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Chapter 19
I couldn’t believe what Byxxel told me.
All night I kept thinking about it.
‘…create your first elf…’
!
Life wizards can do that?!
If I could…my gosh this is an amazing power beyond the reach of mortals! This is unbelievable! This is so much power of other creatures if you think about it! The excitement inside me is building.
So is that what a life wizard does? Bring life to this world?
When night came I tried to sleep but couldn’t because I was so excited.
Byxxel was able to sleep and just withdrew her mental projection image as she rested.
Now that I’ve had the two fairy slave rods in my coat I’ve started to feel their warmth. (Still haven’t worked out how to free them without harming them in the process yet, but I do want to. And they are healed up…)
I tried to practice the two formulas that Byxxel gave me at 4 AM in the morning because of trouble sleeping.
‘I can’t believe I’m going to create my first elf!’
I tossed and turned in sleep some more after that….
…
6:23 AM
I captured another troop of goblins trying to enter my maze.
Stress up! I sucked in a breathe in and out trying to control myself. Not just nervousness but also anger and the willpower to throw them down.
All goblins executed after being trapped at 6:34 AM. I used a variety of rooms and traps. And creatures.
Thank goodness its working. But I still need to keep upgrading stuff.
But then I realized there were a bunch I’d missed that had come in earlier, which are also tangled up. Those are in my traps but not executed yet. There were also an assortment of all kinds of creatures. I slit their throats also.
Free XP… yum.
6:51 AM
Another goblin patrol with a shield escort platoon (2 platoons total) enters the maze. It was quite a large group. The captains in this group looked highly intelligent as I watched them, which makes me nervous. That’s the kind of thing to avoid when they are smart. They’d probably thought that they could get in if they brought enough troops, by muscling their way through. And these troops look a bit tougher than usual, which adds to my stress. Some of them did cut themselves or their friends free initially from the traps near the entrance after getting caught in them. So I learned I had to act fast to distract the others while their friends are trapped.
But slowly they’d gotten bogged down by the full length hedge maze wall traps. I kept thinning their numbers.
Why is it they don’t fear death?
This time they got as far as my 4th room.
That bothered me that they could get in that far. Seriously. Yet on the other hand, I was relieved because they’d almost had me trapped myself at that point, and this group got farther than any other group.
My ris currency pile went up a bit. I also captured 2 health potions, and a poison potion (for weapon applying). 4 goblin shields acquired, but I don’t have a way to sell the surplus gear.
Nice loot. Especially I like getting health potions. And ris plus health potions together is a big win.
I was able to quickly reset the traps. I even grew a couple more trees to be place in the hedge walls of the maze, grow them up to huge tall size, and string rope vine traps in them. The tall trees with vine rope traps that are magic activated are really great, plus they are space efficient since they go up for the space they need instead of spreading out wide where I want closed in wall space of the thorn hedges.
Byxxell slept in and it was frustrating to wait for her.
By 11:23 AM Byxxell is up.
By then, also I’d fought over 6 goblin skirmishes. And it wasn’t even lunch time yet. Luckily they weren’t very big goblin squads. Yet they still come.
“No, no, no you are doing it wrong!” she cried.
Byxxell came over while I’m doing an experiment to grow a tree through magic from a seed.
“You think its wrong?” I was in shock. I frowned at her but listened.
“Yes! Absolutely wrong! You need to do it differently,” she fumed, staring at my work. She was even disgusted by it somehow with her astral projection or whatever it was.
“What? How do I fix it? What would you do differently?” I asked.
In just these five minutes I’d lost 20 mana for the experiment trying to grow this seedling. Its now 18 inches tall. I’d not yet gotten it to a height or thickness I wanted it to be at.
“You are supposed to use the magic rune for people, and mix it with the tree rune, to create a sapling warrior. Much more efficient. They can help more,” she cried.
“Eh?”
“Do as I said!” she ordered in her tiny voice.
She thought I was trying to make a tree monster that could move around and assist me. So she didn’t realize that she was giving me a free technique by misunderstanding what I was doing when she was correcting it!
Wow. This is cool. She just gave me an upgrade without realizing it.
“Here, re-write the code of the formula. Do it like this instead,” she said.
She writes out the formula in the sand. Its full of bizarre symbols written like a math equation. But I was quick to make note of it. I absorbed the code, while others would have struggled with it for weeks or months. Thank goodness that I had thought to make pens and paper already so that I could store the information quickly before it was lost!
I could feel my excitement pumping also to acquire this new spell formula!
This will create a treeman warrior, with this spell!
“Now copy that and practice it. But only use it on fruit tree seeds and pine like seeds. Not others. The others have a different formula,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“If you use the wrong seed… like a bad seed, you won’t get something good,” she said.
Hm…
“What happens if you use it on the others?” I asked.
“Hmmph! A mess that’s what! First work on this, before I correct more of your trash,” she spat pridefully.
I flinched.
She then went to eat, making me practice while eating my lunch. (~12:30 PM to 1:30 PM)
Will that work, I wondered as I practiced.
A sapling warrior? Like a living tree monster that can go around and fight for me? It has merits, I think. If it can be loyal. That’s a small catch that needs to be observed.
A few minutes passed while I worked it out. Sometimes Byxxell is telling me to ‘hurry up human!’
She’s mad at me for being stupid now, which is really frustrating. But I’d actually only been a life wizard a short time.
Wait,…
This means…didn’t she accidentally give me a third spell formula from this?!
I kept practicing the other formulas as much as mana would let me.
Later in the day I was surprised when I now have one of the formulas figured out! (~2:59 PM)
[Life Create; Tree Warrior Guardian.]
[Description; Life wizard skill only, will not work for other types of mages. Also used by powerful or high rank or high level dryads. Occasionally high rank, high level druids can earn access to the spell, though rare. Spell first created on world 2892838, but then adapted and transferred to other worlds. Skill creates a life element tree warrior to protect and serve as a minion for the life wizard. Life tree warrior will have 10 armor plus 2 armor per wizard’s level. Health of warrior will be 10 per wizard’s 2 levels + bonuses. Cost to create; 500 mana. Warning; living things with their own free will may act on that free will, if not trained properly!]
[‘Life Create; Tree Warrior spell’ acquired!]
Ouch!
I just realized this is expensive to create! It will really wipe me out. No wonder it said only high ranks or high levels used it.
If I create this now…it means I could be really hurting if other goblin skirmishes come around now.
I’m lucky I have such a big mana pool. I might be able to create one of these guys. But it will be hard and will wipe me out of much of my defense mana. But I could also see already that most people wouldn’t be able to ever create this, given the cost.
Still…it makes sense that creating a living thing that’s highly complex would require so much energy.
Can I do that, without leaving a chink in my armor for the goblins to exploit?
And not only that, I’d had to use a lot of mana today trying to learn the other formulas that Byxxel is trying to get me to learn. She’s especially trying to get me to learn the third spell formula faster, for some reason, and very anxious about it.
Throughout the day I’d worked hard also trying to keep Byxxell’s friend Styxa alive. She continues to deteriorate and its an ever ongoing battle to keep her from death.
I caught Byzzell crying in a corner, while hiding from me after we started to see Styxa’s body turning grey tonight after dinner. I tried to comfort her, but she’s already in the know on what’s going on with Styxa. (~5:23 PM)
Even an idiot can tell Styxa is dying. Even if I heal her, she’s still sickening. Its taking more frequent uses of heal to push back the graying process, more and more. I’m still keeping her alive for now…but how much time can I buy?
I tried to heal her and even gave her some ‘summon created’ honey bee honey. The smell is amazing and heavenly. Somehow the quality is also high.
“Where did you get that honey?!” Byxxel cried out shocked.
“I used create item for it,” I said.
“What…you can do that too?” she’s looking at me in awe.
“That’s amazing. Oh, I want some of that,” she said.
“Sure. I can share it with you,” I offered.
Her mental projection is slurping up the honey like a pig. “Oh that’s good stuff. High quality. I like you.”
Looks like fairies love honey for some reason. She has it going down the front of her mental projection.
I really want to make this thing happen with learning the new spells.
“Hey, Byxxel, why is it I don’t get a lot of combat spells?” I asked.
She stopped slurping honey like a pig and looked at me. “Isn’t it obvious? Destruction and creation are different. Totally different processes and themes. Of course a creation specialist wouldn’t participate in destruction, except on very limited levels. You are a life wizard, which is opposite of destruction. Your very nature is opposite and polarly opposed to it. That’s how it is. And that’s why you will only get the bare minimum in self defense attack spells.” Then she shrugged and is slurping honey again.
“But destruction needs defenses to block against. Tell me what to do,” I asked.
“Just build more. Build as much as you can. Create allies and level them up. You can do it!” she cheered.
Huh? She’s acting weird. But it was cute when some of the honey ran down her chin. She blushed when she saw me noticing it.
A minute passed…
She’s getting tipsy.
What…?
Another minute later and she’s slurring her speech.
“Are you getting drunk off honey?” I asked, eyes narrowing at her.
“HEY! I’m not a…dr-drunk! I just…can’t hold…my,…honey well…” she slurred. Then she belched loud through the mental projection.
I sniffed the honey to be sure. But I’m sure its not got alcohol in it. Its not making me drunk either. So this… must be something unique to either her or her species biology.
Oh wow. I don’t like the idea of a drunk fairy around. Too many ways this could turn into an accident. Especially with constant goblin incursions.
I then caught a glimpse of movement on the cameras (~6:07 PM). It looks like…
Wow.
A whole line of goblin combatants is coming up the mountain trail. They are still far down there away from me, down the slopes. But they are incoming, about a mile away, maybe two?
I ran out to try to meet them with my defenses. First dosing Styxa with a heal in case I don’t get back on time.
But briefly I had to trap a stealther that tried to ambush me when I went outside the maze.
[Improved vine trap!] I casted.
He’s caught, and then pulled up into the vines. And then I got another one right after him.
Stealthers are hard to fight. I don’t like this. I briefly paused to use my knife to slit their throats.
Then I began running down towards the one room of the maze blocking the entrance comes up through the giant hornet nest.
“EH?!” I stopped in shock.
The goblins are trying to mine and carve a stone staircase to bypass the giant hornet nest! I also see large big iron pipe sections big enough for troops to march through at the bottom of the hill in sections, that are no doubt intended to be the tunnel zone that they’ll protect while getting to me!
They intend to use the pipes to create a safe passage past the giant hornet monsters. That bothers my plans by quite a bit if they succeed with this. I have time to work on it since it will take a long time for them to build this.
Where did they get the idea for big man sized pipes? And where did they get them?
It did explain why things had been quiet for awhile. I mean… sure they’d thrown troops at me today but not in the numbers that they really could have used.
This is bad. If they can get the pipe sections in then they’ll be able to attack any time they want and sneak troops through safely without me being able to reach them!
I hurriedly casted several root traps around the cliff wall that they were carving out with stone cutting equipment. They have stonemasons working all around that area!
But then I saw their overseers cracking whips to make them move faster.
The unlucky goblins move faster under the whips.
I had to duck and dodge to avoid the cover fire of their archers with my shield up. But I’d still caught a glimpse…
There were slave dwarves working for the goblins!
Oh no. That’s horrible. Plus… dwarves are smart and know stuff. Them giving their power to goblins is dangerous for me.
I can’t imagine anything more terrible than having to work for goblins. For dwarves especially that must be terrible. But the look in their eyes is almost as hateful as the goblins themselves. These guys must be the source of the big man sized pipes that they are moving up here, slowly.
Ping!…
I was shocked when while I’m jogging in retreat I see a quest popup in my status screen to ‘Rescue at least 4 dwarven slaves from the goblins’.
I heard movement in the grass behind me!
Oh shit! Stealthers!
I ran and increased my speed to get away faster!
The speed behind me increased!
I sprinted hard to get back to my hedge area.
I’m too far from the protection of my maze!
My lungs began to burn as I increased my speed.
…
Whew! Two minutes later I barely got back to my maze protection zone in time. But I think the stealthers got away from my traps, retreating back down the slope.
I’ll have to work fast and hard.
The goblin siege efforts are intensifying. They’ve increased the numbers of goblin arsonists. And they’d brought in dwarven slave miners, and other siege goblin classes. They have an overseer class also, that helps the shamans keep order. I caught a glimpse of these, and they are the ones with chain whips.
Jeez…whips from chains, that’s awful. Not much could take that and live. A hit could seriously disable people, that aren’t tough like dwarves.
And they are building a new route to get to me, where they can control being able to be attacked.
Damn.
I stopped two more patrols within the next hour, that probably only had the goal of keeping me away from their construction zone.
Then I put down another line of improved hedge vine traps. (-60 mana x 4 traps). Right after that I grew them into full sized hedge walls with a bit more mana, and by twisting the rejuvenate skill. But that only bought me about 40 more feet of maze in an L shape that will be a new dead end for them to explore.
I’m getting a bit nervous.
They could seriously get to me if they finish that fortified troop transport tunnel zone. It will take them some time, but with goblins they have so much manpower they could push the time down to build it quite fast.
I practiced using that star attack spell on a few goblin archers. But it takes so many casts of that spell that its not really very effective. It took five casts of it to kill one archer. After doing that twice, I killed two archers but I’d been forced back myself by the goblins own reinforcements trying to shoot back.
I withdrew for now, and while doing so I already see the goblins cutting up their dead for the stew pot. That’s so gross. But they don’t waste a thing, not even the bones.
…
“What’s up?” I asked Byxxell when I got back.
After getting back from stopping the goblins I was a bit surprised to find the little fairy crying again.
“A-are you going to help Styxa?” she asked.
“I’m trying to. But I have to learn how to do so carefully.”
“Can’t you hurry? Please…” she said.
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder.”
“…” I sighed.
“You have 500 mana now. I can see your tank. But if you create that tree warrior, Styxa will die from you using mana on that instead of using it to spend trying the other two techniques,” she said frowning.
“I won’t use it on that. I’ll still help you. You can trust me. Just teach me how to do things better like you did,” I said to reassure her.
It still was hard not to get a tree warrior first, I was really tempted…but I held on. I also didn’t want this small beautiful naked fairy to die either.
I spent some more mana practicing that other technique.
Now I’m faced with 2 choices…
One get strong really fast and kill more goblins before they take over my maze.
Option number 2…
Isn’t as much fun.
If I can’t overwhelm the goblin attacking force, then I’ll have to pull back and move to a new spot. And I don’t want to do that after getting a small maze running, which took so much time and effort to build. Plus, the system when I got to this world gave me this land. This whole valley. I don’t want to lose that.
I’m feeling sick to my stomach from stress.
Its a hard thing to always be worrying about goblins, ALL the time. And their numbers keep going up not down. I’ve probably killed over a thousand goblins since I’d been here but more just keep arriving all the time instead of them leaving!
Its like…they are enraged and turned on by the idea of something to fight.
Could it be their bodies produce some kind of euphoria effect in the brain from the feeling of having a fight to go to? Its possible their sexual desire part of the brain is too close to the combat area of their brains also.
I began to practice the two techniques harder and harder while mana burned. These were the techniques the fairy had helped me with working on the code together. She’d also helped me practice also, often yelling at me in a tiny voice.
I began to be exhausted as I burned mana by the hour also.
And then…
at 11:32 PM, I finally got the second spell technique to work!
Yes!
[Life element spell code acquired; Life link!]
I clicked on the description.
[Life Link skill; creates a mana tether from the target’s body to the caster. This skill let’s the caster temporarily link their life to a wounded party member or another to keep them alive in grevious injuries or illnesses. A mana shroud is also enwrapped around the target cocooning it into a capsule of light energy in a stasis chamber, keeping them from bleeding to death, and preventing death, and other wounds from doing more harm. Heal techniques can pass through the Life Link’s cocoon into the body also. Note; too much distance between the life wizard and the connected target increases risk. Mana cost; 100. Intermediate level technique. The more dire the target’s situation, the harder it is for the life wizard to sustain. Reccomended level for acquisition level 20 to 25. Current ability allows for; (1) person at a time to be able to be life linked.]
Eh…no wonder I had such a hard time learning it! Its not something I should have been able to acquire this early! I’d acquired it earlier than I should also!
But why was I able to do so? Was it because of my high INT and WIS together?
Also, my origins are mysterious also, but not like a newbie wizard for some reason. This explains my mana tank being so large, and also why I’m able to do so much early on.
“Byxxell, wake up,” I said.
“Huh…yeah?” she appeared next to me naked from the waist up in her mental projection form, and drowsy like she’d woken up.
“I got the Life Link skilL!” I cried.
“You did?! Oh my gosh! Hurry! Use it! Please hurry!” she cried.
As I pulled out the fairy slave rod from the goblins, I was horrified a bit further than before.
Styxa is almost dead. Her body is now necrotic looking, and with putrid flesh. And her little tiny lungs are taking more and more effort to pump air, and increasingly more burdened.
Part of me is worried also. If I cast this with such heavy symptoms on her, will I suffer also?
And also I wonder what it means when it says I can only use this on one person. Will I be able to use this skill for like a buff or to increase my strength at higher levels, when the targets aren’t wounded? And how many will it let me do it with if I get it to be stronger?
“Nooo…!” Byxxell cried.
I cast the Life Link skill!
A huge sap of mana sunk out of my body. It felt quite heavy, and when the mana poured out so fast, I also felt very faint, and almost fell over, feeling myself teeter for a second or two, before catching myself.
Wow that didn’t feel good.
(My mana tank is now 20% full from having to work so hard to get to this point…)
Can we make it?
I steadied myself…
Now I have to make sure if it worked.
…
The life link spell worked and Styxa’s life is preserved! She’s going to live, but her condition is still quite fragile. I’ve linked her life to my life force. However, a side effect is that my own health doesn’t feel good because her state of being is sharing some of its symptoms with me. I feel like I’m wheezing pretty hard, and a bit sluggish on my feet.
The spell works. And it says I shouldn’t die from it. But I still have to be careful. And it is possible for my red health bar to take hits on it from the spell transferring damage from Styxa to me, to keep her alive also. So this isn’t a full fix yet.
I need to rest.
Oh damn. This is not good.
If the goblins come up here now it will be a lot of trouble.
I took a small nap. An hour passed.
Then I went and made the rounds executing goblins, wolves, giant dragonflies, rabid foxes, giant grasshoppers, grasshopper larvae, foot long mosquitoes, and all kinds of wandering monsters that came into my maze trapped. I also reset all the vines and fixed damage.
There’s always more of them at night.
Each hour I did that for the rest of the night interspersing like an hour nap and then an hour of ‘cleaning’.
Tomorrow I need to check things better with the progress of the goblin tunnel. That worries me.