I woke up just after dawn with a dull headache. Since no new information sprang to the forefront of my mind, I checked my Status to see if the Spellbook had worked.

Status Obfuscated Status Name Keagan Murray Sean Holman Level 6 3 Progress 258/299 166/172 Statistics Health 67/67 34/34 Health Regen (/hr) 3.0 1.6 Mana 113/113 49/49 Mana Regen (/hr) 6.4 3.2 Strength 10 10 Endurance 10 10 Dexterity 12 12 Intelligence 17 12 Perception 11 11 Charisma 10 10 Abilities Identify II Identify II Obfuscate III Observe I Observe I Skills Spear 3 3 Forestry 1 1 Trapping 1 1 Wilderness Survival 2 2 Animal Processing 1 1 Foraging 2 2 Dodging 1 1 Spells Mana Bolt 6 6 Teleport 11 11 Create Portal 6 6 Warp Space 7 7 Create Pocket Dimension 2 2 Attunements Space 16 Time 10 Earth 8 8 Fire 7 7 Resistances

Focussing on my new spells conveniently summoned their descriptions:

Teleport (Line of Sight). Requires 10 Spatial Attunement. Moves an object from one location within sight to another. Create Portal. Requires 20 Spatial Attunement. Creates a portal to another location. Warp Space. Requires 35 Spatial Attunement. Changes the spatial properties of a location. Create Pocket Dimension. Requires 60 Spatial Attunement. Creates and allows access to a new dimensional space.

Well, they might not have been offensive spells, but they sure sounded promising. I removed all the new spells from my fake Status, just to be safe. Now that I knew the names of the spells, I could easily access my knowledge of them, which was much more extensive than the System descriptions.

The only new spell I could actually cast with my current Spatial Attunement was Teleport, but it also seemed to be the most useful. With it, I could teleport an object in my field of view to another location in sight. My new memories let me know that distance did not affect the Mana cost, but the mass and speed of the object would.

Unfortunately, I only had about half the total Mana necessary to teleport myself at my current Spatial Attunement, so I would need to either double my Mana pool, my Spatial Attunement, or some combination thereof. Teleport also wouldn’t work on other people or animals, so unfortunately I wouldn’t be able to hunt by just Teleporting animals into the air and letting them fall. Apparently their essence interfered with the spell somehow; my memories on the subject were hazy.

Create Portal had the next lowest Attunement requirement, and I was close to it. It would allow me to create a gateway to another location with no limit on distance or even dimension. Regrettably, keeping the portal stable for even a second required astronomical amounts of Mana or a specially constructed portal frame, which of course required magical metals. Guess I won’t be making portals anytime soon.

The next spell I would unlock was Warp Space. Casting it would expand or compress space. The effect was technically temporary, but even at my Mana levels it would last years. Its main use, as far as I could tell, was making the inside of buildings larger, and perhaps adding hidden spaces. The expanded space wasn’t portable, so I couldn’t increase the capacity of my bag with it, for instance. I had trouble thinking of any use for compressing space. Perhaps it could be used on a large scale to reduce travel times, but Teleport and Create Portal seemed much more efficient in that respect.

The final spell was Pocket Dimension, which would allow me to create and access my own pocket dimension—from anywhere. Forget about trying to find a way to make a moveable expanded space, with this I would never have to carry anything. But that was far in the future, and I couldn’t spend all day dreaming, or I would starve.

On that note, I headed into the forest in search of food. Since I found no snared animals and didn’t want to reopen the gash in my arm trying to spear fish, I spent the day gathering edible plants. As I walked, I constantly Teleported sticks and stones while brainstorming ways to use the spell offensively.

I could teleport poison at animals. Might be hard to get in their mouths though. Plus, that might make the meat inedible; I don’t know enough about how poison works. Something to keep in mind, but probably not suitable for hunting for food, then.

What if I teleported a rock above an animal’s head and let gravity do the work? Could get messy and would be hard to aim, but it sounds better than chucking spears or Mana bolts. Guess I’ll start practicing teleporting rocks into the air.

So that’s how I spent my Mana during the afternoon. Aiming turned out to be even harder than I expected—at first, I could only hit my target if I teleported a stone a foot into the air, and that was only when I was within ten feet of the target. After a couple hours, I had only improved that to two feet up from ten feet away.

At this rate it’ll be months or years before I can hunt like this. With the amount of Mana I’m spending, I would probably be better off improving Mana Bolt, but I don’t want to just give up. Plus it would be awesome to Teleport myself, and I’ll have to practice to get to that point.

Hmm, I’ll keep practising Teleport today, then go back to Mana Bolt tomorrow and keep alternating days after that. I can reevaluate later as needed.

But as I was walking down a steep slow, on a whim I decided to aim at a target at the bottom of the slope, a good fifty feet away. I stopped in disbelief when I managed to hit the target with a rock from two feet up. Assuming it was a fluke, I repeated the spell, and somehow succeeded yet again. And a third try, from five feet up, was dead on target. A fourth drop from ten feet up was only slightly off.

What’s different now? I don’t think I suddenly improved that much. I’m… on a hill? Is it a matter of perspective? To test my theory, I walked to the bottom of the slope and found a target twenty feet up the slope. Sure enough, I missed it, even from just one foot in the air.

So, I can aim better, but will it actually help me? Should I climb trees to hunt? No, any nearby animals would surely notice me struggling up a tree. I would have to lie in wait, and time spent waiting would be better spent making traps.

The targeting component of the spell is purely mental, whereas the line of sight limitation is magical. What if I have line of sight to the target, but visualize it from above? Of course, I tried that next, and it actually worked! Not quite as well as actually looking at the target from above, but a damn sight better than before. To be sure, I tried the same test a few more times, and even noticed myself improving over the tests. Now I had a reliable way to use Teleport offensively. Guess I’ll be practising Teleport tomorrow after all.

At that point, I had accidentally depleted my Mana while caught up in the fervor of experimentation, so I continued my foraging until it fully replenished. Then it was back to Teleporting once in a while, keeping some Mana in reserve. I kept experimenting with visualization, though, and found that if I walked over a piece of ground first, I could picture it more clearly, and therefore aim at it better. I also realized I could Teleport rocks that I wasn’t even looking at when I cast the spell; I just had to picture them while still having a direct line to them.

Of course, what I tried next was teleporting a rock to a destination I wasn’t looking at. That also worked, albeit not with any accuracy. Taking the next logical steps, I managed to teleport a rock a couple feet with my back turned, and then with my eyes completely closed.

Clearly I didn’t have to actually see something to teleport it, but for some reason there still needed to be a straight line through the air from me to both the origin and destination, but a line directly between the origin and destination turned out to be unnecessary. So, somehow I am a conduit for the teleportation. Would it be possible to set up a relay system? At that point, I realized I had gained a spell level:

Teleport (Line of Sight) advanced to Level 12!

Huh. I hadn’t expected to gain another level in the spell so fast, especially considering how high it already was. I guess learning through experimentation can pay off.

It was getting late, and I was close to getting back home. There was one last thing to test, though, so I headed to the big river by town, keeping out of sight; no sense letting the other townsfolk know I could Teleport things.

For my test, I picked a small stone under about a foot of water and attempted to teleport it to the bank. The spell kept pulling more and more Mana from me though, to the point where there were spots in my vision and my limbs felt like they were on fire. Then the Mana flow stopped. Oh fuck, I thought as I collapsed onto the river bank. The spell had taken over four fifths of my Mana, over ten times the amount I expected for such a small rock.

Well, that was unpleasant. Thankfully, nothing had broken during my fall. I’m certainly not doing it again. I guess the spell somehow travels through the air, but is impaired by water and can’t pass through solid objects. Good to know, if not immediately applicable. I stood up, dusted myself off, and headed home for the night.

The following day, I decided to renew my search for ore deposits and thus headed back to the river to the north. That was where I first saw the spined bear, so I decided to call it Bear River, at least in the privacy of my own head.

On the way, I found a snared rabbit and continued my Teleport target practice. I wanted any essence I gathered to go to Mana instead of Health, at least until I had enough to teleport myself, so I no longer practiced infusing Health as I went. Of course, I would still use Health when necessary. I wasn’t about to cripple myself.

I proceeded upriver for the whole afternoon, which was generally northwest, towards the mountains. In the late afternoon, I came to a fork in the river, with one branch heading west and the other north.

A couple hundred feet up from the fork, there was a convenient log crossing the west branch, so I climbed across it. Which way should I go? Hmm; it’s getting a bit late. I can camp here tonight and decide tomorrow. Actually, here would be a good place for a more permanent camp—that way I can explore both forks of the river and have traps and a place to sleep in a central location.

That decided, I set a couple snares by the river and sought a good to spend the night. I settled on a hollow where the roots of an upturned tree had been. The tree trunk was pointed up the slope, creating a flat hollow, rather than a divot in which rain would collect, with the roots forming an overhang that would hopefully keep the rain out. Short of a cave, I couldn’t imagine a better natural shelter.

Instead of continuing on the next day, I stuck around to improve my new camp. Since I wasn’t looking forward to starving, I spent the morning setting more traps along the water. The snares from the night before were empty, as I expected, but fortunately I found some fish in the northern fork and speared one of them. After cooking and eating my fish, I began work on my sleeping area.

I had grand plans for walling the whole area in and creating a floor with branches. They were the work of fantasy though, whereas in reality all I had was a flint knife, which wasn’t exactly up to felling trees or even cutting branches. In fact, I had more luck breaking branches by hand.

As the sun set, I was just putting the finishing touches on a singular wall. However, I did also have a pile of firewood sitting next a small fire pit that I had created off to the side of the hollow, where it was sheltered from the rain but the smoke would hopefully leave the hollow. Overall, I was happy with my progress, especially when I noted that my Spatial Attunement had increased from my constant use of Teleport.

I wanted to give my new traps time to catch some animals as well as make myself a flint axe for work on my camp. Therefore, instead of going into the mountains in the morning, I returned to town, loosely following the river. On the way, I spotted some elk drinking from the river.

Seeing an opportunity to attempt my Teleport hunting method, I crept as close as I dared—about a hundred feet away. I chose a nearby river rock that was a bit bigger than my head and teleported it above the closest elk’s head, subconsciously holding my breath.

The elk stood perfectly still as the rock fell, unaware it was under attack. Unfortunately, my aim was slightly off, and the stone struck the elk’s shoulder. It buckled, collapsing to the ground and letting out a startled cry, and for a second I thought I had succeeded. Alas, it stood back up and bounded away into the forest, quickly followed by the other elk. Damn. I should have followed that rock up with a second one instead of standing around like an idiot.

Not particularly perturbed by the lost opportunity, I continued on, finding a rabbit in my original set of snares, and returned home with it in the early afternoon. There, I cooked my rabbit and started work on my axe, fashioning the head out of the flint I had previously heat-treated but left at home.

For the handle, I chose a sturdy, green branch and carved a slot into it, which I then put some embers from my fire into, slowly burning a hole through the branch. After a bit more shaping of both the branch and my axehead, I was satisfied with how they fit together. A couple test swings at a nearby tree proved that it would at least cut branches off, although felling trees would be impractical.

The following day, I returned to my camp by the fork in the river. I actually found a couple rabbits in my traps that evening, putting me right on the verge of Level 7, after which I chopped some more branches for the wall of my camp before falling asleep. When I awoke the next morning, I started following the western branch of the river.

By midmorning, I made it into the foothills of the mountains and the travel was getting tougher. I was still in the forest, but large boulders scattered the terrain and the banks of the river were often steep. While I walked, I kept Identifying rocks, both in the river and in the forest, but I didn’t have much luck finding ones with high metal content, only a couple slightly ferrous stones in the river.

As morning gave way to afternoon, I was starting to suspect I had chosen the wrong branch of the river. That was when I came across a fresh set of large tracks in the sand by the river.

Hmm… four toes, no claw marks; from what I remember of Marnie’s lecture that makes it… a cat? Let’s see, about eight inches across. That’s a big cat. I do not want to spend the night out here with that beast. I shuddered, then turned around and started trekking down the river, back to my camp. On the return trip, I had to suppress my instinct to run as fast as I could away from the cat’s territory—running would draw attention to me, and a cat that size would surely be able to run me down.

When I reached my camp that evening, I found a Level 1 rabbit in one of my snares, so I quickly broke its neck and dropped into meditation, guided by my new book-gained memories and practice aspecting Mana, which apparently carried over to essence meditation. Now it took me mere moments to conjure my essence imagery. My vortex-self was clearer than ever and its ability to attract essence had increased as well, while the essence itself was now less rocky and more akin to ethereal motes of light. That didn’t seem to affect the efficiency though. When I opened my eyes, I had a new message waiting for me from the System.

Congratulations! You have now reached Level 7. You may choose a new Ability or upgrade an old one.

Well, that’s certainly welcome. Abilities, huh? Let’s see what my options are. I mentally called up a list of Abilities and was overwhelmed by the sheer size of it. There have to be thousands of options here; it would take all night to read through these. There has to be a way to narrow the list down. C’mon System, how about you display just the ones related to spellcasting?

The system seemed to hear and understand my request, because the list shortened to under a hundred Abilities. Nice, but this is still going to be a lot of reading.

It was at that moment I realized I was standing by the river holding a dead rabbit. Right; the reading can wait. I returned to camp, then skinned, cooked, and ate the rabbit, then finally settled in for the night to start reading through my options.

The spell-related Abilities turned out to be a bust, for now at least. As Griff had told me on my first day, Abilities were almost exclusively informational, and therefore not great spellcasting aids. There was a version of Identify that would tell me the name of a spell I saw being cast and another that would list the elements that composed a spell, neither of which would be any use to me. Another category of Abilities would let me perceive Mana through one of my senses. Seeing Mana intrigued me, but I couldn’t fathom why anyone would ever want to taste it. There were also Abilities to protect my spells from other people’s Abilities, but since an Ability couldn’t actually counter a spell, that didn’t seem necessary to me.

Ultimately, I decided that the spell Abilities were all too niche for me. Alright System, how about more general-purpose Abilities? The list shifted and lengthened considerably. I sighed and dutifully started reading.

The new list was much more varied. Some of them were even less useful to me than tasting Mana, like the one that identified colors. Why is that even an option? Maybe for colorblind people? Or for working in the dark? There were clocks, timers, calendars, and even a weather forecasting Ability. Several were for recording information, including capturing sound, images, and taking notes.

Perhaps the Ability with the most potential for widespread use was Message, which could send messages to other people with the Ability. At high rank, it could even send messages across dimensional barriers. Of course, I didn’t have anyone to send messages to, so I immediately discounted it. There was also a dictionary, a thesaurus, a compass, and a map. The map in particular attracted me, since I was still afraid of getting lost, but I wanted to choose something that would help me grow stronger, rather than act as a safety net.

In the end, my attention fell on upgrading the Abilities I already had. Obfuscate was already quite high, for my level at least, and I wasn’t going to be meeting many new people, so upgrading it would be pointless. On the other hand, I had been using both Identify and Observe frequently and both were viable upgrades. Identify III would work on up to Rare rank items and give additional information for lower ranked objects. Similarly, Observe II would work on stronger enemies and give more information about weaker ones, including current Health levels.

Hmm. I can make an argument for either one. I have been using Identify almost constantly, and there have been times when it failed, like that hanging moss, and even when it succeeds the information is incomplete, so improving that would be nice. Wouldn’t want to accidentally poison myself. As for Observe, it would be nice to know an enemy’s Health. That way I can know how strong animals are and, if I get in a fight, I can know how effective my attacks are.

Then again, it’s pretty easy to tell when something is stronger than me, like that bear, plus, if I ever get into a fight for my life, my options are only run away or fight as hard as I can. Knowing how close the enemy is to death doesn’t change that. Guess it’s Identify III then.

I selected and confirmed the Ability upgrade, then opened my Status to review my progress.

Status Obfuscated Status Name Keagan Murray Sean Holman Level 7 4 Progress 1/358 1/207 Statistics Health 72/72 39/39 Health Regen (/hr) 3.0 1.6 Mana 124/124 60/60 Mana Regen (/hr) 6.5 3.3 Strength 10 10 Endurance 10 10 Dexterity 12 12 Intelligence 17 12 Perception 11 11 Charisma 10 10 Abilities Identify III Identify III Obfuscate III Observe I Observe I Skills Spear 3 3 Forestry 1 1 Trapping 1 1 Wilderness Survival 2 2 Animal Processing 1 1 Foraging 2 2 Dodging 1 1 Spells Mana Bolt 6 6 Teleport 12 Create Portal 6 Warp Space 7 Create Pocket Dimension 2 Attunements Space 17 Time 10 Earth 8 8 Fire 7 7 Resistances