Fading daylight streamed into the cave when Don woke. He rose with the clarity that came from a full mana pool and quickly came up with a new plan. “Manipulate”

A fist-sized stone came free from the cave floor. He nearly had it shaped into a smooth sphere when he reached the 15 second limit for the spell. That was much easier than trying to make a huge replica of himself. Don left his practice for the moment. There was no point in exhausting his mana again. Don shielded his eyes against the daylight as he climbed to the exit. The canopy was saturated with the warm green of backlit leaves. Don took a few minutes to absorb the sounds of the forest while using focus senses on his hearing.

After his mana refilled he created another nearly spherical rock illusion. If he just could remember to cast the spell whenever he had full mana he would figure out something to do with it. Or at least his manipulation skill would increase.

He wasn’t looking forward to the next part of the plan. Don turned with an anticipatory shiver and jumped down into the stream. He landed with a splash. Sitting on the chilled rocks at the bed of the stream, he was submerged up to his waist in the water. It surged around him as it tried to find a way around this new obstruction. The sound of the stream made his enhanced hearing pointless so he switched over to smell. It would keep his sense of touch muted in the freezing stream. It also made him aware of how much he smelled like woodsmoke and BO. He took the chance to wash away the smells. Before long his mana regenerated again and he summoned an illusion.

This time he used water for the base. He was surprised when a gout of water poured upwards and splashed into an invisible vessel rolling, then rippling, then smoothing into a perfect sphere in only eight seconds. Don marveled at how much easier it was to work with watery illusions. He would have to experiment with different types of illusions. He started moving the water-ball around before it vanished at the end of the spell duration. His heightened CON gave him respectable stamina recovery. When set against the upkeep of his focus senses he only lost one point every couple of minutes. He kept this up for a little over half an hour before he got what he was after.

+ END

He had to drink one of his stamina potion doses but it had been worth it. He smelled what he wanted to minutes ago and was just waiting for the boost to endurance before he could have breakfast.

He climbed out of the stream. His legs were completely numb and they made the trip a bit clumsy but he moved slowly, Doing his best to make his way to the smell without leaving tracks. He pushed past a screen of underbrush and passed through a small stand of younger trees.

Focus Senses Basic 5 --> 6

10% increase to target sense

10% decrease to all other senses

He broke into a grin as he found what he had smelled from the stream. A low leafy bush covered with Heavy red berries. He limited himself to eating only three before putting seven more into his inventory. He might need some food to take the edge off his hunger in an emergency.

He made his way back to the cave entrance to see a flood of goblins pouring out of the hidden cave like ants out of the side of their hill. They were all incredibly nimble. Even the more clumsy ones left no tracks Don could make out. The normally noisy and quarrelsome gobs moved as silent as a whisper and dispersed into the forest. Kat was waiting by the stream, staring at Don.

“I found-” Don began but was cut short by a curt signal to be silent by Kat before he motioned for Don to follow.

They began their commute down the stream. Don periodically summoned a globe of illusory water and made it zip around in tight curves or blast straight down the streambed. The water distorted with the motion. Behaving like real water might if it could suddenly be talked into flying. It was as if the illusions fed off of Don’s imagination. He had imagined the rock to be solid so it was hard to manipulate. Water is fluid and much more amenable to being told where to go.

Kat grew more tense as they hiked. He was even more prickly than he was the previous night. Don figured it had something to do with being caught off guard by the fox. Kat eventually decided Don had suffered enough and hopped up the wall of the streambed and into the everpresent ferns. Don followed and after a quick dirt-bath, they spent hours sneaking through the trees foraging whatever they could find. Kat had an unnatural knack for honing in on useful herbs. After a time they came to a darker section of the forest filled with brambles and gnarled, twisted trees.

Kat stopped to criticise every part of Don’s approach to tree climbing and made Don climb up and down trees for an hour straight. The little tyrant would let Don rest for one minute out of every ten but he had to hang from a branch while he did. He had to use another stamina potion when Kat immediately set Don to the task of following the leader. This was unlike anything they had done before. They ran headlong through the forest, not caring about noise or footprints. Kat ducked under or weaved around the thorny obstacles and gnarled roots.

Don had to either go over, or failing that, through any obstacles, he came to. Many of them rose to his waist. He could vault them but not as fast as his guide could skip across the path, rebounding from one island in the sea of brambles to the next. They ended up in the crown of a tree, tired from the extended run. Don was happy with the gains.

+ STR

+ 2 AGI

While Don was climbing he tried to make a few illusory wood spheres. They were about as hard to work with as the stone. During the run, he was unable to spare the concentration needed to cast his spell. He had his senses focused on seeing all the different roots that could trip him or stones that could suddenly shift. He still missed a couple low hanging branches which taught him a lesson each. Canceling his Focused Senses he watched the shadows deepen from shallow ponds to deep lakes.

Struck with an Idea he cast “manipulate”. The shadows didn’t lift into the air to form a sphere like he imagined. Instead, they formed a circle while remaining firmly stuck to the branch. Shadows slid from the underside of the branch across the bark to pool in front of Don.

Testing the shadows, he found that they would move very quickly across any surface but were reluctant to leave and take on their own shape.

Wanting to test this new illusion, he spent a few more mana and bought himself a minute to play with. He moved the shadows. They were incredibly easy to manipulate. He imagined a breeze and the shadows from under a handful of leaves shook and blew away. He twisted the shadows of branches and leaves in on themselves until he had a swarm of shadowy ribbons twisting around in a vortex. He gave a devilish grin and directed the shadows to himself. They glided up his legs as easily as any other surface. Once Don was coated in the shadows His grin took on a frightening aspect, flashing out intermittently from behind his new disguise.

Manipulation 2 --> 3

Manipulate light to form intangible constructs

Cost 1 mana

Duration 20 seconds

Range 3 yards

Congratulations!

Through experimentation, you have created a spell!

Shadow Cloak Basic 1

Cost 10 mana

Duration 1 minute

Range touch

Effect 15% increased visual concealment in darkness

+ Wis

His glee was interrupted when Kat hit him between the eyes with an acorn. Kat dropped from his branch and skipped off through the dark tangles of vegetation as easily as if it was a meadow of flowers. Don downed another dose of Stamina potion and crashed to the ground. He tore off in pursuit, taking small scratches as he charged through the brambles he was unable to avoid. He drank down a couple of his health doses to keep his HP pool close to its maximum.

The potions were going faster than he expected. He only had 2 doses of stamina potion and 3 doses of Health potion left and he hadn’t even gotten into a fight yet. After another wild chase to the edge of the brambles, Kat made Don climb around the trees again, this time trying to bridge the gap from one tree to another. He snapped more than one rotten branch which looked sturdy enough and came plummeting to the ground before Kat relented. The training was effective even though it burnt the last of Don’s stamina potions and another health potion.

+ STR

+ AGI

The sun began sending it’s light over the horizon, dimming the stars. Thankfully, that was the time limit for Don’s torture session. He had never worked so hard physically in his life. He had eaten his berries throughout the night to stave off the hungry effect. He felt the familiar pangs starting up and popped his second to last berry into his mouth as he followed Kat in searching for a game trail. He angled towards the stream and before long found a trail. He instructed Don to sit over it and try to catch any rabbits he saw before hurrying off into the waking forest, presumably to find his own trail.

Don pulled himself up into the tree much more gracefully than he could have that morning and settled down to wait. He wanted to use his new skill but The mana cost was expensive and it would only last a minute. He decided to wait for the right moment to use it. That didn’t stop him from practicing with his manipulation skill. He found the shadows moved more sluggishly in the growing light. Anytime they passed through brighter patches, it was as if they became heavier but they slipped across surfaces coated in shadow as easily as Don slipped off the rocks in the river. Between casting and waiting for his mana to regenerate, he watched the ground below him with enhanced vision. Even so, he almost missed it when a rabbit poked its head out from its hiding space and took a tentative step down the game trail.

Don silently activated his shadow cloak spell for the first time. Streamers of shadow flowed out from the underside of branches, the ridges in bark and from under Don’s feet and hands. They wrapped around him until he was covered in what looked like a tattered cloak sewn from the night sky itself. In the early dawn, crouched high in a tree, Don melded into the darkness. Hopefully, it would be enough to obscure his large frame crouching above the game trail. He waited for the rabbit to nibble and hop slowly down its path until it was directly under Don. His traitorous heart pounded so loudly he was worried the rabbit would hear him and it seemed like the rabbit did sense something when it came close to don’s tree. It stopped moving and held perfectly still. Its ears swiveled towards Don. Don had to recast Shadow cloak to keep it from expiring and was preparing to cast it again when, without any visible threat, the rabbit dismissed the sound and moved under his hiding place to nibble at some dewy grass.

Stealth Basic 1 --> 2

6% bonus to sneak and sneak attack

Don stepped out into thin air and dropped. He landed with both feet on the rabbit, killing it instantly. He felt a stab of guilt. That had hardly seemed fair. After the fight with the fox, it was too easy. Remembering the fox, he quickly looted the rabbit and climbed back into his tree.

You have killed ‘Rabbit’

You gain 5 experience

You gain “rabbit foot” x1

Don double-checked his spoils. He didn’t get any meat from the rabbit! What the hell was he supposed to do with a little rabbit’s foot? The rabbit had dissipated into light when he looted it and he mourned the loss of food. He looked down at the trail below him. The body was gone but there was a clear sign that something bad had happened here. He didn’t think another rabbit would come along. He sulked in his tree, waiting for his pools to regen and for Kat to return.

Spoiler: Don's stat and skills Stats: Vitals: regen 1 point regen time (minutes) STR 12 HP 58/105 mana wis per hour 4.29 AGI 13 STA 65/65 stamina (Con * 2) per hour 1.43 DEX 14 MANA 60/60 INT 12 EXP 20/50 WIS 14 Status Effects: CON 21 END 13 skill Rank Level Effect cost range duration Punching Bag Apprentice 7 16% unarmed resistance Training Dummy Apprentice 4 13% training increase Alchemy Apprentice 4 13% potion effectiveness Goblin Language Apprentice 6 Moderate complexity Night Vision Basic 5 9% increased light Diagnose Basic 4 assess the targets visible injuries 1 mana touch instant Focus Senses Basic 6 10% increase and derease 1 stamina self 1 minute Forage Basic 3 7% ease and effectivness of resources Stealth Basic 2 6% sneak and sneak attack Illusion Magic Manipulation Basic 3 Manipulate light to form intangible constructs 1 mana 3 yards 20 seconds Shadow Cloak Basic 1 15% increased visual concealment in darkness 10 mana touch 1 minute