Emily

I breathed out and entered the meditative position. I was looking into the mysteries of magic. I had my different spells circulating around me and I was doing different things with them, the usual stretching, bending and manipulating, but I was also using my magic to make it shrink and grow, ultimately making it either more or less powerful.

I loved magic. Ever since the tutorial had started and we had been left to our own devices, the only thing that made sense to me was magic and my medical knowledge. I loved to experiment and explore all of the amazing things that magic could do. I felt like I was only a couple inspirations away from a type of dao relating to magic.

Magic was like a river. It was constantly flowing throughout our bodies and we could change and manipulate it and send it out of us. It was a physical manifestation of our will upon the world, and the way we utilized our will depended on us, not the magic itself. All of my friends were using spells as the only way to use magic, while I just thought of it as guidelines for a specific way to use our magic.

My speculation was that our path affected what skills, spells and daos we would get. I wasn’t completely sure but I at least knew it was a possibility. Magic was its own thing, it wasn’t just spells, spells came from magic not the other way around. Magic was all encompassing and everything came from magic.

Now that I could see magic with my own eyes I was sure that magic had existed on Earth prior to the apocalypse, it just was VERY limited, to the point where it wasn’t possible to call on it to create spells.

Magic was like a force of nature, it was like your blood, something that was innately part of you, but most of all it was the energy that made the world work the way it did. I even suspected that the laws of physics were created by magic, or something like that.

Higher Dao law found!

Dao of Magic comprehended!

Dao Seed of Magic: +10 VIT +10 INT +10 WIS +10 WILL +10 FOC

I smiled. That was exactly what I needed right now, a boost in power, specifically magic power. I narrowed my eyes, that didn’t mean I was done though, I still needed to get one more dao before the quest ran out in two days.

My thoughts went inward again, looking for the next source of inspiration that I could turn into yet another dao to complete the quest and get closer to Kent’s level of power.

While thinking my thoughts went to my team, who were they to me? They were all people with good morals, for the most part, and were willing to do almost anything for each other. Our team was like a family, Minya was the excitable teenager, Drake was like the father, Brock was like the kid who had gotten his growth spurt WAY too early, I was like the mother, Layton was like the older married daughter, Plikt was like her son, and Kent… Kent was like the son who had risen dramatically and pulled the family up with him, bettering everything and everyone around him.

Referring to our little group like one big family just felt right. As though we were all secretly cousins or something that were just waiting to find each other. I felt a deep connection with each and every one of the Nightmares of Earth, they were closer to me then some of my family had been pre-apocalypse.

I decided to focus on the idea of our team being a family and see if I could squeeze something out of it. Even if I didn’t get a dao, I would at least understand our merry band a little bit more, which could be very helpful in some situations.

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I dove into the thought of being a team and what the team did for each other. The team was there to help and encourage each other, helping them reach heights they would not be able to reach by themselves.

I thought and spun the ideas of our group over and over in my head, refining and strengthening my understanding of our team. Our team was like a wall, without the mortar to hold it all together we fell apart. In this case mortar was like trust, we had to rely on each other to become stronger and grow closer together.

I had reached the stage of meditation where I was only missing a couple of insights before I could get my next dao. I ran over everything I had learned and meticulously checked everything. I couldn’t tell what I was missing.

I let my brain run over the idea that our team was like a wall and felt something, a… weakness of some sort, as though the idea wasn’t complete. I started to expound upon it.

Our team was like a wall, yes, but it was also like a house. We were all supporting each other but if someone wasn’t fully involved then we would fall apart, we needed each other. If we lost even a single person, everything would come crashing down and we would have to rebuild everything, with or without them. It was a very fragile but powerful system.

Dao of Teamwork comprehended!

Dao Seed of Teamwork: +10 STR, +10 CHA, +10 SOUL

Quest: Daoist: Get 3 dao’s before the week is up. Rewards: 30 Free Stat points/ easier difficulty for all humans in the lower levels.

+30 Free stat points

All difficulty levels of the lower modes have been made easier, by a slight amount. Have everyone in your team complete this quest for it to be even easier for everybody else!

I smiled. I had done it! I had completed the quest that had been hanging over our heads for a while now. I wanted to check the rest of our team but decided against it. They were all competent people, they could handle themselves.

I looked over all of our current quests.

Main Quest: Survive the Nightmare Tutorial. Either by beating the final boss or staying alive for 30 days. Success: Scaling item. Failure: Death

Side Quest: Survive the Night. Success: Minimap unlocked/ Bosses marked/ 1 Health Potion/ 1 Mana Potion/ 1 Stamina Potion Failure: Death. COMPLETED!

Side Quest: Kill the Wandering Revenant. Success: Easier difficulty for all other humans/ 2 Speed Potions. Failure: None COMPLETED!

Side Quest: Kill the Deafening Treant. Success: Easier difficulty for all other humans/ 2 Strength Potions. Failure: None. COMPLETED!

Side Quest: Kill the Goblin Captain. Success: Easier difficulty for all humans/ 2 Mana Potions. Failure: None. COMPLETED!

Side Quest: Kill the Beetle Overlord. Success: Easier difficulty for all humans/ 2 Health Potions. Failure: None. COMPLETED!

Side Quest: Kill the Final Boss, The Night-Mare. Success: Far Easier difficulty for all humans/ 6 Potions of your choosing. Failure: None

Quest: Daoist: Get 3 dao’s before the week is up. Rewards: 30 Free Stat points/ easier difficulty for all humans in the lower levels. COMPLETED!

I wanted to smack myself. We had all forgotten to get the potions from the quests. I reached out to get them but flinched back. Now that I thought about it, it might be better to leave them there where we couldn’t use them, I would tell everyone about them later.

Emily's stat sheet.

Emily J. Robbin Level: 28 (F-Grade) Race: Human-Fairy Bloodline: Human 8 pints, Fairy 2 pint Class: Healer Stats: Body: 129 Mind: 266 Spirit: 195 Traits: Evolution(Human), Well of Healing(Fairy) Skills: Wand Mastery(Human+Fairy), Advanced Mana Manipulation(Fairy), Advanced Mana Sense(Fairy) Spells: Weak Heal, Weak Group Heal, Weak Mend, Average Create Mana Wall, Average Mana Fusion, Weak Heal Vortex Path: Path of Healing Dao: Dao Seed of Life, Dao Seed of Creation, Dao Seed of Magic, Dao Seed of Teamwork