Rainer woke to two system messages and a small explosion, followed quickly by a thump and a third system message.
[Arcane bolt Armament has reached Lvl 10.]
[Reached the maximum proficiency of a Tier 1 spell: Rewarding 1 skill point. ]
Then came the brilliant flash of light as all 4 of his armed arcane bolts struck the unfortunate goblin that had stumbled onto Rainer's hiding place.
[5% experience gained]
I just literally killed a goblin in my sleep. Was it friends with the first goblin? Family? I suppose it must have been hostile, or the bolts shouldn't have triggered.
Intellectually, it was clearly self defense. His fingers traced the blade of the well crafted dagger the first goblin had dropped, and Rainer couldn't help feeling he'd killed people, rather than monsters. If I'm ever going to see sunlight again, I'll probably have to kill again.
Sobered, he re-cast his armed arcane bolts. Now that he'd reached Lvl 10 of Arcane Bolt Armament, he noticed that the maximum had increased from 4 bolts to 8. Rainer had no food, no water, and no knowledge of his surroundings, but he did feel a bit safer against direct physical attack with 8 armed arcane bolts surrounding him. He took a moment to check his status.
[Name: Rainer Nvos]
[Age: 19]
[Titles: None]
[Primary Classes: Arcanist Lvl 1]
[Sub-Classes: None]
[Exp: 10%]
[Race: Human]
[Skills: Sleep Learning Lvl 9/10], [General Blade Mastery 5/10], [Dagger Mastery 2/10], [Sprinting 1/10], [Long Jumping 1/10], [Appraisal 1/10]
[Skill Points: 6]
[Talents: Excellent Arcane Affinity, Human Growth]
[Stamina: 12/12]
[Stamina Regen: .1% per second]
[Mana: 5/13]
[Mana Regen: .001 per second]
[Constitution: 11]
[Affinity: 13]
[Vitality: 10]
[Endurance: 12]
[Strength: 11]
[Dexterity: 13]
[Intelligence: 14]
[Willpower: 10]
[Attribute points: 0]
Rainer felt reasonably confident in his ability to defend himself for the time being. What he needed now was a plan that achieved three goals. First, he had to find a way out of this mine. Second, find food and more importantly water. Third, learn. Rainer may be 19 years old, but on this world, he was so ignorant he may as well have been a young child. He needed to learn everything he could as quickly as possible. How long are days? What languages do I need to learn? How dangerous is the environment? The wildlife? How can I find humans? How technologically advanced is this world? Is there money? How is society structured? Is there a goverment, a legal system? What questions, more important than these, am I not thinking of?
In the end, his plan was simple. Walk into the mine shaft, take the right. At any intersection, barring other factors, take the right. Be careful, be quiet. If he runs into a goblin, try to communicate. If he meets a group of goblins, evade them if possible, and kill them as quickly as he could if stealth was not an option. He wished he had shoes. It would be easy to injure his feet, and that could kill him. There was no way to clean a wound, and sepsis was a very real danger. He searched the second dead goblin. It was very similar to the first, physically and in its equipment, though it looked a bit more gray than the first. It too had a leather belt and sheath with an iron dagger. He put on the second belt and tied it, joining the first. There was no concrete reason to take it, but with as few resources as he had, it seemed unpardonably wasteful to leave any behind.
As he walked out his cave, a strange thought hit him - it was a bit like he was leaving a womb, born into a new world. For the first several minutes as he walked along the mine tunnel, his focus was wholly on the physical space around him, alert for any danger or any anything that he could use or learn from. However, the truth was that walking through a long, empty mine tunnel was pretty boring. Very little changed from one minute to the next, though the path did seem to gradually slope upward. The most notable event in those minutes was when he passed a couple of rocks that seemed a good size and shape to throw, and put them in his pocket. It was eerily silent. There was no sound, not even his footsteps on the dirt. Gradually, his thoughts drifted. He thought of his grandfather, sister, mother. The classes he was taking and would miss tomorrow. What could possibly have happened with his wall walking spell to send him here, what he'd be doing right now if he hadn't decided to tried it today. Would whatever fluke dropped him here have done so if he had first tried the spell a month later? A day? A millisecond? One thing he was certain of was that there was no way his magic had brought him here on its own. He wished he had a watch. Just to check, he tried a mental command, was was pleasantly surprised when it worked. [Time: 17:24]. Interesting. I wonder if days are 24 hours long here? It seems implausible that they would be, but it's also implausible that I can breathe the atmosphere here. Or that I'm here in the first place.
Rainer forced his thoughts back on to useful topics - time to think was precious, and he'd wasted too much, given the dangers facing him. The most immediate was a goblin killing him. Perhaps even more serious, he needed to find water within the next two days. If he didn't, his options became grim. Though hunting goblins for their blood was possible, he'd go through quite a bit to avoid it. But if there was no other way? Rainer believed in survival of the fittest, and he did not want to die. His life meant more to him than any number of goblins, even if those he'd killed already tugged at his conscience at the periphery of his thoughts. But that was more than 30 hours away, and there was a very good chance he'd die before then if he didn't think clearly and decisively now. How many goblins could he defend himself against? With 8 armed arcane bolts and full mana, less the 4 mana reserved to sustain the armed bolts, he could theoretically kill 17 goblins. More realistically, he could probably handle 10-12 if he had the advantages of range and surprise, less if he lacked either.
He seemed to be traveling a side tunnel, and assumed the mine was controlled by goblins, and that it was safest to bet there were a lot of them. If the tunnels could be compared to a side street in a road network, then the route to the mine exit would likely take him first to a central junction. That junction would probably have far more goblins than he could kill with arcane bolts. And this was a very serious problem. If he knew what tunnel leading away from the junction led out of the mine, then he might be able to bluff his way out after demonstrating the power of his arcane bolts. After all, the goblins wouldn't know that his mana was so limited. But he had no way to effectively communicate with them. There was only one possibility that seemed realistic to him. He had to find another lone goblin, capture it, and count on his class bonus to learn the first level of its language, then use skill points to raise his skill level in that language until he could interrogate the captive. The goblin who attacked him when he arrived here clearly viewed him as prey. But to survive, Rainer needed to become a hunter.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
He wished that he had a sword. His arcane bolts were powerful, at least against goblins, but his mana was a distressingly scarce resource. But he'd spent every point of mana he had before he'd risk fighting with a dagger. A saber would give him the reach to at least make hand to hand combat plausibly survivable. Looking at the armed arcane bolts surrounding him, he had an idea. Was it possible to summon a sword made of arcane energy? He wasn't overly optimistic. The leap from the arcane bolt spell to an arcane blade would be far longer than the jump from arcane bolt to armed arcane bolt. An arcane bolt could be compared to a deadly water balloon filled with arcane energy. Like a water balloon, it was much more effective at range. To form an arcane blade, he would need to somehow make a blade shaped water balloon, then remove the balloon containing the water while holding the water in place. Only using primal, dangerous arcane energy rather than water. While he didn't understand yet just how spell making worked in this world, his best guess was that making an arcane blade would take too much time to help him escape this mine. Still, it might be a good idea to try. There were costs, of course, in both mana and focus. But even if he failed, it was a way to learn. And given that most of his advantages seemed to be in the direction of arcane magic, learning could mean everything.
As he walked, Rainer formed an arcane bolt in his hand, just as he had when creating the Armed Arcane Bolt spell. While still devoting most of his attention to his surroundings, he slowly shaped the bolt in his hand. He stretched it out until it was about a bit under a meter long, then thinned it, before returning it to its original shape. While there was an ongoing mana cost to holding the bolt, it was so small that it was less than even his pitiful mana regeneration rate. So he took his time, almost idly toying with the bolt, seeing how he could move and shape it. Removing the sheath containing the arcane energy could well be dangerous, and he would not risk it until he could give it every bit of his focus. It was a risk not worth taking as he traveled. But he could at least try to form the shape of the blade. Rainer walked for over an hour, toying with his oddly shaped arcane bolt, when he was surprised by a system message.
[Skill Gained: Arcane Energy Manipulation, Lvl 1/10]
Rainer knew instantly that this skill could be incredibly useful. Given how easily he'd made one spell, the ability to manipulate Arcane Energy had to open the door to countless others. Arcane Bolt was a simple spell - again, like a water balloon. But in it's simplicity, it had tremendous potential. It was a contained packet of arcane energy. And the Arcane was the true origin of all magic. So all of magic could theoretically be derived from the contents of the saber shaped arcane bolt extending from his right hand. He just needed time, time to study and experiment and learn. If he could find teachers or books it would help speed things up, of course, but he was certain that he could accomplish whatever he wanted, if he just had the time. He could even get back home. Slowly, Rainer weakened the membrane that contained the roiling, untamed arcane energy within. It was easier to sense and to control than it had been before. Even at Lvl 1/10, Arcane Energy Manipulation was powerful. After a moment's thought, he decided against trying to remove the membrane and complete the spell quite yet. The last time he'd attempted to use a spell before being fully ready, he'd ended up in a bizarre world freakishly similar to a fantasy RPG. He would wait until he was ready, and right now his mana was at 6/13, with 4 of the missing points reserved for his 8 armed arcane bolts.
For now, he'd wait for his mana to regenerate as he walked. It took self control not to jog. Walking was painfully slow, and the sooner he got to wherever this tunnel lead, the sooner he would have more information to work with. But it was foolish to deplete his stamina without cause. Rainer remembered that during the last Summer Olympics, he'd watched a few minutes of the race walking event. It had looked ridiculous, but the announcer had mentioned the walkers could average around 7 miles per hour, twice the normal human walking speed. He was in quite good shape, and walking at even a fast clip shouldn't tire him. Feeling unduly self-conscious, and then recursively feeling self conscious for feeling self conscious over such a silly thing, Rainer began to speed walk. Twenty-three minutes later (he'd checked the system time right after he began speed walking), Rainer gained a new skill.
[Skill gained: Speed Walking, 1/10]
Immediately thereafter, he again had cause to feel self conscious about feeling self conscious, this time over the thought that he wasn't sure he wanted that skill popping up when someone appraised him, if higher levels of Appraisal could show skills. It was clearly a skill worth having, regardless of if he looked silly. His steps already seemed lighter and quicker. With a new spring in his gait, he continued down (or was it up?) the tunnel.
Roughly 40 minutes later, Rainer saw a light around around a bend in the tunnel. Immediately he slowed, straining his senses for any hint of what lay ahead. Then, he mentally ordered the armed bolts surrounding him to move directly behind his back. Testing, he found that he could keep them about 5 meters behind him, before they would refuse to move any further away. The tunnel, sadly, was still too well lit for him to believe he could sneak up on any goblins who might be around the corner unless he dispelled his armed bolts. But he was loathe to do so, given how vital they would be if the next minutes ended violently. He steeled himself and drew the bolts back around him, then jogged toward the bend in the tunnel before sprinting the last few meters. As he turned the corner, he saw a group of goblins looking at him in surprise. They were already standing, and had been walking from a camp fire toward the curious light approaching in the tunnel. There were seven of them, and Rainer had no time to think, only to react. As the largest goblin reached for a club at his waist and snarled what seemed like a command, Rainer willed his armed arcane bolts to attack, one aimed at each goblin. Swift as arrows, they struck home.
[16% experience gained]
[5% experience gained]
[5% experience gained]
[5% experience gained]
[5% experience gained]
[5% experience gained]
[5% experience gained]
It was a massacre. In seconds, Rainer had killed 7 sentient beings. He had no valid reason to believe that this worlds goblins were any less intelligent or emotionally complex than humans were, and he'd slaughtered them without giving them a chance to speak or flee. They hadn't even had opportunity to attack, and it was possible that they would not have. And it had all gone according to plan: There was a group of goblins, and he'd killed them as quickly as possible. Turning to the side as his vision clouded and his eyes watered, Rainer puked.