Armin had tried swimming, using his mana sense to only just barely avoid various rocks and the river bed itself, enjoying a number of rather harsh cuts, scrapes and bruises for his efforts. The insects were still following him, tracking him from above water.

He had identified one or two of them, Spectral leech - level 13. The others he identified were about in the same range.

Armin was starting to panic, he was running out of air at an alarming rate, he could feel his body screaming for oxygen, his head now pounding in a dull kind of pain. He knew he could not keep this up any longer, or he would seriously risk passing out, which would be the same as drowning.

He made a decision. Armin blew all the air out of his lungs, or at this point, all the carbon dioxide, and quickly stuck his head out above the surface of the water. His health of course started draining immediately. But Armin did not need long, he breathed in the deepest breath of fresh air he could manage, as quickly as he could manage, and once more submerged himself.

That one breath of air had cost him several health points, now putting him at 19. He probably only had about two breaths left, before he would inevitably kick the bucket. At this point, Armin was of course really, really freaking out. What was he going to do? Either he would die drowning, or get leeched to death. He could not escape these things, they seemed hell bent on following him. The only option that leaves then, is what? To kill them? Or perhaps chase them off.

Yes. This was his most practical option, that is, to chase them off. Of course no physical way would make that possible with creatures like these, even that Moonka was completely helpless against them after all. No. He would have to find a more magical solution to escaping this particular predicament.

Armin had only the most minimal grasp of magic at present and the only thing even remotely resembling an attack spell would likely be his ‘fire’ ‘spell’. He was hesitant to call it that, since it was neither a spell in any traditional sense, nor was it even really fire most of the time.

Regardless, Armin knew this was all he could attempt. He needed to create fire, or at the very least heat, above the water’s surface. The first thing he tried was to heat the ambient mana in the air, above the water, burning his own mana to fuel the change.

It was difficult, nay, close to impossible. Even just a half a meter of distance like this was proving too much of an obstacle for him to overcome. Armin tried harder, but no matter how much effort he put into it, he could barely manage anything more than just raising the temperature of the air by several degrees, apparently not enough to even bother the little buggers.

Armin could feel his air tightening once more, he didn’t have long before his next breath was required. He needed to do something else. While it was true the distance played a factor in his control over mana, he was also quite reasonably sure that his own mana was much easier to control.

With this in mind he tried to push his own mana out instead. He watched as the mana exited his body. He waited until the mana had been guided out of the water and above it, before he started to heat it, there was no point in boiling the water he was swimming in after all.

Much to his delight, he realised that it seemed to be working! The air was heating up significantly enough that the bugs were being affected by it. Just not enough. It was clear from the change in their movement, almost more frenzied, and the fact that they had backed off, even if just a little. But this result was not good enough. If he hoped to survive this, he needed to kill them or completely drive them away.

Armin was out of time, forced to resurface for another breath of air. He performed the maneuver as quickly as he could manage and was back under water again with a fresh lungfull of oxygen and 12 remaining health.

One spare breath.

He needed to do something. He needed a drastic change. He just didn’t have the power or control over mana to get out of this situation.

Armin then remembered that he had accumulated ten skill points already, and they had yet to be spent. While it was true that he had designs on upping his [Constitution] to increase his general survivability in the wilderness, none of that would matter much if he died in the next couple of minutes. So Armin, without a moment's hesitation, sunk all ten points into the only stat he thought could possibly make a difference right this moment.

[Will]. Now raised to 21, basically double what it was before.

He tried once more, streaming out mana to above the water’s surface and then heating it as hard and fast as he could manage. The difference was staggering! The mana that he could only previously heat at this distance, soared in temperature causing the very air around it to ignite, albeit not in a particularly large area of effect, but it was something.

Some of the bugs immediately zigged and zagged to get away from the literal fire magic. So Armin, still running out of breath and time, redoubled his efforts. He tried to fan his mana outwards to cover a wider area, as well as push it further out, not attempting to ignite it until he had mana covering a large area. He then tried to ignite it all at once, but failed spectacularly.

He still couldn’t cover such distances with his control and also trying to control this much at once totally screwed with the effectiveness of his control. Armin quickly scrapped that idea, and instead focused on bundling his mana just above the water’s surface, trying to keep it in a compressed area. Basically, since he did not have enough control to essentially ‘propel’ his mana, a.k.a the classic fireball spell, he would try instead to assist said propulsion with some good old fashioned pressure.

Once he felt he had enough of his own mana accumulated in one tight spot, he, while still holding the ball of mana in place, tried to ignite it. It was difficult to say the least, but he had kept the ball as close to himself as he could manage and eventually succeeded.

As soon as the first bits of mana reached ignition point, it caused something not dissimilar from a chain reaction, that while not strictly igniting the rest of the mana on its own, was somehow egging on his own efforts to do so, all in an instant. The result was of course none other than an explosion of heat and fire. And much to Armin’s pleasant surprise, enough to take down several of the creatures, or at least he assumed so, based on the fact that, to his mana sense, the condensed mana he was using to identify the creatures seemed to disperse into their surroundings.

Of course, the notification that he got about another level up, was certainly backing up this notion.

Armin was running out of breath again, he did not hesitate for a second and once more sunk his five new points into [Will].

His control once more leapt forward bounds. He was able to pour considerably more mana into the ‘mana bomb’ before he felt his control slipping. Once more he focused on igniting it and this time the blast radius and force, were considerably more. A large number of Spectral leeches died, enough to give yet another level up.

Armin was once more out of breath and had to resurface for more oxygen yet again. He once more did so as fast as he could manage. He was pleasantly surprised to find that this time his health hand only dropped by 3, down to 9. Only half the damage. He had raised [Will], not [Spirit]. Does that mean he had managed to kill half of them already!

He can do this!

There had been some concerns in the last minute or two about his mana levels. Between the draining from the bugs and his now rampant expenditure of mana, he had been fast running out. Luckily pushing points into [Wil]l had actually given him some more mana to play with. Enough to make a difference, at the rate that he was going.

Which was a good thing, since he really didn’t just want to keep sinking points into [Will] blindly, that just seemed like a poorly balanced character after all. Added to this, was the fact that he would likely not be able to use such magical combat techniques in too many situations due to the fact that it took time to charge the ‘bombs’ and that he was actually being protected by the effects of his own spell, by the water.

Armin let off another blast, killing many more. He repeated once more, killing yet more and earning himself yet another level. At this point, what few bugs were left decided that this was simply not worth it and basically just ‘buggered off’. Armin was internally jumping for joy, yet he remained in the water as long as he could still, more than a little afraid to just resurface and assume they were all gone for good.

He really didn’t have the health numbers to play around with, or in his case, health number, as in singular. Armin couldn’t help but shudder at the thought of how close he had come to death. The thought of just how dangerous this world was, was simply bone chilling.

Armin, no longer able to hold his breath, finally resurfaced. He took several long deep breaths, trying to stave off the light-headedness. His health, mana, stamina and essence, all in dire straights.

Opening his eyes for the first time, he noticed that the surface of the water had what appeared to be some kind of blue glitter floating on it in places. There was considerably more of this blue glitter on the nearby river embankment and tell traces of a much finer version of it floating through the air.

He could only surmise that it must be remnants of the dead bugs, how that worked exactly he wasn’t entirely sure. On another note, the feeling of light-headedness, that he had assumed to be from oxygen deprivation, was only getting stronger. He idly wondered if breathing in whatever this stuff was, might actually be dangerous? Well, he had not received any status effects from it, so it was probably fine.

Either way, he quickly swam to the river bank and got out, lest he end up unconscious or something. Drowning in a river after surviving such an event would be just incredibly sad. Clambering onto the bank, the feeling of light-headedness only continued. His vision was now becoming blurry and he felt like his surroundings were swimming all of a sudden.

Nope. Definitely harmful. Another peek at his status only served to mystify him, still no status effects, all good. Well as good as it could be given his abysmal numbers. Strangely he had struggled to pull up his status, it had felt kind of weak, distant almost.

He only faintly registered his mana draining on its own for no apparent reason, before the voices started. They were incoherent, chaotic and entirely illegible to his now delinquant faculties. All that was left for him now, were the voices and his now completely indecipherably blurred surroundings.

The voices were getting louder and somehow clearer. Yet despite the improved clarity, they were not any less chaotic.

“Come on! This way!”

Someone was calling to him. This voice was crystal clear against the backdrop of chaos.

Armin followed the person the voice belonged to. He still could not make out much of his surroundings. There was mist everywhere.

He was choking. No- not mist, dust. There was dust everywhere.

“Come on!” The voice, male, urged him on once more. Armin had tripped and stumbled, slowing down, hence the need for this person to impatiently egg him on once more. Armin was doing a lot of tripping actually. He was running, or at least trying to. The ground was uneven, with constant obstacles, some of which even had to be climbed over.

As he progressed forward, constantly chasing the person in front of him, all the while choking on the dust riddled air, he was occasionally blinded by a beam of light peeking out from somewhere up above. His vision had cleared up considerably, yet he could still not see much, this, it seems, was owed to not only the thick dust everywhere, but also the general darkness pervading the entire area.

Another beam of light hit Armin’s eyes, causing him to squint in pain. Was he underground? The light rays seemed to be coming from ‘outside’. Armin tried to squint through the pain to see past the veil presented to him by the contrast between light and dark, maybe catch a glimpse of this ‘outside’ but failed utterly to do so. The light rays were simply too bright. He suddenly had the feeling that this light could not be natural light from outside.

As if to rebuff his conclusion, the man in front of him suddenly pushed a boulder out of the way to reveal an exit into the ‘outside’. The boulder that crashed to the side loudly, now with fresh light from the ‘outside’ cast across it, was in fact a huge chunk of concrete. That was huge. How had that man managed to push it aside like that?

These thoughts and other questions plagued Armin as he stepped outside. What he saw when he did, however, made even less sense to him.

There was no sun, no stars, it was neither day nor night, yet the sky was practically ablaze with light. Armin couldn’t even understand what color the light was, it was simply bright, that was all he could say about it.

Looking more to terra firma direction, revealed a wasteland of rubble and concrete. Everywhere he looked, there was rubble, with only the occasional building left standing here and there. Even those that were left standing, were not exactly so. Several of the ‘intact’ buildings were missing chunks out of them. They looked like some giant had taken ‘bites’ out of them, with the missing parts more or less spherical in shape. It was actually a small miracle some of them were even holding in their current states. Had this happened to everything here?

Looking further into the distance, it appeared that the mass destruction was localised to about a couple of kilometers radius. So… a natural disaster? No, nothing natural about this lot. A war zone? Also didn’t seem to fit very well.

“Look out!” The man grabbed Armin’s arm suddenly and jerked him to the side. The reason would be the gaping ten meter across hole that suddenly appeared in the ground, the inner edge of which would have been directly under his feet.

The force with which Armin was ‘pulled’ away was considerable, he found himself being tossed to the side and skidding and tumbling across the tarmac for a good several meters before he finally came to a stop.

Armin recovered quickly, getting to his feet. It was too little too late however, as soon as he looked up, the underside of a car filled his vision. He did not know where that car came from, or why it was flying through the air from in front of him, like someone had tossed the thing at him. But needless to say, he did not have enough time to react. The underside of the car was the last thing he saw as it drew closer in his vision and eventually covered it. Everything went black.

Armin opened his eyes. The light was once more giving him a massive headache. Only this time, it was the sun’s light that was assaulting him via his optic nerves and the pain in his skull was only partly caused by this. No, he was quite confident this headache was of a more natural variety. Well, relatively speaking of course.

Armin realised that he was lying on the ground. Had he been dreaming? He had just survived a fight to the death with those damn insects. This was hardly the time to be sleeping on the job. Why on earth had he been asleep? Armin tried digging a little deeper for the answer. His memory was foggy, but it was coming back to him.

He had been poisoned. No, not poisoned, not according to his status anyway. Something else had happened to him. Something his status had not been able to pick up. His status!

Panic struck Armin full on as he remembered something alarming had been happening to his status, even if he didn’t strictly remember what that something was. Pulling up his status, Armin was even more confused by what he saw there. What?

His essence and his health were both full, even though they had been in dire straights before he fell asleep and he could tell not that much time had passed, not enough anyway. Unless he had slept for a full day and night cycle. No, not possible, he would be starving if that were the case and definitely would not have a full essence to show for it.

More puzzling still and not a little bit alarming, was that his mana was zero. Zero! And it was staying that way it seems. Either it was no longer charging, or something was draining it constantly, yet there were no status effects listed in his status.

Try as he might, Armin could not make heads or tails out of this strange situation.

He was scared. Really scared.

This situation, this world, it was just all too strange. Even regular isekai knowledge was failing him here. In hindsight of course, relying on standard isekai knowledge put up against the ‘real’ world was always going to be an exercise in futility, but that did not serve to lessen the weight of everything that was suddenly hitting him like a ton of bricks.

Just what had happened to him? What was that strange dream? Was it a dream? Was it a memory? More importantly, how the fuck was he going to survive this place!

Armin noticed just then that his hands were shaking. And not from the cold. A good thing too, since he would not currently be able to use his self heating spell at the moment.

He realised he was spiraling and needed to ‘get up’ and get his act together. Giving up or just sitting around would give him zero chance of survival. Doing something about it on the other hand, even if it only gave a one percent chance of survival, something that seemed quite likely at the moment, it was still a chance. But only if he fought for that chance.

Taking a deep breath, armin got to his feet, still a little unsteady, more to whatever had happened to him than the fear though. He examined some of the blue dust, but really had no idea what he was looking at. That he didn’t have any mana to use on his mana sense also didn’t exactly help. At least the glittering powder wasn’t in the air anymore so he didn’t have to worry about breathing any more of it in.

Without anything else to go on, all Armin could do for now was ignore it and move on. He walked back along the river and located his discarded spear and knife. He then made his way back down the river that he had been running along and attempted to locate the slain Moonka.

Unfortunately the Moonka was nowhere to be found. Armin was certain he had the correct spot, well as certain as he could be, but there was neither hair nor hide of the thing, and he had so been hoping for the ‘hide’ part of this.

Just before he was about to call it quits, however, Armin noticed a trail of blood. Something that was not easily spotted amidst the tallish purple ‘grass’. He was briefly overcome with the urge to follow it and find where his Moonka and gone.

Only briefly.

Sense at least dawned on him and he realised that the Moonka had been decidedly very dead before he had run away. So only two possible reasons exist for this trail of blood and lack of a fresh corpse. Either something carnivorous in nature had dragged the body off, which is not a good option for his survival. Or, it had become a zombie and walked off on its own, which was not a good option for his survival.

Seeing the pattern here?

Armin was. So he instead let sleeping dragons lie and rather continued his way downstream. Better luck next time. At least he had managed to level considerably from this entire debacle. Speaking of which, now that he had a moment of quiet time and that his brain capacity was not currently dedicating 99 percent of its processing power to spell crafting, survival tasks and pissing his pants with fear; he still had ten skill points to distribute.

The question was now, where to put them. [Constitution] was definitely still high on his list, but he felt it might be a bit dangerous to neglect his other stats too much. He had already sunk a boatload of points into his [Will] stat, which was now totally useless on account of his zero mana situation.

It did occur to him that maybe he should just pump the lot of it into [Spirit] to boost his mana regen and ‘general resistance’ enough to hopefully overcome whatever was inhibiting his mana regeneration. But this was a risky plan, that could in all likelihood result in zero gain.

Armin knew that generally speaking, your first levels in a game or isekai were quick and easy to get. He, despite the amount of danger he had been in, was certainly leveling at an alarming rate. But usually as the numbers increase, these levels get much slower, so there was always a limit to how much you could ‘effectively’ level. That being said, he did not want to risk ‘wasting’ any points right now. So [Spirit] was out.

He also doubted [Charisma] would be of any real help until he found civilisation, so that was also out.

In the end, he sunk 4 points into [Constitution] for all round survival. 2 points into [Agility] and [Perception] each, the ability to spot and react to or run away from threats feeling pretty important to him. And finally 1 point to [Strength]. He doubted having some extra Strength to play with could do anything other than aid him, even if it wasn’t his highest priority right now.

The effect was immediate. His senses felt ever so sharper, like previously the world around him had a veil pulled over it and now it was lifted ever so slightly. He also felt a little more fit and a bit stronger and healthier. All in all, the differences were not major, but the jarring switch to the improved stats made it feel like a big deal. The novelty would likely wear off with future upgrades, but for now- this shit is amazing! What an experience.

Riding the high of his hard won self improvement, Armin didn’t even noticed that he had started gently humming a tune as he walked down stream.