The first steps to survival

She walked through the narrow pathway leading out of the cave she woke up in. She felt her nerves worsen with each step she made. If she was being honest with herself she felt very freaked out, she knew far less than she'd want. How did she get the construct? What creatures lived in this cave system? And why was the lying in a room filled with corpses riddled with rounds? She had far too many questions and no answers to them, and it scared her.

With the help of [fear resistance] she pushed her worries down when she saw the end of the narrow pathway, this was no time to worry about this. She took a deep breath and stepped through the exit and found herself standing on a small ledge overlooking a large circular cavern. The roof was covered in more of the bioluminescent muschrooms she saw earlier, in the middle of the cavern she saw a the skeleton of an absolutely colossal beast.

The sheer size of it just felt wrong to her, how could anything that large even exist? It's ribcage alone was larger than the entirety of the corpse cavern. Next to the corpse grew large green mushrooms, and in the middle of the ribcage was a large glowing dark green orb, she instinctively felt the power it contained, it called to her, she wanted that power, no needed it.

[mana sense (low) unlocked]

Oh, okay I'm guessing the orb contains a lot of mana then, if I can find a way to absorb that I might get a lot stronger, that or I implode from absorbing too much. She mused to herself, deciding to deal with that once she found a place to safely settle down. She moved her eyes away from the orb, scanning the large cavern for a source of water.

She quickly found a small stone hill next to a small waterfall, it looked like a good place to settle down. It had easy access to water and was easy to defend, seeing as there was only a single easy passage up, the rest of the hill being to steep to easily approach. She decided to settle down there, at least for a while. All she needed now was a source of food.

After steeling her heart she climbed her way down from from the ledge she was standing on and landed on the stone ground. She kept her frame low to the ground and made her way to the hill as quietly as she could manage, which admittedly wasn't all that quiet.

On her way there she spotted a large worm like creature in the distance, it's scaly leather having a faint shimmer to it. She guessed it was a little less than a meter long, luckily it seemed rather slow, so if she needed she thought she could run away from it.

She slowly continued on towards the hill, making sure to avoid the worms she came across, their wriggling forms creeped her out, and she would rather not fight them if she could avoid it. Luckily for her she safely arrived at her new home.

She let out a small sigh of relief before making her way to the waterfall, the water looked a bit odd to her. It had a faint glow to it, like the orb had, just a lot weaker. The rational side of her mind wanted to leave it alone and search for another water source, but after a few second her thirst won over. She cupped her hands and took a small sip of the water.

To her surprise it tasted delicious, it might be the best thing she had ever tasted, which wasn't all that surprising considering she couldn't remember tasting things before, but the refreshing taste of the water was great. So she drank more and more until she wasn't feeling thirsty anymore, even her stomach didn't complain as much, being tricked into feeling full after all the water she drank.

She sat down for a while, feeling rather satisfied for now. After a minute or so she felt a refreshing energy coursing through her body, it felt pretty relieving.

But suddenly she felt her body cramp up, her flesh felt like it was being ripped appart and a groan of pain escaped her lips, she wanted to take a deep breath but couldn't. She felt her mind growing clouded, and a headache erupted. Then the pain vanished as quick as it appeared and she felt entirely fine, minus the shock.

What the fuck was that? I'm never drinking that stuff again in my life! She screamed in her mind, before being interrupted by a message from her construct.

[large amount of water mana absorbed]

[elemental mana system unlocked]

[water mana has been used to increase water mana capacity by 2]

Or maybe she would, if drinking this water could make her stronger the pain was worth it, at least in her mind. What bothered her was that the construct said water mana capacity, not mana capacity. Was this a seperate mana pool? And if so what differed from the normal one? Well I guess thinking about it wouldn't really solve anything. She thought to herself before taking off one of her bandages and drawing the sigil with the blood on it.

After she finished she wrapped the bandage around her wound again and sat down in the sigil, pushing a sliver of mana into it as she watched the now familiar construct appear before her eyes.

[name: - ]

[mana: 8/10 (12 allocated)]

Arcane mana: 6/8 (12 allocated) Water mana 2/2 (0 allocated)

[stats] (8 allocated)

Strength 10 Dexterity 4 Agility 8 Vitality 7 Toughness 7 Intelligence 3 Wisdom 4

[skills] (4 allocated)

fear resistance 1 (low) (5% effect)

[available skills]

mana sense (low) (3 mana)

She quickly started to experiment, trying to allocate a water mana point to her stats. To her surprise the construct just didn't allow her to. After that she tried putting it into her new skill.

[mana sense (low): allows you to sense mana]

[Select mana type to allocate]

Arcane mana 8/3 Water mana 2/3 - insufficient capacity

It didn't look like she could put half half in, but it seemed like the type of mana did matter. She swiped away the construct and walked over to the waterfall. She had decided to try out getting [mana sense] from water mana, and since she needed more water mana for that she decided to drink more of the water. Although is smaller amounts in the hopes to reduce the pain, which to her relief, did alleviate the pain somewhat.

After increasing her mana capacity and calming down from the pain she sat down in the sigil again, summoning the sigil once again and putting 3 water mana in the [low mana sense] skill.

[mana sense (low): allows you to sense mana]

[Warning, skill may mutate due to allocated water mana]

[Allocate 3 water mana?]

She sent a mental aknowledgement to the system.

[mana locator (low): by injecting water mana into a flat surface of still water you may create a temporary locator to detect mana, depending on the amount of many put in and the size of the pool the range increases.]

The skill had changed entirely, it sounded useful however, she suspected it might be far more accurate than mana sense. It did concern her that there wasn't a rank though, did that mean she couldn't rank it up?

She sat up again, deciding to drink more of the water so she could use her new skill at least. To her surprise she did need to drink far more than the last times she did this, she suspected that the more total capacity she had the harder it would be to gain more, which was a bit disappointing to her.

She decided to just wait until it happened naturally from drinking the water, instead throwing the water in a small depression in her camp area, making a small pool for her skill. After she finished the hunger set back in full though.

As far as she knew she had 2 options for food, she could try and eating the mushrooms or hunt down one of the worms. While she felt that the worm would probably have a higher chance of being edible she didn't have much confidence in winning a fight. She decided to try one of the mushrooms, if they weren't edible she could always hunt down one of the worms, and even if they were poisoned she might get poison resistance out of it.

She snuck down from her hill, quickly plucking a small pile of the not glowing mushrooms, she was pretty sure those weren't going to be edible. She made her way up and took a very small bite out of the mushroom.

A vile taste spread through her mouth before she spit out the mushroom. "Blegh, absolutely not edible. Guess it'll have to be worm then." She said to herself, as a voice resounded in her mind.

[poison resistance (low) unlocked]

Well at least I got that out of it She decided to check that out later, after she had hunted down a worm. She took a few sips of water to wash out the disgusting mushroom taste and walked down again, clenching one of her hatchets in her hand.

It didn't take her long to find one of the worms. She slowly walked towards it in order to ambush it, but before she could get close enough to strike the worm lashed out at her at a speed far faster than she had expecting.

She could feel it's tail cutting through her leg, she froze up in fear, the worm was far stronger than she thought, and she wasn't sure she could defeat it. She wanted to run, but while she was contemplating this the worm jumped at her, it's teethed maw heading towards her shoulder.

Panicking at the sight of the worm approaching she swung her hatchet towards it's head. She could hear the worm's carapace crunching under the pressure of the hatchet, which swung with more force than she had expected thanks to her strength stat. Unfortunately it wasn't enough to pierce the flesh, but it left a large indent in the carapace, but the worm continued and bit deep into her shoulder.

She screamed out in pain, and her mind blanked for the fraction of a second, before swinging her hatchet into the same spot she hit before with all the fury she could muster. A grotesque crunch and squelch sounded out from the worm, and it dropped to the ground, unmoving.

She panted next to the newly dead worm, and realised she had broken her hatchet during that last swing. Just to be sure she took out her second hatchet and swung struck the worms a few times.

It was done, she had killed the worm, a laugh sounded out, her laught. She did it, she actually did it, pride swelled deep within her. She had fought, and she had survived. But her victory was rudely interrupted by her construct.

[pain resistance (low) unlocked]

[anger (low) unlocked]

[fear resistance (low) has reached rank 2]

Wow, that was more than I expected, 2 new skills and her first skill rank up She thought to herself as she started to drag the worm carcass to her camp, though her aching wounds weren't making it easy, especially not the one on her shoulder.

When she finally arrived at her camp she started ripping off the sleeved of her shirt, quickly cleaning them under the waterfall and wrapped it around her wounds.

After she finished cleaning her wounds she made a small rack from the bones she snatched from the corpse room and some more cloth from her sleeves. Under there she piled some of the mushrooms, with her shoddy campfire now created she started on dismantling the worm.

She started by skinning it, she found it to be pretty disgusting but continued anyways, anything for food after all. She spread out the sheets of leather to dry them out. After that she pulled out the teeth, throwing them on their own pile. She seperated the meat and threw out the organs. In the worm she found a smaller orb similar to the one within the giant ribcage, just at the size of a fingernail instead.

Still she felt a faint hint of power from it, which was a bit surprising to her considering she missed out on the [mana sense] skill, but she wasn't going to complain about free benefits.

That's when a thought appeared in her mind, if she got mana from drinking mana filled water, would she also get mana from eating a mana filled orb? Unlike the orb in the ribcage this one was small enough to swallow. She decided to try it after she started cooking the meat.

She took a slab of meat and stuck a bone through it, before putting it on the campfire stand. She struck a piece of flint of the metallic teeth of the worm, eventually making enough sparks to light up the mushrooms, creating her makeshift campire.

With that done she swallowed the orb, and an ungodly amount of pain erupted from her body. It felt like her body was burning and freezing at the same time and everything became blurry. And after what felt like an eternity the pain finally faded away. After taking a few seconds to collect herself she found that she had vomited over the fire, luckily is was burning away fairly quickly. But her construct rewarded her for her tribulations.

[large amount of earth mana absorbed]

[earth mana has been used to increase earth mana capacity by 6]

[earth manipulation (low) unlocked]

6 extra mana capacity felt like a lot to her, she thought it was well worth the pain. Wanting to examine her new skills and stats she sat down in the sigil and sent in more mana.

[name: - ]

[mana: 11/14 (15 allocated)]

Arcane mana: 5/8 (12 allocated) Earth mana: 6/6 (0 allocated) Water mana: 0/0 (3 allocated)

[stats] (8 allocated)

Strength 10 Dexterity 4 Agility 8 Vitality 7 Toughness 7 Intelligence 3 Wisdom 4

[skills] (7 allocated)

fear resistance 2 (low) (10% effect) mana locator (low)

[available skills]

pain resistance (low) (18 mana) poison resistance (low) (9 mana) anger (low) (6 mana) earth manipulation (low) (9 earth mana)

[pain resistance (low): reduce the amount of pain felt by 5% per rank]

[Allocate 18 mana capacity?]

Well that one certainly sounded very useful, in her last battle the pain was a large issue for her, causing her to freeze up. Reducing that would be incredibly useful, unfortunately it has a ridiculous cost, so [pain resistance] was out.

[poison resistance (low): reduces the effect of weak poisons by 5% per rank]

[Allocate 9 mana?]

That one sounded far too situational to her, a mere 5% reduction for weak poisons alone? Absolutely not woth 9 mana!

[anger (low): Channel your anger into your strikes, getting stronger the angrier you are at 10% efficiency per rank. Additionally the more you're hit the angrier you get]

[Allocate 6 mana capacity?]

That one could be useful, but it was also a double edged blade. But honestly she thought anger might be better in a fight than the fear she had, so [anger] may alleviate a bit of her fear in combat. On the other hand it could make her reckless which would definitely be a problem. The cost was pretty low though so she was considering it. She could get the earth version of the skill too if she really wanted to.

[earth manipulation (low): spend mana to move the earth around you in a 1 meter radius around you, range increases by 1 meter per rank]

[Allocate 9 earth mana capacity?]

This one was pretty appealing too, it'd let her defend her camp way better too, erecting defenses to protect herself against monsters. She wasn't sure it'd be any use in battle though, since she didn't know the speed of it. It was also the first pure elemental skill she had seen.

In the end she decided to grab [anger] with her arcana mana and save her earth mana for [earth manipulation]. She quickly allocated the mana and reviewed her status again.

[name: - ]

[mana: 8/8 (21 allocated)]

Arcane mana: 2/2 (18 allocated) Earth mana: 6/6 (0 allocated) Water mana: 0/0 (3 allocated)

[stats] (8 allocated)

Strength 10 Dexterity 4 Agility 8 Vitality 7 Toughness 7 Intelligence 3 Wisdom 4

[skills] (13 allocated)

anger (low) 1 (10% effect) fear resistance 2 (low) (10% effect) mana locator (low)

[available skills]

pain resistance (low) (18 mana) poison resistance (low) (9 mana) earth manipulation (low) (9 earth mana)

Satisfied with her purchases she closed her construct again, and seeing that her meat was done being cooked she picked it from the campfire and took a bite. The meat was pretty tough but the taste was pretty great. Though that may just be the hunger talking, not like I care though, good food is good food after all She thought to herself as she continued hungrily devouring the worm meat.

Not too long after she fell onto the ground, feeling satisfied and full she took a sip of the water, ignoring the pains that came with it.

[large amount of water mana absorbed]

[water mana has been used to increase water mana capacity by 1]

Heh, guess luck is on my side now. She thought to herself as she slipped into a deep slumber.