I. Am. Exhausted!

Laying on the cold hard dirt in the small clearing I managed to make over the last month I gnaw on another piece of the worlds worst jerky. Apparently if you don’t smoke it like actual jerky and just heat it up with the magical equivalent of a convection oven you just end up with gross dry mildly cooked slabs of meat.

I really wish my parents borderline illegal child soldier training included cooking lessons. I am still struggling to find enough pointy sticks to build myself a proper grill. Sadly the trees are a bit too durable to drop any twigs.

Musing to myself over how high I need my level to be to move that perfectly flat rock I saw a week back to my makeshift campsite I choke down the last of my meal and refocus on the map I have been working on since I upgraded my skill for the first time.

Countless tiny dots of white spread across the clearing above my head. They morph and bounce around as if constantly settling into place. I wave my hand and the expanse of white shrinks down to the size of a manhole cover glittering all the while.

Sitting up I lean in and study the white forest. I have the motes of light that make up the area of my camp marked in blue while most of the area outside of it is marked in bright red. Yeah, I hate this forest. The number of times I have nearly died is growing so numerous that Alice has even stopped bothering to keep tally. Which makes me a bit happy because the little tally board she would repeatedly pull up at the end of each day was getting infuriating.

I have marked out the territory of so many monsters I could never hope to face that I am starting to wonder if I will ever be able to escape this dreaded forest. Currently I am in a stalemate with the group of [Shoulad Monkeys] that have been surrounding my camp for the past few days. They use a special type of sound magic and it is becoming rare for me to get more than an hour of sleep before their attacks pick back up again and I am forced awake.

Snappy can’t deal with their endless numbers and protect me at the same time but the monkeys can’t break past my defenses without Snappy’s vines ripping them off the ground and into its mouth. Thus I am stuck here at my camp and quickly running out of water.

I really am exhausted, I have been trying to find a way out of this but nothing has worked so far. The radiation barrier is all I have managed to find to keep them back and even now I know they will soon realize I don’t have the mana to surround the whole camp in a dome and that if they attack all at once I won’t be able to throw up new barriers in time.

I have made some pretty good progress over the last month though. I am now level 64 and can sustain quite the number of light spells at the same time, thankfully basic visible light is rather low cost.

[Level 71 Shoulad Monkey defeated!]

[Bonus Experience is awarded for defeating a creature 5 levels above you!]

[Less Experience is awarded for getting assistance in the kill.]

Another one bites the dust. Or becomes dust, considering my radiation fields are enough to fry one of the monkeys in moments when it is concentrated.

Snappy must have swatted another one into my orb of death I have orbiting the camp. We have been making a really good team recently. But my spirit is being worn down with each passing day.

Looking over the mass of red dots surrounding my safe zone I decide to try the plan I have been working on since I established my little camp. I never had the materials to complete it before now but now I have them in abundance.

To my left is a pile of charred monkeys and to my right is a large collection of mana cores.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Light magic is not the only thing I have been studying, Golemancy is quite useful when facing hordes of powerful enemies.

Sewing together the mana I start to push myself to my feet. One by one I link the mana cores to my network and convert them into golem cores. Pumping more and more mana into them my army begins to take shape.

Several dozen warriors of dirt stand before me, arms straight by their sides. They all salute me at once and begin to cycle their cores as rapidly as they can. The mana forming a tight vortex within their dirt bodies. Once they are all ready and primed I give the command and send them off to their positions.

“Fuck em up boys!”

The dirt golems rush off in all directions charging into the forest and attracting the countless monkeys their way. The shrieking primates pile on to my little soldiers by the dozen tearing them to shreds. This however does not happen instantly as their dirt bodies are empowered by the cores of the monkeys' fallen comrades, making their bodies far tougher.

My eyes never leave my map as I see the little blue dots begin to disappear under the sea of red. Just as I can feel the first of the golems losing its form I send out a pulse of mana through the threads connecting me and my army.

Boom!

All of the golems detonate at once. Their mana bursting out in a wave of light and debris, absolutely shredding the monkeys around them.

Red dots disappear from my map en masse as I see Snappy move out to push the attack. As the mass of green vines zips about the trees impaling and snapping at the remnants of the horde I force out the last of my mana to send a sphere of radiation exploding outwards. The screaming spikes in the forest and then begins to fade into the distance. As the light on my map dims I see the last of the monkeys either die or flee.

Now, I need to figure out how I am going to dispose of all these dead bits of monkey that litter the whole area surrounding my camp.

Sighing to myself I turn to my ally and friend Snappy who has made a triumphant return. Flitting about the trees and munching on its new pile of snacks I can tell it is happy about our victory.

Well I guess that solves one problem.

I send out the scout golems I had hiding from the attacks to collect water and mana cores. These little guys are no longer amorphous bipedal masses of dirt but actual functioning forms similar to the monkeys we had just slaughtered. They can even think for themselves, ish. It is not perfect and they can get confused if my orders are even slightly complex but hey, they have thumbs and know how to hold things.

Calling my partner in crime down from its revelry I begin the process of packing up camp. Snappy and I had been moving deeper into the forest when we got attacked by the monkeys and now that we are free of them we are going to continue our journey to the thing I spotted about two weeks back.

Ruins.

One of my scout golems I've had constantly moving deeper into the forest for exploration spotted a massive hole in the ground and when it went to investigate it found the sprawling remnants of some ancient civilization deep within the cavern.

Looking through the thread of light I have attached to the golem I can see buildings almost reminiscent of the skyscrapers from my memories of earth. Towering edifices of enchanted stone and wood slowly crumbling under the weight of time. Rows upon rows of buildings holding up the earth above them and circling around a singular point. Right in the middle of this confusing mass of tilted and collapsed towers is a single massive structure. A temple that despite the dilapidated state of everything around it, seems relatively untouched.

Now I am sure anyone with a brain would scream at me that heading towards such a structure is an obvious way to get myself killed. I am well aware of the stupidity of such an action but the reason I decided to go anyway is because of my AI companion.

For a while now she has been helping me with things far outside of her supposed restrictions on only giving system related assistance. Oftentimes when I am asking questions about things like that grand curse on the world or about that creature that attacked me above the cliff, she will give hints or intentionally say nothing as a way to help me.

But since I started heading deeper into the forest she has been getting more open, like she is able to ignore her own restrictions the further we trek into The Sea of Trees. Despite the limits on her becoming looser and looser she still remains completely silent whenever I ask about the temple I saw. Only shifting a bit when I suggest I want to head there and check it out. I can tell she wants me to go but is unable to say that.

So after a lot of internal debate I decided to level up as much as I can while I make my way to the cavern holding the temple.

And after slaughtering this horde of monkeys I have leveled up quite a bit. However it seems it was not quite enough.

Looking over my stats I see that I have managed to reach level 78, gaining over a dozen levels from that single monkey genocide.

I had wanted to reach level 100 before I made it to the ruins but it seems I won’t be that lucky.

And I doubt I am going to find a store selling an Ascension Catalyst in the middle of the woods.

For now I guess I will make a new army of golems and send them out hunting while I make my way towards the strange ruins.

“Hey, Snappy! Let's get a move on!”

Stopping its munching, the maw filled with dissolving monkeys turns to me, looks back at the pile of monkeys, and then back at me.

“Yes, yes. I will have the golems carry your snacks.”

And with that, the gluttonous plant and I are on our way.