I awoke to Tamani kneeling next to where Sarah and I had collapsed. The rest of the party in a semi circle around us. Tamani’s brow was furrowed in concentration until Samuel noticed I was awake and spoke.

“What the fuck happened” He asked frowning down at me. “You were both gone when we woke up and then we found you like this.”

It took me a couple seconds to push away the dull ache still running through me.

“I was messing with my magic and she came in right as I discovered Fireball. We were talking about how I have the ability to use magic even though we don’t have it in our world and it’s also pretty rare here. I had a theory that I could use the mana I have to unlock magic for her, based on the same way that I taught myself Fireball.” I paused for a moment, the events flooding back to me as I put my mind back together.

“She decided to go along with it so we sat down and tested it.”

“What exactly did you do?” Tamani asked, no longer absorbed in whatever she had been doing.

I explained the imagery I had used, as well as the messages I had received, and what happened after. Tamani’s eyes were wide when I was done speaking. Her sister bore the same expression, and from the look that they gave each other, I felt even more sure that I had fucked up royally.

“What you did is something that has not been done in several generations. While you did not know what you were doing, her dying is not the worst thing that could have happened. For her at least.”

My heart dropped to my stomach, and I sat up slowly as she continued.

“The last time that something like this was attempted, the shaman ended up accidently enslaving the goblin recipient on a soul level.” She paused here to let it sink in. “Before that most other attempts failed, resulting in the death of the person on the receiving end of the ritual. From what you say however, your situation seems to line up with the one success that my tribe had. Many generations ago, before our tribe started ruthlessly killing all the humans that showed up, one of our shamans encountered a human who wished very much to learn magic.”

“The shaman performed the ritual much as you did, and when it was over, the shaman and the human had formed an unbreakable bond. The human gained the ability to use magic, but the two always seemed to know what the other was doing, even at great distances. Beyond this there are many tales on the power that the two shared, some claiming that when one was in danger the other could teleport great distances to help them.”

I looked at Sarah, still unconscious, and noticed that she had what looked to be a tattoo running from her hand all the way up her arm, and into her sleeve. Looking down at my hand, I found that I had the exact same tattoo, running up my arm. I took my shirt off and found that the tattoo ran across my shoulder and expanded over my chest where it felt like my mana pool was.

Samuel whistled, “Damn, day two of being here and you might have accidentally unlocked legendary power while almost killing you both. Congrats.” I nodded, still shaken, and idly traced the new tattoo on my hand.

I was startled out of my daze when Sarah woke up. I sensed it before it happened, almost like another part of me was stirring, one that I never knew was there, but also didn’t feel foriegn. I looked over at where she was laying on the ground, Tamani still leaning over her. Sarah opened her eyes and coughed a couple times, before wiping a thin layer of sweat from her brow.

“What the fuck happened,” she mumbled, her gaze distant for a moment before focusing on Tamani, “How long was I out?”

“Around two hours.” She replied, “You were both mana starved, so I spent most of that time trickling mana to the two of you as it regenerated.” She gestured at me then stood up and walked to where the others had gathered, “He can fill you in on what happened, I need to rest.”

Sarah looked expectantly at me for a moment before I filled her in on what happened. “So,” she said after I was done with the TL;DR. “Soulbound huh, this seems a bit cliche.”

“I mean it was that or you died, and considering how the fight with the mini bosses went, we kind of need you.”

“So I die you all die?”

“Eventually? Probably. In the short term however, I think that since we are soul linked it would just be you and I who died immediately.” There was a moment of silence as the words sunk in, then I said, “There is an immediate upside to this though.” She looked at me questioningly. “Well you now have access to mana.”

Her eyes went wide as she realized that even through this whole soul linking mess, we had succeeded in our goal. Her hands shook slightly as she stood up. “So, how did you cast that spell? The fireball.”

I walked her through my theory on how the spells in this world worked, then after making sure everyone was out of the way, cast a fireball at the wall. I turned to find that she had a strange look on her face.

“What’s wrong.” I asked, concerned that the link was affecting her negatively somehow.

“I felt you use the spell. I could sense you gathering the mana, saw your mental image of what you wanted to do with it, then FELT you throw it.”

I looked over at Tamani who just shrugged and said, “This is uncharted territory, the legends of our tribe didn’t have many specifics on the link between the human and shaman. What you two discover will be all new information for me.”

I nodded and turned back to Sarah, “Do you think that you can replicate the spell off of what you felt through the link?”

“I can definitely try.” I felt the mana in her pool start to stir, swirling around her core until it flowed down her tattoo to her hand. I felt the mana grow warm and take the shape of a ball, then I felt the energy disappear as, with a flick of her wrist, she threw the ball of flames across the room into the same soot stained spot I’d hit.

I whistled, “Hopefully the chieftain isn’t immune to fire, because if he isn’t we have this fight in the bag.” Sarah smiled and prepped for another fireball. I noticed that she didn’t have enough energy in her pool and was about to say something, when I felt my own energy start to flow down my tattoo and go to her.

Soul Bond: Mana Connection Lvl 2

+5 mana each

Sarah looked over at me quizzically and I shrugged, “I guess when we do things that involve the link we both get stronger.” We decided to take a break and sit with the others, while the training was nice, we also needed to discuss a plan of action.

“So how are we going to tackle this?” Sarah asked. “As it is we almost lost a couple people to the mini bosses, and unless the chief isn’t much more powerful, this fight is going to suck.”

“Well if we all coordinate what we put our stat points and skill points into, it should make things easier.” Kevin offered.

I blinked at him in astonishment. Of course why hadn’t I gone looking deeper for an interface or menu of some sort, after all we already had an inventory system, why wouldn’t there be more?

“What did you do to open the ‘leveling’ menu.” Samuel asked.

“I just thought about my stats and focused on wanting to view them, same with the skills menu.” I did as he was told and ended up with this:

Spoiler: Vincent's "Character Sheet"

Name: Vincent Level: 4

HP:15/15 Mana:25/25 Stamina:15/15 XP: 0/100

Soul Bound: Sarah

Main Stats:

Strength 0

Constitution 0

Intelligence 1

Wisdom 0

Dexterity 0

Charisma 0

Luck 0

3 Attribute points remaining

Sub Stats:

Mana Regen: 0

Health Regen: 0

Stamina Regen: 0

Spell Power: 0

Spell Control: 0

Skills:

Passive:

Quick Learner: Lvl 1

Soul Bond, Mana Connection: Lvl 2

Active:

Taunt: Lvl 1

Spells:

Cure Wounds: Lvl 1

Fireball: Lvl 1

I was glad that Kevin had mentioned the menu system, I wasn’t sure how scaling in this world worked, but considering my highest stat was a whole 1 in intelligence, 2 points was probably huge.

I looked around the group and found that the others had a distant look on their faces, probably reading.

“We should also take into account the grey item tickets that we all got from the mini bosses, I was able to redeem mine for a short bow and some arrows. You guys might want to use yours for some equipment upgrades.”

The rest of us nodded in acknowledgment, and Samuel stood up. He made a couple gestures and then made the motion of tapping on something. He swiped the air then, with a smile, tapped again. A round shield appeared on his left arm a section at the top right missing, in his right there was a spear that looked a little sturdier than the ones that goblins had been using.

He tested his new equipment out, sparring against an invisible opponent for a few seconds, then turned to us. “This should help a ton.”

“Where did you learn to do that?” Kevin asked.

“My family loved to go to renaissance festivals. After the first couple we decided to take up old fighting styles and crafts as a hobby. If my dad were with us he could probably help Kevin with his archery.”

Now I was curious, what else did the item ticket offer? I closed out my stats menu for now, and went to examine the ticket. When I selected it, the ticket opened up a new menu, this one a drop down of item sets. They all seemed to be a main hand and off hand set, a single piece of decent armour, or a couple of minor pieces of armour.

I took my time getting used to how the system handled equipment. I hadn’t paid much attention to it until now, since the last time I had gotten new items had been in the heat of battle. The system seemed to break items down into several categories.

First was level requirement. Some pieces you had to be a certain level in order to gain all of their stats, but they would scale down until you hit the requirement. This was awesome because most of the items being offered to me were above my level, even with me hitting level four.

The second category seemed to be item quality. While all of the items were grey, they were further divided by the quality of craftsmanship. Out of all the ones I was offered, the highest seemed to be a set of gloves with a “Decent”, while the lowest was an almost complete set of cloth armour that had a “Very Poor” rating.

The items seemed also seemed to be broken down into proficiencies and stat requirements, in addition to other things that seemed almost blurred by the system. After skimming through my offerings again and comparing them to the equipment we’d gotten from our two fights with goblins, I ended up settling on a hammer and shield set.

While I had access to magic, I didn’t want to be a sitting duck if something got close. That and we would probably need all of the damage soaking we could get in our fight with the chief. After selecting my new items, I reopened my stats screen and contemplated how to distribute my points.

Given how most RPG systems worked, I gathered that Intelligence would probably help me with my spells and possibly mana. I also didn’t want to have a repeat of the fight with the mini bosses.

After much contemplation, I put a point into Intelligence, one into Strength and the last one into Constitution. I hoped that this would help me with spellcasting, but also give me something to do after I ran out of mana, or people got too close.

After we had all selected our items and distributed our stats, we ended up with Samuel and Sarah as out frontliners (Sarah opted to take a breastplate from her ticket). Kevin put two of his points into Dexterity and one into Strength, giving him some essential help with his bowmanship. With the two goblins accounted for, we had a pretty decent party. Now all we had to do was rest up and face our fate.

Spoiler: Character Sheet (At end of chapter)

Name: Vincent Level: 4

HP:15/15 Mana:30/30 Stamina:15/15 XP: 0/100

Soul Link: Sarah

Main Stats:

Strength 1

Constitution 1

Intelligence 2

Wisdom 0

Dexterity 0

Charisma 0

Luck 0

0 Attribute points remaining

Sub Stats:

Mana Regen: .5

Health Regen: .5

Stamina Regen: 0

Spell Power: 1

Spell Control: 1

Skills:

Passive:

Quick Learner: Lvl 1

Soul Bond: Lvl 2

Active:

Taunt: Lvl 1

Spells:

Cure Wounds: Lvl 1

Fireball: Lvl 1