Solimus, while being flung through the air, exited the terrain of the tundra at rapid speeds. To his left he saw mountains as tall as giants, and to his right he saw the vast seas sparkling under the sun’s rays. The clouds were closer than they ever were for Solimus, and, all the while, he screamed in fear of the eventual impact.
His flight continued without a single sign of halting. The birds desperately attempted to avoid him as they flew in their flocks.
“Damn it! I shouldn’t have tempted that kid!” thought Solimus in retrospect, tears in his eyes from his flight at such speeds. “Might as well enjoy the view while I still can… I don’t know if a spell can cushion a fall from this height.”
Just a parcel of pain went through Solimus’s arms.
“Looks like I exhausted my body a tad bit too much with the dispatchment of that elite soldier.” realized Solimus. “Great, now I have to use the magic at the right moment too! Can I pull this off?”
The mountains and seas disappeared from sight, and the terrain led into an endless desert of cactuses and cities of all kinds. Though, they only went by with a glance in Solimus’s eyes.
After this, Solimus began to wonder if he would ever actually land. This thought, and all those that related, continued to persist in his mind. The thought simply continued after passing through a zone in which the desert thinned into grassy green plains where cows, among other animals, grazed and roamed around.
At this point, Solimus became bored rather than intrigued by how far he would go before he dropped. The pure absurdity of it bewildered his mind’s knowledge of all things natural… this was not natural. In truth, he found himself no longer anxious, let alone fearful, of his eventual descent back down to the ground.
The ground itself had disappeared from his sight, though. Instead, in perfect replacement of the ground, the ocean’s waters laid below Solimus. Several spread out islands littered this water with land here and there, but none of them were large enough to even make a difference.
The sun cast its gleam onto the fathomless, deep blue waters below Solimus, though it also blocked his view with the same gleam. Before Solimus covered his eyes with his forearm, the skies nearest to the sun turned a hue of orange, layering with light red over it, before they both ceded to the blue of the sky.
The sun’s radiance simply added to the scene as it set, each second passing by as the clouds moved by Solimus. The clouds themselves had taken both the radiance which the sun had blessed them with and the colors that inhabited the sky as traits for their appearance.
Solimus moved his arm from its position, and witnessed the scene as the sun did not blind him from seeing anymore after some time. He was awed at this view, mouth marginally open.
“That’s… quite beautiful.”
However, he could only watch this view for a few minutes before clouds of gray rolled in. With these clouds of gray came droplets of water. Though barely visible to Solimus, he only fully realized what was to come when one landed on his nose. And then his forehead. Then his head, for his hair had been shaven some days before this from the top down.
“Water? No! Rain?!”
Solimus’s latter guess was correct. He was soon soaked in the heavy rain which came from the clouds above. Relentless in their attack, the droplets of rain hit every spot possible on Solimus’s body. In a desperate attempt to shield himself, Solimus covered his head with his hands - though that hardly did anything except make his hands an easier target to hit.
The ordeal lasted for a minute before Solimus finally flew past the clouds and back to the vastness of the ocean. However, the ocean no longer had a tincture of the former blue to be seen. Instead, the darkness of the night gave the waters a color of what can be best described as black.
The moon usurped the place of the sun. Its glow had similar effects to that of the sun, but only in luminous white. As Solimus passed by, he was also awed at this scene too. But, also, he started to wonder where exactly he was.
“I don’t remember the records talking of an ocean that was this vast. I should’ve reached the country again, but I see no tundra. I should’ve circled the circumference, and yet I see no sign of that. I should be over Gulf Hodie! But where is the island?”
As Solimus pondered this, he felt a sudden bump through his entire body. From there, he felt his body descending rapidly. Solimus’s eyes went wide with realization as he began to configure his spell.
It was simple compared to his many others. Solimus combined stability with water and a pinch of earth to create soft and easy-to-sink-in mud.
…
It was a known magical law that Solimus had learned at a university in Atothica that specific portions of magic can combine to create a variety of new elements. For each single amount of a certain element combined with another, the sum of the element was never the same as another combination’s sum.
For example, water and earth don’t just simply form “mud”. It could range from “dirty water” all the way to “earth with some saturation”.
…
Solimus found this to be common sense, for why would magic in its vastness allow for such finite qualities?
With this core, Solimus began to structure it into a line before adding in the Protection variable. He then came to the anchor but found himself unable to decide.
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“I don’t know if my mental space can take an anchor at the moment. If I overload it, I’ll faint most definitely. If I don’t, will I really be safe from this fall?”
The wind started to move quickly by Solimus’s body, grazing it as his freefall was still in effect. Solimus bit his lip before inhaling deeply.
He fainted soon after, encased within his own magic as he fell.
|◈• • •◈|
When Solimus awoke, he laid in the puddle of mud created by his own magic. Casting a shadow over him were trees which were monumentally large compared to Solimus. Through these trees, the sun shone on Solimus where the shadows were unable to touch him.
The chirp and calls of the birds reverberated throughout the forest from the height of the trees. From these trees dropped droplets of water, though at a much slower extent than the clouds Solimus had run into as he got to such a place.
A drop of water on Solimus’s nose is what finally convinced him to rise from his laid-out position.
“Where am I now? I don’t think… a place like this was ever described by the records. That ocean too…” Solimus pondered.
Solimus put his hand up to his head as it began to hurt in pulses. He inhaled through his teeth as the pain started to subside.
“That! Is why I hate overloading my mental space. Damn it!”
Within a few seconds, Solimus stood on his feet once again. With his hands, he brushed the mud off of his clothes, which - surprisingly for Solimus - left no stains in sight.
As he stood, Solimus inspected the area of trees and grass. While he did so, he saw birds as they flew by, and heard deer as they rustled in the bushes and past the trees.
“Interesting,” Solimus noted before he took a step forward out of the mud and onto the grass, “but something feels wrong though… I should prepare the spell configuration just in case.”
A slight breeze went by Solimus’s cheek, but felt sharp and jagged.
“That tickled. Just a little.”
Solimus put his hand up to his cheek, to the area where the breeze had gone by, but felt a sharp sting as he did so. Solimus’s hand recoiled in reaction. He put his hand in front of his face where he could see it clearly. Smeared on his fingers was blood, and Solimus leered at the sight.
Solimus looked up, where he could see the arrow which had grazed him subtly, yet efficiently. He turned around to see his adversary, whomever it was, and gazed out into the emptiness of the forest to find any sign of them. He could see nothing like that, however, and so he decided to stand still before he furrowed his eyebrows.
“For the archer in the forest, I am the perfect target. But do you know what I am doing? I suspect you don’t.” thought Solimus while he grinned, but not to a noticeable attempt.
As he had thought, his adversary shot another arrow towards Solimus. It was to penetrate his chest, but Solimus simply caught the arrow as he memorized where the arrow was shot from.
“Found you!” exclaimed Solimus before he rushed behind the bushes.
There in Solimus’s eyes, beyond the bushes, crouched a creature of short stature. Its skin was chartreuse, and riddled with bumps that varied in size. Its teeth were sharp and in an extreme overbite that went down to his bottom lip. The creature was clothed in leaves of brown and red as well, as if it wore a robe - perhaps even a toga. Solimus did not waste time in the extermination of the creature; he did not admire its staunch and vastly inhuman looks, nor the way he thought it polluted nature. Although he had never seen the creature before, an instinct from Solimus was to kill it without second thought.
To prevent mental strain from happening again, Solimus decided to create a far more simple spell to deal with the creature. He envisioned fire and the destruction it could cause before he drained all other thoughts of fire from his mind. He then envisioned the creature in front of him, conquered and engulfed by the flames before it fell over and inhaled in its last breath.
Flames began to circle in Solimus’s hand immediately after his vision was over. They swirled like unwavering tides, and gradually grew hotter. Solimus let this spell loose onto the creature within seconds of its materialization in his hand. As it made contact, the creature looked up at Solimus with eyes like a predator’s before it laughed. Its laughing was short-lived, of course, as a hole formed in the creature’s torso where the ball of fire made contact.
The creature fell over onto the grass before it closed its eyes for the last time.
Solimus sighed before he walked over to the cadaver of the creature. He examined it carefully, touching it once before recoiling back due to its slimy texture. Solimus wiped his hand on his pants while he sighed and shook his head.
“Oh disgusting creature, what are you?” pondered Solimus as he still looked at the cadaver, which had its tongue out like a possum when playing dead - except the creature really was dead.
Solimus looked up from the cadaver, but was blinded by a sudden flash of blue light.
“What the hell? Another combatant?” thought Solimus after he covered his eyes with his forearms. “I have to get out of this place fast!”
It was sudden, but the artificial light disappeared a few seconds afterwards. Solimus, though cautious, lowered his arms slowly. After he unobstructed his view, Solimus was met with the sight of a floating box of blue color and a white border.
“What is this?” asked Solimus. “An illusion, or…”
Text appeared in the box; Solimus began to read.
[You have defeated a Goblin Archer! You have gained 60 Exp from your battle.]
[You have leveled up from Level 1 to 2!]
[You have overridden the tutorial. It has been deleted from your system.]
[Error! Your system is…]
“I’m positive this isn’t illusory magic - or at least any I’ve seen.” thought Solimus. “If it’s not, what is this system thingy? And levels? Or this ‘Exp’? They serve no use to me if I don’t know what they are.”
Solimus shook his head and waved off the text. Accordingly, it disappeared from his sight soon after with a noise similar to a bell.
“Now that that’s over with, I should explore this area.” concluded Solimus. “I hope I find civilization of some sort, at the very least. A city would be optimal, I do believe.”
Solimus looked to his north and decided to go this way. As he knew from his country, going north was usually where one could find a settlement of some kind if one was lost in the wilderness without a map. He had tried this method multiple times when he, himself, was lost in the vast tundra without anywhere to go.
And so, Solimus made his way through the forest. He passed by the trees and through the shrubbery, and went deeper into the forest with each step taken.