It’s done! With that, we can finally start learning to actually use magic! ∫Congratulations. You have worked hard to get his far.∫ {Yep! And it’ll all be worth it soon.} ∫However, it is not as if you can take it easy now. Your learning has only just begun.∫ {Geh… Can you at least be a bit more gentle with the magic missiles?} ∫Actually, I was just thinking it may be time to move on to elemental magic.∫ {No! Anything but that!} ∫Very well. We shall give you a few days of rest while you strive towards using magic yourself. Now, let us make haste, the others are waiting.∫ With a flowing, graceful movement, Nea turns around and walks towards the rest of the herd of Stadiea. I quickly follow behind, excited to begin. [Hm? Are we finally doin’ something?] {Have you not been paying attention?} [Nope!] {You… Ugh, whatever. Our magic understanding skill is finally high enough level to learn how to use magic.} [For real?!] {Yeah.} [Finally! That took foreeeever!] {It probably would have gone faster if you paid attention…} [Nahhh. Too much effort.] {You could’ve at least tried…} ∫The basic magic skill comes with a spell at level one. Attempt to use it, and I shall help you if you struggle.∫ {Alright!} I focus hard, using the mana manipulation skill to accumulate it at a single spot within our body. Then, I let my body move on it’s own, trusting the knowledge imparted onto me by the magic understanding skill to prepare the clump of mana for casting. It’s a strange sensation. I myself am not doing most of the work to do this, rather, my mind is moving on instinct. I’ve never done this before, obviously, but it feels like second nature. Is this the effect of skills? How odd. I wonder if using magic is even possible without the system and it’s skills assistance. You’d have to be a super genius, that’s for sure. Smarter than the Stadiea, even. With the mana prepared, I slowly and carefully lead it out of my body and into the air, forming it into an intricate circular shape in the air before me, like an infinitely thin plate of light. The ‘instincts’ within the basic magic skill guide me, allowing me to know the exact shape I need to create, without even knowing what the details of it do. As the last bits of mana escape me and enter the shape, it glows a pale blue, and an incredibly small ball of the same color appears slightly above the center of the circle. It grows to around the size of a lemon, then stops, and the circle below it fades away. ∫Congratulations, you’ve successfully cast your first spell.∫ {A-awesome…} I can barely form words. The orb of light draws my focus, and all the memories of my fantasies of using magic flash before my eyes. {S-so! What does this spell do?!} Excitedly, I turn towards Nea. ∫This is the most basic of the element-less spells, the level one basic magic spell ‘mana light’. It creates and sustains a small sphere of glowing, concentrated mana to illuminate your surroundings.∫ {...That’s it?} ∫Yes.∫ {Oh…} ∫Do not be upset. You shall be capable of even greater feats before you know it.∫ {R-right, yeah…} [So, what’s the nex-] Before Gloria finishes talking, a deafening crashing noise erupts from the forest, and sustains itself, growing closer and closer by the second. Before we can talk amongst ourselves about it, the source of the sound peaks it’s great, horrifying head through the greenery of the forest. Ah, hello again. I would say it’s good to see you again, but it’s really not. Why do you have such a mean look in your eye now? ∫Run.∫ You don’t have to tell me twice! I immediately take off, running in zigzags away from the forest as fast as I can. {Gloria, take over!} [Gotcha!] Before Gloria takes control of the body, I turn around just in time to see Rorthal open its mouth and unleash a massive beam of mana toward the herd of Stadiea. Unbelievable. Completely unbelievable. How is something like that possible? But what’s even more unbelievable is the barrier of mana between Rorthal and the Stadiea, which somehow managed to completely block the mana beam. Unbelievable. Seriously, are we living among gods? They’re just tossing insane amounts of mana back and forth at each other like it’s nothing. And from our training with the Stadiea, I bet it is nothing to them. I wonder if we’ll be that strong one day… Ah, not now, not now! Gotta focus on making it out of this! I feel absolutely terrible just leaving Nea and the rest of the Stadiea behind like this, but our firepower is absolutely inconsequential compared to both sides of this fight. We’re like an ant! Wait, where are we running? Is there anywhere we can even go? The longest path I know of is… Ah! {Gloria, I know where we’re going!} [Okay Mr. GPS, guide me there!] {First, into the cave entrance within the forest!} [Are you crazy?!] {Rorthal is busy with the Stadiea, we have to slip by while we still can!} [Ugh… If you say so!] Here we are, back at the ruins. Back during our training I asked Nea if they knew what the magic circle here could be. According to them, it’s most likely a teleportation magic circle. So, it’s time to hit the eject button! We already know Rorthal can follow us basically anywhere in this whole cavern, so let’s step on this circle and get outta here! Well, we have to fix it first of course. It seems like we still have time, since I can feel the shock waves of the battle happening up in the forest coming through the ground. I’ll still go as fast as I can though. The circle is insanely complicated, but I think I can do it if I just have to fix some parts that have faded with time. If I just pull a bit of mana from the part of the circle that draws in ambient mana, and push it through… Okay, so it gets stuck here… Ah, I see, there’s a bit that got chipped away by a rock here. To fix this, I just have to… There. I forced the mana over the gap, and made a temporary bridge to the next part of the circle. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Next up, it flows this way, through this part… Hm… It seems like this area has loosened with time, so the mana doesn’t flow fast enough. Easy enough to fix, just have to… There we go. It’s not a permanent solution, but as long as I manually tighten the flow, it should work. Seems like there’s just one problem left to solve. This part… Bleh, I knew this wasn’t going to be that easy. This part is entirely faded, I’ll have to redraw it from scratch, with just what little is left as a guide. I think this is probably how it was before… maybe? And then here… uhh… I guess I’ll try this? This… hrm… Ah screw it, I’ll just scribble around and hope it works… There! It should be back up and running now! I just have to coax a little mana through it, and- the moment I push mana through the circle, a wave of nausea washes over me, and the air around me seems to shift and distort. I wince from the feeling of my stomach turning, and when I open my eyes, the environment around us is completely different. Ah, good, it looks like it was a success. [I think I’m gonna barf…] {Hold it in, we need to save nutrients in case food is hard to come by… wherever we are.} I look around at our new surroundings. Crazy… That’s all I can describe it as. It’s still a cave, but the stone is a pitch black in some areas, and a sheer white in others. There are many patches of what seem to be crystals embedded in the black kind of rock, looking like stars twinkling in an eerie light. That light comes from bioluminescent plants, glowing various exotic colors. Pinks, reds, blues, purples, and neon greens. It’s an incredibly odd looking area, but despite its stillness, it gives off an aura of hostility. I don’t feel safe here. Well… there’s nothing for us to do except explore I guess. We need to find a source of food and shelter. I’m sure one of these plants is edible… probably… At least we’re safe from Rorthal for now. I hope Nea’s alright… Even aside from the lessons we learned from them, talking to them was always fun. Better than Gloria, that’s for sure… When we weren’t training, we would talk endlessly, about all sorts of things. I told them about my life before I got reincarnated, we discussed what it meant for me now that I’m no longer human… we talked about a lot of philosophical stuff. It was an amazing two weeks. Now we’re alone again… Ah, no use dwelling on the past! We have to focus on what’s going on right now to survive! First, a source of food must be secured! However, which one of these plants should we eat… I feel like if we eat the wrong one, we’ll end up poisoning ourselves. Hrm… W-well, we don’t have to secure food this instant, maybe we’ll explore a bit first. Yeah, sure. Let’s do that. Man, this cave… it’s spooky. So dark… And the little light that is here honestly makes it worse. Ugh… Ah! I have an idea! As Gloria continues walking, I concentrate mana, and begin weaving together the magic circle for the mana light spell. With a flash, the area around us lights up. It’s not as bright as the cavern, but it’s brighter than it was before. It’ll do. We’ll have to keep an eye on our mana supply though… I’m not sure how fast our mana will replenish itself. We don’t have any kind of mana regen skills yet, so probably not very. Squish Huh? Hearing a noise behind us, we turn around. There’s nothing- ah? On the ground, maybe six feet in front of us, there’s a strange substance on the ground. Squish With a gross noise, another glob of the substance falls onto the rest. [...What is that?] Above the pile of the strange substance, there’s something clinging to the ceiling of the cave. Green tendrils stretch around, grasping and clasping the rough surface. Every few seconds, a pulse of bioluminescence shoots through each tendril, creating a hypnotic rhythm of light. The tendrils all coalesce in an organic bulb above the substance, which looks like both plant matter and flesh at the same time. At the center of the bulb is a hole, with blobs of the substance dribbling out. {I… don’t know.} Squish The weird goo stuff just keeps falling out of its… mouth? It doesn’t look like it’s dangerous… should we just keep walking? Plat Behind us?! We turn around quickly, and see… A mushroom? A walking mushroom? Ah, wait, we should be using insight. I completely forgot about it! A mushle… and what about the weird thing on the ceiling? This thing doesn’t have a level… Plat, plat, plat Oh, that’s… Even more of the mushrooms are starting to show up… Let’s just get out of their way for now. We move away, and the mushrooms waddle slowly over to the pile of the gooey substance. Once they reach it, they all try to stand in it, pushing each other and starting a fight when there’s not enough room for all of them. In the end, the two level threes win, and stand in the pile of goo while the rest walk back where they came from, sulking. As the two mushrooms stand in the goo, it begins to shrink beneath them. Are they absorbing it? As the pile shrinks, their caps begin to glow, one orange and one a vibrant pink. I guess literally everything in this cave glows. Well, that was very interesting, but we should get moving now. Just gonna sneeeeak right by… We slowly move past the mushrooms, but right as we get by, one of them steps out of the goo towards us. Uh… hello there? The mushroom steps closer cautiously, until it gets around three feet away from us, where it begins to sprint full speed. A-ah? It’s not really intimidating… What can a little mushroom thing do?- The mushroom reaches us, jumping forward and ramming directly into our face. As its cap impacts us, a cloud of dust spews out, filling the tunnel. Ouch! That hurt way more than I thought it would! Without me even saying anything, Gloria jumps on top of the mushroom and shreds it to pieces with our claws. That might be a little excessive… With each cut she makes into it, even more of the dust erupts into the air. {Uh, Gloria, I think we should get moving.} [Why? I’m not done teaching this jerk a lesson.] {This dust… I don’t think we should be inhaling it.} [We’ll be fine. Just a little more.] {No, I really think it’s a bad… idea…} Suddenly, the guts of the mushroom that Gloria is currently tearing apart begin to warp and shift, growing into a writhing mass and surrounding us on all sides. {Wha-} Smaller versions of the mushroom emerge from the walls, running wildly in circles around us, dancing and screaming. More and more mushrooms pour out from the bleeding gashes in the walls, and the cacophony of their screams becomes unbearable to listen to. They start approaching us slowly, but I’m scared still. They grab and pull at every inch of our body, climbing on top of us and picking us apart until we’re a pile of dust on the ground. Ghuh?! Where… What happened? Urk… My head… The corpse of the mushroom is in front of us, its body no longer a writhing mass of flesh. Was that… real? The other mushroom is gone now, along with the pile of goo it was standing in. huh… {Gloria?} … No response. That was definitely a hallucination. So, like I thought, that dust was spores of the mushroom. Ugh, we’re drenched in sweat. Gross. I should check if we’re hurt… Hm, it did a little damage, but nothing terrible. Fear resistance and nausea tolerance leveled up… we even got a new skill, confusion resistance, and it’s already level two. We shouldn’t get hit by those spores again… even if it’s not dangerous as an attack, it leaves us way too vulnerable for who knows how long. Well, can’t let this slow us down. Finding food is even more important now that we wasted a ton of time passed out on the ground. The only pathway is the way the mushrooms came from… I really don’t like the idea of being around even more of them, but there’s no choice. I begin my trek through the cave, my path lit up by the eerie bioluminescent light of the plants growing from every side of the cave. As I go deeper and deeper, I’m seeing more and more of what look like the tendrils from that Gaul pod thing. They’re even pulsing to the same strange rhythm… [Hng… Fir?] {Welcome back Gloria. You were out for a while.} [What happened?] {Remember that dust I told you I was worried about inhaling? It was hallucinogenic, and knocked us out cold.} [Oh…] {Yeah, no more messing with those mushroom things.} [Yeah… Just the thought of those things makes me angry. I hope we never see one agai-] Gloria stops in the middle of her sentence, because her hope to never see another mushroom has already been squashed completely. What must be thousands of them are walking around in a large open cavern in front of us, lit from every side by the Gaul tendrils, which cover every inch of the cave. Giant exotic plants litter the floor, all glowing a variety of colors. Maybe we should have just stayed up there with Rorthal...