Chapter 10: Man’s Best Friend
Would you like to bond with the “Black Dire Wolf Cub”?
Tide obviously selected yes, no way he was going to pass up this gift. Honestly, it was much better than any gear. Gaining a Companion pet at the very beginning was a huge reward. If he trained it well and got it to level up alongside him, this wolf could become his most dependable ally. Not to mention that it was a freaking dire wolf, which could sometimes grow to the size of a goddamn horse if groomed properly. Tide’s mind wandered, imagining himself showering a battlefield with spells while riding a giant wolf.
After he came back to reality, the screen disappeared and in its place a new one popped up in front of him.
What would you like to name your companion?
Tide took a moment to contemplate what he wanted to call the wolf pup in front of him. He had a couple of ideas like “Jet” or “Pitch” but ended up choosing the name Onyx. It really did fit the little guy, so Tide finalized the decision. As soon as he did, the cub opened its eyes and was instantly full of energy. It ran circles around him, sniffing Tide’s legs and wagging its tail at a frantic pace.
The little guy’s mood was infectious, and Tide quickly forgot the deadly encounter he had but ten minutes ago. Tide reached down and ruffled the shaggy black fur on the wolf’s head. It really was adorable, something about its oversized ears constantly flopping around made it especially endearing.
No matter how much fun it was to play with his new bud, Tide managed to regain his focus. Inside the chest there were also thirteen silver and five copper pieces. With a flick of his hand, they were quickly absorbed into his subspace. Not too shabby considering it was a single monster. With this, he could get some more clothes to replace his shredded shirt and pants. Once removed, the chest vanished in a spray of glowing motes like it was never even there.
With all that taken care of, Tide took a quick look around making sure he didn't forget anything and began to make his way back towards town. He would have to hunt some lower-level monsters before coming back to this area.
He made his way back slowly to make sure to avoid any other monsters, and also to keep his wounds from opening back up. After a half an hour or so, Onyx began to tire out, so Tide gave him a small piece of jerky and fashioned a makeshift backpack out of his bedding that could hold him. As he began moving again, the pup started to fall asleep on his back.
Every once in a while, Tide would have to stop and hide and wait for a monster to pass before continuing. As he got closer to town the monsters began to become weaker and weaker. They went from wolves, goblins, and bears to deer, field rats, and horned rabbits. Other than that, he managed to make his way back to the town without conflict after a grueling four hour trek through the night.
By the time civilization was in sight, the sun was beginning to peek over the horizon. By the town's entrance there were a group of people standing around holding sharpened sticks looking like a makeshift town guard.
Tide was slightly impressed if they really were a guard, clearly whoever had established order in the town seemed to be doing a decent job. Although, this posed a problem on its own. The plan had been to sneak into town before anyone was up and getting into the tavern to recover and plan out his next move.
There was no way he let them see Onyx. There’s no telling what they would do to it if they found out. They would, at the very least report it to their boss and right now Tide really didn't want to attract attention.
Tide circled past the main entrance and was glad to see that the walls were empty. It would have taken a lot of people to watch the entire town day and night, so they must have settled for the entrances.
Tide made his way up an isolated section of the wall and took most of the mana that he managed to recover after the fight and injected into the ground under his feet. Slowly, he began to push the ground under him upwards until he began to run out of mana. This made him rise about five feet upwards before stopping. From there, he was able to reach up to the edge of the wall quite easily.
Tide strained as he raised himself up and over the wall, flopping onto the stone top. The exertion made some of the cuts on his chest open, but he had suffered far worse in the past.
He quickly made his way to a set of stairs and disappeared into the town’s buildings with no one the wiser. From there, he made it to one of the larger buildings in town, the tavern. Once inside, it was quickly obvious that it was quite empty. Either no one had discovered its use, or the people in town realized that they couldn't afford its prices at the moment.
He made his way over to the NPC who ran the establishment and asked for basic accommodations for one day and a full meal in the morning. The old lady running the store raised an eyebrow at his request.
“The total will be 3 silver and 25 copper, can you afford that?” She said, skeptical that the semi-naked man could afford a room. Plenty of people had entered her tavern in the past three days, and when she told them that a room cost three silver, they all left, not wanting to fork up the money.
Much to her surprise, the fee she asked for appeared on the counter when Tide passed his hand over it.
Tide took a slight bit of joy in the shock on the owner’s face and received his key to his new lodgings. Normally, he wouldn't be so frivolous with his coinage, but he needed a place to lay low and was getting sick of the jerky and hard tack. Also, there was an extra bonus to everyone who stayed in the tavern. They would regain health, stamina, and mana at double the normal rate.
Reaching his room, he set a sleeping Onyx on some bedding in the corner before undressing and collapsing on the bed.
Blessed sleep grabbed a hold of Tide almost immediately. It had been a grueling day, and Tide had been half asleep on the whole way back.
Tide was abruptly woken up after only six hours of deep dreamless sleep by a coarse tongue running up and down his face. Tide grumbled and pushed the fuzzy black cub off his face before it managed to take a layer off his skin.
Onyx took this as a challenge and dashed around on the bed, nipping at Tide’s hair and hand. Seeing this, Tide wanted to teach the pup a lesson and began to tussle with him.
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This quarrel ended up in a twenty-minute-long wrestling match on the bed before Tide managed to tire him out. Once the little ball of energy was calmed down, Tide was able to get some time to plan out his next move.
First things first, he checked his wounds only to see that they had healed completely, the increased regen in the tavern did wonders for him. Only faint pink lines remained from the deep grooves that got carved into him. After removing and throwing away his bloody bandages, he decided to check his status screen. The previous day was so action-packed that he didn’t get a chance to look at any of the changes.
Tide Blackwater
Lv: 3 (27%) [10 Stats Undistributed]
Class: Elementalist
Health: 200/200 (Regen 10/h)
Mana: 400/400 (Regen 40/h)
Stamina: 200/200 (Regen 20/h)
Vitality: 4
Strength: 3
Endurance: 4
Agility: 4
Intelligence: 9
Wisdom: 8
Control: 7
Skills: Mana Manipulation, Meditation, Element Manipulation, Elemental Augmentation, and Bind Golem
Traits: Observant
Affinities:
-Earth: 4%
-Water: 2%
-Fire: 1%
The first thing he looked at was his class’ description. A small sub window revealed itself after focusing on the text in front of him.
Elementalist: A mage who is in tune with the world. Able to bond with any element, they have a flexible range of powers. Favored by the world, they can take on characteristics of the elements around them and summon elemental servants to assist them.
While the description was short, the power it claimed to give him was potent. It was saying that he could specialize in all forms of elemental magic! Reading it over again, Tide was eager to look at the skills the class could give and closed the window.
He quickly made note of the other changes on his stat sheet as well. Besides the class change, there were only a couple of minor stat improvements from his body becoming stronger. He did gain the Fire affinity like the system had said earlier, but it was only at 1%. Perhaps if he had more time to work on it, the affinity could have been higher. He also noted that his Earth affinity was a percentage higher than before. Tide could not figure out what would have caused this, his best theory being his familiarity with the element or his continued manipulation of it.
Shaking his head, Tide focused on what he wanted to look at most of all, his new skills. Focusing on that part of his status screen, another subwindow popped up with their descriptions.
Skills:
Meditation- The ability to clear your mind and feel the mana around you. While Meditating, mana regeneration increases.
Mana Manipulation- The ability to move your mana to your will. Passively helps control over other mana-based actions.
Element Manipulation- The ability to merge your mana and an element in the nearby environment, giving you control over the infused element. The more you wish to control, the higher the mana cost incurred. The force and damage that can be applied using this skill is determined by the intelligence stat. Mana cost will decrease in accordance with elemental affinity and control stat. If the requested element is not nearby, it can be created at the cost of a substantial portion of mana.
Bind Golem- The ability to pour mana into an element, bringing it to life for a period to serve you. The more mana you use, the longer the golem lasts before expiring. The larger and stronger the golem, the faster it burns through its allotted mana. Mana cost will decrease in accordance with elemental affinity and control stat. Ten Control must be reserved for controlling each golem. Golems created without sufficient Control cannot be influenced by the creator.
Element Augmentation- The ability to absorb an element into your body to strengthen or change your body’s properties. Effectiveness is based on Intelligence and intended effect. Mana cost is determined by wisdom and the element's affinity. Slowly drains mana while in use.
Looking at the skills, Tide was a little confused, as each one was incredibly open ended. In his past life, most skills were very cut and dry. You would activate the spell, then it does a predetermined action for a predetermined mana cost.
For instance, his Earthen Epear spell would cost fifty mana to activate, and Tide would select a target. Then the dirt spears would try to skewer whatever the target was. Both the element infusion and elemental manipulation were up to his imagination.
Tide shrugged his shoulders; it looked like he would have to do some experimentation before fully understanding his new skills.
At least he got a good grasp on what stats were important for this class.As a Geomancer, he had been able to get away with just dumping points into intelligence so his spells would hit harder, while sprinkling some into wisdom to keep his mana pool manageable.
The Elementalist class operated around four key factors. The Intelligence, Wisdom and Control stats, alongside his elemental affinities. Intelligence would increase the strength of his spells; Wisdom would expand his mana pool and Control would help him maintain golems and make spells more intricate. Elemental affinity just was an overall boost towards lowering mana costs. To him, this made a lot of sense for such a flexible caster. The more familiar he was with the properties and attributes of each element, the easier it would be to use them.
Based on this, he decided to allocate some of the stats he got from killing the dire wolf. As he did, he felt a rush of warm energy swirl throughout his body, modifying it.
Tide Blackwater
Lv: 3 (27%) [3 Stats Undistributed]
Class: Elementalist
Health: 250/250 (Regen 12/h)
Mana: 400/400 (Regen 40/h)
Stamina: 200/200 (Regen 20/h)
Vitality: 5
Strength: 3
Endurance: 4
Agility: 4
Intelligence: 10
Wisdom: 10
Control: 10
He decided to increase his Vitality by one to increase his survivability, and then decided to just round the core three stats up to a baseline of ten.
With that accomplished, he started trying to figure out what he would do with the rest of the day.He quickly produced a list of things he still had to do after going down and enjoying his prepaid lunch.
-Buy a new set of clothes and armor if affordable.
-Figure out what happened in the town after he left it and get a sense of the situation here.
-Find somewhere safe to set up camp outside of town.
-Test out his skills and develop familiarity with them.
-Find a good hunting ground to gain levels safely
-Level up Onyx so that he would become a serious asset in battle.
With little time to waste, Tide got out of the wonderfully comfortable bed and made his way to the door with Onyx trailing behind him. Today was going to be a busy day.