Congratulations, Beast Taming has reached Level 2!

Congratulations, VIT has increased by 1!

The moment Grom’s breathing halted, I received those two pop-ups. Pulling my sword from his throat, I slashed the air to flick the blood off of it before sheathing it. It was such a minor improvement to my numbers, but those two pop-ups summarized the fight better than anything else.

Grom would’ve killed me if not for my pets. He got me twice, even if my shield managed to block both blows. I only won through sheer numbers advantage. I needed to get stronger, to be able to fight on my own.

Still… it wasn’t their fault I was so weak. So, whenever they approached me, I simply smiled and gave each of them a pat on their heads. “Thank you, all of you. I would’ve died if you weren’t here.” Glancing back at the various corpses on the ground, I sighed. What should I do about this?

“Congratulations on winning your first fight! I wasn’t actually sure that you could pull it off considering you didn’t have any offensive Abilities, but I was pleasantly surprised!” Eve’s voice echoed in my head. “Looks like you even increased one of your Attributes! As you can see, they go up on their own whenever you perform an action that involves them, or have an action performed on you - such as when that orc hit you with his ax and decreased your HP.”

“Thank you, Eve.” I replied after a moment. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was feeling at the moment, but a good portion of the excitement at adventuring seemed to have been shaken off. I needed somewhere safe to rest for a bit and gather my thoughts. “So, is there anything else I need to know before I head off?”

“As a matter of fact, there is! Since you’ve finished your battle, I should let you know that the System now registers all the corpses and equipment on them as yours until you leave the area! So, feel free to loot whatever you’d like from them and dispose of the bodies in any way that you wish! Or store them in your inventory as well. That’s all up to you.”

The casual way that she spoke didn’t quite sit right with me, but it was just a game, so perhaps it was fine. It was just extremely realistic because I was living it, I guess. Still, I should probably dispose of the corpses, as she said. The stench might attract something more dangerous than a bunch of greenskins.

So, starting with Grom, I knelt next to his body and placed my hand on the bronze chestplate he wore. As I did, I saw a screen pop up listing out his equipment.

Grom the Berserker

Grom’s Armor (Set) Grom’s Shield

Grom’s Ax Healing Poultice x3

Grom’s Journal Jerky (Unknown)

Berries (Unknown) Nuts (Unknown)

Waterskin (80% Full) Charcoal

No money, but there were lots of good supplies for surviving. If the other four had similar amounts of food, then I’d probably be set for a while without having to go hunting or foraging and could just focus on finding a good shelter.

My decision made; I gave a mental command to loot all of it. In a flash of blue light, Grom lost his armor, leaving him in the clothing he wore beneath it. After a moment, I sighed and turned to my pets. “I’m sure you’re hungry after that battle. I’m gonna go take stuff from the goblins too, see what I can get. You better eat now while you’ve got the chance.”

They didn’t give any reply that made sense to me, but all four of the monsters were carnivorous, as far as I could tell. When they started ripping chunks of flesh off of Grom’s bones, it confirmed that particular suspicion.

For my part, I continued with my looting, moving from goblin to goblin to take what they had. All of their mismatched armor was far too small to fit me, and Grom’s bronze armor was classified as [Heavy], meaning I’d get penalties just for putting it on, if I even had the necessary STR attribute to do so.

There were various weapons, but nothing better than my longsword. Like with the Heavy Armor, the one bow gave me penalties just for equipping it. I really needed to figure out how to remove those penalties if I could.

Thankfully, there was more of the meat, nuts and berries that Grom had been carrying, and each Goblin had their own waterskin, filled to varying degrees. It was simple enough to fill them at the river and stuff them in my inventory for later.

Perhaps, if I ever found a settlement, I could sell off all this loot so I could invest in some proper armor for myself. That would be pretty nice.

Still, when I finished looting and filling up on water, I called for my pets. It was time to head on out. Those other two goblins had run off further downstream. There might be a camp that way full of other orcs as strong as Grom, and that was something I really didn’t want to deal with. Without my numbers advantage, there’s no way I’d survive.

At the same time, I really didn’t want to head back the way I came. I’d already walked for two hours downstream if my clock was correct. If I wanted to make any progress at all going the other way, it’d take at least another two hours just to get back to where I’d spawned in, assuming I didn’t encounter anything else that wanted to kill me on-sight.

I couldn’t just stick around here though. Some smaller animals had already shown up and were getting their fill of goblin flesh. They mostly looked like small insects - ants the size of mice, a couple dragonflies the size of small birds, some grasshoppers that came up to my shins, things like that, but I really didn’t want to see if anything bigger was going to show up.

Pulling some of those berries out of my inventory, I ate a few of them. They weren’t bad. A bit on the bitter side, and they were dried so there wasn’t really any juiciness to them, but they were better than not eating.

I just needed something to do while I looked around. The indecisiveness was gnawing at me, but I just didn’t have any information to go on. Simply walking downstream had ended up getting me ambushed by a bunch of goblins and an orc.

When I ran out of berries to munch on, I let out a sigh. Instead of simply getting more, I decided to be more proactive. The number of insects had increased to the point that my pets seemed to be getting more anxious.

Well, there was a pretty simple way to get some space between our groups, so I hopped across the river. Monty followed after me, wrapping Squishy up in his body and dropping him at my feet. Charlotte, meanwhile, crawled onto Sadie’s back as she followed me across. With the river between us, that would at least keep the scavengers from trying to eat me. Hopefully, anyways.

On my own side of the river, I summoned a piece of that mystery jerky and took a bite as I continued downstream. At least if I was on the other side of the river from the goblins, I could probably just use a Gale Slash to buy some time if I needed it.

Glancing at my clock, I did note that it was rapidly approaching 11. I still had plenty of daylight left. Probably anyways. If one day was 30 hours, then I still had several hours until midday, and probably several hours more until dusk. I got the feeling that night would bring on a whole host of problems I didn’t want to deal with right now, and so shelter was of the utmost importance.

“Hey, Eve?” A thought had occurred to me since I’d been thinking about Gale Slash. “You said that offensive Abilities will only unlock if I use them on an enemy, and that’s why I unlocked Gale Slash only after I used it on Grom. Does that mean that I can unlock non-combat magic by just experimenting with my Conduits? And would that apply to other, non-magic Abilities that aren’t specifically meant for Combat if I just practice them as well?”

“Oh! Well… yes, that’s right!” My question seemed to have caught her off-guard, but she cleared her throat and adjusted right back to her normal personality. “Abilities can essentially be categorized as Combat and General Abilities. Because Combat Abilities are only meant to be used in fights, the System won’t recognize that you’re proficient enough in them to grant it to you unless you use it in an actual, combat scenario.

“That said, each Ability does have particular prerequisites towards being unlocked. For instance, your [Headpat] required you to use it on a creature the System recognized as your pet. Even General Abilities sometimes - actually, more often than not - still require an applicable target for the System to register that you know both how to perform that action, but also what its purpose is.”

I hummed in thought at the last bit of information. So, I could only get Abilities if I used them in the correct way. Blindly flailing around might get me a few here and there, but it seemed that I’d have to actually have some sort of plan to make significant headway into getting better Abilities.

“Thanks, Eve. I think I understand it a bit more now.” In a flash of light, I summoned the Charcoal Wand, my Fire Conduit. It was exactly like it sounded, a long piece of charcoal that resembled a small stick. It was pretty light, but even when I grabbed both ends and applied pressure, it didn’t feel like it was going to snap.

Firmly gripping it, I tried to remember what it felt like when I used Gale Slash. I didn’t have any instinctive ideas on what to do with this one, but maybe I could try and just replicate the process of channeling my Aether into the wand.

My steps halted as I focused on the feeling. I was worried it might take more time to figure out, but this was just another one of those things that came easy to me, probably due to my past self using magic.

I felt something well up within my stomach and travel through my arm. It left a tingling sensation in my fingers as it jumped to the wand. Even though I knew that the energy had left my body, I could still feel it, swirling within the wand and waiting for its command.

I needed a target. That’s what Eve said. I needed to perform an action that was suited for the Ability. She also said that. I knew what it was I wanted to do, but I wasn’t sure if it would work. Well, there was only one way to find out.

I focused on a part of the air a few steps in front of me, then pointed the wand in that direction. The moment my arm straightened, I saw my MP bar dip down by about a fifth, and a ball of blue fire launched from the wand. However, instead of traveling further, it simply… hung in the air where I had focused.

[Witchlight] Ability Gained.

You may create a ball of floating fire of any color you choose to illuminate your path. It will be created wherever you are looking when you cast the spell and will remain until you dismiss it or after an hour, whichever happens first. By using more MP, you may increase the amount of time it remains.

Looking at the floating orb of fire, I couldn’t help but get a bit of that excitement back. Getting shelter was still very important, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t experiment a bit while I looked, did it?