Vultressant decided to check his own notifications to see if he too had received any skill bumps. He found that his bolt of fire spell had increased twice, his wind magic and fire magic skills were now at three and four, respectively, and he had attained character level four. There was also a notification for a new spell that he could now cast called wind wave. He focused on the spell name, and a description of the spell appeared on his display: Wind wave: cast time: 3 seconds; damage: 20–25 HP; cost: 70 MP; cooldown: 45 seconds; effect: a 15’ wide wave of air is sent in the direction of your choosing and will push any objects in its path. The damage didn’t jibe with the amount that his shield had absorbed in the battle when the Gnoll captain cast the spell at the party. He had taken twice the minimum damage of this spell, so maybe as he leveled his wind magic or the spell itself, it would increase the damage done. The spell that the Gnoll cast could have hit for critical damage; he checked his battle log, and there was no mention of a critical strike from the spell, only two instances where his bolt of fire spell had done critical damage. Another possibility could be that the Gnoll captain had a higher Intellect attribute than he did. Intellect not only increased mana, it also increased the damage of offensive spells.

The party was in no shape to run away, so they decided to stay. Vultressant wanted to get the essences from the Gnolls here, and there was other loot to be had. He sat Vanya down in the alcove where the captain had emerged so that she would have some protection if they were attacked. He started with the Gnolls next to where the campfire used to be and was able to successfully extract essences from the first two. The third one he attempted felt fainter than the others, and after struggling for a moment, he gave up. The process was slow without Vanya helping, and he wanted to make an attempt on the captain before its essence had dissipated too much to be able to be drawn out. He had started with the foot soldiers in the hopes of increasing his skill, but he hadn’t received a notification indicating a skill bump.

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When he started on the captain, the essence was still extremely strong, even stronger than the first regular Gnoll that he had tried. Vultressant began drawing the essence out, but it was far more difficult than the previous ones. There was a strong resistance, as if the essence were fighting the extraction process. All of his extractions had been a bit of a struggle, but this time he felt as if he was on the losing end of a tug-of-war game.

Vultressant was already nearly exhausted from the night’s events, and the extraction was draining his energy quickly. He had been at it for just over three minutes when there was a warning flash on his HUD and a notification indicating that he was nearly out of mana. He hadn’t realized that the process used mana at all. He ignored the warning and tried to power through. He had recently used his enhanced mana regen ability, so he had to do this with his remaining MP, which was a mere 12 points. Those points went away quickly, but when they reached 0, the lack of mana points didn’t cancel the attempt. He felt more exhausted by the second. Still, he pressed on, and the essence inched closer to him. His sight began to blur, but a moment later he was rewarded with a glowing green essence. Vultressant felt woozy, and as he sat down next to the corpse of the captain, he abruptly passed out.