Magnus’ soul snapped back to his body. Luckily, the return trip didn’t feel as long as the first one. He wasn’t so lucky when it came to his body, however. The pain from the injuries he got from the fight came rushing back to him, filling his mind with fire. It was especially bad in his head due to the Sentinel’s punch. That was not to say that he hadn’t more wounds, not even close, but they weren’t dangerous enough to warrant his attention while his head recovered.

Magnus laid there for what must have been close to half an hour, before he managed to sit up, even through the splitting headache. His head felt like it was split in half by an axe. That was probably a concussion. He managed to successfully stand up on both his feet, but when he tried to take a step, he had to bend over a puke. Magnus sat back down. Guess he had to wait a bit longer.

Turning his attention to his other wounds, Magnus examined his right side only to find that, thankfully, the thorns stopped spreading, probably due to the Mage’s death. That much was obvious as he wouldn’t have been able to lie here so long if they were spreading. Sighing, Magnus went to work tearing out the thorns out of his body. He figured that with his increased Vitality and Endurance, he wouldn’t bleed out so easily.

It took him a while to find a grip that wouldn’t cut his hands open. Taking a deep breath, Magnus pulled with all his Strength to get it quickly over with. Magnus managed to stuff the scream of pain down his throat, but a few grunts still made their way through. He wanted to let it all out but he was still in a forest, with who knows what lurking in the trees. Pulling the thorns out was physically easy, a bit too easy, even though they were rooted in him pretty deeply. Magnus suspected the reason as to why, but he had to finish tending to his wounds before he went and made plans. Good plans usually weren’t made when people were in pain and bleeding.

Taking out one of his freshly cleaned bandages, Magnus wound it over his leg, pulled out a second, shorter bandage, and started applying it to his arm. A grim realization hit him as he was done bandaging his arm. He didn’t have enough bandages to bandage his torso. Looking down at his pants, which were now missing the right leg, Magnus sighed. Well, what could he do? The bleeding had to be stopped.

“Guess I could just wait for the bleeding to stop by itself,” Magnus thought. In the end, he decided it wasn’t a good idea to rely on his stats alone. He wasn’t immortal.

Yet.

After he was done tearing a long strip out of his left pant leg, Magnus was now the proud owner of brand-new shorts. Unbuckling the straps that affixed his breastplate to himself took him the better of 2 minutes. No wonder. Medieval armor wasn’t exactly the peak of fashion back before the Integration. That may have changed actually. Magnus stared longingly at the ceiling, imagining how it looked up there now. He was woken up from his fantasy by the tingling of [Danger Sense] and a sharp pain in his right chest.

Groaning, he unbuckled the last strap, and he let the breastplate crash to the ground, figuring that if it couldn’t survive a simple fall, it wouldn’t be of any use to him in a fight. Carefully, to not aggravate the wounds even more he removed his shirt. His chest wasn’t looking good. There were deep furrows in his skin and he was pretty sure that he could see a rib poking out at him. Stomach acid rushed to his mouth but he pushed it down. He was getting better at that. As for why his chest looked particularly bad. It was probably that the thorns had to dig deeper into his flesh to spread further under the breastplate.

After he was done treating that wound, he finally got the chance to pull out his Stat screen.

Body

Strength – 2

Agility – 4

Endurance – 13+ (+10%) – 14.3

Vitality – 7 + (+5%) – 7.35

Mind

Intelligence – 3

Focus – 2

Perception - 4

Soul

Might – 3

Will – 8

Aura – 2

Something was not right. Where were his Stat Points from the level up? Why was his Will, Endurance, and Vitality higher? It was not adding up. Thinking it over Magnus got an idea and thought Blessing.

Blessing

[Follower Blessing of Hostyr]

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Gain 3 Endurance, 1 Vitality, and 1 Will. The effect of these Stats is minutely raised.

Magnus was disappointed. That fancy “Test” that was more of torture for all of this. Exhilarating. He cursed quietly as if hiding his disappointment from the god that was probably observing him right now. Hostyr seemed like a good guy, but one couldn’t be sure of anything in this world.

Moving on from the issue of his Blessing, Magnus realized something was still not adding up. His Will was 5 the first time it was shown to him and the Blessing provided only 1 point of it. He started thinking back to what happened and his mind subconsciously wandered back to that “Test”. The memories were getting clouded as if to shield Magnus from what he saw. Thinking it over, it was as if a light bulb lit up above Magnus’ head. He must have subconsciously put his unassigned Stat Points into Will to better weather the “Test”. Yeah, that seemed like the most obvious answer. Or maybe Hostyr assigned them for him. Who knows.

Magnus finally had time to rest and look over his Stats properly. To be frank, he was getting kind of overpowered. Unbeknownst to him, his face went green as he realized how high Hostyr’s Endurance and Will must be. All those chains. Magnus only got a taste of the smallest one, and even then he could have barely lasted the minute. It assaulted both his Soul and Body at once. To think that Hostyr was going through that for who knows how long. His Stats must dwarf Magnus’, there was no question about that.

Back to his Stats, specifically to the Soul portion of them. He could imagine what Will did. But the other two. Maybe Might was like the Strength of the Soul. As for Aura, he had no idea. Shrugging his shoulders, Magnus shook his Body awake. It was time to move. He was still hungry after all.

Limping over, Magnus closely examined the tree that the Ents came from to check if any more Ents waited to ambush him while climbing the tree. While he didn’t find a fully formed Ent, he frowned as he observed a swelling tumor-like growth on the bark of the tree. He stood there observing it for a few minutes. It was disturbing to watch the tumor start growing limbs and a head. Deciding to nip the problem in the bud, Magnus tensed his half-refreshed muscles and struck the center of the tumor. The wood gave way before his [Vicious Blow] enhanced strike and the green ball of mana sitting in the middle of the growth dispersed into the air.

“Easier than I thought. Why am I stronger?” Magnus thought.

The tree screamed.

It was not common for trees to start screaming like it was a person getting stabbed. So, Magnus covering his ears activated his [Mana Perception]. There was a thin line of mana slowly retreating away like an injured snake from the formerly forming Ent into the center of the tree. What it was retreating to, Magnus couldn’t see for whatever reason. Desperate to stop the screaming, Magnus focused on [Mana Perception] and pushed. A crack sounded in his Soul and simultaneously his vision went red and a ball of mana bigger than he had ever seen revealed itself in the center of the tree.

[Mana Perception is now Level 5]

Cursing, Magnus tried futilely blinking the blood from his eyes. In the end, he decided it was better not to irritate them further, so he gave up and turned his attention back to the issue. The issue being the screaming tree that would inevitably continue spawning more Ents. Magnus looked around. And considering the whole forest could be his enemy…

He had to get rid it would come back to bite his ass sooner or later. Unable to think of a better way to kill the tree, he started punching away. It was not a short endeavor considering his measly Strength. [Vicious Blow] helped quite a bit, but he estimated that it raised his Strength by at most half. Weirdly the more he punched, the more his knuckles ached, the easier the wood broke. That was partly thanks to the Level in [Vicious Blow] he got roughly ten minutes in.

It was fifteen minutes later after he started when he, finally managed to break through and grab the ball. He was out of breath at this point as even his relatively monstrous Endurance couldn’t sustain using [Vicious Blow] for a quarter of an hour. Thankfully, the tree stopped screaming about halfway through his punching exercise so his ears weren’t completely decimated. Magnus tried to activate [Mana Perception] to make sure he had the right thing in his hand, but instead of the telltale blue of mana, all he got in response was a sharp stabbing pain.

Shrugging his shoulders, he stopped trying to activate it and crushed the mana ball inside his hand. The tree responded by letting out a last high-pitched tree and started shaking. The fruit left on the high branches of the tree started raining down like a summer storm. Hoping that at least a few would survive the fall, Magnus retreated to not get a concussion from a fruit landing on his head. Going down that way seemed a little anticlimactic.

While rubbing his sore knuckles, he finally figured it out. The reason why the thorns were so easy to pull out and the longer he punched the tree the easier it was. What did those two actions have in common? It was simple in hindsight. He was hurt both of those times. It must be his new skill [Last Stand] at work. Magnus hoped it wouldn’t be as slow to level as his [Danger Sense] considering what he would have to do to level it.

When the shaking finally stopped, he shuffled over to one of the unbattered fruits on the ground and picked it up before his mouth. A dull ache sounded in the back of his head between his ears. Feeling starved, Magnus foolishly ignored what [Danger Sense] was trying to tell him and took a bite.

The taste was not quite the same as last time and Magnus dropped the fruit back on the ground in shock. Like the hungry idiot, he was he already managed to swallow a mouthful of the fruit before the taste hit him. Unsurprisingly it burned on the way down, like a shot of vodka. Cursing, Magnus started trying to scrub off the taste down from his tongue. What he didn’t realize, however was that the taste wasn’t the main problem. His stomach exploded in fiery pain when the mouthful of fruit he swallowed finally settled down into it.

“Of course it’s poison. Everything in this damn cave is poison.” Magnus silently lamented. What he didn’t get was why the fruit was poisoned now. He ate one just a few hours ago. Maybe it was due to the tree’s death. Or maybe the fall. The pain subsided not even half a minute later. The poison wasn’t as strong as the spider’s venom.

He looked at the ground where the fruit he tried to eat laid splattered. A nauseating stench suddenly hit him. It was probably from the poison in the fruit. Safe to say, that his appetite was sated for now. In fact, he realized that the single fruit wasn’t the only one emanating that stench. Magnus looked around himself and registered all the fruit around him.

He frowned.

He wanted to get stronger and survive. No one said that it would be particularly pleasant.