promptly began licking her head, covering it in slimy saliva. At least she knew the collar was effective. Gently pushing away the wolf, she looked around and saw the utter devastation surrounding her. The goblin town was entirely gone and in its place there was just a spattering of burnt out ruins. Most of the corpses had disappeared, as dead monsters tended to, but for some odd reason there were a few remaining, blackened and charred. Strange.
Had she caused this? The last memory she had was of reaching out to the strange web of sparkling ripples in the atmosphere, and intense heat. At least she wasn’t dead. She certainly felt like it though. A quick peek at her status notified her that her health had mostly recovered somehow, and in the fugue of battle she’d distributed quite a number of stat points in a haphazard way. There was a deluge of notifications from the Chain, mostly informing her of the various monsters she’d killed and how many times she’d levelled up. Before she could start to trawl through and sort them out, a gruff yet familiar voice cut through her focus.
“Looks like you’re finally awake, lass. I have a lot of questions for you, but first of all, why is your damn hair bright red all of a sudden and what happened here?” Asked Wren, the guard captain of Felspire.
Elaria grabbed a strand of her hair and almost recoiled in surprise. He was right. Her usually mousey brown hair was now a vivid, fiery red. It was sort of beautiful, actually. Whatever had happened there, it can’t have been that important compared to everything else. Her aching body protested, but she dragged herself to her feet, using the sturdy wolf to support her. It seemed pleased that she’d recovered. She ran a hand through the matted and bloodied fur along its back, and it rubbed back. It had fought bravely alongside her. They definitely both needed a bath though, a thought that was driven home when she caught the whiff of gore and sweat from her hand.
“I’m not quite sure, but I don’t think that’s too important right now. I discovered a fortress of goblins here, using the silvermoon wolves as pets. I realise now it was rather reckless, but I tried to defeat them all by myself. There was a huge goblin, their leader I think. I was on the verge of death when I felt this strange fluctuation in the atmosphere. It was hot and sparkly, and I reached out to it. That was the last thing I remember.”
The two old men shared a knowing look, and the one she didn’t recognise laughed loudly before muttering something about prodigies and mana. Wren turned back to her with a slightly wary look in his eye and was silent for a moment.
“No wonder this place felt devoid of mana. Try not to do that again, especially if you’re near a city. You used the natural mana to cause an explosion, lass. One so big that we felt it back in Felspire. The whole place is in shambles right now, but I can’t exactly blame you. Goblins building fortresses and organising in these kinds of numbers is a worrying precedent, and I’ll need to talk to the guildmaster about it. It was damn foolish of you to take them on by yourself, but based on all this,” he said, waving a hand around at the surroundings to emphasise his point, “it seems like they were the ones in over their head facing you. Look, usually I’d offer to take you back to the doctor, but the last thing you should do right now is be anywhere near Felspire. Just keep on your way to Lockmire and try not to get in any more trouble. When you reach Cloudvale, look for a man called Larius Wildwing and tell him Wren sent you. You’ve got a bright future.”
That actually made a lot of sense. That spiderweb of excited little blobs of light had been natural mana, presumably fire related, based on the results of her fiddling with it. On the plus side, that hopefully meant she would have completed her class quest and unlocked her class now. The missions from the guild would also be completed thanks to the hundreds of goblins and wolves she’d slaughtered, so it seemed smart to just head straight for Lockmire without any interruption. Judging from the captain’s warning, it would be wise to get out of Baron Faust’s territory, lest he discover what happened and blame her for the damage to his city. He wouldn’t exactly be wrong to do so, but she had no desire to be on the wrong side of his particular brand of justice.
“Thank you for your help, captain. I think I’ll probably head straight to Lockmire from here and let them know about what happened with the goblins too. It should be much quicker now that I can ride her,” she said while stroking the Silvermoon Denmother.
She would have to give it a name. Silvermoon Denmother was quite a mouthful and she didn’t want to just keep calling it a wolf either. There would be plenty of time to think on the journey, it would still take a day or two to reach the city even at a faster pace.
“I found this by the way,” said the captain, tossing over a charred blue handle connected to a melted stub of metal.
Her father would not be pleased to see what she’d managed to do to his gift. At least it had seen plenty of action before meeting such a fate. Perhaps someone would be able to fix it in Cloudvale. The kingdom’s most talented gathered there after all, so she was sure to find a skilled blacksmith. If not, she could always give it a proper burial somewhere and find a new weapon. The captain gave her a few more health potions before heading back to the city with his companion. It was a generous gift, although she hoped she wouldn’t need to use them for a while. Elaria had come to enjoy the thrill of battle, but after the visceral and gory fight she’d just been through, she needed a break for a while. She was tough enough now that the low level monsters around these parts wouldn’t be able to bother her anyway, and the wolf would probably deter any of the braver ones.
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Before she set out again, she had to sort out her status and read through all the notifications that were hovering there in the corner of her vision. Her level had skyrocketed, and even though she remembered spending plenty of her stat points, there were still a few waiting to be invested.
[https://i.imgur.com/QyFKRKW.png]
Her health pool seemed to have jumped, perhaps reaching 5 points invested in fortitude had caused some kind of qualitative increase. Her mind felt sharper too, and based on the fact she had 5 points in agility as well, it seemed like all of the stats would get a boost in effectiveness upon reaching that point. With that new piece of knowledge, she used the 3 unallocated stat points to get her strength, intelligence and luck up to 5 as well, and immediately felt the effects. Her body was lighter and all her muscles reacted better to her command. They weren’t much bigger thankfully, she didn’t want to look like some kind of amazonian, but just more condensed and powerful. Her mana pool jumped quite a bit too. She wouldn’t be able to know if luck followed the pattern, but perhaps the next time she used her ability she’d find out.
Elaria simply dismissed the kill and level up notifications, although she now had the problem of too much loot. After some intense reorganising of her supplies, she managed to fit most of the monster drops into her bag, but it was a squeeze. She would definitely need to look into some kind of dimensional storage in Lockmire, if that was even a thing in this world. She hoped it was, otherwise her destination would need to be a tailor to commission some kind of giant backpack. With her strength, she’d be able to carry a lot of materials now, but it would look pretty stupid if she had to carry a huge bag everywhere. After that the only ones left that were interesting to her were a message from Zel and a new skill she’d unlocked.
That was rather shocking, my dear. I had expected you to learn how to manipulate natural mana at some point, but that explosion was beyond my expectations. You’ll want to practise your fine control unless you plan on decimating everything around you every time you cast a spell. Congratulations on unlocking a class and stepping into the realm of magic. The secrets of the world seem to be unravelling before you, so I’m sure you’ll be able to help me with my little problem soon enough.
Zel
A rather short message, given Zel’s propensity for rambling. She did appreciate their little notes to be fair, and given that they had brought her to this new world and given her a second life, Zel was kind of like a parent. Her sword proficiency had gone up to level nine, meaning it gave a sizable damage bonus when using a sword. Unfortunately for her, the only sword in her possession was now a mangled stump, so the skill wouldn’t be helping out any time soon. She had two new skills, Firestorm and Manablessed. One was the passive skill granted by her new class and the other seemed to be a result of the explosion. Both would be extremely useful, although Firestorm was probably best used away from any other people, at least until she learned to control it better.
Firestorm
Mana sparks at your touch, and with a thought you can unleash a raging blaze that engulfs your enemies.
Manablessed
You are loved by mana, and it will bend more easily to your will.
The description for Manablessed was rather vague, but she could guess at the uses. The natural fire mana had seemed almost happy for her to use it, dancing and flickering at the touch of her mind. That could end up being annoying too, if she caused strange things to happen everywhere there was mana, which was everywhere. Elaria would definitely need to practise her control on the way to Lockmire. She noticed she could also feel the flow of her internal mana, something that had only happened fleetingly before. It was like a second set of veins and arteries inside her, not physical but almost overlaid on her body. It flowed gently, the viscous and pure mana within her body completely unlike the wild and erratic natural mana that jumped at her touch.
Having sorted herself out, Elaria hopped onto the Silvermoon Denmother, grabbing onto the only patch of fur that wasn’t matted and covered in ash, and urged the wolf forward. Their first destination, a bath.