[Performance assessed]

[Skills demonstrated:]

[Endurance - Basic→Common, Upgradable. 1/10]

[Ability to push the body past its limits, through pain, fatigue, and damage. Decreases physiological effects of pain, lowers perception of pain, slightly increases bodies resilience]

[Mana Control - Uncommon, Upgradeable. 3/10]

[Ability to influence mana through force of will. Increases responsiveness of personal mana.

[Titles acquired (4)! Complete round to claim.]

Ari considered his notifications as he swished some water around in his mouth, idly.

The Endurance should make me a little harder to hurt and give me a little more stamina, which will be helpful. Mana control should be useful too in clearing out the rest of this gunk, but those are just a bonus. The real prize is cleaning up this body. Everywhere I can get mana flowing will be stronger than baseline human when it heals, and when i’m able to circulate completely, that will open up some more options. I just need to…

His train of thought was cut off when his gut rebelled and he spat out the water and retched, glad for his empty stomach as he dry heaved, hunched over the cold stone floor.

There we go. Shock response is working as expected.

He brought himself to his feet, and the stench hit him all at once. The acrid smoke produced by his stagnant mana boiling off smelled of death, rot, and something sharp. Lactic acid, maybe? That was new.

I need to clear out of here for a bit. I can feel a draft coming from somewhere, so the smell should go away. Probably. I'm going to need to wait for my focus to come back to take a stab at opening another channel, so that makes it time to start working at the objectives.

[Secondary Objectives:

-Slay 40 Monsters (4/40)

-Earn a Skill

-Defeat the Area Boss]

I didn’t manage to finish any of the secondaries last time. Let's see how far we can get.

*********

Ari had been walking for a few hours now. He stepped quietly, but not unduly so. He had faith in his long practiced ability to know when he was being hunted.

The forest was beautiful in the way only unspoiled nature can be. The sun, slowly creeping down towards the horizon dappled the ground as it passed through countless branches that were swaying in the breeze. The world smelled of pine, cedar, and damp earth, and the air was fresh and cool on his skin.

He knew the human race was counting on him. Intellectually, he knew that as well as he knew his own name. But that was far away, a distant threat, and he couldn't do anything more about it than he already was. At the moment, all he could do was relish the almost long-forgotten feeling of not being in mortal danger. He was alive, would be for the foreseeable future, and was taking a walk through a beautiful forest. Who could ask for more than that?

Every hundred steps, he would take a moment to cut a mark in a nearby tree, trying to map out his progress and ensure a way back. He stopped for a moment to lick his finger and test the wind.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Okay, the sun’s over there, so still blowing southwest.

He took another hundred steps.

Southwest.

Another hundred.

Southwest.

Another.

Southeast. Wait, what?

He backtracked a hundred paces, and spent the next few minutes tracking up and down this stretch of forest, trying to find the exact spot where it transitioned. He couldn't manage to nail down an exact line, though, and the area looked just like any other patch of forest.

Interesting.

He took note and kept on walking forward.

He only made it about an hour before being forced to stop again.

He sighed. I hope this doesn’t make me lose my place, he thought, as the four stalkers who had been hunting him for a few miles decided to make their move.

They charged in waves, growling and hissing. The first came galloping at his front, attempting to draw his attention away from the three at his back.

As it came at him like an avalanche, claws tearing furrows out of the ground, he picked up his staff and braced its middle under his armpit. The staff’s tip danced with his slightest movement, bringing his full weight to bear as he guided it into the charging creature’s shoulder joint, crippling it and sending it flying past as he spun like a matador.

The broken stalker’s momentum carried it into one of its charging fellows, tangling it up and giving Ari a few seconds where he only had two to deal with at once.

Luxury. Am I sure that I want to focus on healing this time? Combat is so much easier this time around.

He took a sharp jab at one of them which landed on its skull, likely concussing the beast, but then immediately missed the follow through where he meant to catch the second in the kneecap. Its full weight caught him in the stomach, and its claws scraped down his side.

He winced. Yep, I'm sure. He kneed it in the jaw, narrowly avoiding getting a bite taken out of his abdominals, and whipped the staff around his back, using his spine as a leverage point to pick up momentum, and slammed it into the Stalker. It didn't break anything, the creature had scales for a reason, but it knocked it away for a bit.

The fourth beast had successfully worked its way past its crippled fellow, and took a lunge at Ari’s leg. He hopped back enough to avoid losing a foot and launched a kick at the thing which had presented its head as an easy target.

It felt like kicking a tree stump.

“Puta madre!” he swore. “Forgot I was wearing tennis shoes. Holy fuck that hurts.”

The rest of the fight was a severely off balance vaudeville routine that would have made any drunken master proud as he spinned and lurched in an attempt to avoid putting weight on his severely bruised foot.

He failed at that, miserably, but eventually, he was left standing, leaning on his staff and covered in scrapes and scratches, and the Stalkers were all incapacitated or dead. The creature's claws had failed to break his skin, likely due to the upgraded effect of his Endurance skill reaching the Common rank. Useful.

They did only manage to land glancing blows, though. The voice of doubt whispered to him. They could probably manage to cut you open if they really set their minds to it.

He resolved to not find out.

He used his staff as a very poor cane and trudged over to the last living Stalker, the vanguard, the first one he had crippled and left alive specifically to Identify. A lot harder to Identify a corpse, after all.

It weakly growled at him as he sat down on the ground a few feet away.

“Yeah yeah, buddy, I know.”

He took a deep breath, and forced the mana in his core up to his eyes. It was easier this time, likely just because the mana in his core was slightly cleaner, but it was still excruciating.

The headache felt like a particularly aggressive raccoon was rooting through his brain like a dumpster but he held on. He held on through the creature's weaknesses, its habits, its tactics, and a few other meaningless tidbits until he reached the information he was looking for.

“Not poisonous!” he whooped, throwing his hands to the sky. “Victory!”

He promptly made the decision to butcher the creatures and cook at least some meat here, and not outside his base where he might attract unwanted attention.

Yep. A tactical decision. Definitely not because he hadn’t eaten in a day and a half.

Decision fully justified, he took out his knife and set about his grisly work.

I wonder how everyone else is faring?