Chapter 9
So far so good…
Its getting later in the day. And now I can be much more efficient than before. But I now have a game changer; a heal skill! And it makes sense that a ‘life wizard’ would have such a skill.
Its my first spell formula also! I feel vindicated!
But now I still have to survive! And its still not easy.
But already I’m having to think about the future.
Now that I’m level 5, I want to try to use my power for a stronger item create item to ‘summon’ or ‘create’.
But I’m not sure what it will let me create over here that will still bypass censorship? It had been quite demoralizing when I’d found out guns wouldn’t work a couple weeks ago.
And part of me is wondering; ‘will the system let me create machines?’ And if it does would it mean that I just would have to know how such machines worked? Or would I have to piece them together bit by bit, or just create the whole thing at once? Or would they be allowed?
And if I can do small machines is it going to let me create gasoline also? And I have no way of storing it even if it was allowed. And a good machine would probably use too much mana…
Yeah…
Its possible that it could require obscene amounts of mana to do something complex. It could snap my neck in half so to speak.
So creating a car is probably not going to work…right?
Or would it?
And even if I had a car, it could still get attacked actually.
I checked my mainstat bars after a small nap…
Health; 41/139
Mana; 181/651
Stamina; 61/126
So far so good, nothing incoming.
But my robe is looking a bit ragged from combat damage. I also need to repair it. This was my stats after 2 or 3 skirmishes already today.
Don’t I also need to make a house here also?
I mean the messengers from the other world did send me the deed to all the land in this enormous valley!
So its mine! I need to learn how to defend it properly and grow it also!
But if its too prosperous and has no monsters at all then other humans would try to steal it from me.
After my nap…wow, I slept longer than I should. Its almost 5:39 PM.
But already I can see a couple goblin scouts coming up the valley. They’d gotten separated from each other from their platoon fleeing a swarm of giant hornets. And that had also caused a few deaths among them also. Their platoon was reduced from 12 down to 3, not counting 4 others that had ran back the way they actually came.
‘So in a way the giant hornets are protecting me from the goblins’, I also realized. If that’s the case, maybe I should stop killing the hornets and only kill the goblins. The hornets at least have a sense that they only kill what they eat, but the goblins kill anything that moves, and then rub their feces and urine into it, if they don’t plan to eat it. (Sick and twisted bastards all.)
One of the goblins spots me as they got closer. He charges! (The others haven’t arrived yet but will soon.) Uh oh…
I blocked the blow with my shield and then slammed my axe into him (-27 damage).
He hits me in the side with his club. (I took -14 damage). But I blocked his second hit with my shield.
I used my minor heal to heal the damage on myself (+15 health). And in the same shot, I hit him in the leg with my axe and bounced back before his swing could reach me.
One more hit in the next round of combat slays goblin 1.
I managed to hit goblin 2 with a throwing knife. Then I hit him straight up with a power strike when he’d closed to combat range before he can get his weapon up to hit me. His arms are crushed by the heavy axe blade. I had to block the third goblin from sneak attacking me before finishing off goblin 2.
Goblin 3 didn’t last long after that.
I was lucky I didn’t lose much health.
I used another heal after that because I’d taken a spear jab also from goblin 3 before its end. (-30 mana, +15 health)
Health; 47/139
Mana; 121/651
Stamina; 46/126
Whew…still hurts.
…
(-30 mana, +15 health) at around 6:29 PM.
Health; 62/139
Mana; 91/651
Stamina; 45/126
A new monster was encountered at 6:31 PM.
This time a mutant snail approached me, slithering up through the grass from somewhere near where the brook goes down to the east and south east.
I killed it, but its slime is acid and had left a nasty burn on me. (-42 health.) I feel like I’m dying now.
This is why its hard to get anywhere. I got some juicy XP from the snail but it was pretty high level and fast also! (Monster snails aren’t like the non-monster versions.)
At the end of the fight I had enough mana to get back +45 health. But now I’m pretty much incapicated to need rest.
I took a small nap. Then I woke up. Now my mana bar is at about 110/651. Its only a matter of time before something else comes along. I did a couple of heals but saved some mana.
And my build sure is weird. I’m supposed to be a life wizard but it seems like a lot of what I’m doing is a mixed bag. There must be an explanation for it. Maybe it has something to do with the censorship thing that I’ve been going through.
I created a hair spray cannister (full of course) around 7:45 PM. This cost me -80 mana. Because it was complex, it took a lot of mana, but being small that reduced it also.
And a lighter was created at around 7:47 PM to help me combine the two into a flame thrower unit.
I’m lucky I had this thing ready.
I easily used it do dispatch a goblin in a flaming inferno, at 6:49 PM, only just barely after I’d acquired the piece. And shortly after that I used it to kill a mutant snail, and then another mutant snail after that.
I also wonder if I can duplicate this process of infusing mana into the chemical process to capture it into a spell?
Tomorrow I’ll practice doing it this way. And I believe I’ll have the extra mana to do so, because the flame thrower, simple unit, is also so harsh to approach that its forcing monsters to stay away from me, and even be forced back! This is saving my health literally.
…
Within 2 days I no longer feel chronically sick as I’d gotten my health bar above 90 for the first time in over a week.
I practiced using the flame thrower unit, with mana infusion for a few days. But by the third day I ran into trouble when it started to run out of gas in a small goblin raid of 3 goblins. Luckily I had a back up hair spray aerosol spray ready. But in switching to the other one I lost (-32 health).
By day 3 since using the flame thrower contraption I’d realized how lucky I’d been. The first few goblins come up this way had been mostly rejects. And for some reason now I’ve been running into stronger goblins. Some of them took over 200 or 300 health damage before they died. And when they had more health this meant that they also sometimes had to take a combination of moves in order to defeat. Initially I tried to use the flame thrower on them, but then sometimes I’d have to hit them with the axe, or even block with a shield, then I’d use the flame thrower unit to keep them back while I went around again trying to create distance.
By the end of the fourth day this week, I no longer had to use the flame thrower contraption and had successfully created a flame barrage simple spell that had push back, to keep monsters away from me while it was torching them. This thing was also making me able to keep my health. (There had been some error code when I made this. I suspect it was trying to censor me, but I managed to work around it.)
[Skill acquired; Minor Flame Wave]
I clicked on the destription.
[-10 mana cost to use; burn wave forces back enemies and causes 1-2 damage per level to target.]
That bothered me that it said target instead of monster. I hadn’t run into any other humans, but I didn’t want to harm them. And it seems that the version I have is not very powerful. It won’t let me do a more powerful version.
The minor flame wave does a horizontal flame burst in a wave like arc pushing severe heat and hot gas outwards towards the target. The arc wave size and intensity seems to be determined by the strength of the mage. So it is useful.
So I have my first offensive skill? Nice!
I began to work hard.
I found that monsters were constantly trying to come up this way now. But I didn’t know the reason why. Mostly nothing escaped me that came up here.
Could they smell my mana?
Or were they fleeing other monsters also?
Or did they have rumors of a mage up here, with goodies to steal?
Predator and prey behavior said that the stronger monsters should be in the valley below by the lake and where the river system was, and the better hunting areas. The weaker prey would flee to more isolated parts like where I am.
But I knew for a fact that the goblins wouldn’t stop coming. And what I’d seen of them so far was mostly the low level rejects.
This mean the truly normal goblins were much, much stronger than I’d expected so far from the current strength that I’d seen.
This meant I’d have to build a fortress of some kind, I thought. I needed to build my way out of this!
It was odd to think that. And I’d never done something like that before.
Build a castle?
I guess I could. Well not quickly, but I could do something.
I started to hypothesize about how to start.
In theory, I could start just creating the blocks of stone and start stacking them in patterns.
But its also true that the more I built that the more I’d get noticed. Sooner or later someone would start to see a half finished tower or other half finished castle parts in the valley below.
So I’d have to start underground?
It seems that would be the only way. And I may even have to cover turf grass over over parts of the above ground pieces just to help hide as long as possible.
I began working right away.
I summoned a shovel, and a pick the same day. I began to cut through the turf of the meadow and made box like cuts. I even changed the existing pit to look more box like as I was cutting.
And…I began to work as I dug.
*Sounds of pick working in the earth*
This turned out to be pretty good exercise also. Several hours passed.
Before I knew it I’d also had numerous skirmishes while working to dig downward also.
In one day I’d killed 4 giant hornets, 5 goblins (from 3 skirmishes), and 3 mutant snails. But on that same day 3 slime monsters had approached also.
The slimes were strong.
And the goblins are tougher also.
But there’s nowhere to flee to also.
I sighed as I worked.
I’d stabilized my health now. But now the monsters were getting stronger.
Is it because its closer to winter that more of them are coming up this way, I thought?
It got to be hard to figure out how to build.
I managed to ‘magitek create’ my first big block of stone once I’d cut into the turf to a certain point. That wasn’t easy by any means. But when I had a week of digging deep enough that’s when I had enough space to work. I finally had created a room shaped cavity that’s when I did the blocks of stone.
My first stone block!
And I’ll do them one by one.
The stone block was too heavy to move. And it had cost me -150 mana to summon, create, whatever you call it the first one.
I was breathing hard when it was created. Fortunately when I create them, it lets me choose how they are placed. If not I’d never be able to move them!
I stopped. This is too slow.
Shit, -150 mana for that one block?! Sure it was big enough, but I’d need hundreds of those to make a full room! And then I’d have to go upwards also.
I need to get skills first and level up some more to be able to do anything. I’m going to have to stop for a bit until I can work out the kinks.
I need to try something else first. This sin’t going to work.
…
A few days passed while I experimented.
I ended up putting a temporary roof of cut timber over the pit, with the ends of the timber going into the earth on the sides of the pit. Some of these I cut down myself, but a few of them I ‘magitek created’. It costs a lot less to item create wood logs. And I can cover those with cut turf squares that even still have earth connected to the roots, which will let me place them in a way to hide the roof and have the turf still alive!
This is more stable for a temporary solution of housing, and to stay dry.
After I had a pretty good sized covering over the pit, I then spread dirt over the top, but being careful to have a layer of wood chips over the timber cut log pieces to prevent dirt from just falling between the log cracks and creating a mess. But that took a few days by itself, as I had to summon create the wood chips.
A week passed…
I had a pit house finally.
It was disguised with meadow grass over the top. And there was enough timber to allow for some pretty thick sod to muffle sound and make it look like there was nothing there. The sod was the meadow grass from the same meadow, which I’d ‘magitek created’ also. I technically didn’t need to magitek create that, but I did so in order to not disturb the rest of the meadow grass, and that so that other creates would be less likely to know I was here.
But one issue is that I had to have an uneven spot for a hidden door way with a ladder through it. This hatch was made of ‘magitek created’ wood, like a trap door, but with sod cut into a 2 foot by 2 foot section over the top with a hidden handle.
I’d also been working on wood logs in the walls to push back the earth in the pit, and also make it more homely. Its working.
If you don’t know where the trap door is you can’t go down into the pit house, and won’t even know where its at.
Still…
I’m frightfully nervous now.
In theory, the monsters should be able to smell me. At least some of them could despite the camouflage.
I should hit level 6 soon.
My back is sore from all the work. And I’m still not done. But I have a refuge. I can sleep better. And I can use this to hide in and avoid some of the monster encounters but not all.
Technically the next step is to line the inside of the pithouse with wood wall panneling to keep the ground from sliding down in (I hadn’t finished this yet). Of course I can salvage rock pieces and stack them but that’s a lot of travel. And travel means monster encounters.
And another thing that strikes me…
I’m pretty high up on the mountain. It has a strong view of the valley below and the surrounding terrain.
In such views, I’d never seen any chimney smoke stacks, or other activity indicating humans. I had seen sign of goblins and several goblin camps but that’s about it.
Tomorrow also I want to see if I can do something with mana flow duplicating the water in the brook somehow. I want to turn it into a skill if I can, any way possible. Water manipulation should be something that I can do or emulate.
But I also had failed experiments to duplicate other fire skills. It seems that my fire compatibility just isn’t there, so …karma, life, whatever isn’t letting me have more fire skills. I think its the censor, and it was letting me have 1 freebie minor fire skill only. And trying to push back harder to force another skill just made the blow back worse. One of the fails even burned me, but thanks to my minor heal skill I’m better.
I have also occasionally been able to save extra mana away stored in the form of ‘minor health potions’. With my minor heal skill, this technique should have become obsolete…except for the fact that any unused mana at full max mana capacity is lost forever. But the health potions can be stored forever, which is an advantage. So whenever I’m in danger of becoming as such I’ve been turning surplus mana into minor heal potions.
I began working hard like crazy.
Where I thought I’d worked hard before, now I’m working even more hard than that!
I tried to make a water magitek skill using the brook.
But its defective…
All I got was a lousy [Create Water] skill.
It will be useful if I ever go to a desert, but not much else.