Shit shit shit shit shit

Alright what do I have on me?

Kalan was continuing to launch firebolts at the oncoming goblins as Shelby began to fire arrows at them. Andrew stepped up with shield out and spear at the ready as he thought.

Spear, hammer, shield, armor. This armor did great against goblins before, Kalan should be alright, but his armor will have less durability. Shelby is wearing no armor and will probably die if swarmed. No grenades, but there's a pile of rocks, which is fucking worthless. Alright just going to have to tough this one out. Focus.

Kalan and Shelby both managed to knock out a goblin before they reached us, but more were continuing to come over the wall. Andrew stepped up and thrust his spear forward into the first approaching goblin. It struck true piercing through it's throat. He raised his shield and stepped forward into the next goblin, knocking it onto it's back. He saw Kalan pull his sword out of the rocks where he sheathed it and begin slashing away at the approaching goblins to his side. He stabbed forward again and again, fighting aggressively and trying to keep the goblins from circling around the two of them. Arrows flew over their shoulders and impacted the goblins as they hopped over the wall, one or two at a time.

He was able to kill most of the goblins with a few quick thrusts of his spear, but Kalan appeared to be having a slightly harder time hitting the quick goblins. They jumped and dodged out of the way of his swings. He still managed to kill a few though, and he was doing the far more important work of delaying the goblins and keeping them from looping around.

They were still slowly being pushed back, stepping back and around to keep all the goblins from surrounding them. The goblins continued to run at them, swinging stone daggers and clubs. Most of the impacts were bouncing off their armor, and Andrew was able to fend several off with his shield at once.

"They've stopped coming over the wall! I think this is the last of them!" Shelby shouted from behind him.

He looked past the goblins surrounding him and saw three more running towards them from the wall ahead, but no more were coming over it.

Alright. Seven total. Four in front, Three on the way. Two with Kalan, Two with me.

He struck out with his spear impacting one goblin in the chest and piercing through it. He stiffened for a moment as the goblin wrapped its hands around the spear and held on. He pulled it back but only ended up dragging the goblin along with. The other one took advantage of the opportunity to strike out with it's stone dagger and cut at the gap in his armor's elbow. The dagger pierced his arm and he dropped the spear and kicked out at the goblin knocking it on it's ass but leaving the dagger embedded in his left arm.

He quickly stepped forward and slammed the bottom of his shield down and through the downed goblin's throat before stepping back and pulling the stone dagger from his arm. Kalan had killed one of his goblins, but was still fending off the other as two more arrived.

The third was limping forward slowly, pierced by several arrows. Andrew threw the dagger at the first one, slowing the goblin as he pulled his hammer out in time to strike the one following closely behind with an overhead swing to the top of the head. It slammed face forward into the dirt as he ignored the impact of the next goblin's club on his shoulder. He swung out sideways with his hammer and struck the chest of the next goblin throwing it to the ground. He quickly curb stomped the first goblin he hit, finishing it off with a crunch before slamming his hammer into the other goblin which was already on it's feet again. The blow knocked the goblin off it's feet again and before he could step forward and bring his hammer down a bolt of fire hit the goblin in the face and it stopped moving.

He looked up and around, heart pounding in his ears and adrenaline pumping in his veins. The damp coppery smell of goblin blood thick in his nostrils. There were no goblins moving. Kalan stood a few paces away arm extended, a faint glow fading from his palm. Arrows littered goblin corpses in a line leading away from them to the wall. A swarth of goblin corpses laid out in front of them, forming a couple wavy lines following the path of their slow retreat.

"Shit! Alright, then. That sucked. How are you guys doing?" Andrew said turning to the others.

He started pulling the armor of his left arm guard off to get a look at the cut near his elbow. Trying to ignore the pain, as he walked to the wagon where they kept the extra clothes taken from the last caravan.

"I'm okay. A few bruises and a cut on my thigh, but it's pretty shallow." Kalan replied, joining him by the cart and accepting a piece of torn cloth to tie around his wound.

"All good back here! None of them got by you guys and I got a level in archery too!" Shelby called from the wall where she was peeking through the cracks at the forest beyond. "No more goblins that I can see out here either!"

"Good good" Glad one of us thought to check. Shit that really surprised me.

His wound hurt but he knew from experience that it would heal up just fine. He pressed a folded cloth to his arm and tied it on with another strip of cloth. He checked his log.

[Goblin level 13 defeated]

[Goblin level 12 defeated]

……

…..

[Goblin Level 16 defeated]

That was a lot of goblins, and no levels this time. I suppose it wasn't exactly a dangerous fight for me though.

"well. If everyone's alright then back to business as usual I guess. Though I guess it may be worth building that wall a little higher now huh. " Andrew said, surveying the wall only a few feet taller than his head.

"No shit we should build the wall higher! Imagine if they showed up when we were sleeping! If that’s going to be a threat we need to have much better protections, they just went right over it!" Shelby said as she walked back to the center of camp, satisfied there were no more goblins on the way.

"Okay, okay, yeah point made. We'll have a rotating watch tonight, and I'll build a higher wall tomorrow, put some spikes on it or something. But if we want to be better protected we can't do much better than this. They could always just climb up the cliff face, we're not exactly protected from above." Andrew said.

"Alright. Yeah a watch is good, and I know you like this place, but maybe we should find somewhere else to stay, a cave or something, somewhere we don't need to worry about goblins climbing up over the walls." Shelby said.

"I don't think we can find a place like that honestly. I know the goblins live in a cave, but I'm not sure that I want to provoke them again." Andrew said.

"Again?" Kalan Asked, "So your provoked them in the first place?"

"well, yes, I did. They attacked me when I was exploring the forest one day, and I ended up finding their camp after continuing in that direction. I also may have thrown a bomb at them. And killed a bunch of them. I'm not particularly proud of it, but I was kind of thinking of this as a game at the time. I'd really rather leave them alone." said Andrew.

"Well if they're going to continue to attack us at night then we're going to have to deal with them one way or another. If you really pissed them off that badly I bet they keep coming to try and take you out. They certainly didn't seem to value their lives much." Shelby said.

"Alright how about this." Kalan stepped between them, "We go back to normal, post watches at night and continue to practice. If the goblins attack again, we go after them and remove the problem, if they don't we get good practice at keeping vigilant. When we rescue more people from the next caravan watches will get easier. How does that sound?"

……

Shelby and Andrew shared a look, before turning back to Kalan.

"Yeah, that sounds alright."

"I can deal with that"

They answered at the same time, and Andrew could feel the tension bleed from the room.

"Well alright then, shall we return to dinner?" Andrew said with forced levity, walking back to the stewpot and removing more of his armor.

The others agreed and they quietly returned to skewering the remaining pieces of meat and vegetables before retiring for the night. Andrew volunteered for first watch

He spent most of the time watching the wall ahead of him and sitting as still as possible, listening to the forest outside, trying to determine if that shift in the bushes was a goblin sneaking up on them or just an animal moving through the forest. He took a break from listening every once in a while to carve runes into a river stone. He carved four circles on the stone, a delay stone, a fire stone, an air stone and an earth stone. The most effective explosive he had tested so far.

I won't be caught off guard again.

Andrew kept watch until his hands were numb from the strain of carving rock and his eyes were drooping uncontrollably. He shook Shelby gently awake and had her take over as he laid down on the pallet and faded into unconsciousness.

[Rune Modification lvl 3-4]

[+ 1 Dexterity for performing precision work]

Andrew awoke late the next morning. Shelby was still asleep nearby but Kalan was up and practicing. Andrew watched as he swung his sword overhead down, diagonal up, raised his shield to block an imaginary blow, then stabbed the sword down behind him and fired off several fire bolts into the stone wall in front. He paused for a minute as he fished around behind him, reaching for his sword and falling out of his stance as he had to turn to find it and pull it from the stones behind.

Alright, maybe I try and figure out how to conduct fire mana through a sword. That really isn't going to cut it in real combat. I'll have to test out that siphon affinity thing once I finish the armor. Also, determine if affinity is different from the mana infused by my circles. Might've just gotten an ability that I can already do with a little prep time, which would really suck. Focus. Priorities. Armor first.

Andrew climbed out of bed, greeted Kalan, and quickly went about starting up the forge and preparing to finish the iron skirt that would be the last part of Kalan's armor. While the forge was cooking he pulled the wood strips from the river and laid them out to dry. Then returned and started to inscribe the earth, air, and water circles onto the chest and back plate of Kalan's armor.

He spent all morning hammering out and assembling the iron plates that made up the iron skirt of Kalan's armor. He finished inscribing the three circles in most of his existing armor during that time as well. In that time Kalan took a break from practice to drag all the goblin bodies onto a bonfire outside. Andrew offered to help but Kalan waved him off saying something about training strength and fire affinity, and so he returned to working on the armor.

Shelby woke up pretty quickly after Andrew started hammering out the iron sheets, and though there were some less than mumbled complaints she went about checking on her submerged hides and recovered arrows pretty quickly.

Right. Not living out in the forest on my own any more. Should probably look around a little more before I start on the loudest possible work I could be doing.

The day's work passed quickly as they spent most of their time practicing their respective skills. The icebox had more than enough meat for a few days, and Kalan had gathered an excess of wild vegetables the day before. There was a restless energy in the little valley, but no one seemed to be interested in heading on any expeditions outside today.

Andrew finished forging and inscribing Kalan's armor a little while after they finished lunch, and Kalan had taken to practicing with the armor on. Andrew decided it was time to work on testing out his second new skill.

He gathered several materials around him for testing. A couple large branches, three river stones, three of his mana smelted ingots, two of the hobgoblin swords and the crystal he used to power most of his early circles.

I don't know if this skill will give me any indication of what kind of affinities each of these materials have, but I might be able to find out by messing with materials who's affinities I definitely know.

I know that affinities for Fire, Earth, and Nature definitely exist, as I gained the Druid catalyst option for having those three. I can assume that water and air affinities exist as well, given that I can use runic circles to gather mana of those types.

Logically, if a tree branch had an affinity it would be Nature, the stone should be earth but might have some water considering how long it may have sat in that river. My ingots were 'mana smelted' which according to the skill increases their affinity, so they may have some fire affinity within. I can compare this to the iron sword which doesn't have the same reddish reflective property and so is probably a more mundane metal. The crystal is a complete wild card. No clue what affinities it might have but it's worth a shot. I'll experiment with the nearly drained one just to be safe.

He reached for the two branches first. He held one in each hand and activated the skill, trying to focus on the flow of mana within him as he did so.

He felt his mana flow into one of the branches, as though he was empowering it, but instead of trying to change the shape of the branch the mana latched onto something inside the branch and began to pull it out. He felt that strange ephemeral something flow through his body. It felt like the mana he injected into the branch expanded somehow when it leeched the affinity from the branch, but he couldn't tell how exactly. The expanded mana flowed through his body and down his other arm, into the other branch. He then lost control of the mana as it seemed to fizzle out, flowing like mist up and out of the branch, but leaving whatever that other substance was behind.

Physically there was not much change between the two branches. The one he pulled affinity from might've been a little lighter, the bark a little paler, but it was hard to tell. He repeated the process four times until he could be sure there were physically visible changes taking place. The branch he was pulling from had thinned down, it's bark was pale and flaking off into the wind, when he squeezed he could feel it start to crunch into dust in his hand. The branch on the opposite side was a vibrant brown. It's bark felt more like stone and he could almost sense the life in it. It had grown several inches in length and even sprouted tiny additional branches and a couple of leaves.

Okay, can't tell instinctively what kind of affinity is in something. But that definitely works. Skill seems to only pull a little bit over at a time though. Probably for the best.

He set the two sticks down gently on one side. The drained one still crumbled into several pieces despite his best efforts otherwise. He picked up the stones next and repeated the process.

He felt the affinity this time. Rather than a gentle expansion of the mana within the stone, this was more of a hardening. The mana became denser, heavier, it moved slower and though the skill was guiding the mana he had to strain to force it up and through his body into the other stone. He practiced siphoning the affinity again, but it's effects were quickly apparent. The stone that was siphoned began to weigh less and less, little bits began to flake off and it was losing durability rapidly. The one on his right grew in weight but did not seem to get any larger. The changes were harder to notice visually, but much easier to feel.

[Mana Control lvl 6-7]

[Siphon Affinity lvl 1-2]

He set those aside as well, and had better luck keeping the drained stone intact, though it still sported a sizable crack across it's surface.

He picked up two of the ingots and began the process again. The affinity pulled from the ingot felt warm, big surprise there, it also felt turbulent. As soon as it was absorbed by the mana it began to almost vibrate, it flowed into and through him quickly and he was surprised to find the mana already dispersing out of the other ingot. He repeated the process several times with this one as well, and struggled to slow the mana down and embrace the feeling as it raced through his body. After his sixth pull the quality of the mana changed sharply. He still felt the warmth, but it was heavy and slow. Similar to the earth affinity, but not quite as thick and stifling. He stopped after that transfer and turned his attention outward to the ingots in front of him.

The ingot he had been draining had lost the reddish reflective quality. The shine of the metal in general actually seemed a little dimmer, but it's weight was unchanged. The ingot he had been infusing affinity into now reflected a slight red shimmer at all times, even if there was no light shining on it and felt slightly warm to the touch.

Definitely transferred over the fire affinity. Seems like I started to pull something else out at the end as well. Metal Affinity? Earth affinity mixed with metal and fire? Is that even a thing? I'll have to be careful with this if I'm trying to get a pure affinity into something. I'll have to keep an eye out on a skill that gives me more information on the affinities if I want to make the most out of this.

He set the two ingots aside as well, this time without trouble as the ingot he drained didn't seem to visibly lose any durability. He then picked up the hobgoblin sword and the third ingot. He began to siphon affinity from the sword into the ingot and had trouble nailing down the change in mana quality. It felt slightly heavier, and it slowed a little. He was surprised to feel a slight warmth as well, but it was faint enough he only noticed it when he pulled it from the sword into his body. He repeated the process several times with similar results, though the change in mana became fainter and fainter each time he did it.

This one feels like it has no affinity to even transfer. Or if there is one there it's not one I can pull from very easily. Maybe it was easier to transfer affinities from an object I created? I still got a fair amount out of the branch and rocks though, and I certainly didn't create those. Might be affected by my own affinity. I should have good nature, earth, and fire affinities so it may have been easier to draw those in, though that would mean that there definitely is a metal affinity, and that I don't have it. That would also imply the existence of metal mana, which sounds pretty hardcore. Like a magical magneto, super badass, but also off topic. Focus.

The ingot didn't seem to change much from the transfers he did, and neither did the sword. It felt a little lighter, but that was negligible enough that he couldn't be sure it wasn't just his imagination. He set the sword aside for a moment and decided to transfer more fire affinity from the ingot he held to the ingot he already infused. Transferring fire affinity felt quick and easy and he stopped when he started to feel the heavy metal affinity again. The ingot was literally glowing now. It felt warm in his hand and there was a definite red tinge to the metal.

[Siphon Affinity lvl 2-3]

Now what can I do with this? Affinity implies that it will conduct fire mana better. Does that mean that fire mana I push into it will have a greater impact? Or does it mean it can hold more fire mana? Will Kalan even be able to push his spell through this metal, or is that not how magic works in this world? I'll need to do a lot of testing. Before that though, time to take a look at the crystal.

He took the crystal in one hand and one of the drained ingots in the other. It was the closest thing to an empty vessel that he had, discounting the sword which he suspected was less receptive due to his lack of familiarity. He activated the skill and was surprised to feel the mana he injected into the crystal expand, like the mana in the branch had. He also felt a familiar pulse from the crystal. It was similar to the mana pulses within himself that he had first used to learn how to control mana. The process was slow this time. He could feel his mana straining to expand and still maintain it's structure. The pulses of mana in the crystal began to slow until they matched the pulses of mana within himself and he was shocked at how quickly and fluidly the mana flowed through his body and into the ingot as soon as the two pulses lined up. It was by far the strangest transfer he had performed so far and left him feeling oddly drained.

He repeated the process twice more then examined the two objects in detail. He felt that the quality of affinity transferred from the crystal was far more dense than any of the other materials he experimented with. The crystal lost a little color, and was now a paler cyan compared to it's previous dark blue. The ingot now had a shifting green-blue reflective quality to it, and felt slightly warm in his hand. He felt strangely connected to it and if he focused he could almost feel the wind blowing across the top of the ingot where he wasn't touching it.

[Mana Control lvl 7-8]

[Siphon Affinity lvl 3-4]

Absolutely no clue what kind of affinity that’s supposed to be. Feels like nature mana, adapts to my mana pulses, flows like fire mana as soon as it lines up, looks blue-green when reflected through metal. Absolutely bizarre. Probably not something I'll be able to experiment with considering how few of the crystals I have. Good for the skill gains though apparently. Which feels cheap considering it felt way easier to move than the earth mana. Oh well, one last test.

He took his other drained ingot and his overcharged branch in each hand. He transferred the nature affinity out of the branch and into the ingot. At first it went quickly, the branch seemed overfilled and parted easily with the affinity. As he continued it began to grow more familiarly difficult. He drained the branch until it was a lifeless flakey husk like the other branch and looked over his ingot. It's reflection was slightly green now and it had a rough bumpy texture to it. It also appeared to have grown in size every so slightly, which he had definitely not expected.

Alright so fire affinity reflects red in ingots, nature affinity reflects green, earth will probably be brown or something, and air is probably whitish, just based off of my mana concentration tests a few days back. Which means this crystal which reflects green and blue is nature and water? That doesn't feel right, but it seems to match the other affinity color lineups.

That’s enough basic testing for now anyways. Time for the fun stuff, magic sword tests! I'll need to kill some time to let my mana recharge though. Just testing those completely drained it.

Andrew set his each of his altered ingots into the chest along with the crystals and closed it. He then grabbed six ingots and set them by the forge. He planned to first fill the ingots with fire affinity, then forge them into a sword and see if Kalan could focus his spell through the weapon.

He made it halfway through carving another four circle stone grenade before his mana recharged, and he set the project aside to work on the sword. He easily transferred the fire affinity from four of the ingots equally into the other two. They were now tinted red, hot, and lightly glowing. He then placed them in the forge and got ready to work. They heated even faster than usual and retained the heat longer, allowing him to spend far less time reheating them in the forge. He hammered the ingots together, then out into the rough approximation of a sword.

It was his first time making a sword and he spent some extra time on it, trying his best to get it right. He didn't have any of the materials to sharpen it, but the empowerment process would be far more effective the closer to a finished product he could get it.

[Blacksmithing lvl 7-8]

It was getting dark when he was finally satisfied with his creation and set it to the side to cool. He was sure there was another step in the process of forging a sword, he felt a growing dissatisfaction with just letting the sword cool in the night air, and suspected it came from his growing blacksmithing skill, but he couldn't place exactly what was missing. The growth of the skill was frustrating. For most it was fairly straight forward, when rune inscription leveled his chisel felt more natural in his hand, with adaptive weapon mastery he could feel his reactions increase and became aware of new ways to use his spear or hammer. With blacksmithing he gained some useful things, a better sense of when to reheat the metal, it was easier to predict how the force of his hammer would effect the metal he was about to strike, and he was pretty confident he could put an edge on a weapon if he had the right tools. But something about this last step was eluding him. He knew cooling speed had something to do with it, and he knew throwing it in the river would be the wrong thing to do, but he didn't know what the right thing to do was, and leaving it sitting out definitely wasn't it.

He forced himself to ignore the feeling and let the sword cool as he sat down to finish the stone he had been carving into a weapon. By the time he finished night had comfortably fallen and he finished up to the sounds of Kalan and Shelby complaining about preparing stew for the third day in a row.

He set the stone aside and headed over to the sword. It was a rough approximation, pointed at the tip and shaped like a longsword, though it had no handle, edge or guard. It was a slivery red and the slight glow was far more easily spotted in the darkness. He walked over to the cookpot where the others were talking.

"Hey Kalan! Wanna test something out for me? It'll be pretty cool, I promise it won't explode!" he said.

Kalan looked up from where he was dumping carrots and potatoes into the stew and smiled. "I suppose that's what you've been working on all day? Well sure, might as well, what do I do?"

Andrew explained the purpose of the sword and led Kalan to the wall where he had been testing his firebolts before. "Alright, now just try casting firebolt, but send your mana into the sword instead."

"I'll do my best, but I don't think I'm as good at this mana control thing as you are. I can really only feel it when I'm using the skill."

"don't worry about it, just do your best, and fuck that stone wall right up!"

Kalan obliged, holding the unfinished sword out in front of him, tip pointed toward the wall. His face screwed up in concentration for a moment before the sword burst into flame, handle and all. Kalan yelped and dropped the blade just as a ball of flame formed at the tip and went rocketing out into the wall. It looked far stronger than the firebolts he normally used.

Andrew rushed over to where Kalan was holding his hand. It was an angry red and he could see small blisters already forming on his palm. The sword was lying in the grass, no longer on fire but glowing stronger than ever.

"Shit shit shit shit! Sorry Kalan! Didn't know it would do that! Shit! Sorry! Here put it in the river, quick!"

Andrew led him over to the river, continuing to apologize despite Kalan's repeated assurances that it was fine and "worth it in the name of science".

Shelby approached behind them with cloth strips and ice from the freeze bowl and gave it to Kalan to squeeze.

"I believe I heard you promise it wouldn't explode, like, five minutes ago over by the fire. And yet here we are, with a burnt up Kalan." Shelby said.

"Well, in my defense it wasn't supposed to do that. Just, you know, transfer a lot of fire mana really quickly. How was I supposed to know that would make a lot of actual fire? I almost always know when something is really going to explode. Sorry again Kalan."

"Well, you should probably be doing the testing on yourself from now on. We don't have nearly as much vitality as you do you know." Shelby said.

"Definitely. Anything I give to you guys to test from now on will be tested on me first. Besides, that one worked great! Other than the whole, bursting into flames thing, it did exactly as intended! That was a hell of a fireball Kalan. Oh and sorry by the way, but, I mean, I know exactly how to fix it now! By this time tomorrow you'll have a totally legit, fire spewing, magic sword. And it won't even burn you up or anything." Andrew said.

"It's fine, it's fine, shut up already. Besides you heal really fast in this world anyways. I'm sure it'll be just fine by tomorrow. Hurts like hell right now though. Damn, that was some strong fire. The second my spell started up that sword went right up. If you can get that working right I bet I could handle a wave of those goblins by myself. Didn't take any more mana to make that big fireball than a normal firebolt, and I even got a skill out of it. [Kindle Weapon]." Kalan said, hunched over the river with his hand submerged. "It even gave me a point of intelligence and wisdom for creating it and everything."

"Oh hey! That's good! That's good! All the skills I've created that give two points are like, extra specialized. I bet that'll be super handy for when you pick out your class!" Andrew said.

"Why do I feel like you're trying really hard to put a positive spin on this?" Shelby said.

"I'm definitely not! I'm just excited for the increasing strength of a team member."

And my fucking sword worked! I mean yeah it burned Kalan, but it worked! Fucking magic sword! I haven't even empowered it yet! Fuck yes! Sorry Kalan.

"Absolutely no ulterior motives here!" Andrew said.

Now I just need to figure out how to keep it from burning whoever tries to use it.