Successfully slain Caballuco de Diablu

Level UP!

Name:Aether Cael Level: 2 HP: 8/11 STR:12 DEX:10 CON:11 INT:14 WIL:9 CHA:7 Unused stat points: 1 Status effects: burned (1rst degree) Skills:fire resistance 1 Feats: Feat points: 3

“...”

And here I am, staring at a screen that belongs in a goddam videogame. Apparently I leveled up by killing that bug… did they invent VR when I wasn't looking? And if they did… WHY THE FUCK DID IT HAVE TO HAVE REALISTIC BURN PAIN!?

I mean seriously, what happened? How many drugs do you have to take to go through this shit, and where did I get them? I mean I’m as happy with the world turning into a video game as the next max level nerd, but everything I know about the laws of physics is screaming that this shit doesn’t make any sense… (disconnecting from reality in 3… 2… 1… )

On the bright side I seem to have learned a fire resistance skill… I am not training that shit. Logically speaking, the best course of action would be to get up and try to find other people but…

“ROOOOOOOOAAAAAARRR!!!!!”

Yeah, seems like those dragonflies were not the worst things here. In light of that fact, I decided to prioritize gathering information… shit that burn stings… maybe if I… I mean it probably won't work, but maybe if I raise WIL, which I assume is willpower, I wont feel the pain as much? I mean it's a 9 right now anyway, my second lowest stat… then again, specialization is usually bett- OW!

I accidentally tapped my burns with one of my backpack straps. That's decided then.

Name:Aether Cael Level: 2 HP: 8/22 STR:12 DEX:10 CON:11 INT:14 WIL:10 CHA:7 Status effects: burned (1rst degree) Skills:fire resistance 1 Feats: Feat points: 3

Nope, still feel like someone is continuously skinning my arm. On the bright side, I feel 11% better at dealing with it. How do I know its 11%? Because my willpower increased by 11%, therefore, that should be 11% as well…

Either way, the other stats seem to mirror D&D, with STR being strength, DEX being dexterity, CON being constitution, INT being intelligence, and CHA being charisma. I assume their effects would be self explanatory, strength being how strong you are, constitution being how tough, etc…

I assume I got the fire resistance skill by being burned, and it should make me more resistant to burns… not going to test that hypothesis…

The burned status effect should refer to my arm, since nothing else seems like it fits the criteria. Probably going to go away after my arm heals up… I wish I had some first aid equipment… at least it tells me the degree of the burns.

Now the feats… that seems a bit more interesting…

It appeared that he earned feat points through some unknown method, and was then able to select strange abilities. Right now he had 3 feat points, and his available feats were:

Available Feats: basic fire affinity (1 point) basic magic affinity (1 point) basic regeneration (1 point) basic ki affinity (1 point) basic monster hunter (10 points)

Monster hunter is right out, not nearly enough points for that one, regeneration is a definite must, hopefully that will help heal my arm, magic affinity is a definite yes, my highest stat is already intelligence… but between fire affinity and ki affinity… my physical stats would probably receive a boost, but pyromancer, but those kung fu movies… maybe if I get fire affinity it can help me train my fire resista-

That thought was killed with fire immediately upon appearing… there is no escape is there… this is stupid, I know this is stupid… why am I clicking that… Aether no…

Aether yes…

Name:Aether Cael Level: 2 HP: 8/22

MP: 10/28

STR:12 DEX:10 CON:11 INT:14 WIL:10 CHA:7 Unused stat points: 1 Status effects: burned Skills:fire resistance 1 Feats:Basic regeneration, basic magic affinity, basic fire affinity

Basic regeneration: regenerate 1 point of all of your resource pools every hour.

Basic magic affinity: unlock magic skills, unlock magic power pool

Basic fire affinity: unlock fire based skills besides resist skill, increase leveling speed of fire based skills

I got a cool sensation in the back of my head. Definitely my mana, using my will I moved it along my body, collecting it in my hands by instinct, pushing it to the tip of my finger until the power seemed to be about to burst, and released the energy as a bolt of force.

Mana bolt spell unlocked, level 1

And… my nail went flying off my finger as I fired the bolt. WHY DOES MAGIC HATE MY HANDS? Then I thought that magic can't hate anything as it seems to just be a form of… energy? Then I thought, is healing magic a thing I can do?

Moving magic back into my hand, I tried willing it to hold the tip of my finger back together. It pinched it shut to stop the bloodloss… oh that doesn't sound so bad? I remind you that said finger lacked the nail, so it was pinching directly on to every single nerve in my finger. why do you hate me magic? Well, that failed… lets try a more precise approach…

This time I imagined the cells that made up my finger. I imagined the magic taking the place of things like ATP in the cells, urging them to replicate, repairing DNA, promoting the growth of a new nail, moving blood back, etc… and it worked!

Not only was my magic fixing my finger, I also sensed something else, something in my blood itself…

Medical magic spell unlocked, level 3

Minimum blood affinity achieved!!!

Hell yeah, all of those biology classes are paying off, but blood affinity?

Name:Aether Cael Level: 2 HP: 8/22

MP: 5/28

STR:12 DEX:10 CON:11 INT:14 WIL:10 CHA:7 Unused stat points: 1 Status effects: burned Skills:fire resistance 1, mana bolt 1, medical magic 3, Feats:Basic regeneration, basic magic affinity, basic fire affinity, minimum blood affinity Feat points: 4

Oh boy…

It appears that feats can be achieved without feat points, though i'm not sure how I gained those points, given that I assumed they were given once per level. Given this information, I sat down and began meditating. I gained the blood affinity by sensing it in my body, so therefore I should be able to gain ki affinity the same way. Remembering all of the weeaboo stories and martial arts mumbo jumbo I’ve read I start looking.

Of course having one of your arms feel like shit didn't help, so I decided to spend the rest of my MP on healing my arm. Normally in stories like this, emptying your MP ends in the character blacking out from exhaustion, but in this case it just caused that cool feeling at the back of my head to disappear, which actually let me focus on an interesting electric feeling in my brain. Psychic powers? Maybe, but let's stay focused on Ki first.

About an hour later was when I unlocked minimum Ki affinity, as well as minimum psionic affinity. I could feel a calm torrent of energy as well as a constant buzz of power, but neither unlocked a new resource pool like magic affinity did. It appeared that minimum affinity only made very small changes, almost unnoticeable. The main thing they did was open the way to higher versions of the affinities. That, and apparently grant feat points.

I also gained a meditation skill… this almost feels too easy, despite the pain involved at the beginning…

Is it normal to gain affinities this fast? Especially with the meditation skill

Meditation: allows you to slowly increase your affinities over time

Of course, 5 hours of meditation later and I was starting to get hungry, and no I will not eat the dragonfly’s corpse. I bought the basic versions of the minimum affinities I got, and noticed a couple things. 1rst of all, I had the ability to purchase the beginner version of all the affinities at 4 points each, and a feat for 100 points called magical healthcare.

Magical healthcare: add WIL to your CON for the effects of health regeneration. Add INT to your CON for the effect of maximum health.add +1 to a physical stat every level.gained by unlocking blood affinity and medical magic.

I was able to deduce that health was equal to constitution multiplied by level. If my intelligence was added to that, then my health would more than double. Added to that was a doubling of healing power, and getting bonus physical stats every level… it was tempting.

I was also able to deduce that feat points came whenever you either leveled up, leveled a skill, or achieved a feat yourself. So, if I was to go about exploring this place, carefully avoiding whatever made that roar, I might get strong enough to escape without waiting for the military to drop a missile strike on whatever the hell that thing was… actually why haven't I heard any booms at all? With monsters appearing like this, i would at least expect to hear police gunfire?

Well, only one way to figure out what's going on…

Approaching the door, I began to observe the murals on the wall. There were figures of cyclopean sasquatch, as well as a winding serpentine figure lining the corners, as well as the standard shapes and flowers I'm used to. Reaching the end of the hallway and opening the door, I saw why there were figures of those sasquatches.

The hallway led into a wide atrium, definitely not one that was in the old university. Twin stairs led down into the first floor, and a giant glass dome let light in from above, at least in the direct middle of the room. A 3 meter tall version of those figures was lumbering across the area under the light, smacking around small goblins wielding spears. Given the fact that the walls were plastered with blood, I assume there used to be more of the goblins before I came in. actually… while the big guy is distracted I could just sneak across and escape. Then I could come back when I trained up a few more skills. I mean… I could try a fireball… show those bastards their own medicine… and burn them… hopefully get the smell of blood out of the air…

I had about 10 units of magic power left. Using my magic affinity and fire affinity, I tried summoning and throwing a fireball. I ended up spending 3 mana on the equivalent of a flung match, which didn't do much besides draw the cyclop sasquatch’s attention.

“I’d like to apologize”

And I ran straight back to the hallway like a little bitch, the cyclops in not so hot pursuit. What? The thing was almost twice my height!

It appeared that just imagining stuff happening wasn't very effective. If I wanted to use magic I had to play according to reality’s rules, which meant I had to know what I wanted to do.

What did I want to do? Set the cyclops on fire

How do I make fire? Heat and something to burn. Or more precisely, heat, fuel and an oxidizer. Looking at the hairy bastard, I had a plan for what to use as fuel.

As the cyclops reached the door, I began focusing on it, specifically, the hair all around it. I used my mana to vibrate the air around the hair, and to draw in oxygen. Once that was complete, the asshole was bent over to get under the door. All that was missing was a little spark, which I tried to make by focusing my magic into trying to rip the electrons in the oxygen and the hair together, combusting the tip of a single hair, that spread to the whole hair, that spread all over the hairy fatass. Of course, that left me with no MP, and stuck in a narrow hallway with a burning giant. My only saving graces were that he was forced to crouch in the hallway so he couldn’t charge, and that he was slowly burning. The fire and smoke were covering his eye, the only thing he could smell would be his own burnt hair, and he was making so much noise with the fire even I could barely hear myself think. I could probably sneak between his legs if he wasn’t swinging his arms like a madman. Though if I time it just right, I might be able to jump through using ki.

Observing his movements, I looked for a swing that would be hard to recover from as I readied myself to bolt. It didn’t take long before he threw his whole body into a swing to the left. Taking my chance I dashed under him like a baseball player jumping for home base on a game winning run. Unfortunately it was not a total safe, his knee jerking to the side and into me as I was jumping through. It was only a quick hop that got me out of the way of a follow up stomp. My legs felt wobbly, the right one probably broken. My health was completely healed before coming here, but it was already under a quarter of it left! Again, the pain was held down while the fat fucker was still nearby. Eventually I hobbled to the end of the hallway as the giant stomped around looking for me. I’d suggest it stop drop and roll, but there wasn’t really enough space for that. As I closed the door, I waited for the banging to stop, hoping the smoke would knock the giant out for a while. That much fire in an enclosed space was never good for you, especially if the fire was on you.

I was just sitting there waiting for my mana to regenerate. At a solid 1 MP every 30 minutes, it took a while. After spending 1 unit of MP I just regenerated on medicine magic to set my broken leg bone back in place, the goblins came over… holding spears.

“Stay back, or your burning next”

The goblin kneeled down and pointed at my leg.

“Cuidado, tu pierna está herida” (carefull, your leg is hurt)

Careful, your leg is broken… these guys speak Spanish… might as well ask them what they want

“Que quieren?” (what do you want?)

“Nos salvaste del Ojáncano, queremos devolver el favor” (you saved us from the Ojancano, we want to return the favor)

Huh, I assume Ojáncano is what they call that one eyed sasquatch. Still, carrying spears around doesn’t paint a perfect picture of trust…

“Y las lanzas?” (and the spears)

The goblin looked towards the closed door, smoke slowly leaking out of its frame

“Para el Ojáncano” (for the Ojancano)

“Bueno, ese bruto se debería asphyxiar pronto, con todo ese humo” (well, that brute should asphyxiate soon, with all of that smoke)

The head goblin actually kneeled in front of me, spear held in salute

“Gracias, ese monstruo ha masacrado un número incontable de mis compatriotas por los años, nombra lo que quieras de nosotros como recompensa y te lo daremos” (thank you, that monster has massacred an uncountable number of my compatriots over the years, name what you want as a reward and we will give it to you)

Of course, I don’t really believe a tribe of goblins can help much, since if they knew how to escape this place they would have done so.

“Gracias, pero no necesito recompensa, sólo déjenme descansar un momento” (thanks, but I dont need a reward, just let me rest for a bit)

The goblin stayed kneeling.

An hour later I was able to heal my leg a bit more and got several notifications