I stay crouched, sneakily hiding in the shrubbery. I stay silent, my camouflage not existing anymore after I evolved into a mana monster. It’s been a couple of days since then, almost a week. I can't really tell the time exactly so I've just been counting the numbers of time I've slept. The cavern troll is eating the corpse of a mirage wolf I had slain before. Thankfully it wasn’t a stalker variant like before, but killing it was still pretty troublesome when I couldn’t tell where to aim with my shots with all of the illusions it kept summoning. After I was finished with the battle, I left it at the entrance of the den of this troll, which I’d spotted earlier before I slew the wolf. After that, all I needed to do was wait, and sure enough, the troll came.

Cavern Troll

A monster that possesses great strength and stature. It has extremely limited cognitive skills outside of combat but is able to rely on its instinct to overcome adversaries in battle. The cavern troll builds mounds in places it frequents often to sleep in. The cavern troll possess high Health, Power, and Speed with medium Endurance and low Mana, Intelligence, and Spirit.

The cavern troll is a variant of the troll species, and is often found deep in caverns with high biodiversity.

Full Health

Level 10

The identify, after being recently leveled to four, is now able to tell me information about a target's stats and its current well being. Unfortunately, its use as a way to track health is limited in battle because of its proclivity to take up most of my vision when first summoning it.

I smirk. Often people lower their guard during times of feasting, and I’m sure that it will be no different for monsters as well. A thought crosses my mind. Do void entities not care for their monsters in the same way a god doesn’t care for their creation races? Maybe it’s a matter of sentience, or maybe they’re hypocritical.

I shake the thought from my mind. No need to ponder the morality of the situation right now. Instead, I have to focus on the opportunity coming up.

I ready my iron bullet spell, this time aimed at its Achilles tendon. I’ve learned from past encounters that aiming at the neck is usually met with the monster, though wounded, uninhibited in its movements while also being not dead. The skin around their neck seems to be stronger than in other areas of their body, and I find that areas like their Achilles tendon seem to be most effective when trying to kill them.

I take a deep breath, and finally, I shoot.

The iron bullet flies through the air at an intense speed. Not quite the level of a regular bullet, but it’s starting to get there. Still, the force combined with the shape of the iron pellet deals great damage to one of the monster’s foot.

The troll roars in pain and looks back to find me already running away from it. Luckily for me, it decides to give chase, even with its damaged leg. Not like I couldn’t just come back later and hit him with another iron bullet, but this just saves a little time.

And so, the troll chases me as I run through the mushroom forest. I have to empower my legs because of my extremely low speed and even then, I only barely break even in speed compared to the troll. It runs at me with a massive rock in hand, the size of a basketball, and raises it above it its head.

I panic and try to run faster. Crap.

I didn’t consider that a troll could throw rocks. Oh, narrow-minded me. I forget to account for the most of the probable scenarios. I’ve been fighting with too many quadrupeds. I never really had to deal with someone throwing something at me and I got careless with my planning.

The rock is flung at me, and I grab one of the boomshroom caps on me and magically fling it at the rock. Not only the power of my magic has grown, but also my control. With this refined control, I was able to precisely hit the side of the rock, and with a big bang and explosion, the rock landed to the far right side of me.

The troll roars and flinches after seeing the temporary flash of light. It begins to run even faster.

I gulp, was that not it’s top speed? I think it just got serious. Aw crap, did I make some sort of mistake?

I push my legs to run even faster, and is somehow able to match speeds with the troll.

You have increased your Speed by 1

I dismiss the panel and continue to sprint away from the monster. I would celebrate the small occasion and my first increase in speed outside of leveling, but I don’t want to be crushed by this troll.

I’ve already tread the path I’m running through and I recognize that I’m getting close to the trap I’ve made before. In there, I’ve buried a whole bunch of boom shrooms and covered them with the sharpest rocks I could find, as well as my failed knife creations. Knifey broke shortly after making it – a testament to my profound knife manufacturing skills.

I continue to run as the troll chases me, and I’m starting to get a little tired. I have found no good way to improve my endurance other than empowering my whole body with mana, which is a great way to use it all up in about twenty minutes or so. I push on further and eventually, I arrive at the point where the forest clears a little, the troll monster about fifteen feet behind me.

Then, I begin to push my legs to their absolute maximum, pumping in as much mana as I dare. I’ve learned that overextending my legs this much can begin to leave some tissue and muscle damage afterward, so I limit myself from using it for extended periods of time. Healing magic takes up to much mana for it to be worth anything.

Finally, I reach the circle sharp rocks and take a big leap forward in the air. I am propelled high into the air – about four to five or so Aarons high. At this height, I may actually take damage from the fall, so I expend magic to wet the ground below me. Sure, it would be slower compared to just slowing down my fall, but it would also be more efficient with mana. That’s actually my main problem right now. Mana is the only way for me to get more powerful at this point, and it’s the only chance for me to find any solution to the whole divine vs void thing. It’s basically my limiting resource at this point, so I must conserve it as much as I can.

I land in the mud and my legs come out fine. A little painful, but not broken at least. The cavern troll is about ten feet behind me at this point. I keep running forwards, towards the fungal platform ahead of me.

When I set up this trap, I planned an escape route just in case the trap failed to kill the monster. I’m not worried about that now. My survival sense has improved while down here and I’m able to tell what monsters can probably survive or die from, unlike while making the trap when I wasn't sure. Behind me, I can hear the trap go off.

Five boomshrooms, and a whole lotta shrapnel coming from it. My version of a landmine in this world.

Regarding the shrapnel, I positioned it so that all shrapnel would move either directly upwards or to the center of the mine when the shrooms where detonated, removing the possibility of it hitting me. Unfortunately, I hadn’t considered what I’d do next when the shrapnel started to fall.

My arm got cut, and the shrapnel got stuck too. I grit my teeth in pain, leaving it in so to limit the bleeding.

I hop onto the fungal platform ahead of me, and underneath it are boomshrooms, which detonate as soon as my weight destroys the outer caps of the mushrooms. The shrooms launch me high into the air, and combined with my empowered leg jump, I was able to land on the top of one of the medium sized mushroom trees. I look down on the troll below me.

It has toppled over, bleeding all over from the shrapnel. I raise my hand and summon an ice bullet.

I have no spells in my arsenal that will allow me to kill the troll in a timely manner; I have to somehow make this battle last long enough for my spells to tick down its health. And in order to make sure the troll has no option to run away, I have to hit it in one of the only places where it doesn’t have the strong protection of its skin.

The bullet flies out of my hand, crashing into the iris of the troll. The troll roars in pain, clutching its face in agony. The troll has been blinded. I ready another ice cube and hold it in my hand.

After the troll recovers from the pain, it searches for me, locking eyes with a shadowy figure atop a mushroom tree. Not for long though.

My hand begins to glow with intense light which, empowered by my increased capabilities, rivals the light of the sun. I can even feel the heat radiating from my hand, warming it up considerably. I stop it soon, so as to not cook my hand.

The troll however, has covered its eyes, still sitting there on the ground. I ready an iron bullet and aim it at its groin. No mercy – especially not here. I look with grim resolve as the bullet hits and destroys the troll’s pride, paying close attention to the timing.

The troll flinches, and its last good eye is immediately hit with another ice bullet, rendering it completely blind. I let out a sigh. You’re finished.

And so, the roles have been reversed. The troll frantically runs blindly through the mushforest while I give chase, pelting it with bullets…

Mana Sight has leveled up 2 → 3

External Mana Manipulation has leveled up 1 → 2

… until the fight ends for good.

You have slain Cavern Troll LV10

You have leveled up 6 → 8

Your stats have increased:

Health: 180 (Void Breached)

Magic: 150

Power: 5

Endurance: 8

Speed: 9

Intelligence: 29

Spirit: 20

You have 8 unassigned stat points

I let out a sigh of relief. It was worth it to battle a monster four levels above me. I leveled twice and leveled some of my skills too.

I laugh a little. Am I perhaps getting a little arrogant?

The pain in my arm tells me otherwise. I remove the shrapnel while grimacing and begin to divert magic into healing the wound.

I recover myself and begin to use my magic to claw off portions of the meat. Most of the time I spent after evolving was used to build a little infrastructure for myself. I had a house built and carved out some amenities from stone. Just some pots and stuff like that.

After using up as much mana as I can, I use my mana siphon skill on the fallen troll. From it, I gain seventy five mana. It’s not much compared to the level of the monster I had defeated, but it will only increase as that skill levels.

Using the newly gained mana points, I levitate the carved out pieces of meat around me while walking back to my base at the bottom of the lakeside cliff. Mana is awesome.

My house is what I would call a dainty little abode, though that description may have been influenced by my bias. I used cut stone for the foundation, fungal wood for the frame, and some dried mud reinforced with wood as walls. The concept is similar to the idea of rebar and concrete, where the wood gives integrity to the mud. Not sure if it works, but it at least hasn’t fallen on me yet.

I snap my hand and a flame is produced, which I then use to light a fire to cook my slabs of meat. I’ve been working on a new way to perform magic, where I am able to load spells into a preset formation which is programmed to activate when given a certain stimuli. In this case: A flame spell, with the stimuli being my fast moving fingers accompanied by a noise with a sound profile similar to a snap.

It works, and it’s a step close to building a magic machine. Maybe it could be the basis of programming the machines to do a variety of things.

I also found out that those weird rocks that I found while looking for flint near the lake has a special property that allows it to retain and slowly disperse mana. I can’t really control how quickly it disperses mana or how much it holds, but it gives me hope that there maybe could be a mineral that could be the basis of some mana battery.

For now though, I am at an impasse. I need to level my mana sight and manipulation skills, which requires me to fight monsters. I need to level my stats in order to increase the control and power of my magic, which requires me to fight monsters. I need to not die in this cave, which requires me to fight monsters… ironically.

Point is, in order to do anything, I have to grow in power and capability. I’m still a juvenile, so evolving into an adult should be one of the goals I have.

I let out a yawn and stretch, while putting the meat on a slab of stone over the fire. I then lay on my bed, which I’ve lined with the soft fur from the various monsters I’ve fought. Underneath is a bunch of mushroom caps. Surprisingly, they actually lasted me for a good couple of days – no replacing the mushrooms needed. The end result is something that I could actually sleep on, and I lay down there, comfortable.

Beside me is a smaller slab of stone that I’ve cut out with my magic. A numerous amount of them actually.

In this world, there hasn’t been a single act of human contact in weeks. The loneliness and solitude… it’s getting to me.

I thought that the scorpion at the beginning was the worst I had been in my current life, but I know now that it’s not the dangers of natures that get you in a survival situation like this; it’s the crushing loneliness.

I let out a sigh, still holding the slab.

I don’t want to lose myself in this world. I fear that the longer I am here, the more I will forget myself and who I was.

Aaron Leum… there is no use for that name here. I am just a Juvenile Mana Monster.

But it’s still my identity, who I am, and there’s no way I will ever let that part of me go. And so, I have the stone slabs.

I focus mana into my fingers. Right now, what I am using is a spell that focuses large amounts of force in a small area at rapid speed, consuming moderate mana. I ponder a little about what I should write for today. For the past few days, all I’ve been writing was accounts of what my old world was and who I am before and now.

I think I should switch it up.

And there, I sat, scribbling away on my slab of stone, in my own humble home. The noise of tiny chunks being chipped off of stone could be easily heard. On the slab was the view of a certain city, seen as if standing from atop a cliff. The night was cold but lit, and you could see the various towering skyscrapers with tiny little stick figures in the background, playing in the snow. The moon rises high over the city, the stars sparkling and shining.

On the cliff was a single person, overlooking the entire thing. The name of that person was me. Aaron Leum.

A crudely drawn picture, one altered by along the trials of life, but the essence of it still holds true. Cemented in stone, I will now never forget it. City Maceret.

That day, tears fell onto that city like a rainy night.