Since all they had found were some vegetables and some animal footprints, there wasn’t any immediate concern for the group. Still they had a big hurdle left to take.

“You sure you want to fight with weapons again?” Dave asked.

They were both standing at the same spot where they had fought before. And once again Dave felt nervous.

“Yes. I’m sure. Now stop whining and let’s get this over with.” Max sounded a bit angry, but Dave saw the difference compared to last time. He seemed a bit more nervous now, less enthusiastic. Of course that was only reasonable, who would be looking forward to getting beaten?

It made it no easier for Dave though. More difficult actually if anything. A few minutes before, Max had apparently deleted him from the Node’s list of allies. While he had done that, Dave had checked his Skill list again.

*Dave Coleman

Rank: 1

Domains: Melee, Arcane

Skills: Spark Level 5, Soul Weapon Level 6, Soul Weapon Mastery Level 4

Blessings: Newly Initiated, Chosen Prodigy

Active Quests: 3

Alliances: None *

Indeed the Alliance information had immediately updated to “None”, but what Dave actually wanted to check were his Skill levels.

Since their last fight he had gained two levels in Soul Weapon and another one in Soul Weapon Mastery. All his training over the last days had indeed paid off. The biggest upgrade he got, his new Soul Weapon, was one he couldn’t use in combat. His Hidden Blades were just too deadly.

Still Dave felt stronger than before. It was hard to imagine Max being able to push him as hard again, but Dave knew his friend was always good for surprises. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. There was really no part in Dave that wanted to fight Max again.

“Listen Max, I just… I just don’t want to hurt you again.” Dave said softly, his eyes cast down.

Max took a few steps forward until he stood only a feet away. “I can understand that. And I appreciate the sentiment. I really do. But this isn’t just about us. You were there when we made the plan, you know that’s just what we have to do.” He paused and took a deep breath. “Dude I would rather get a few bruises from you again, than risk having an army of Nodefoxes marching into our camp tomorrow.”

He was right and Dave knew it. Max’s words gave him a sense of clarity again, a rope to draw himself out of his self pity. Because that’s what it was. They had to do it, there was no way around it. His guilt wasn’t helping him, so he dropped it and pushed it down like he had done with so many other feelings since this whole thing started.

Somewhere in him there was a pit. A deep pit, stuffed full of fears, worries, anger, sadness and so many other emotions Dave couldn’t allow himself to feel. Not if he wanted to keep functioning.

He looked Max in the eyes, took a few steps away and gave him a stoic nod. Max’s eyes dropped their softness as well and turned hard upon seeing Dave’s resolve. He returned the nod, and with that their fight began.

Dave was right. It wasn’t as competitive as the last. It didn’t need to be. There wasn’t a question to be answered anymore, only a task to get completed.

It was over pretty quickly, less than a dozen exchanges before Dave landed a clean blow on Max’s liver. He dropped to the ground, unable to continue.

Dave stood over him and waited. Two heartbeats passed and nothing happened. He started to get anxious. Was this not enough, did he need to keep fighting? Or was their plan simply foolish and Grace Period wouldn’t trigger.

The nervousness in his stomach grew, unsure what to do, he took a step forward towards Max. He was clearly unable to continue fighting, so the shield should work. It had to.

Dave looked up to his friends for directions, but they vanished in front of his eyes. He blinked in surprise and looked down again, but not just was Max gone, Dave suddenly stood at least twenty metres farther away. All around him it looked just like a normal forest.

Their exploit worked. Relief washed over him and pushed his nervousness away. He still felt a little guilty about hurting Max, but mostly happy that their plan was really functioning.

With their Grace Period shields working in tandem, shroud hiding them and the mine producing Mana Shards, it was only a matter of time before they would finally escape from this god forsaken land of murderous squirrels.

The next days went by similarly to the previous ones. Improvements to their camp were made, Skill were trained and conversations held. When there was nothing to do in terms of immediate survival, everybody turned their mind towards training.

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Dave still had his little private place where he alone was training. Nobody even came to observe him. He had the suspicion that Max probably told them it would be uncomfortable for him, and that they should rather stay away. If that was the case Dave didn’t know if he was mad or happy about Max condescending, but he tended towards happy.

His training was showing results, as proven by the quest that Dave pulled up more than once during the day.

Master of Arms, Domain: Spend 100 hours in practice with your Soul Weapon. 27/100

He enjoyed watching the number go up. Not just because he couldn’t wait to find out what the reward for the Skill was, but also because it gave him a certain satisfaction.

Most of his recent training had been with his new Soul Weapon. After Dave had gotten the Hidden Blades, he became so enthralled by them, that he spent most of his time only training with them. They just hit the perfect sweet spot between his geekiness and his newly found interest in becoming a competent fighter.

Dave had seen some pretty cool fight scenes in the games, and he’d be damned if he wouldn’t at least try to get to that level of proficiency with his Hidden Blades. With the new world and his almost super powers and all he had enough confidence to know he could reach what he was striving for.

But he didn’t want to forget about his spear. Especially because it was probably his better bet at surviving fights, due to the long range. If he would find himself up against a Nodefox, his spear would be far safer than the Hidden Blades.

So he returned to the basics and started working on his forms with the spear. Dave was very slowly going through the motions of a simple spear thrust. With Soul Weapon Mastery active Dave heard a little voice in his head telling him if his movement was off. It felt like the parking assistant in a car. Only less annoying.

Dave tried to feel every muscle used when using the spear. Deeply familiarizing himself with the weapon, but he could never get it quite right.

Just as he got so frustrated that he wanted to take a break, a window popped up in front of him.

*Congratulations, your Soul Weapon Mastery Skill has reached Level 5. New paths for Soul Weapon have become available.*

Soul Weapon Mastery: Gain a deep understanding of the ways of your Soul Weapon. You are proficient with the use of your Soul Weapon. Proficiency increases by level. Passive Skill, active whenever having Soul Weapon equipped.

Soul Weapon Mastery has increased effectiveness.

You may add an additional effect to Soul Weapon Mastery:

Archenemy, Common - While using your Soul Weapon, gain slight advantage against foe of choice. Slight advantage will entail, reading opponents movements better, slightly faster reaction time and better targeting of weak points. Will only apply against chosen type of foe.

Torch in the Dark, Common - Your mastery of your Soul Weapon allows you to add a glowing effect to the weapon. Can be turned on and off on command.

Marathon Fighter, Common - Slightly decreased Mana costs for Soul Weapon Mastery, you’ll be able to uphold Soul Weapon Master for longer.

Dave decided it was probably time for a break and read through the messages greedily. Ever since his Spark Skill upgraded to level 5, he wanted to see what effects he could gain for his other Skills.

But he was oddly disappointed by the options. Sure there wasn’t any upgrade that he would’ve called gamebreaking when he leveled his other Skills, but this was still underwhelming.

Every option was common. Just seeing that had soured his mood, but as he had told himself before, practicality was more important than rarity.

Dave immediately dismissed the Torch in the Dark effect. Having a glowing weapon could be a cool gimmick, but he was looking for more than a gimmick.

That left the first and third option. Both looked solid on paper, but the damage buff was only against a certain type of foes. While it would certainly be useful against the Nodefoxes, Dave wanted to think further ahead. The damage increase was only slightly, and ideally they wouldn’t have to deal with Nodefoxes ever again in a few months. Then that would be a wasted effect.

The third option also sounded really good. Decreased Mana costs were always welcome. But so far Dave hadn’t even known Soul Weapon Mastery to cost Mana. He had noticed that he started feeling tired after four or five hours of use, and that his thoughts turned sluggish, as if was thinking through molasses.

That was only after a long period of heavy use though, so hopefully nothing he would ever encounter in a fight. Heck if he were to fight four hours consecutively, he probably had lots of different worries.

Giving it a few more moments of consideration, Dave decided to go with the Archenemy effect. It hurt his power gaming heart to pick an effect that could potentially become useless in the future, but despite all the oddities, Dave knew that it wasn’t a game he was playing. He needed to survive now, or otherwise he might not even live to see his effect become useless.

*Congratulations, the Archenemy effect has been added to your Soul Weapon Mastery Skill. You’ve picked the type “Nodefox” as a foe. You can change the chosen foe only once. Do you wish to do that now?*

Dave clicked no and was relieved that he had picked the Archenemy effect. With the option to change his chosen foe in the future, if only once, the effect had a lot more utility.

Still the decreased Mana costs effect had been a very close second though. Dave’s main problem with that was, that it was hard to say whether or not the symptoms he was experiencing sometimes were signs of low Mana or maybe just fatigue. He had to ask Bixby about that. Like with so many other things.

The others had lots of similar questions lately, they were leveling their Skills as well and that was bound to come with an influx of questions. It led to everyone bugging Bixby with tons of questions when they sat together for dinner.

So much so that the Nodefox had decided that it was too much this morning. Instead of answering every question individually, he now wanted to hold a lecture in the evenings, to teach them the foundations for the working of the Manaverse.

“Because trying to care for the leaves of a tree won’t help if the roots are rotten,” he said.

Dave was looking forward a lot to that. He wanted to know so much more about how his Skills and Mana worked. Partly because he always enjoyed learning. But mostly because he knew that to exploit every nook and cranny out of his abilities, he needed to understand it all.

If he learned one thing in his two decades of playing video games, it is that you needed to learn the rules in order to bend them. And he didn’t just want to bend the rules, he wanted to crush them.