Eloise leaned onto a tree, watching the desolation laid out in front. The soil torn apart, holes from explosions littered around. Pieces of roots resting strewn around. Corpses. At least a dozen of dead bodies of Twotails rested forever in the area. Nature upheaved. And the responsible ones were [Fire Traps].

Eloise checked her level.

[Level: 1]

Even after all this destruction of nature and monsters her level stayed the same. Not like she could check the experience bar that generally existed in games, but here it appeared nowhere. Did the system glitch out because I’m not native here?

The other possibility was the that requirements were harsh. While books spoke about leveling and levels, they didn’t give any numbers or anything to compare to. The only thing that leveled normally as expected were skill levels.

Eloise pondered about the system while waiting for more monsters to take her bait. After waiting for a while, a pair of Twotails showed up. Eloise threw [Analyze] on them out of habit already.

[Twotail - Lv. 4]

[Twotail - Lv. 2]

Now that her [Analyze] has leveled up, she saw levels of most Twotails she encountered.

She flicked her hand want up and pointed at the weaker monster. A burst of fire shot out of it.

[Fire Shot]

It flew true and the Twotail flinched from the hit. That enraged both of them and they took to sprinting at Eloise. Eloise held her ground, not thinking of retreating or running away.

The weaker dog-monster stepped over another Twotail’s corpse onto a [Fire Trap] she had set up. The explosion carried the Twotail into the air, giving it a chance to feel flight before gravity slammed it into the ground at a wrong angle and snapping the monster’s neck.

[Twotail defeated. Extra experience gained for defeating a being above your level.]

[You have reached Level 2!]

[Gained: 1G 3M!]

Oh, finally! A level-up! But the priority was neutralizing the other monster. While flicking [Fire Shots] at the Twotail, Eloise moved to position herself between the monster and another [Fire Trap]. While one of the shots missed the monster, the others were enough to knock push the monster the wrong just enough for it to step into the trap, which took out his leg.

After the Twotail has lost all its mobility, Eloise gave it mercy.

[Twotail defeated. Extra experience gained for defeating a being above your level.]

Eloise returned to the tower undamaged and leveled up. She filled up a cup with the drink, and made her way onto a sofa in one of the guest rooms on the first floor, as going upstairs all the time felt tiring.

Eloise brought up her Status.

[- - - - - -]

Name: Eloise Desmet

Class: Student of Fire

Level: 2

Health: 66/66

Mana: 7/16

Strength: 4

Dexterity: 3

Endurance: 6

Intensity: 3

Flow: 4

Capacity: 3

Available Points: 1 G - 0 P - 3 M

Active Class Skills:

Fire Shot - Lv. 4

Fire Trap - Lv. 5

Passive Class Skills:

Active General Skills:

Analyze - Lv. 3

Passive General Skills:

Wand Crafting - Lv. 1

Osmela Language Proficiency

[- - - - - -]

The general point will most definitely go into a physical attribute. While strengthening magic was important, surviving was just as important. Easier dodging or dying less quickly both sounded like good options to Eloise.

Different books clashed on their opinion about distribution. One of the books above in the library explained that keeping physical stats balanced was for the best, as it allowed for the body to work with itself in perfection. The other book praised people who concentrated all attribute points into a single attribute and let their skills and spells do the catch-upping.

As Eloise had no idea how she would play catch-up with only Fire spells, she picked the balanced route. She called up the interface, assigned the General point into Dexterity, and pressed [Confirm].

The moment Dexterity went up from three to four Eloise felt weak, drained, tired as if she ran a marathon on a hot day from her high school day memories. She stumbled for her healing drink and gulped it down. Didn’t help. She fell sideways onto the sofa, her vision darkening around the edges of the sight. Eloise tried to outlast the bad feeling.

After the longest minute, the feeling disappeared as if it never existed in the first place. Eloise sat back up, reaching for the sofa’s side to hold onto. Her body reacted quicker than normal and her arm missed it by a margin. Instead, Eloise lost balance and smacked into the side she was supposed to grab on.

Eloise groaned in pain. This will take some time to get used to. I just put one point in, and all my movements, every single little movement feels weird. Like I’m moving for the first time.

Eloise elected to make no big moves. She sunk into the sofa, focusing on moving her body, part by part. Starting with toes.

Once Eloise felt more comfortable with her own body again, it was time to increase attributes for magic. She wondered what the best approach would be.

Capacity increased Eloise’s total Mana, letting her use more spells often, and more used spells meant more power once they leveled up higher as well as faster leveling.

Intensity gave immediate returns, it increased the raw firepower of spells, letting Eloise defeat enemies quicker while using less Mana. Having higher fighting power helped the leveling rate.

Flow. It helped in both big and small ways. Flow made so Mana went where it was needed faster and easier, making it easier to learn stronger, more powerful spells, at the same time it made it easier to cast all spells and making it easier to manipulate them. It was akin to an invisible small skill level bonus to a spell, and a bonus to learning spells. If I had high enough Flow, maybe I could learn other element spells with relative ease?

At four points, Flow was already Eloise’s highest magical attribute. In this cursed forest where monsters crawled out without ever stopping, Eloise could practice her spells infinitely, and her specialized class helped with fire spells. Eloise decided to increase Flow later.

While trapping and raking in experience doing nothing sounded fun, the doing nothing part on its own was quite boring. Having more Capacity would allow Eloise to do more traps, lure whole packs of Twotails.

Eloise dumped two points into Capacity, while the remaining one went into Intensity.

After assigning the points and pressing the [Confirm] button on the interface, Eloise felt fire. The fire that burned from the inside, first embers then it caught something flowing through her —Mana—and the fire exploded in size and fierceness.

The fire felt like a powerful headache, rather than physical pain from being burned. Eloise figured from assigning a single point in Dexterity that things changed, and rapidly. But as she never felt Mana with an exception of some sense of loss when learning the [Fire Trap], she figured Increasing magic will be fine. It wasn’t.

After some time, the headache lessened then disappeared, a fire burning inside of her stayed and burned with leisure. Eloise had a feeling it wouldn’t go away.

Eloise checked how much Mana she had now.

[Mana: 22/27]

She smiled. That was almost double what she had before. She stood up from the sofa, finished what was left of the drink, and went outside with relative ease, smacking into the door only once because of a missed handle.

Eloise arrived at the minefield quicker than the previous times, with increased Dexterity the roots weren’t as evil, threatening to trip her up every couple of steps.

Some Twotail bodies were missing, and some new bodies laid that hadn’t died from traps. A single Twotail was having a gourmet dining experience with all these bodies around it. Not just a minefield then, but a restaurant in the middle of a war zone.

[Twotail - Lv. 3]

Eloise slung a [Fire Shot] at it. The new and improved [Fire Shot] slammed into the monster’s side, throwing it off his feet. The Twotail got back up and shot at Eloise when it ran headfirst into another [Fire Shot] and staggered to the side where one more [Fire Shot] finished it.

[Twotail defeated. Extra experience gained for defeating a being above your level.]

Previous [Fire Shot] worked as a distraction, a buy-time spell, and if an opponent had lost all mobility, a finishing spell. Now it was a true combat spell with power to spare.

Eloise tried setting up a [Fire Trap] next. She pointed her wand at the Twotail that died moments ago. The flame inside Eloise burned brighter, the licks of the fire ran through her body, through her wand, and condensed into a [Fire Trap].

While the Mana cost of the spell hadn’t increased, its size grew from a capsule’s to a coin’s. With a bigger container, the explosive Mana it held increased, too.

Eloise dropped a few more [Fire Traps] and started the fun part of the process - waiting for experience points to arrive.

After a short wait where Eloise drew random math formulas on the soil with her wand, the first experience point carrier showed up.

[Twotail - Lv. 5]

The first thing Twotail tried to do was cannibalize one of his dead friends, but its luck was bad, it picked one of the trapped bodies. Twotail heartily crunched into the corpse, trap triggering inside its jaws. Fire exploded through its body and beyond. Moments later two dead charred corpses remained.

[Twotail defeated. Extra experience gained for defeating a being above your level.]

[Fire Trap leveled up to Fire Trap Lv. 6]

One trap, one kill. Eloise no longer needed to finish them off with [Fire Shots]. If Eloise somehow managed to get more bodies into this desolate restaurant, there’d be a ton of customers who’d pay with the experience they carried.

After Eloise hung around for a while longer and tested the spells further, she returned to the tower to regenerate her Mana. She hoped Twotails would go into the area and trigger some traps on their own again.

The next time Eloise arrived at the desolate battlefield was tomorrow morning. She found a Twotail gnawing and clawing at a tree. Eloise dispatched him with a few quick [Fire Shots]. The field being empty now, Eloise stepped up to set up [Fire Traps], when a monster landed from the tree Twotail was clawing at in front of Eloise.

With a snake-like body, the creature stood as tall and wide as herself. It had two scythes like a mantis for arms, yet the head had familiarity. The monster’s head was the same one as Twotails had, except for fur, the monster had no fur at all.

Eloise shivered looking at such a sight.

[Unknown - Level ??]

Not a Twotail then, it also had no tails or fur. Eloise shot at him, but its body swerved and leaned to one side, making the [Fire Shot] miss. The creature swung its scythe, a blade of wind flew out from the motion and struck Eloise. The wind blade damaged both of her legs. Eloise yelped and jumped back from the pain. She then noticed that her legs were showing no signs of bleeding, they were just in pain.

This guy can use magic? That’s too much! I just hit level two!

Eloise snapped around and took off towards safety. The monster slithered, chasing her.

Eloise’s Status interface for the first time showed a drop in health.

[Health: 54/66]

When I got my legs bitten, they were bloody but health stayed full. Now magic hit me and my Health dropped but my legs are fine.

Eloise threw a [Fire Trap] in front of herself and jumped over it, she didn’t even look back when the trap exploded, sound and heat washing over her.

Eloise was about to place another trap when a blade of wind slashed across her back. She stumbled from the impact, dropping onto her fours, roots scraping her hands.

[Health: 40/66]

She raised her head. The boundary was in sight. Eloise got back on her feet, and the moment she faced the monster, she sent a couple of [Fire Shots]. Just buying time. Eloise ran with all her strength toward the barrier while the monster dodged them.

Whenever Eloise could, she dropped traps, but the monster ran through them. Short glances showed no effective damage on the snake creature’s body.

Another slash arrived and removed a portion of her Health. Eloise stumbled almost at the boundary, the monster loomed over her. The snake-dog raised its guillotine and Eloise dropped a [Fire Trap] near herself. The guillotine fell, Eloise rolled to the side barely escaping it. The scythe triggered the trap sending Eloise into the air with warmth and care. She landed onto soft soil, and momentum carried her a few more rolls.

Eloise stood up, her legs shaking. She spat out the soil she ate while rolling. The monster screeched, unlike a dog, slashing with its scythes at the invisible barrier. The creature tried both physical attacks and wind slashes. The barrier held.

Eloise walked right up to the barrier and smirked. “Annoyed?” The monster responded with more slashes.

First dogs, then dog-snakes. If only the library had books about monsters in any languages I could read. The only bestiary Eloise found, someone had written it in a language unknown.

“So you’re the next challenge?” She asked the snake and left for the tower.