Had recent crash from trying to fix bugs. Please excuse the mess while we clean up.
Chapter 8
The fight of my life…
…
I was pretty depressed seeing 5 giant hornets have come up for this patrol!
There’s no way that I can defend and take down 5 at a time!
Shit…
Right away they buzzed right at me trying to charge.
I deflected the first one with the shield, bouncing it off entirely. Then I kicked it away (-4 damage).
I swung the big axe harshly but clumsily since the axe is a bit too big to use well with the shield. I’m lucky that it still hit however on the second hornet!
(-26 damage; 2nd hornet).
Then I ran with the other 3 chasing me!
I ran and ran but couldn’t find an opening to strike back without accruing damage on myself through openings. I did bounce one off my shield, by luck. Then I managed to do it again, somehow.
At first I was headed to the woods, but seeing another creature possibly in the woods turned me towards the edge of the cliff.
Shit…has it come to that?
I ran to the cliff edge, but then whirled to stand my ground putting the shield up just in time to block a shield.
I almost missed deflecting that blow!
Then I had to deflect another from the fourth hornet. And then the fifth. Each hit almost knocked me over as these things are tough, and with the speed of their charge it makes them even harder to deflect! Their blows are heavy also, I almost fell off the ledge from the first one pushing me back so far (would have been instant death). Then I had to move to some rock outcroppings.
How do I even get through this?!
My stamina bar is dropping, but slowly. Each hit is costing me some stamina to block with the shield.
I realized I can purposely bump them hard with the shield on a deflect, to give me more time to do reactionary hits on the next incoming hornet! So I did this twice more.
I finally got an opening on another hornet! I hit it, and its the same damaged one before. I got in a hit (-42 combined total damage).
But then I had to deflect with the shield for several times in a row.
!
I became alarmed also when I realized that the hornets began to charge me in a formation of one after another in order to try to push me off the cliff and fall to my death!
I grit my teeth and somehow threw the throwing knife into one of them. (-11 damage). (Lost 1 throwing knife.) With the throwing knife stuck in its abdomen its flying speed is slowed a bit. But I don’t have more knives.
But then I mised deflecting an attack with the shield (-19 damage to me).
Shit! That hurts so bad. Current health bar now at 72.
It took about five more minutes to find an opening to strike back after endless blocking. My hands are getting a bit chapped and sore also from trying to hang onto the shield in high impact hits from the hornets.
I finally hit the same damaged hornet again, with a solid hit. He falls hard off the cliff, and is losing altitude, and possibly I’d hit one of his wings. If he’s not dead from my hit, he’ll die from the fall!
Two can play this game! I now realized I can also strike the wings of the other hornets even as they are trying to charge at me to push me off the cliff! And if I do it right, they themselves will fall to their deaths if I can manage a solid hit to their wings!
Yes! I can do this! My unexpected error at going to a place hard to defend will work in my favor after all!
My stamina bar dropped to about 70 after another minute of defending. More charges by hornets.
Then finally I saw an opening!
Shpleeeck! I hit it hard where its wings connect with the body, and off the edge of the cliff he goes!
“Yes!” I cried in joy. This is obviously a cheat, and its confirmed when my status screen registered a [giant hornet has been slain!] message.
Things got a bit easier.
But then my health bar dropped to 52 when the hornets started to get a bit smarter with coordinated dive bombing attacks.
I had to work hard just to not lose my footing when they also tried side snipe attacks from different directions.
Crunch! I split one of them with the axe. (-28 damage.)
Then I hit him again for (-37 damage).
By the time the fight is over, I’m wheezing and trying to just breathe. My body is having a hard time just trying to stay on my feet. It was a long fight.
My health bar says 07/131.
I’m almost dead, and so this explains why I feels o crappy. My vision blurred for a second and I almost passed out but caught myself.
I hurriedly use the first aid skill on myself, which stabilized my body to 11/131 health.
If I can only hang on until I can get enough mana to cast another potion create I’ll be OK!
Somehow I’m hanging on.
…
After the initial cliff fight with the 5 giant hornets I had barely kept my eyes open long enough to create another potion and drink it.
I spent the rest of the day just trying to live.
There was a skirmish with another goblin then at 5:23 PM. (I won…as you can tell because I’m still alive.)
But how did he pass by the hornet nests?
And when I die, who is going to find my journal? I sure hope some goblin doesn’t use it for toilet paper, or something awful.
But after investigating this and walking around, I have seen the hornets killing and attacking the goblins with swarms. And in some cases I see 2 or 3 hunting goblins killing wasps, or hornets, as I watch over the edge of the meadow’s elevation down into the valley trail that goes below us to the east.
I fought 2 more hornets at 8:23 PM. (-19 damage to me). But by then my health bar had been stabilized already, so I wasn’t dead.
By now I know that without my current high mana regeneration stat level, I’d have died already. I’ll continue to invest in that stat, which is perfect with my godly cheat item create skill.
Its now costing me -92 mana to create the minor health potion. And its giving me +14 health back to drink. This means it also takes me about an hour and a half to be able to summon one of these potions. I also have to go to bed exhausted in order to not waste mana.
I began to get desperate now that I don’t have an illusion projection guide there to help me by distracting enemies. The next three days I almost died over and over again as I tried to just XP. And its harder to watch for monsters also without help, when I have to balance that and resting also.
I’d run into goblins more recently. The hornet patrols have increased to two per day. I’ve discovered a third hornet nest also. And I’d found out there’s a huge giant honey bee nest that’s on the sheer surface of the cliff below me also; and when I’d tricked the hornets to falling to death off that cliff, it had woken them up to patrolling this area also.
The large honey bees are only about a foot long, but still fierce. They are easier to kill than the hornets, and also mortal enemies with them. I don’t know if these are hostile are not. Bees are a different kind of creature and a prey animals, so in theory when they are aggressive its because of their neighbors.
And I’d always been fascinated by bees. But still if they are a foot long that’s too much for me to study right now.
With the bees and hornets rivalry…
I’d figured out I can play them off against each other by bringing them to each other when one starts to chase me. If they see their mortal enemy while chasing me they will immediately stop and fight each other instead. (This trick has saved my life many times, as my health bar seems to always be really low.)
And its not easy to stay alive at night either.
I now have a camouflaged pit that I’ve been sleeping in separate from the big on. This new one is about the size of a sleeping bag, and is covered with logs, and then covered with dirt, with grass sod (alive) over the top to disguise that I’m sleeping there.
I hope I can survive there, but there’s a chance some things will eventually detect me.
Because I’d had to use mana almost exclusively for small health potions, I haven’t had any chances to really do much else. And by bouncing this strategy back and forth I managed to hang on for several days in a row longer.
But one day, after I’d lost track of time of how long I’d been here, I was relieved when there’s a ping in my system, showing that I have a level up!
Ping!
Name; Javen
Race; Administrator class (Censored)
Job class; Life/Creation Wizard
Level; 4 –> 5
Age; NA
Health; 31/131 –> 38/139
Mana; 36/641 –> 38/651
Stamina; 52/121 –> 56/126
Health regen; 11 per day
Mana regen; 72 –> 74 (hourly)
Str 30
Agi 32 –> 33
Con 65 –> 66
Int 101 –> 104
Wis 102 –> 104
App 100
Skills; Survival, Mana Sensing, [Censored], Summoned Danger Sense Turret(human shaped), Smash, Defend, Create Item , First Aid, Meditate, Axe Mastery
Traits; Memories have been censored, Blessing of the Heavens, Mana Genes, censored skills & traits, Life Affinity, Intermediate Life Affinity, Mana Efficiency, Advanced Life Affinity, Creation Affinity, Intermediate Creation Affinity, Intermediate Creation Affinity!
Unused stat points; 7 –> 0
Equipment; Leather Gloves, Wizard Robes, (Unknown type?) Shield, Splitting Maul 34″ Axe, Backpack, Coat, Throwing Dagger (5), Hunting Knife, Flashlight, Combat Boots
I need to get more tools and up my game. Its true that I’ve slowly leveled up, but its a form of bloody trying to avoid falling into the pit while hanging half in it metaphorically speaking.
I need to somehow create a game changer or I’m going to die.
I had also found out a couple days ago that the system won’t let me bring guns to this world. This was part of why I’d had set backs, because I needed to think of another way around this when I had thought that only guns would work.
But besides guns what else is there?
Crossbows and normal bows take mentorship to learn how to shoot, or skill books to teach you their secrets. You can’t just get the skill over night. And it may take years to figure them out…which time should instead be used to working up mana.
Spell formulas?
I wish.
I have to know what the spell formulas look like in order to create them. And I have no clue. So trying to create them with my skill won’t work.
I’m beginning to get more desperate.
…
Slowly here and there when not facing death, which wasn’t often, I began to experiment with mana and trying to simulate its effects. In theory, I could simulate patterns with mana that mimicked the health potions energy I reasoned.
To do this I wasted a few potions by spilling them on top of a tree stump and then pushing my mana through the liquid. I did this a few times hoping to trigger some type of status screen effect, which could be turned into a skill.
By what, two weeks, or is it three weeks, after Alice is gone I’m sitting there in the cold wind, face and hands chapped, and severaly chilled as I worked. Its kind of cold up here also.
I almost fell asleep after the second potion today is wasted.
Shit.
Is this not going to work?
But then I realized I could feel what the mana felt like as it passed through the spilled potion contents one day, on day 9.
Ping!
[System notification; you have created a [Life Wizard] skill!]
[Minor Heal] has been created!
[Minor Heal] skill has been acquired!
[System updating!]
[Error…skill censorship detected…rerouting pathways…]
Huh? Why is it saying that?
Is that thing saying someone is trying to block me from acquiring skills!
“Is this why I didn’t get any starting spell formulas?!” I blurted out loud.
My hands are so cold and raw right now also!
I looked at the new skill.
[Minor Heal]
The description says…basically similar to the potion.
I tried it out by targetting myself with the minor heal…
Success! The skill triggered and went off right as it should, though a bit slow since it was my first time using it.
(-30 mana, +10 health +1 health per level.)
Yes!
This is way more efficient than the potions also! This is fantastic! I have a first magitek spell!
I now have my game changer!