“I was aware of the possibility of a bad outcome,” Zed muttered, “but this is just wrong.”
Zed was seated on the floor, back rested against what was left of a broken tree. Blood flowed freely from a wound in his side, refusing to stop and his new axe was held loosely in his hand as he stared at a notification.
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* [Denizen viper] has inflicted [venom] on you.
* [Venom] has applied effect [Iron stone].
* You do not have sufficient [Mana].
* [Iron stone] takes effect.
* [Iron stone] has inflicted [Slow], [Pain], and [Edge of stone].
* You have been poisoned.
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“Yea,” Zed groaned. “Those are a lot of inflictions.”
He had felt the effects as the fight came to its crescendo. His swings had been less than efficient and every time he did anything, pain filled him. He wasn’t certain what [Edge of stone] had done to him, but he suspected it had dulled his senses, if not he would’ve realized the twenty feet long viper as fat as him had a stinger for a tail.
“You know what,” he muttered, crawling forward to the dead beast. “I’m more than happy I killed you.”
He placed a hand on its head and cast the only spellform he knew. The spellform came to him quickly and he found he didn’t need the entire chant to cast it. He wondered if this was how it felt to improvise. Either that, or the spellform was becoming a specialization.
“I sought, I found, I conquered.”
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* You have cast spellform [Conqueror’s touch] on [Denizen viper].
* [Conqueror’s touch] has applied effect [Reward] on [Denizen viper].
* You have gained +181 Exp.
* Trait [Mana blessed] does not take effect.
* Exp to category 2: 1720/2500.
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A group of monsters had stumbled on Zed, and while he had sensed them before their arrival, he had failed to escape them. The fight that had ensued had cost him greatly, but the Denizen viper had been the real threat. It had been fast and efficient, striking where he didn’t expect and moving faster than it had any right to.
Zed pushed himself to his feet as the monster burst into a smoke of colors and his body breathed it in. He staggered to the next beast, a large mole as tall as his waste. It laid on its side with small cuts and a missing leg where he’d blasted it with a force rune, and he touched it too.
“I sought, I found, I conquered.”
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* You have cast spellform [Conqueror’s touch] on [Death ground mole].
* [Conqueror’s touch] has applied effect [Reward] on [Death ground mole].
* You have gained +156 Exp.
* Trait [Mana blessed] does not take effect.
* Exp to category 2: 1876/2500.
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“I guess you didn’t live up to your name,” he told it, moving on to the next quarry.
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* You have cast spellform [Conqueror’s touch] on [Bone cutter].
* [Conqueror’s touch] has applied effect [Reward] on [Bone cutter].
* You have gained +208 Exp.
* You have acquired x3 [Mana stones]
* Trait [Mana blessed] does not take effect.
* Exp to category 2: 2084/2500.
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Zed backed down, the colorful smoke calming around him as he breathed it in while slipping the mana stones into separate pockets. Once upon a time he’d lied to Ivan that he got a bit of a top up to heal whenever he used [Conqueror’s Touch]. Judging from the fact that his bleeding was beginning to stop and his body slowly returned to a better function than the Denizen viper had left it, maybe it hadn’t been a lie after all.
Besides that, Zed had bigger problems to deal with. He hadn’t been walking for up to twenty-four hours before running into these monsters. He had spent last night walking without sleep and intended to continue on that path until he was back in town, but he wondered if he really could. He had at least one forest and one destroyed town to go through before he was back in town. Who knew how many monsters he would have to face in those places. What if he ran into a Rukh rank monster?
“Then I guess I’ll finally get rid of that pending quest,” he muttered.
Zed let his aura spread out around him, seeking out any other auras within his vicinity. If he was going to keep on moving he needed to be sure he wasn’t going to get himself killed in the process.
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He sensed a few more monsters in the vicinity and was thankful to find they were all Beta rank monsters. They weren’t much, but they were enough. It ensured violence was inevitable. Hefting his axe, Zed took a deep breath and readied himself for what was to come.
“More Exp for me.”
……………………………………….
Zed paid attention to the auras around him as he continued on in the woods. His feet were quiet against the earth and dirt and there was no strong enough breeze to ruffle his clothes. In one hand he held his bloodied axe and in the other he held up the small notebook he’d taken of one of the corpses at the auditorium. He’d somehow avoided the monster’s he’d sensed after the Denizen viper and its gang and was more than glad for it.
In the last two days he’d been studying the book in his hand. It had been easy to discern between what was a rune and what was nonsense, and it had taken him no time discover that of all the pages in the book, only eight runes existed. Unfortunately, he needed to be careful in learning them. The book came with no discernable instructions and he knew nothing of which rune did what. In this way he multitasked as he walked, splitting his attention between sensing auras and learning new runes.
Runes, Zed had since learned, were like letters and words. Anyone could look at a rune and see it, but it was something else to understand what they were looking at. It was like a Japanese looking at an English word or an English man looking at a Vietnamese word. They could identify the curves and the lines that made up the letters and characters, and they could see the words as a whole. But that meant nothing. Anyone could look at an alphabet and not know what it meant, in the same way, anyone could look at a rune and not know what it meant, it doesn’t matter if they are told.
Zed could hold up a force rune and tell someone it was a force rune, but it didn’t mean the person would understand it if they were shown the same rune perhaps three days later. Understanding a rune was like understanding letters, then understanding words. Casting runes was understanding words and learning how to write them.
One of Zed’s finger weaved a rune as he worked, wracking his brain each time. Most of the time he failed, his finger failing to trace the rune in the air past one point. However, it did not dissuade him. Festus had told him once that while he was not special, he was showing a knack for understanding runes. Apparently, he picked them up faster than any mage Festus knew.
Zed shifted part of his focus to his aura sense as he slipped behind a tree, his back hugging it. He sensed a group of auras, each one wild and feral. They were all Beta rank, seeming to move as a discordant pack as one snapped at the other.
Zed kept his calm, controlling his breath as he did. The auras were close enough that he heard the footsteps of the monsters passing through the sea of trees. There was a specific one that shook the earth with each slow step, an interlude to the many limbs that moved along the earth. Zed kept his attention on them, slipping the book into his back pocket. It had survived there during his last fight and he hoped it would survive there this time should anything go wrong. One of his fingers continued weaving the rune as he waited, slowly finding success, concluding its form before starting afresh.
Zed wasn’t sure what it did but was certain there was no way he was activating a rune whose function he didn’t know without having a safe place to cast it. For all he knew it might be an alarm rune, designed to signal others to his location.
Zed continued to listen as the monsters continued on their way. His worry was already subsiding when he realized it had been a bit too long since the heavy footstep had played interlude to the others. As if by command, the other scurrying steps halted and Zed’s worry doubled. He squeezed his grip on the axe handle and prayed today wasn’t the day.
He’d gone two days without another monster encounter and had been hoping to go one more. If he was being honest, he’d been hoping to go two weeks more, running into the occasional monster at best.
With the sudden silence, the place was ominously eerie. Zed could only hope the silence meant other things. There was always the possibility that he hadn’t been what had caught the monsters’ attention. They weren’t moving, after all. If he was responsible for it, then they wouldn’t have stopped moving, they would’ve changed directions and headed for him. Zed was still contemplating his chance at escape when a notification popped up.
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New Quest: [Against all Odds]
The woods are a treacherous place for the weak. Animals and monsters alike lurk its confines seeking prey as well as enemies. And now a mage has joined in the struggle, disrupting the hierarchy. This is not a fight for supremacy.
* Objective: Survive Beta rank beasts.
* Reward: [Safe zone].
* Bonus objective: Don’t die.
* Reward: None.
* You have 1 pending Quest.
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Zed sighed. It had been too good to be true.
“If the objective already says I should survive,” he muttered, “then what’s the point of the bonus objective?”
Zed heaved a deep breath, prepping himself for a run when a loud roar shook the air and his senses lit up in alarm.
He ducked out from the tree as its top half exploded in a ball of fire. He scrambled to his feet, his eyes on the monsters, and found that they weren’t five in number. Despite counting nine monsters in front of him, he could still only sense five of them. The knowledge terrified him and he wondered just how many more monsters walked the woods concealed from his senses.
As for the monster responsible for the demise of his hiding spot, it looked like a rhinoceros if it had chosen to change its diet to something more carnivorous and developed the teeth for it. Smoke was rising from its mouth and it opened its jaws to reveal a sharp orange light reminiscent of a furnace, a herald of what was to come.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Zed snapped as a blast of fire shot from the creature’s mouth.
It came straight at him with terrifying speed and his finger moved deftly. Zed raised his hand as he completed the rune and activated it.
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* You have cast rune [Force].
* [Force] has applied effect [Knockback] on [Fire breath].
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The ball of fire exploded somewhere between Zed and the other monsters and he stared at them with anger in his eyes and fear in his spine, his axe gripped in whitening knuckles.
“You’re not even a dragon!” he shouted at the monster.
With a grumble, he turned and darted into the forest. Against these odds, survival meant escaping.
Zed’s retreat was ten paces successful before another monster stood in his path. He hadn’t sensed this one either and he was beginning to understand why his quest had asked him to survive and gone the extra mile to request that he not die.
The new intruder looked like an ogre, if one of its parents had been a rock monster. It stood taller than Zed, a hulking mass of stone grey and moss green, and Zed knew it’s strength would far outweigh his.
It raised a quiet yet angry hand, silent in its action, and brought it down. Zed was already casting before the blow landed.
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* You have cast basic rune [Force shield].
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