Once I had finished collecting what I needed to start a fire I lit it the same way that I had lit the fire the other night almost burning myself in the process when the kindling suddenly caught causing me to jump backwards in surprise.

“Damn!” I exclaimed checking my hand for any burns before turning back to the quickly growing fire. “I really need to figure out a better way of doing this.”

I really hadn’t been expecting to light the fire so quickly or suddenly and while this wasn’t something I had done awfully often back on earth I was pretty sure it was unusual for normal wood to do that so I picked up one of the spare branches I had put aside and took a closer look at it. This particular branch was of a different type than the ones that I had been using to make the handles for my axes and was slightly sticky to the touch and had several of the strange insect-like creatures embedded in it which suggested that the tree this had fallen off was either of the predatory variety or released this substance to protect itself. If the tree that this branch had fallen off was indeed predatory then this didn’t really do anything for my worries that there would be carnivorous trees big enough that they would try and eat me but I quickly banished those unhelpful thoughts from my head and scraped a bit of this substance off onto a rock which I then flipped into the fire and sure enough there was a slight flare when the stone made contact with the fire.

“Alright so this stuff is flammable,” I muttered to myself. “That’s useful information, I can use this.”

Noticing a number of holes in the wood I drew my knife and started shaving the wood back to discover a series of capillaries running through the wood and was filled with the same sticky substance that was already beginning to harden slightly. However, I didn’t really know how I was going to collect this extremely useful liquid. The Yajash might be able to make permanent lights with magic but constant use of my Mana Light spell was going to be pretty taxing so using this stuff like lamp oil or maybe candlewax when it hardened was a much better option for me if I could get enough of it.

“Maybe the same way people used to collect maple syrup?” I mused. Some of the liquid might harden but it was the only thing I could really think of off the top of my head.

Anyway, it was time to move onto the next thing and after considering my options I decided to try two different methods of cooking the Crawler meat that I had collected. The first method was the same way that I had cooked the Feathered Chimp meat and the other was something that I decided to try because of the similarities between the Crawlers and the squid and octopus back on earth.

Soon I had two chunks of meat sizzling away, one was wrapped in a large leaf that I had found and placed on a stone that was propped over part of the flames which would mean that it was going to take much longer to cook but would hopefully prevent it from burning and becoming so tough as to be inedible unlike the skewered piece of meat which started to blacken almost instantaneously forcing me to move the meat a bit further away from the flames.

Right then, I guess I should have a think about what I’m going to do tomorrow, especially since that’s the last day that I was planning on being here because the barrier was going to go down at some point the following day. I had been considering my options all day and had made a few plans but that didn’t mean that my plans couldn’t be improved upon, especially now that I had the added complication caused by the Giant Amoeba which was now large and heavy enough that it would slow me down if I had to carry it but nowhere near fast enough to either keep up with me or outrun a Crawler. I also wasn’t willing to just abandon it which meant that I would have to create a separate opening for it to get a head start on me while distracting the Crawlers.

I was also planning on getting out of here well before the barrier disappeared on me, hopefully I would be able to sneak away without being caught by any Crawlers but even if I did it would be difficult to get away, there were just so many Crawlers that I could be certain that there would be a few that could at the very least keep up with me if not outrun me and they almost definitely had more Stamina than I did which would complicate things even further.

Eventually I hit on the idea of creating some simple pitfall traps and lining them with spikes like the traps that you saw in old movies. However, while digging the holes should be easy enough with my Digging Skill, I wasn’t sure that wooden stakes would be able to do enough damage to slow down the Crawlers that fell in them too much.

“Looks like I might have to fall back on my Earth Affinity again,” I sighed. While I was pretty sure that creating both the pitfall and spikes mage of rock would be beyond me, I was pretty sure that just making the spikes would be easy enough and besides I was planning on making a spell that could do that anyway and doing it now made a lot of sense.

Concentrating I reached out to the Mana both inside me and around me before trying to use it to form a small spike on the ground in front of me. Of all the earth spells that I had tried this was in some ways the easiest because it wasn’t using another affinity like my Sticky Bog spell or trying to detach the rocks from the ground it was just bringing them to the surface and changing their shape slightly. Opening my eyes, I found a small spike of rock about half a foot-high sticking out of the ground and frowned slightly. While this might be good to slow down any pursuers it wasn’t actually what I was looking for. Closing my eyes once more I tried to force more magic into the forming spell to see if that had an effect and sure enough the spike of rock grew to about a meter in length and slightly wider which made me nod happily. This size was about perfect for what I was going to use it for. Checking the notification for my new spell made me smile even wider.

Rock Spear Unlocked!

This skill forms a large spike of rock that juts out of the ground in whatever direction that you desire.

Cost 5 MP per inch in length or width for each spike.

Growth Rate increased by 1 Wisdom

1 Aspect Point awarded for unlocking Rock Spear

It looked like not only could I make the spike shoot out at different angles which would make it even more useful to me and the fact that I could change both the length and width of the spikes was also useful. In the future I could see myself creating small forests of spikes a couple of inches long around me to prevent anything approaching me too easily or even creating larger spikes that I could use to make stone palisades to protect certain areas like the village I was going to have to think about setting up sometime soon among other things. Maybe these specific uses could even be turned into their own spells eventually, but for now this was just what I needed.

Deciding to check how my other Skills had been advancing I mentally pressed on the glowing symbol in the corner of my vision.

Skills increased!

Mana Manipulation increased to Lvl 8

Mana Bolt increased to Lvl 5

Mana Bolt now has a small area of effect.

Running increased to Lvl 4

Meditation increased to Lvl 7

Stone Shot increased to Lvl 4

Controlled Breathing increased to Lvl 3

Spell Targeting increased to Lvl 4

Botany increased to Lvl 2

Available Aspect points increased by 10

Yeah… that’s a lot of changes, looks like this method of training was paying off quite well, but what was really interesting was that instead of getting an increase to my Growth Rate for reaching Lvl 5 the Skill itself changed instead. Don’t get me wrong, the idea that Mana Bolt now had an area of effect was an exciting one, but I couldn’t help but be slightly disappointed that I wouldn’t be getting a further increase to my Stats when I Levelled Up.

Opening my Aspect Screen, I put all 11 of the Aspect Points that I had saved up into the Aspect of the Summoner and confirmed my decision.

As expected, I was once again thrown into the world of my Soul Aspect where I saw a massive number of organisms that were both larger and more varied in shape and size than any of the ones that I had seen in my inner world before. Naturally this meant that they were mostly multicellular organisms, but I could also see more than a few of the amoeba that I had seen earlier swimming around as well. Blinking as I returned to my body, I started reading the screens that appeared in front of me as I usually did.

Then everything blurred as time began to advance at an incredibly fast pace and when things finally slowed back down to normal I could see that there were even more different types of living creatures than there had been the previous times both single-celled and multicellular and I was surprised to see much more complicated organisms swimming around in the oceans including things that seemed to be distant relatives of jellyfish with translucent bodies that had either groupings of short tentacles or cilia all over more like my Amoeba. There were also things that somewhat resembled sponges and corals growing on the rock shelves in the shallower areas of the ocean giving these areas an almost alien atmosphere. Taking a closer look at the strange jellyfish like creatures proved to be both interesting as well as slightly disconcerting as I could see things that they had devoured being slowly digested inside of their bodies. But even the weirdness of that didn’t change the fact that they were some of the most complicated and interesting organisms to have evolved in my internal world. I didn’t think that they would be particularly useful as creatures to summon but I had always found things like jellyfish to be very odd but interesting creatures.

Once again everything changed in front of me leaving me marvelling at the strangeness of all of this. I was basically watching a time lapse movie of several millennia in the blink of an eye. When everything slowed back down to normal, I looked around to see that things had changed significantly once again. All around me swarms of organisms swam through the water but more interestingly I could see that there were some things that didn’t follow this trend. Attached to a nearby rock were several rather lumpy looking shells. The first of the molluscs had appeared in my internal world.

Once I came around the notifications that I had come to expect in this strange new world of mine appeared in front of my face and I obligingly read them.

Aspect of the Summoner has been increased to 20/50.

Willpower increased by 2

While Minions are summoned to protect their summoner, it would be foolish for a summoner to send them into battle without being able to keep them alive.

Heal Minion Unlocked!

The ability to create allies to help you in battle is all but useless if you cannot control their actions.

Charisma increased by 3!

Aspect Points: 0

Soul Aspect increased to Level 85!

Your internal world has undergone a massive change with thousands of new species appearing within a few thousand years. These new species are far more advanced and varied than anything else that has existed so far.

Unassigned Stat Points increased by 3!

Growth Rate increased by 2 Unassigned Stat Points!

The organisms in your internal world are flourishing like never before with many new types of organism carving out their place in the ecosystem. The time where a dominant group of organisms is growing near and many of the candidates are already beginning to appear in your world.

Vitality increased by 2!

Unassigned Stat Points increased by 1!

The organisms that live in your internal world have dramatically increased in variety once again over the past few million years and some have formed new ways of protecting themselves from the creatures that hunt them by forming protective shells that cover their bodies or developing new limbs so that they could outrun their predators. Of course, these predators have also developed new ways of breaking these new shells and outrun their prey over short distances.

Toughness increased by 2!

Agility increased by 2!

Growth Rate increased by 1 Agility

Oh, I got a healing spell from the Aspect of the Summoner, I guess I should take a look at it. I already had a Skill that could heal me already but this one seems to be specifically for my minions. This was actually a good thing because it could tell me a bit more about how Skills work. My Air Affinity had also gotten a boost which would hopefully be useful once I figured out what sort of spells, I wanted to make with my Air Affinity. Another interesting thing was that I had received some Charisma for this Aspect and the -for lack of a better word- warning that it had given me which suggested to me that not all of the creatures that could be summoned were as easy to control as the Giant Amoeba that was sitting next to me now which was slightly worrying. Thankfully I did have a reasonable amount of Charisma for my Level, or at least as far as I knew I did but I made a note to invest more Stat Points into it later.

Which reminds me I should probably use the Unassigned Stat Point that I had gained from my Soul Aspect, I wasn’t going to use this one on Charisma though. No, this time I was going to put the point into Endurance, I didn’t really want to do this because it wasn’t a Stat that I felt that I would need too often in the future but in the end I had to make sure that I would actually have a future before thinking about how I wanted to spend my Stat Points in the future.

I also got a fairly significant number of Stats that I was going to have to deal with as well but first I brought up the description of my new Skill.

Heal Minion Unlocked! (Specialised)

This spell allows you to send Mana down the link between you and any summoned creature healing its wounds. This spell can only be used no summoned creatures but can be used at any range so long as you still have a minion link between you and the creature in question.

Cost: 30 MP

Growth Rate increased by 1 Intelligence and Willpower

Huh, that’s actually really interesting. The spells description mentioned the link between me and my minions which suggested to me that there were other things that I could do with that and I made a mental note to investigate further as I turned the meat over before picking up the piece of stone that had once been the head of my axe.

I wanted to make a new weapon to use in my other hand when I was using my axe. The knife that I had when I arrived here was far better than anything that I could create but that was actually more reason to have something else to use most of the time because replacing it would be all but impossible for me right now. The only question was what was I going to make?

I already had the Knife Mastery Skill so I should be making something that would be treated as a knife by the system so that I could make use of that Skill. It would have to be something simple to make, so a knife similar to the one that I had was an option of course but I decided to examine my other options as well. A simple spike made of stone was a decent idea as well, it would be very easy to make a large number of simple stone spikes making it very easy to replace any damaged or lost ones. All I would have to do was use my new Rock Spear spell to create a spike of the desired length and use my Nature Shaping to cut it off.

But I decided that would be taking the easy way out, if I was going to do this then I had to actually come up with something that I could take seriously because I was pretty sure that was something that affected how Skills were acquired and grew, not that I had any proof of this, it just made sense to me. Besides I wasn’t sure that a spike would be compatible with my Knifer Mastery Skill. Then I had an idea, there was a weapon that I was certain was going to be compatible with my Knife Mastery Skill that also kept to the ‘theme’ that I seemed to be picking up of being prepared for anything. That weapon was known as a kunai which was a special type of knife that was famously used by ninjas and could be used both in melee combat and as a thrown weapon but the thing that clinched it for me was that the kunai was something that was originally intended to be a tool used for digging which I was planning on doing a bit of tomorrow.

Taking the piece of stone, I moulded into the familiar diamond shape of a kunai before turning my attention back to the cooking meat when I smelled smoke.

“Ah, shit,” I groaned as I pulled the skewered Crawler meat which was now almost completely black from the fire before checking on the other piece of meat which thankfully seemed to be fine. “And that’s why you never cook when you’re distracted.”

I wrinkled my nose as I looked at the pungent smelling meat before carefully attempting to take a bite. Now I say attempting because this meat was tough, like rubber tough. Underneath the slightly crispy surface. It also didn’t taste very good, sort of similar to squid but much, much stronger as well as being slightly sour which wasn’t a pleasant combination at all. However, a quick check of my Status Screen revealed that so far it wasn’t causing me any harm, not that I had actually managed to swallow anything yet. After gnawing at the unpleasant chunk of meat for a few seconds I finally managed to tear a piece off which then swallowed with a grimace before sitting back and watching my Status carefully, the moment I saw my HP dropping I would stick my fingers down my throat to induce vomiting and hope that my Poison Resistance Skill would do the rest.

Surprisingly my HP didn’t drop at all even after waiting a few minutes during which I made the handle for the kunai. It was slightly misshapen because I had ended up having to combine it with another piece of stone because I ran out of material, but it had the right basic shape, so I decided to leave it for now while I finished eating the Crawler meat. By the time that I had finished half of the first piece of meat the other was well and truly cooked, or I was pretty sure it was cooked, I had never cooked Crawler meat before, hell I wasn’t sure anyone had. But I decided to call it cooked, so I gave what remained to the Amoeba which greedily snatched the meat out of the air and enveloped it with its gelatinous body with a slight slurping sound.

Picking up the piping hot bundle of leaves and meat I partially unwrapped it and attempted to take a bite. While it was still pretty tough it wasn’t quite as tough as the piece I had just been attempting to eat, unfortunately it also wasn’t as dry as the previous piece of flesh and the greasy liquid that coated it filled my mouth with that same unpleasant flavour that the previous piece had almost making me spit the meat right out into the fire in disgust, however in the interests of research and survival I persevered and swallowed the chunk of flesh watching my HP carefully as I did so.

A little bit later my HP started dropping a point every few second and I started to feel a bit ill but I decided to leave it for a bit, I was pretty sure that this wasn’t actually going to kill me any time soon and I needed to see whether this would actually be dangerous to eat. I was guessing that I was suffering from a minor form of poisoning that was probably being caused by the foul-tasting liquid that was oozing from the Crawler meat. Sure enough a few seconds later my HP started dropping slower and slower before stopping.

“Hmm, yeah don’t think that this is going to be on the menu any time soon, in either form,” I said tossing the greasy piece of meat at to the amoeba again as I rubbed my still protesting stomach. While technically I probably would be able to eat Crawler meat without any real problems, especially once my Poison Resistance Skill Levelled Up, I just didn’t think that it would be a worthwhile thing for people to eat which didn’t actually surprise me that much. Well, not if I was cooking it anyway, who knew what people with high Cooking Skills could do. Still it was a bit annoying that something that seemed to be quite a common creature in this neck of the woods was something that wasn’t really a viable source of food.

“Oh well, not much I can do about that,” I sighed irritably. “Now I should probably use these Unassigned Stat Points.”

Considering my options, I decided to place a point into Willpower, which now looked like it was going to be one of my main Stats, if not my main Stat. After this I put 2 points into Agility and the final point into Endurance for the extra speed and stamina

Status

Level 1

Exp: 55%

HP: 115/120

MP: 121/121

HP Regen: 12.6 per minute

MP Regen: 9.4 per minute

SP: 83/83

Essence: 29

SP Regen: 7.4 per minute

Control Points: 15.8

Str: 6 (+3/Lvl)

Agi: 14 (+5/Lvl)

Con: 16 (+ 4/Lvl)

End: 9 (+6/Lvl)

Tou: 18 (+3/Lvl)

Int: 14 (+21/Lvl)

Coor: 9 (+5/Lvl)

Vit: 23 (+5/Lvl)

Wis: 13 (+13/Lvl)

Will: 19 (+15/Lvl)

Per: 12 (+10/Lvl)

Cha: 11 (+5/Lvl)

Additional Growth Rate: +10 Unassigned Stat Points/Lvl. +20 MP/Lvl. MP regen increased by 1/min per Lvl.

Unassigned Stat Points: 0

Still my Stats were looking pretty good now, despite the current state of my HP so I waved the screen away and turned towards the strange gelatinous creature that was currently my only ally in this exotic and dangerous world.

“Now then my translucent friend let’s take a closer look at you,” I said as I closed my eyes and slipped into Meditation.

Once I had entered my meditative state, I looked in the direction of the amoeba with what passed for my sight when in this state. It was easy enough to find the link between myself. To me the link ‘looked’ like a string of Mana that started in an area just above my navel and ended in the centre of the amoeba which incidentally shone with both Water and Nature Mana to my mental sight. The link itself was actually the thing that I was interested in and it was largely formed of Nature Mana which made sense to me and another form of Mana which felt very similar to Nature Mana but not quite. I wasn’t actually sure how to describe it but if I had to give it a colour like I had the other forms of Mana it would be golden. I couldn’t say what this new form of Mana was for certain, but my gut was telling me that it could be something like Soul or Spiritual Mana which again made a certain amount of sense to me.

When I had unlocked the Heal Minion spell I had been struck by a certain idea. This idea concerned the amoeba’s rather limited senses. Right now, it could sense touch and vibrations but that was about it. But what if I could use the link between the two of us to allow us to share our senses?

If I could then this would be extremely useful, both for myself and the amoeba.

Focussing on the thread of Mana I tried to send more Mana through it and then nearly leapt out of my skin when the amoeba made a strange bubbling sound like it was in pain.

“Okay, not like that then,” I muttered. “Maybe I could try using my Inner Vision Skill to help me out here?”

This actually worked in the end, but the Skill wasn’t really meant to be used that way which showed when I developed a very sudden and very painful headache. Still it did work. Next, I crossed my fingers and attempted to mentally fold the Inner Vision Skill into the link itself. I chose to do this because it was the only method that I could think of to move my senses around like this. Yes, it was a bit of a reach, especially considering my thumping head but it wasn’t like I knew a better way to do this.

To my surprise, I was indeed able to put some of my consciousness into the amoeba which was an extremely odd sensation. Still it did allow me to feel things that the amoeba felt which only added to the oddness of the situation especially when I realised that I could now literally feel the vibrations of my own heartbeat. Now I only had to make this a two-way street, as it were.

In the end the only thing that I could think of in the end was to try using the Heal Minion spell that had given me the idea in the first place and try and combine this with my mental concepts of my Inner Vision Skill and my Minion Control Skills.

Now making new Skills was something that I didn’t really know all that much about and I was sure that doing things this way was really dangerous. In fact, as I did this, I felt warm fluid start dripping from my nose again. But I did feel parts of the Skills begin to fuse together, hopefully doing this wouldn’t negatively affect the Skills themselves.

Opening my eyes, I winced in pain as I wiped the warm fluid from my nose with the back of my hand, sure enough the liquid was blood which was annoying but better than it being brain fluid.

“Alright then, moment of truth,” I groaned as I mentally pressed on the flashing new symbol in the corner of my vision.

Share Senses Unlocked (Rare)!

This Skill allows you to share you and your minions to share your senses within a range of ten metres. Costs 5 MP/ min.

Increases Growth Rate by 2 Willpower and 1 Perception.

3 Aspect Points awarded for unlocking Share Senses.

Well it was certainly the Skill that I was looking for but holy cow maybe I should risk crippling brain damage more often if this was what I was going to get. My second Rare Skill baby!

And what was even better was that the MP cost was so surprisingly low that if I wanted I could actually keep it active constantly and I actually decided to activate it right now which made the amoeba twitch slightly like it was surprised as my own senses were added to its own. Once again, I could sense my own heartbeat from the perspective of the amoeba, not that I expected to get all that much use out of that, for now this Skill was mostly for the amoeba as my senses were far superior. That might change when I unlocked other types of minions but for now giving my sole minion the gift of sight, even if it was from my perspective was the best thing to come out of this Skill.

“Well, I think that I might be done for the night,” I groaned. My head was still thumping so hard that it would be difficult to sleep but that only meant that it would be even more difficult to do anything else. But as I drifted off to sleep with the amoeba sitting next to me, I did have one final thought.

Just how did Skills work anyway?