Now that I had the basic shape of my weapon sorted out I wanted to actually practice using it and see what I needed to change before trying it in a life and death situation and even swinging it a couple times was enough to tell me that the balance was off and after thinking about it a bit I decided to try sinking a small stone into the end of the haft with my Nature Shaping.

Once I had done this, I swung it a few more times and nodded my head, the weight was much better but now the handle didn’t feel like it would be comfortable if I used the axe for any real length of time. However, I didn’t have much Mana left so I decided to meditate for a bit and sat down and attempted to enter that same state that I had been when I had unlocked the Skill.

I felt like that I had gotten lucky the first time that I had entered this state and unlocked the skill, so it was pleasantly surprising how easy it was to enter that tranquil state where I was greeted with yet another surprise. All around me I could feel energy and I quickly realised that this was the secondary effect of Meditation that allowed me to increase my Affinities.

Below me was an energy that felt, I don’t know strong and rigid which I immediately labelled as Earth Affinity, all around me there was a chaotic, constantly moving energy that had to be Air Affinity, nearby there was also a pool of calm energy which must be Water Affinity energy and there was a myriad of others as well that I was having more difficulty identifying but one that felt almost alive had to be Nature Affinity energy. Deciding to try something I reached out towards the Earth Energy with my mind and was surprised when it started to flow up into me as I breathed in.

“Whoa!” I gasped opening my eyes in shock. “That’s a trip.”

Deciding to test a couple of theories I once again started meditating and tried to do the same thing with the other energies which I decided to refer to as Elemental Mana which made more sense to me.

As expected, while I had no problems absorbing Earth, Water and Air Mana, I couldn’t absorb Nature Mana the same way which made sense because it was locked. It was a little irritating because my Affinity for Nature Mana was the highest of all my Affinities and I wasn’t quite sure what Affinities I would have to increase to unlock it nor how much I would have to raise them by. But there was nothing I could do about that now, so I decided to test out my second theory and instead of using whatever this new sense that allowed me to detect and absorb the Elemental Mana surrounding me I instead focussed inwards.

At first, I thought that I was barking up the wrong tree as I couldn’t sense anything inside of me other than the Mana that I had been expecting, both the regular variety and Elemental and just as I was about to give up, I suddenly noticed a small light glowing just above my navel and focussed on that.

A smile covered my face as I was greeted by a vision of the world that I had been seeing when my Soul Aspect reached a new milestone. I had managed to use Meditation to artificially access that same thing, this was very interesting as it suggested that there were other things that I could use my Soul Aspect for if I could figure out how to do so. A closer look revealed that the organisms that I had seen when I had unlocked my Biomass Absorption Skill were thriving and spreading to other areas.

Opening my eyes once more I smiled as I saw the familiar symbol blinking in the corner of my vision and with a thought brought up the notifications that were waiting for me.

Inner Vision Unlocked!

This skill allows you to view your inner world and influence what they find within. They may also learn additional Skills by watching the occurrences in their inner world. Both influencing the world and learning the Skills within it may incur a cost.

Increases Growth Rate by 1 Willpower.

1 Aspect Point Awarded for unlocking Inner Vision.

Skills increased!

Meditation increased to Lvl 2

Available Aspect points increased by 1

Affinity increased!

Air Affinity increased to 2%

“Huh, that’s some good progress,” I said. The description for Inner Vision was particularly interesting but it like I would have to spend Essence to change how the inner world created by my Soul Aspect and learn some of the Skills that I could learn from observing it. Of course, this raised the question of how other Soul Aspects paid the ‘cost’ to do these things that the skill mentioned. I had my Essence resource which I expected I would have to use to pay that cost, but I only had that because of my Soul Aspect and judging by the notification I had received after unlocking it the Essence resource was either unique to me or extremely rare. But then for all I knew Soul Aspects that gave someone a new resource could be common or there could even be Soul Aspects that didn’t create a world like the way mine did. I didn’t even really understand the way my inner world works, was it a real world somewhere out there in the universe that I was somehow connected to? Was it imaginary or just something inside of my soul?

Shaking my head I cleared my head of this line of thought, while this might be worthy of further study I currently didn’t have access to any resources to that would help me figure something out right now so I would have to wait until the Yajash arrived before I would be able to make any real progress and even then I would probably have to learn how to read and teach them about this world before I would have any real spare time. Assuming of course I even survived that long of course, I still didn’t really know what I would have to face outside of the barrier that was protecting me and with a sigh I turned my attention back to the hatchet in my hands.

As I had noted before I had tried to keep the rough texture of the so that the handle was easier to hold on to, that didn’t actually make the handle very pleasant to hold so after thinking about it for a bit I decided to try and make the part of the handle that I thought that I would be holding most of the time contoured to my hand and activated my Nature Shaping Skill squeezing the handle tightly as I did so. I wasn’t sure how successful this would be but when I stopped, I was pretty happy with the results.

“Well that might be enough of this,” I said deciding that this would be good enough for now. I only had six more days before the barrier disappeared so spending more time on something that would work even if I didn’t work on making it better was a waste of time because I had to become strong enough to survive without the barrier before it disappeared.

“But what should I do next?” I wondered bringing up my Stats in the hopes of finding some inspiration there.

Status

Level 1

Exp: 0%

HP:54/54

MP:49/49

HP Regen: 6.1 per minute

MP Regen: 4.8 per minute

Stamina: 48/48

SP Regen: 4.8 per minute

Essence: 0

Str: 5 (+1/Lvl)

Agi: 6 (+1/Lvl)

Con: 8 (1/Lvl)

End: 6 (+1/Lvl)

Tou: 7 (+2/Lvl)

Int: 7 (+5/Lvl)

Coor: 8 (+3/Lvl)

Vit: 10 (3/Lvl)

Wis: 7 (+3/Lvl)

Will: 13 (+7/Lvl)

Per: 7 (+3/Lvl)

Cha: 8 (+5/Lvl)

Additional Growth Rate: +2 Unassigned Stat Points per Level.

Unassigned Stat Points: 0

My stats were definitely interesting, it was pretty obvious that I wouldn’t be able to stand a chance against anything that specialised in Strength at the moment which was fine as I planned on using magic as my main fighting style. With the healing abilities given to me by my Biomass Absorption Skill I could heal any injuries I received, but I still wasn’t comfortable with the idea of fighting something at close range, especially as I didn’t have a single melee-related Skill yet.

“Holy crap, when I level up my Willpower is almost going to go up the same number of points that I had the last time I looked at my Stat Screen,” I said incredulously. Willpower was not only my highest Stat, but its Growth Rate was also the highest out of all of my Stats and both my Mana and Health Regen seemed quite high, not that I had anything to base this off. I was a little annoyed and worried by the state of my Constitution though, it was only going to increase by 1 point when I Levelled Up which wasn’t great considering how vital my HP was to my survival.

“Well,” I muttered. “At least I do have a Skill that increases my Constitution’s Growth Rate. I was dreading trying to find a Skill that did that. Besides that, I also have some Stat Points to assign when I Level Up so I could use some of them to boost my Constitution.” I really wanted to increase my Intelligence as I felt that Stat was going to be more important to my build but staying alive had to be the priority.

Passing my eyes over my Stat Screen one more time I noticed that there was something odd about my Growth Rate, I couldn’t remember why I had +1 to Toughness listed.

“Oh crap!” I said slapping my forehead in exasperation. “I forgot to check that Heat Resistance Skill!”

Quickly I brought up the Skills details.

Heat Resistance

This skill increases your resistance to the negative effects of high temperatures.

Increases Growth Rate by 1 Toughness.

Sure enough, below the Skills short description was the increase to Toughness that I was expecting to see. The Skill itself didn’t really look like anything special but it did explain why the warmth of the forest wasn’t affecting me as much as it had when I arrived which was a small blessing. As it was specifically called Heat Resistance, I didn’t think it would protect me against flames, it might help a little bit, but I expected that I would need a specific Fire Resistance Skill for any real protection. Still the additional point to Toughness every time I levelled up would help to increase my Health which could only be a good thing.

However now that I had sorted that out it was time to move on to the next thing on the list, it was clear to me that I had to increase my physical stats or there was no way I would be able to last even a few seconds in the wilderness and with a sigh I made a decision about my next move. Rising to my feet I started to do something that most people who knew me back on earth would’ve been surprised to see me willingly do.

“Gods I hate running,” I grumbled as I started sprinting from one end of the grove to the other and back again. Back on earth I had actually had an injury that had made me hate running even more than I had before I injured myself so it was almost a pleasant surprise when my left knee didn’t start to feel like it was on fire by the third time I turned around and just as soon as I started to think that this wouldn’t be as bad as I had originally anticipated I felt my breath becoming short which was a surprise to me as even back on earth I could have run further than this without becoming short of breath and after going another couple of laps I came to a panting halt and opened my Stat Screen to test a theory.

“Well shit,” I said looking at my Stamina which now read 22/48. “That’s not good.”

It would seem that strenuous exercise like running decreased your Stamina which made a lot of sense, but I could see this becoming a problem in the future. If I was going to be a mage then being able to run away from something that wasn’t affected by my magic was going to be important which meant that I had to find a way to increase my Stamina. This was actually one of the reasons that I had reluctantly chosen this form of training but running out of Stamina this fast hadn’t been a part of the plan.

However, this was why trying things like this out before getting in a situation where I had to rely on my ability to run away was important, so I decided to continue running until my Stamina ran out, just to see what happened. A few minutes later sweat was pouring down my back, soaking into my shirt and my vision was starting to turn dim, my Stamina was definitely lower than it had been back on earth, but this was still harder than I had ever pushed myself before. Opening my Stat Screen again I saw that my Stamina was sitting at 5 out of 48.

“Shit,” I gasped, holding my sides. “If I keep going any further than this, I’m going to lose consciousness.”

My legs felt like they were on fire, the muscles filled with lactic acid, or whatever chemical that a Yajash had that allowed them to perform anaerobic exercise, my chest was tight, and I felt lightheaded. There was simply no way I was going to be able to continue running and remain conscious, it was even more annoying that despite pushing myself this hard I had yet to receive a Skill. However, I felt that I had proven my theory that depleting my Stamina was a bad idea and collapsed to the ground to recover.

I didn’t have a Skill that would increase my Stamina regeneration, so I decided to instead start meditating instead of wasting time and started drawing in the different types of energy that surrounding me. As always meditating was a calming experience despite the clouds of multicoloured energy that I was absorbing, and my breathing soon steadied.

A few minutes later I opened my eyes again and checked my Stamina once more discovering that it had been restored to 32/46 before checking the notifications that were waiting for me.

Affinities increased!

Earth Affinity increased to 6%

Water Affinity increased to 2%

My affinities seemed to be increasing pretty, I hadn’t received an increase to my Air Affinity this time but seeing that my Earth Affinity had increased surprised me. I had originally expected that it got harder and harder to increase our Affinities the higher they went and I still didn’t have any proof that wasn’t the case, after all there was a lot of Earth Mana all around me but it did beg the question whether this was because I was more talented with Earth Mana than other types, because I couldn’t see many other reasons I would’ve increased so quickly it otherwise.

“Yet another thing to add to the list of stuff I don’t understand I guess,” I decided with a shrug. The list was already pretty long after only a day and a half or so and without some sort of help function or access to a library it didn’t look like it was going to be getting shorter any time soon. Still it was good to see that I was making some decent progress increasing my magic related abilities even if I was still having difficulties on the more physical side of things, in fact it was only serving to reinforce my decision to specialise in magic.

Of course, that didn’t mean that I was going to give up on my physical training and I clambered to my feet and started running again. Running was even less pleasant now that I had been resting for a bit, my shirt was still wet from sweat and clung uncomfortably to my skin in places and I pulled it off in frustration and tossed it to the ground as I ran.

Soon I was once again panting from exertion and just as I was about to give up a notification appeared in front of me and I immediately came to a halt to examine it.

Running Unlocked!

This skill increases the speed that you are able to run at while slightly decreasing the Stamina cost.

Increases Growth Rate by 1 Agility.

1 Aspect Point Awarded for unlocking Running.

“Well that’s something,” I gasped bending over. Anything that increased my Agility was certainly welcome especially as the Skill also increased my speed and decreased the Stamina Cost of running. Personally, I thought the name was a bit on the nose but who was I to judge something like that?

Of course, now I had to decide what I wanted to do next, I had a feeling that if I kept depleting my Stamina by running I would unlock another Skill that would provide an increase to my Endurance Growth Rate, but my Stamina had run out again so I decided that I would practice with Mana Bolt and maybe try and come up with some ideas for new magic spells. I had a feeling that I wouldn’t be able to actually unlock many more spells until I increased the level of Mana Manipulation, but it was still worth giving it a go.

One thing that quickly became clear as I stared firing Mana Bolts at the same rock I had used as a target the first time I used it was that hitting the target had been a fluke. With the amount of MP and regen that I had available I only had ten shots and of those ten shots only three hit the target with the rest taking chunks out of the trees behind it or kicking up the ground when they struck.

“This is more difficult than I thought it would be,” I grumbled in irritation. I had started taking a little bit more time between shots to try and increase my accuracy and to a degree this had worked with the later shots coming much closer than the earlier ones. In fact, two of the shots that hit the target had been shots that I had taken later but unfortunately, I ran out of Mana just when I thought I was starting to get the hang of it.

Sitting down I started Meditating once more embracing the sensation of absorbing the energy of the world around me, despite the way that sounded it was actually quite calming, like I was becoming closer to the world around me and soon I began to feel like I could continue my training regimen.