I was running through the jungle, panting hard. This had not gone according to plan. I heard the griffator’s cry just behind me, already recovering from the last shard of stone I had pounded into its shoulder. I was out of projectiles and couldn’t afford to let this thing close the gap to try and use a close combat attack. I felt blood pouring out of the gash in my side. I couldn’t even spare a second to heal. My only hope was reaching the beach.

What kind of predator takes on a ramhog? I was finding out the answer to that question the hard way. The guards had not described it in sufficient detail. One part panther, one part velociraptor, a griffator was a concentrated murder machine. My mistake had been treating it like a vipis, which hunted by way of sound. A griffator hunted with smell, and I had stupidly been upwind of my bait.

The creature had a distinctly junglecat-style shape to it, but the claws were reminiscent of a raptor’s talons, and the snout was distinctly dinosaur, as were the razor-sharp teeth within. It had no external ears, which should have clued me off that it didn’t hunt predominantly from sound, and had intense, focused, falcon-like eyes. It was covered in soft-looking feathers, not flight feathers but the softer looking feathers of an emu, or–more accurately–like the dinosaur feathers I had once seen pictured online back on Earth, which had been discovered trapped in amber.

I had no idea where Treepo was, but at the moment I couldn’t worry about him. I could see light through the trees ahead, and hear the ocean. I might yet survive, if I could just–

The griffator’s screech was right behind me. It was too close. I might not make it.

I dove, feeling the talons scrape the back of my head as it barely missed its attack, and cast a huge blast of wind, pushing the beast well beyond its intended landing point and into the water. I rushed forward and shoved my hand in the water, strengthening the connection, and focused on forcing a jet of water into the throat and lungs of the horrifying predator. It surfaced, gagging and retching, and I summoned an orb of water around its head. It splashed at the water in a panic, trying to swim up and surface as though it were still underwater, unable to figure out why it couldn’t get air. I finally exhaled when it slumped, drowned.

“Shit,” I muttered, hearing the guard atop the wall. I quickly cast an invisibility illusion over myself, and watched him sight the creature in the water. He spun and raced back up the top of the wall, presumably going to notify his commanding officers about the griffator.

I glanced at the corpse floating in the water. I wanted to add it to my inventory, but the guard had seen it, so I better leave it. It was a bit big to carry in my inventory, anyway. I would have to lay low for a while until the guards calmed down; I just hoped the injuries looked enough like a ramhog that fought back.

As much as I wanted it for dismantling, I wanted one as a familiar even more. That thing was dangerous and scary, but I was already imagining having one under my command and how much easier it would be to rake in the experience. Maybe one day.

I fell back to the treeline, sitting and panting for a minute, and Treepo emerged, bloody but alive, and crawled directly into my lap. The griffator had bit off half of his tail. “Sorry buddy,” I said, petting the sad-looking treehopper. I lightly healed myself, enough to get the wound closed, and used a more advanced version of heal on Treepo, which consumed a huge amount of my remaining MP. I watched as his tail grew back from the magic.

Healing magic had the potential to be a lot more powerful than natural recovery, which was all that was accelerated from HP restorative foods. If Treepo wasn’t at risk of bleeding out, he would heal normally, and if he ate HP restorative foods, he would heal more immediately, but with magic, he would heal perfectly, including regrowing a tail like this. I had already, a little barbarically, tested out the differences with some nodmice.

I wasn’t sure if I could heal the same kind of damage in a human. The MP cost was huge for Treepo, and he didn’t have all that much HP. Hopefully, I wouldn’t need to regrow any of my own limbs until I advanced my 6-point magic further.

I glanced down at my shredded clothing, frowning. I was running out of clothes that weren’t in tatters. “Let’s wash the blood off quickly,” I said to Treepo. We had to get out of here before the guard made it back to check on things.

* * *

The griffator experience got me to level 9, which gave me a ton of skill points. I immediately put 2 SP into both 4-point magic and my inventory skill. I noticed the effect on my inventory right away; the change was an order of magnitude of difference. I had slowly increased my comfortable carrying capacity each time I added skill points to the basic skill, but my advanced inventory could probably hold ten times as much before I felt over-encumbered. I kicked myself for not grabbing the griffator, now that I had all this extra space.

I wanted to see all that I could do with advanced 4-point magic, but I knew from last time that pushing my skills to their limits would automatically assign my extra 5 SP into the skill, so before I could do that, I needed to assign my remaining points.

Taming was the obvious choice, but frankly, I was hurting for lifestyle skills. I wouldn’t be hunting in the jungle anytime soon if there were more griffators around, so leveling up again in the near future wasn’t likely. There were several things that would be more useful in the long term if I spent 1 SP learning new skills.

I got Bosh to teach me basic butchery, which made a big change to my metasystem after acquiring the skill. Having the butchery skill let me dismantle meat into a set of meat cuts, like round, loins, ribs, and chuck, although it was different for each beast’s meat. Some of those were further able to be dismantled down into steaks or chops or the like. I suspected each dismantling perfectly divided up the potential MP restoration value of the meat when cooked to whole integer values, and the cuts also stacked nicely in my inventory. I realized that if I could somehow share this magical technology with this world’s butchers, it would simplify many lives. Unfortunately, that would expose my skills, though it was a moot point for now as I didn’t know how.

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I also picked up needlework from Sharma so I could repair my own clothes. Needlework seemed to include a number of different stitching and tailoring skills, not just sewing but also darning, crochet, tatting, and embroidery. I wondered if some of these abilities used to be separate skills and evolved into one over time, like the elemental magics evolved into magic circles. As always, I had so many questions.

Needlework was also a necessary skill for stitching leather, I learned. I learned from Bosh that there was a leatherworker in town who would buy certain hides and turn them into leather crafts. He was a crotchety old man named Fergus who mostly did it as a hobby in his older age, as there weren’t many hides to work with in Mirut, and when hunters did bring in ramhog hides they tended to be cut up pretty badly by swords. Facilitated by Bosh, I picked up a tanning skill from Fergus, which let me dismantle hide into leather.

I bought some thread and cordage so I could repair some of my clothes and craft myself some items. I converted some ramhog hide into leather and crafted myself a belt, stitching in slots in the leather to hold my stone disc magic circles. I debated impressing the circles into the leather as stamps, but wasn’t sure if that would work. I only tried using stone discs like this after seeing Sharma’s locket, and it kept working so I hadn’t thought much of it. Metals, and precious metals, might work better.

I thought back to the enchanted items I had seen at the shop. All the enchantments were cut into metals of some kind. Between enchantments and potions, maybe it was time to revisit that shop.

* * *

The woman glared down at me, eyes narrow and suspicious. “You’re Sharma’s boy,” she said when I came into the shop. I quickly appraised her.

Belat Ragandot (Lv 39)

HP: 173/189

MP: 455/638

Status: none

EXP: 1294/3900

Skills: 4-Point Magic(++), 5-Point Magic(+), Brewing(++), Cooking(+), Enchanting(++), Horticulture(+), Inkmaking(++), Literacy(++), Needlework(+), Negotiation

I needed to get on this woman’s good side.

“I am,” I admitted.

“No children without parental supervision,” she said, pointing at the door.

“I was hoping to learn more about what you do. I’m thinking about my apprenticeship,” I said.

Belat laughed. “You’re, what, five? Awfully young to already be thinking about apprenticeship.”

“I’m six,” I said, stubbornly. “And a half,” I added after a beat.

Belat shook her head. “Boy, even if I wanted to take on an apprentice, and I don’t, I sure wouldn’t take you.”

I frowned. “Because I’m a boy? Or…”

“Because you’re a thief,” she said, scowling. “I don’t know how you did it, and I didn’t push the issue because I don’t want to anger Sharma, but I know you took two potions. I know this store inside and out. I’m not so senile that I would make that kind of error.”

I sighed, glancing at the potions on display. “How much are these worth?” I asked.

She glowered at me. “One silver each,” she said after a moment.

Hell, that was highway robbery for such a weak MP potion. Of course, that only made me want to learn how to make them more. I reached into my pack, and pulled a small magic crystal from a rocky shieldback out of my inventory. “I found this on the beach. What would this be worth to you?”

I placed it on the counter, and her curiosity momentarily overcame her anger. “Hmm, a crystal of this size… I could probably get up to a silver for it in a bigger town,” she commented, placing it back down.

Now it was my turn to frown. She would sell it, not use it? And it was only barely worth the same as one potion?

“Don’t you use these to make those potions?” I said, pointing. “They’re the same color.”

“What? No,” she said. “I brew potions out of an herb I grow. Crystals like this are usually just turned into jewelry.”

Huh.

I deliberated for a moment. I needed to know what herb that was, and how to brew a potion, but I was sure there was a connection between MP and these stones. I shelved that last thought for now.

“I’m not admitting to stealing anything,” I said cautiously. “But I’d like for you not to be so mad at me, and I’d like to learn more about potions and enchantments.” I watched her face carefully. “I really think it could be a good path for me. I’ll give you that stone as a gift. Can we make peace and move past this?”

She scowled, but her expression started to soften. She picked up the stone, looked at it again, and tucked it into a pocket of her robe. She sighed. “You really want to study brewing potions and enchanting?”

I nodded. “I can’t promise that I’ll go that route when I turn ten, but I’d like to at least learn about it and see.”

I could see deliberation in her eyes. If I could do something to push her over the edge I might just pull this off. I summoned something else out of my inventory, and put it on the counter. Oh well, I technically owed this to her anyway. “How about I pay for my first lessons, and we can go from there?”

It was an obvious bribe, but it worked. Belat picked up the two small silvers with surprise, and finally smiled a bit for the first time I had seen. “All right, boy, you’ve got yourself a deal.”

I felt the familiar pressure of a notification. What?

Skill acquired: Negotiation

Ah, damn. There goes another SP point.

“Could we start with potions, please?”