Chapter 7: The Trouble with Mana

Miro awoke with a start, and realized he’d almost summoned another fireball when he saw the warm glow that surrounded his hand. He shook off the nascent spell. The forest remained silent and the sun was still high in the sky, and Miro concluded that he couldn’t have been out for that long. Still, it had been foolish of him to let his guard down like that, even if he did feel better for having slept. Once he had a chance to relax, the flashing text before his eyes came into focus:

2 Skill Points Available

This was new. His two previous level-ups gave him only one point, but where to put these two? As a result of the last couple of days, his three Charisma points stared back at him admonishingly, so he dropped both new points into Strength.

Once he completed the process, he hardly felt any different, but the latest update to his overall chart flashed briefly in front of his vision:

MIRO KALDOUN

Level 4 Mage

Strength: 3

Dexterity: 1

Vitality: 1

Intelligence: 1

Charisma: 3

Spells: Incinerate level 1 (cost: 0.5), Lesser Fireball level 1 (cost: 3)

Maximum Mana: 10

Mana regen: 1 per hour

Debuffs: unavailable

If his newest additions into Strength were anything like his Charisma stat, the effect wouldn’t be immediate – he still had to hone his skills, but it would come far easier. Learning the new spell; however, was mercifully instantaneous.

He decided to try it again, this time under less dire circumstances, so he raised his right hand in the direction of the river and released the ball of fire. It entered the water with a hiss of smoke, but in that smoke he saw the face of the bandit, twisted in agony. Having already rid his stomach of his paltry breakfast, all Miro could do was retch sonorously on the riverbank. Braining mice was one thing, but if this is what it took to advance through levels, he wasn’t sure if he really wanted to see what Lesser Fireball level 2 could do.

For a while, Miro just let himself sit at the river’s edge, his feet mere inches from the water, throwing pebbles into the current. Whatever other lessons he learned that day, the most important was that the sole purpose of honing his spells was no longer about impressing the local village girls. It had now literally become a question of life and death for him and he was left with no choice but to sharpen the abilities that he had. At this realization, Miro lifted his hand and drowned another fireball in the river. And then another. And then nothing happened. Instead of a fireball materializing between his fingers, an error message materialized before his eyes.

Insufficient Mana. Mana level 2/10. Mana regen rate: 1 per hour.

He’d never paid much attention to the cost of his incinerate level before, never having previously reached the limits of his mana supply. This seemed rather limiting. As long as there were three bandits or less and Miro had perfect aim and there was at least nine hours between battles, he would be perfectly fine. Short of that, best he could do was try to incinerate their pants.

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“He must’ve gone this way.”

The words were faint and Miro almost didn’t hear them above the sounds of the forest, but they were unmistakable – there was someone upriver and they were looking for him. With his two points of mana in reserve, there was only one way for him to go – downriver and fast.

Luckily for Miro, it was not the easiest terrain to track. Unfortunately for Miro, it was because it was a difficult terrain to walk. The sandy shores of the river soon ran out, forcing him to splash through shallow water. That too eventually gave way to steep banks with an abrupt drop-off, and he had to climb up away from the river and trace the its course through thick shrub, thankful each time a stretch of beach returned and he could climb down again.

When his mana was almost back to affording him three whole fireballs, Miro found himself running out of daylight fast. Although he was now no stranger to sleeping out in the open in the darkness of the woods, he still preferred to have been doing so in the company of the well-armed riders, even with their cursed mana-cles. Just then, he had smelled it. Smoke drifted towards him on the wind, and that likely meant people, and people tended to keep near them warm comfortable beds. He decided to pick up the pace and immediately discovered what a terrible idea that was.

An unexpected cut in the river caused him to put his foot down into empty air and his whole body followed. For an endless moment, he dropped straight towards the water, until an outstretched hand caught on a tree root growing out the side of the sheer riverbank and stopped his fall with a painful pull on his arm and shoulder.

He dangled on one hand for a minute, studying in the twilight the various assortment of broken branches sticking out of a fallen tree that partially poked out of the water, ready to do him all kinds of potentially fatal damage if he hadn’t caught himself. There were enough handholds here to feel his way through and climb back up, getting away with some new scrapes, soreness and a lesson learned. From there, he proceeded more cautiously, but ended up taking no more than a few steps before he heard the rustle of a tree branch snapping back into position. He paused with his foot not even fully planted on the ground, lowering it slowly so as not to break any twigs. Something else in the woods held no such reservations, the loud sound of a broken stick causing Miro to twist his neck in the direction from where it came from.

It was difficult to tell for sure in the darkness, but what looked like a long yellow life bar drifted slowly through the woods. He was unable to make out the name, but if the noise it made was any indication, this was not something he wanted to have a closer look at. He tried not to breath, and to stop his knees from chattering against each other in fear, yet whatever it was drew closer, the outline of a large rounded body and tall legs visible just beyond the trees.

It felt like he’d stood there half the night, but eventually the largely unseen beast had moved on, sniffing and rustling its way further upriver. When he felt that he was safe, Miro took off in the opposite direction and eventually stumbled onto a narrow road that traced the river and led into either a very large village or a really small town. The only thing that mattered to Miro at that point was that if his own village that he grew up in could support a dingy inn with two rooms and hot potato soup for dinner, then surely there must be one here as well. Sure, the potatoes at that inn were hand-delivered from Bondook’s potato fields, whose bug infestations only varied in severity and never fully went away, and the meat in the soup, if there was ever any, was from sheep who died of old age, but in Miro’s state, as long is it wasn’t dried and shaped like a tube of animal excrement, he would order three bowls, even if the key ingredient was a horse who died of loneliness.

He passed farmhouses and gardens, spaced wide apart on both sides of the river, until he reached a bridge and crossed over to the other bank. Here, the houses grew taller and were made out of whole logs rather than wooden planks. Once he reached the end of the river, where it flowed into a grand lakes that may have been one of the ones he sighted on his way there, he found a dock and several boat launches, as well as what he had been looking for.