We ran for what felt like hours, keeping up the fastest speed we could manage for as long as we could. The Nymph we managed to save ran along with us gracefully, seeming barely tired from the gauntlet of hills to ascend and fallen logs to leap over. Its whip bounced against its thigh as it bounded through the forest with us. At first, I was impressed, but eventually, as my legs felt more and more hollow and powerless, I was just jealous of its seemingly endless Stamina.
The Nymph didn’t just run with us, though. It led us. As we fled from the Infernals we’d left behind us, it took a sudden turn to the left, toward what seed to be a massive hill that’d be hell to climb up. But then it took us behind a tree, through a squeeze between two rocks, and into a tunnel that’d been bored through the hill long ago. Maybe it was a digging monster, or a Classer that used so Spell to bore through the hill, but the hole was still here. The Nymph led us through, and suddenly we were on the other side, moving straight through an obstacle that would’ve taken ten tis as long to traverse otherwise.
And then we ca across a massive ravine that split the earth in two. We’d have to go around it, I thought. A detour, but one the Demons would have to take, as well. It was too long to jump across, and too deep to go down and back up. But then the Nymph grabbed a vine that clung to a nearby tree and split it off, and used it to swing all the way across the ravine. We did the sa, and suddenly we were that much further ahead.
Over and over, the Nymph used its seemingly-infinite mastery of the terrain and environnt – knowledge of every tree and rock, of every monster territory, of every single shortcut that one could think of – to eke us further and further ahead. The constant movent and climbing and crawling and ducking under this and jumping over that only served to tire more, though.
The exhausting sprint helped keep my mind off the sacrifice we’d made to escape, though. I couldn’t forgive myself for letting soone die there, right in front of . Sure, I’d also left behind the citizens of Carth, but it was completely impossible for to have stopped that invasion. The Supre Hellion, the legions of Infernals – they were more of a force of nature than sothing I could have stopped. This ti? I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I’d just been a bit stronger, gained one extra Level, I could’ve gotten out of that encounter with everyone alive in the end.
Maybe I’d chosen the wrong Spells and Talents. I’d raved to Erani about Recursive Growth’s infinite potential, but I sure as hells wasn’t feeling that power now. And her Angelic Shield hadn’t been very useful in that fight, either. I’d known it wouldn’t be very good for a while, and yet I still convinced her to take it. What was I thinking?
I set my jaw as we ran. There was no use in condemning myself for my past actions. At the end of the day, the reason we had to leave that Nymph behind was because the Demons decided to attack us in the first place. They were the ones to bla.
My legs scread at , begging to lie down for even a mont. My ankles jolted in pain with every footfall, and my feet chafed and blistered from rubbing against my shoes. But I kept running. If the Infernals caught up to us, we’d be dead, and that Nymph’s sacrifice would have been for nothing.
But eventually, after pushing myself to a physical limit, past that limit, and then up to a second physical limit that I didn’t even know I had, I received a System notification.
Your Stamina has reached 1.
You can no longer physically exert yourself.
Imdiately, I collapsed onto the ground as I felt all strength leave my legs. I gasped for air, suddenly realizing just how out of breath I was. It was as though all of my physical Stats had left my body.
“Shit, are you okay?!” Erani gasped. She crouched down and helped sit back up.
“At one Stamina,” I managed to get out. “Need to rest.”
She looked around the area. We were still in the middle of the forest, but there weren’t any signs of Demons around us.
“I guess we should all rest,” Erani said, breathing heavily. “I don’t like being out in the open, but… Well, at least we have the Nymph with us to keep the nearby monsters calm.”
She collapsed against a tree. Both of us had sweat drenching our skin and dripping from our face.
The Nymph was still standing. I could tell it hadn’t entirely ntally recovered from the attack. I reached over and took its arm, pulling it down into a sitting position. It looked at , but I couldn’t entirely parse what it was thinking. I knew Humans, but the emotions of monsters were another thing entirely. Its large white eyes stared into , and its green skin, with its shifting vines and leaves, never quite seed like it was still.
I closed my eyes while I continued gasping for air. Before long, without realizing it, I fell into an exhausted trance.
I didn’t know how long I rested, head laid against a tree trunk with my eyes closed, but eventually, I awoke to the noise of a snarl. I opened my eyes and saw a Panther charging out from the treeline at us. Its teeth were bared and its eyes had an unquenchable rage in them. Instinctively, I shot off a couple Rays of Frost, freezing and killing the enemy.
You have slain Level 2 Panther.
You earned 6 XP.
I looked at the Nymph. It was obviously stressed and traumatized. It didn’t even react to the attacking Panther. As things were, we probably wouldn’t get any rest; the Nymph’s empathy would automatically agitate any animals or monsters that ca nearby, and it didn’t seem like it could turn that off.
Currently, the Nymph was sitting still, staring at nothing. Mustering as much energy as I could, I sat back up and leaned over to it. My Stamina was regenerating now that I was resting, but that didn’t make my exhaustion go away. Erani was still fully asleep on the ground next to us. It didn’t seem my scuffle with the Panther had woken her up.
“Are you okay?” I asked the Nymph. It didn’t respond or react to my words. I knew it wouldn’t understand, of course, but I hoped a calm tone and a little interaction with another person might help get its mind off things. I gently touched its arm. It flinched, but kept staring at the distant point in space. “I know it must be hard. Losing a friend, or a lover, or whatever it is that the other Nymph was to you, is always difficult to bear. And so is losing a ho. I don’t know how attached Nymphs get to their hos, but we Humans care a lot about where we live. That’s where we put our lives.”
The Nymph seed to realize I was speaking to it, and turned to look at . Its eyes were empty of feeling.
“I’m sorry I dragged you into this. I knew I was being hunted, and I stayed with you and took advantage of your kindness anyway. And I’m sorry that I wasn’t strong enough to take responsibility for the consequences of those actions when the ti ca. I put you in danger. I didn’t realize… I wasn’t thinking about that in the mont. I’m sorry.”
The Nymph tilted its head. I wondered what it was thinking now. Could it at least understand the intentions of my words? It at least seed a bit calr, which was the point of all that. It looked down at the ground and began tracing its finger across the dirt, making lines in the soil. After a mont, I realized it was drawing the riverbed. The winding river cut through the ground, trees and rocks scattered along the side. Every detail was perfect, each bend in the stream and root of the trees in the exact place they were in reality.
The Nymph had a wistful look on its face, as though it were making a true attempt to bring itself back to its ho. Every ti I felt like it was done, it would only go back and add more detail to the perfect picture. A vine on a rock here, a patch of moss there, tiny dots in the dirt to represent pebbles scattered across the dirt. When its fingers were too large to draw the details, it would use a stick from the ground, and when the stick was too large, it would use the sharpened tip of its fingernail.
Eventually, it seed to get to a point where it was satisfied with its drawing. Then, it put its finger to the area of the drawing that contained the makeshift table that it had been sitting at when Erani and I first arrived at the stream. It traced careful lines above the rock sitting next to the stump, and by the end, I recognized it to be the Nymph itself, sitting at the table, cheerfully laughing at an unsaid joke.
The Nymph put its finger to the rock on the opposite side of the stump. But it never drew its conversation partner. Its finger stood there, stuck in the dirt, shaking. I looked up to realize the Nymph was crying.
I wasn’t sure what I could even do. I gently lifted the Nymphs hand from the dirt, careful not to ruin the beautiful illustration, and turned the Nymph around so it was facing . Then, I leaned over and began drawing a picture of my own in the dirt. I wasn’t sure what to draw at first. My room in the inn back in my village wasn’t very interesting, and I probably wouldn’t be able to draw it very accurately, anyway. I never really paid much attention to my material possessions.
Eventually, I settled on the landscape of Carth, from the top of the clock tower. I wasn’t sure if I could do it justice, but I’d do my best. I drew out the city streets and the boxy houses lining them, the distant market squares and the walls surrounding the city. The Nymph watched, intrigued. As a monster, it’d probably never seen anything like this before.
Once I was done with the larger picture of the grid-like roads, though, I had trouble with smaller details. I found my ‘people’ walking the streets were more like little blobs, and the lines I ant to be straight were instead shaky and slanted. When the Nymph noticed struggling, it reached out and began helping with my lines, detailing my scene more accurately than I ever could.
However, it seed to misunderstand what it was I was trying to draw. Instead of the people I’d ant them to be, the Nymph detailed my blobs into tiny boulders peppering the streets. Instead of windows in the houses, it drew vines covering the square buildings. My roads were turned into gigantic roots protruding from the tree that it interpreted the clock tower to be. I guess it made sense; it’d only ever known the wilderness, so it wouldn’t be able to see anything else.
In the end, the picture looked like one straight out of the bard’s tales, a city taken over by roots and vines, rubble scattered in the streets. Even though it was a misunderstanding, it was strangely beautiful.
Eventually, the Nymph yawned, clearly tired. I understood the feeling. It glanced at , and then lay down on the ground next to Erani, closing its eyes. I was glad I’d managed to help it. I leaned back, too, rembering my exhaustion, and closed my eyes.
Before I knew it, I fell into a slumber.
I awoke to a gentle stirring by Erani. It was dark out – I’d apparently slept through the rest of the day and all the way into midnight. The Nymph was still on the ground, sleeping soundly.
“You doing okay?” Erani asked .
I checked my Status.
Na:
Arlan Nota
Age:
20
Strength:
12
Class:
Minute Mage
Level:
9
Endurance:
22
Class Type:
Magic
XP:
181/500
Dexterity:
12
Health:
126/220
Health/Minute:
0.0804
Conjuration:
48
Stamina:
102/102
Stamina/Minute:
0.672
Intelligence:
10
Mana:
530/530
Mana/Minute:
10.14
Stat Points:
3
Spells:
Talents:
Titles:
[Spell Choice Available]
Recursive Growth
Trailblazer
Ray of Frost 5 - XP 4/45
Ti Loop 9
Crippling Chill 5 - XP 4/45
Noxious Grasp 9 - XP 332/355
“Uh, yeah, pretty much. Health’s still only around half, but my Stamina’s full now.”
Erani flicked my forehead. “I can assu that much, dummy. I an outside of your Status. You feeling alright? It got a bit intense back there. I got worried when you collapsed.”
“Oh. Yeah, yeah, I’m doing fine. Sorry, got a bit distracted when I checked my Status. I Leveled up earlier and completely forgot about it. Got a Spell Choice and everything.”
“Oh, congrats,” she smiled while I closed my eyes to begin ditating. “While you get focused to make those changes… mind discussing what we’re gonna do with the Nymph?”
I winced, keeping my eyes closed. “Yeah, sorry. Guess from your perspective, I just appeared and declared what was happening with no discussion or information.”
“Yep,” she laughed. “Don’t worry, though. I’ve been getting used to that sort of thing lately.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not exactly sure what the plan is from here. I guess it depends on what the Nymph wants to do. It’s just… I saw them back there, fighting for their lives against the enemies I brought, and I saw that I could do sothing about it.” I didn’t ntion that my reasoning also included the XP from killing the Infernals. The second tiline, at the very least, I spent all my effort on saving them. “If the Nymph wants to go, it’s not like I’m gonna do anything to stop it. And if it wants to stick with us, I say we need all the help we can get.”
“Makes sense to .”
After a few minutes, I was able to open up my Spell Choice and look at the options.
Choose one Spell to learn:
Betrothed of Fire
School: Fire
Type: Toggle
Cost: 6 Mana/Second
—
While active, douses you in an aura of fla, dealing up to 10 damage per second, depending on how close they are to you, to any being within 5 paces of you.
Intelligence information:
If you choose this option, your next Spell options will be:
Solar Blaze
Energy Bolt
Force of Will
Spiritual Guardian
School: Divine
Type: Passive
Cost: 10% of your Mana regeneration
—
All damage you take is reduced by 5%.
Intelligence information:
If you choose this option, your next Spell options will be:
Holy Day
Parasitic Bonds
Flashfreeze
Gravity Well
School: Arcane
Type: Toggle
Cost: 10 Mana/Second per Being Affected
—
While active, increase gravitational pull by 25% for any number of beings within 30 paces of you.
Intelligence information:
If you choose this option, your next Spell options will be:
Ethereal Armor
Abrupt Decay
Stasis
It wasn’t imdiately obvious which one I should pick. Betrothed of Fire had obvious synergies with the Spells I’d been taking – it was basically a longer-ranged Noxious Grasp – but its damage left sothing to be desired, especially in situations where I only had one enemy in range. Spiritual Guardian would be interesting, simply consuming so of my Mana/Minute to reduce any damage I took. However, as a Passive Spell, I wouldn’t be able to ever turn it off, so that Mana/Minute consumption would be permanent. And Gravity Well seed like a great Spell to control a battlefield and keep opponents weakened, but it would be expensive to use, and not always useful on smaller or lighter monsters.
I read them all out to Erani.
“Which do you think?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. I was honestly hoping you’d recognize one of those Intelligence Information Spells as sothing we desperately needed so I wouldn’t have to figure it out myself.”
“I don’t think I do,” she said thoughtfully. “But just from hearing all of their effects, I’d say Betrothed of Fire is the weakest.”
“I was thinking the sa thing. If I’m up close with a monster, Noxious Grasp already does what it does, but better. The main situation it would be good in would be fighting a gigantic swarm of weak enemies, but I don’t see that happening soon, and your Explosive Firebolts handle situations like that just fine.”
“Right. So it’s between the other two, them?”
“Yeah. It’s hard to choose. Gravity Well would work very well with Crippling Chill and Ray of Frost’s Dexterity debuffing effects, but it’s Mana-intensive. It’ll be good against the slow and heavy Infernals, sure, but against any other smaller, more agile monsters, it doesn’t seem like it’d be as good.”
“Yes, but Spiritual Guardian’s lack of flexibility worries . Since it’s a passive Spell, you can’t ever turn it off. So even if you desperately need the Mana for sothing else, you’ll have to always use up so of your Mana on the Spell.”
I nodded. “But it seems useful to have so sort of protection for , right? It’s been a very long ti since I’ve seen myself at full Health, and I need sothing to keep safe.”
Erani humd. “Well, from before, when you were picking your Talent. Recursive Growth ca with the Intelligence Information that in your next Talent Choice at Level 10, you’ll be offered a Talent called ‘Regenerate,’ right?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Well, I don’t know exactly what it will do, but judging from the na, it probably regains Health. So, if you know you’ll be offered so healing in the future, you know that you’ll get another option to fill that role of keeping you alive.”
I hadn’t even thought of that. “Yeah, you’re right. I guess if it’s still desperately needed at that point, I can always look into Regenerate. So Spiritual Guardian isn’t quite as unique in its effect, it seems. Still, think Gravity Well is better here?”
“I’m not sure. I an, against an enemy like the Infernals, it’s obviously pretty useful, since they’re so heavy. Especially against sothing that jumps around like the Infernal Commander. But in the long-term, I could imagine you going up against all kinds of things that it’s borderline useless against.”
I pursed my lips. Did I really have the luxury to think in the long term right now? Gravity Well would be an imnse help in keeping those massive Infernals off us, and that was exactly what I needed right now. If I kept taking things that would only work in the long term, I’d just die in the short term. So, while Spiritual Guardian would probably always be at least a little useful, it was also likely that it’d just get killed here. “Gravity Well it is.”
You have learned the Spell Gravity Well.
Your next Spell options will be:
Ethereal Armor
Abrupt Decay
Stasis
I also went ahead and put my Stat Points into Conjuration. With the new high-cost Spell, I’d need that Mana more than ever.
You have used 3 Stat Points to increase Conjuration.
Your Conjuration value is now 51.
And with that, I was settled, a new Spell in my arsenal and so additional Stats to help use it.
“Now I’ve just got to get the damned thing to Rank 5 like the rest of them.”
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