Chapter 18 - It’s Magic Time.

I woke up the next day with a fire in my belly that burned more intensely than the one Edith had after eating raw eagle meat. And trust me, after that one he couldn’t sit down for the next three hours.

Unfortunately, we left the recluse of the cave first thing in the morning to travel even further east.

After the eventful rest day, Kearan had begun to show signs of worry over the travelling party we journeyed into Oblivion to rescue. Apparently, their location had completely disappeared from his tracker yesterday. Since they hadn't moved from one spot for the past two weeks, it was safe to say that their movement patterns would stay the same. However, Kearan’s nervousness was evident, and it affected the entire group atmosphere.

I wasn’t particularly happy about the decision to leave at first light, especially after Winter had hyped me up so much last night for the magic lesson. And that was why, on this bright and sunny day, I was sulking by myself in Winter’s saddlebag.

Cherry was enjoying herself with the rest of the group. Being able to fly as fast as a horse helped.

[Weak Telekinesis has leveled up! 5/5]

[Weak Telekinesis has evolved into Not So Weak Telekinesis.]

The notifications snapped me out of my thoughts, and I skimmed through them. It’d been a while since I had a skill level up, and an even longer while since a skill had evolved. I suppose it took longer for skills to level up when I didn’t do anything groundbreakingly inventive with them. The most probable reason why ‘Super Duper Weak Telekinesis’ had evolved so quickly at that time was because I used two ‘hands’ at the same time. This system’s rewarding methods weren’t exactly unpredictable.

Regardless of that, I called out my status window to check out the new skill when a certain something caught my eye.

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Winston June

Title: L’Der Potato (Stage 1)

Race: Potato

Path: Path to Potato Godhood

Faith: 100 (Path Quest Available!)

Xera: 100/100

Path Skills:

[Divine Being] (Passive) {Maxed} [Xera Transfer] (Active) {1/10} [Potato God’s Eye] (Passive) {Maxed}

L’Der Skills:

[Set Quest] (Active) {N/A}

Race Skills:

[Germinate] (Active) {6/30} [Potato Battery] (Passive) {4/40}

Misc. Skills:

[Mind Speech] (Active) {11/20} [Not So Weak Telekinesis] (Active) {1/5} [Area Of Awareness] (Passive) {15/25}

___________________________________________

Next to the hundred beside faith were the words ‘Path Quest Available!’

‘Path quest?’ I muttered to myself, then remembered that my skill ‘Divine Being’ could generate path quests upon reaching a certain number of faith. However, I still didn’t understand one thing. Why did my faith increase? I hadn’t done anything praiseworthy after the boar incident, so there was no reason why they would trust me more.

I furrowed my brow in thought. The way they had been treating me had changed, if only by a little. When I first met them, they would rarely talk to me. But now, I felt like a part of the group. At least somewhat. Even if they didn’t totally respect me, they still accepted me as a being, not just as a food source.

Lifting up the flap of the saddle bag, I glanced at Winter’s status window.

___________________________________________

Winter Hina

Level: 34

Type: Gifted

Class: Swordswoman

Path: N/A

Applied Faith: 31

Combat Power: 7013%

___________________________________________

Thirty one applied faith. That was triple what it’d been when I woke up. Her combat power had reduced as well. Was it because she was getting weaker? Or was I becoming stronger? Something told me it was the latter.

I let the flap fall, returning to the darkness before opening the skill window for ‘Divine Being’.

___________________________________________

Divine Being

Lvl: 1 (Maxed)

Category: Class

Type: Passive

Faith Buffs (General): -10% time needed to level up skills, +10% strength for active skills, 10% xera reduction on active skills, assortment of special benefits to skills

Faith needed to rank up: 200

Faith needed to generate path quest: 500 (1 Available)

Enables the L’Der to gain {Faith}. {Faith} is a unit that determines when path progression quests can be generated. {Faith} will also enable the L’Der to rank up, which may lead to unlocking new skills. The L’Der with {Divine Being} gains {Faith} whenever a Gifted places their trust in them. As trust grows, the amount of {Faith} the individual contributes increases. {Faith} will allow the L’Der to grow stronger. {Faith} can be lost.

___________________________________________

Apart from the increased buffs from faith, nothing much had changed. ‘Generate path quest?’ I said tentatively, not sure if it was the right command. Thankfully, it seemed to do the trick.

[Generating new quest…]

[You have received a new quest!]

___________________________________________

Path Quest

Beginner Mage

What do you mean ‘Potato gods have to learn magic?’ Of course they have to learn magic. Why? Well… I don’t know. Why not?

Learn one standard element of magic at a Beginner’s level.

Magical Element learnt: 0/1

Rewards: Progression to next stage of Path + Hidden Reward

Penalty: No rewards for you.

___________________________________________

‘Beginner Mage’ was the name of the quest. A strange name, but fitting. I wondered how the generation of quests seemed to work. How did the system seem to always know my situation and generate a quest that fit with it?

I pushed that thought aside hastily. I didn’t need to know, nor did I care much. All that mattered was it wanted me to learn magic. And I really couldn’t contain my urge anymore.

‘Winter!’ I called as I popped out of the bag.

“Hmm?” She picked me up and wedged me in between her legs and Verity’s butt. Verity was at the front of the horse today. “What’s up?”

Resisting the urge to snuggle deeper into my position, I focused on Winter’s face and nothing but her face. ‘I know we’re not relaxing in a cave anymore, but can you please teach me earth magic? You said you would yesterday…’ I tried to make puppy eyes, but that would’ve only worked if I had eyes. Which I didn’t. Regrettably.

She sighed, and flicked her hair in the wind. “I think it’d be easier for you to learn if we actually stopped and sat down beforehand. I’ve got a bunch of cool diagrams I wanna draw for you. It’ll also be harder for you to grasp the concepts if I teach you like this. Besides, you can’t actually do the earth magic while on horseback. At least not at your level.”

‘Oh please, Winter, please? I don’t want to learn much, just a single spell would do. I need to learn magic for my path quest, so pretty please with a potato on top?’ Oh come on, everyone knew potatoes were her weakness. How could she deny me after I begged her with a ‘pretty please with a potato on top’?

Winter bit her lip and rubbed the top of my head lovingly. “You naughty little potato. Oh, fine… I’ll teach you a spell. But only one, you hear me? I don’t want you attracting every monster within a ten kilometer radius without even knowing how to defend yourself against them.”

‘Yes!’ My imaginary eyes lit up and I almost jumped in glee- then I remembered I was on a moving horse. Also, now that I had come out of the saddle bag, I realised my surroundings were very, very unfamiliar.

We had left the mountatinous region and were now in what looked to be a partly sandy biome. The ground had flattened considerably and trees were no longer a rare sight. But the strangest thing about this place was not the terrain, but the colours. The sand was red, the tree trunks were tinged grey, and the leaves were a greenish yellow, as if drained of life. Where had we travelled to? An alternate dimension?

I peeked out to the side and looked behind Winter, and almost fell off the horse in shock.

Only about fifty metres away was a literal border between the mountains and… whatever the hell this place was. Instead of a gradual change between environments, the two biomes were split apart by a single line.

Gravel on one side, red sand on the other.

For some reason, it gave me a strangely ominous feeling.

I pushed that thought away. It was probably Kearan’s worrying that’d rubbed off on me.

For now, though, it was time to do magic.

“One thing before we start. Each spell has a classification for difficulty. Beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Usually, the higher difficulty the spell is, the more xera it will use. Also, your xera purity will alter the strength of the spell. Xera purity is simply the power of your xera. Mages are measured in alphabetical tiers along with their elements starting with ‘F’ up to ‘A’.”

I nodded furiously, without realising how strange it must have looked since I didn’t have a neck. Winter raised an eyebrow and chuckled a little.

“Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get on to what I’ll be teaching you.” She said, “Since earth magic’s specialty is trapping, it’s easier to practice when compared to the other elements- especially if you’re a beginner. The only downside to earth magic is that you can’t do much about close combat and against airborne enemies.”

That was a good point. Maybe choosing earth magic on a whim wasn’t the smartest idea.

“The spell I’ll teach you now is what I like to call ‘snag’.”

‘Pfft!’ I burst out sniggering, unable to control my laughter. I guessed such a terrible name wasn’t unexpected coming from a person who’d tried to name Cherry; ‘Peanut’.

“What?” Winter pouted and crossed her arms. “Hmph. If you don’t want me to teach you, then fine.”

Hehe. Now that I was the one laughing, she didn’t seem too happy.

‘Nothing, carry on.’ I smirked to myself.

Winter gave me one more mock-suspicious look and pointed to a dirt patch a couple of metres in front of us and called out; “Snag.”

Nothing happened. At least, nothing that I could see, anyways.

“Alright!” She called, satisfied, and pulled out one of my e-potatoes from the saddle bag. After a few more strides, she dropped the e-potato from the horse right onto the place where she’d casted her spell just a few moments ago.

Instantly, the e-potato sunk into the dirt patch, almost disappearing from sight.

‘How did you- when- why-’ I stuttered, not understanding how she’d done that and why she’d used one of my e-potatoes as a demonstration.

“Hah!” Winter winked at me and placed her hands on her hips majestically. “Now isn’t that cool?”

Verity shook her head and sighed. “Stop that. Anyone can do that level of magic and you know it.”

‘Woah! That was awesome, Winnie!’ Cherry flew alongside us, drawn in by Winter’s braggin. Oh, and yeah. Only Cherry was allowed to call Winter ‘Winnie’. I had a feeling she was beginning to like the little potato girl more than me.

But Cherry’s next words made me do a double take.

‘I can do that too!’

‘Come on, Cherry. Do I really have to tell you not to tell lies? I thought you were already past that stage.’ There was no way she’d be able to do something like what Winter had just done. That was earth magic. Cherry could only do… plant magic?

‘No papa! I’m not lying! Look!’ She insisted, and drew out another one of my fully-grown e-potatoes.

‘Nooo! Not the e-potat-’ Before I could finish, Cherry had flung it into a patch of long grass beside us.

The grass contorted on itself and bent over to wrap around the poor e-potato, brutally dragging it into the dirt. It disappeared from sight a few moments later.

I froze. Th-th-th-th-this was unfair! Completely and utterly unfair! I wanted to cry.

Even this! Even magic, which I hadn’t even managed to learn yet, she beat me at? If I had hair, I’d probably have torn it all out in frustration by now.

Forcing myself to calm down, I turned to Cherry. ‘Th-that was great, Ch-Cherry! W-where did you learn that?’ I managed to force out. I hoped she didn’t sense the edge to my tone.

‘Thanks, papa!’ She replied cheerfully. ‘I bet you can do it too! After all, papa can do anything, right?’

Ahhh… I felt my cold heart warm. I just couldn’t stay mad at Cherry.

“Ahem.” Enter coughed very unsubtly. “As impressive as that was, Cherry, I’m a little busy teaching June right now. It looks like your plant magic is progressing well, though, so keep up the good work!”

‘Thanks Winnie!’ Cherry said in that adorable voice before zipping back to Kearan’s lap.

I didn’t believe my ears. When did Winter have time to teach Cherry plant magic?

“Alright.” Winter looked down at where I was wedged. “Now it’s your turn. ‘Snag’ is a beginner spell because of its simplicity, however, it’s highly effective in most situations. All you have to do is use xera to temporarily soften the ground in an area. When a heavy pressure is applied. It will cause the ground to sink and trap the object. At this level, it only works on dirt and sand.

‘Uh huh…’ I said skeptically. ‘So what you want me to do is use magic to soften the ground, and trap monsters. Sounds simple enough.’

I stared straight ahead at a little mound of sand about a hundred metres in front of us and imagined it softening, so that any slight touch would cause the entire mound to collapse. Each grain of sand separated, until they were only held together by an invisible force. Xera. A warm, yet icy feeling seeped through my body from the outside, circling around until it reached my core.

One word resonated through my mind.

Snag.

The sensation turned into intense pain for barely more than a second before disappearing. It happened so fast that my body almost missed it.

Without warning, the rhythmic padding of the horse jerked to a halt and frantic neighs filled the air.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked, my concentration broken. I moved to the side so I could see past Verity.

“No. Fucking Way.” I heard Verity mutter under her breath.

Peeking out from beside her, I could finally see what had caused the horses to stop and shocked the entire group.

The giant mound of sand had disappeared, replaced by a small, black floating sphere of… nothingness? It sucked the sand and dirt near it into it with an invisible force. The horses seemed terrified of it and jerked uncontrollably.

It continued to absorb everything around it for a few more seconds. Then all of a sudden, the black sphere collapsed into itself and disappeared, as if it never existed.

Whatever I had done, it was not ‘snag’.

But it was damn cool, for sure.

[You have completed the quest {Beginner Magician}.]

[Distributing quest rewards…]

[You have ranked up! Your title has been changed to {L’Der Potato (Stage 2)}.]

[You have unlocked the ‘Race’ skill {Potato Body}.]