I’ve spent the last 5 hours trying to resurrect the centipede corpse via necromancy.

I figured as someone who has come back from the dead, that I could more easily use magic to influence it.

That turned out to be completely wrong.

Either necromancy doesn’t exist in this world, or it operates in a way that doesn’t involve that….. place that I was in after I died.

I exhausted every conceptual interaction of my mana to influence “that place” and had no trace of locating or interacting with the centipede’s soul or whatever a dead consciousness is.

At least I didn’t completely waste my time as I got 1 new skill, [Astral Projection] WIS +1 (87) WIL+1 (139).

Astral projection allows for me to go back into my bodiless form, leaving my living body undefended.

I tried to possess insects, trees, and Ratina’s body, but was unable to. The only things I could do were see, hear, and feel mana likely due to mana perception.

While this may be useful to spy or give orders to my monsters, I already possess a link and telepathy for communication, and spying can mostly be done via my magic sense, so the only possible use I can see is to spy when I am very far away from the place I want to spy on.

The most interesting and useful aspect of astral projection (and reason I don’t feel it was a complete waste of my time) is that my astral projected self can instantly travel between my body and linked bodies.

In conclusion, I spent five hours in order to develop a skill that is only useful under extremely specific circumstances and have still not done anything that actually needed the centipede’s body.

On the upside, Ratina has not been idle for this time. I would occasionally give pointers as Ratina tried to figure out magic based on the sensations she has felt in the link when I use magic.

Ratina was able to learn [Mana Perception] [Mana Manipulation] [Magic: Mana Sense] and [Telepathy] INT +10 (23) WIS +3 (9)

Ratina gained intelligence for learning telepathy which I didn’t, potentially because I got it from my class, but monster buff did give me stat buffs for learning from an increase in class rank.

There are too many possibilities so I shelve my thoughts, be gone analytical thoughts, I have more important things and it doesn’t bother me.

It absolutely does. not. bother. me.

.

.

It bothers me but I can ignore it.

I want to get to the bottom of this, I want to make weapons out of the centipede corpse, I want to see if I can teleport based on the astral projection sensation, I want to try and learn light or dark magic to assist hiding, but I need to stop myself and focus.

I start getting around to my initial objective of learning the hide skill. I focus on my link to Ratina and try to focus on her memories of the hide skill.

The link is far calmer than usual, both of us are normally on edge in the forest and our collective paranoia amplifies each other.

But now, we are both trying to calm, and focus, focus….. I got sidetracked again by thinking about the link, excuse me one moment as I bash my head into the nearest wall, wait baby body bad idea! Mentally slap myself and move on.

It seems like you are in need of a chill pill master, I will let you know the moment I find one.

Ha Ha very funny.

A few hours later [learned hide] +2 INT (115) +1WIS (88).

Now it is starting to get late so I use soil manipulation to cover the cave entrance some and start to sleep.

I am woken up sometime later in the night.

Ratina woke up first because she heard some larger animals nearby, and quickly woke me up as well.

Mana perception shows there are 8 wolves outside, and that each of them has as much mana concentration as I do.

I am not strong enough to handle all of them, I could probably take down half of them, but I would run out of mana too quickly.

Worse it seems as though they smell us as they are coming our direction while….. the centipede.

They probably smell the centipede corpse that we have with us in the cave, I usually wash myself and Ratina with water ball, but the corpse of a monster would obviously draw some attention in a forest.

The good news is that they haven’t seen us yet, the bad news is that they noticed the cave already and are likely only hesitating in case a strong monster lives inside.

So I use soil manipulation to make a separate path in the cave with some air holes, and close it behind me and Ratina.

I’m not about to fight a battle at such a disadvantage if I can avoid it, now I just have to out wait the wolves.

I should really design some traps or defenses beyond covering up the entrance in the future.

A few minutes pass and the wolves are still waiting outside, well speaking of traps if they are going to wait then how about I hollow out some pitfalls and make some stalactites with thin connections to the ceiling that I can cut.

An hour later and the wolves begin to stir, it seems like they are now convinced that nothing too powerful is in the cave, although I have no idea how they came to that conclusion.

I intentionally avoid triggering the traps as they walk into the cave, no reason for me to allow them an escape route is there?

Once they reach the centipede, the fun can begin.

The moment they reach the centipede I trigger the pitfall with soil manipulation dropping the whole pack onto dirt spikes.

The spikes broke.

Funny thing about a world with a level system, objects without a wielder buffing them are basically useless.

And now the pack of high levelled wolves is pissed off.

It’s a good thing I have most of my MP because of course they can dig, and they just so happen to seem to be able to notice my direction as they all seem to be digging toward me.

I try to use the tame skill to dominate one of them like Ratina, but it fails likely due to them having similar mental stats to my own.

So I have Ratina put me on her back, we both use the hide skill, and we run.

We run out of the cave first through the alternate path, we even make a sizeable lead, but after the wolves get out they run fast.

REALLY fast.

So we are slower, weaker, outnumbered, and the hide skill doesn’t seem to stop them from tracking us.

That leaves only 2 options and since there are no stronger monsters close by to lead them into, I chose the more chaotic one.

I use fire ball and start a forest fire.

Instead of concentrating it like with the centipede, I just use 20MP worth of fire mana to spread out between me and the wolves.

It makes a literal wall of flames, which you’d think would be a different skill, but still seems to count as fire ball for some reason.

The flames spread fast, and while I was worried that the wolves would charge through it and ignore the damage, they seem to run away very quickly.

While this is quite convenient for me, I wonder why they would ROOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAARRRRR.

Then the fire breathing deer arrives.