I wake up the next morning and start my day by stretching, eating, and take care of the other morning things. Today is also the last day I can survive on the food I have, so hunting is the next priority, but I want to get my mana manipulation and mana bolt as high as possible today. I think I will check my stats, and skills first, haven’t done that in a while.

Race human (100%)

Level 1 (22/50)

SP:0

HP 120/120 (6/h)

MP 120/120 (13/h)

Str 7

Int 12

Dex 11

Wis 13

Agi 9

will 11

Vit 12

Def 1

skills

Identify

Monster beginner 1, hide, carving, crude item, plant

Active

Meditation beginner 5

Spells

Grade 0

Mana bolt beginner 1

pasive

Skinning beginner 1, recovery beginner 1, Hard skin beginner 1, gathering beginner 1, carving beginner 1, crude item crafting beginner 1, mana sense beginner 4, man manipulation beginner 6

Keeping myself concentrated on stats there isn’t any change, below average agi, and strength. But everything else is ok for level one. Then there is the list of skills. Most of my skills are still level one. Skinning, monster identify, and carving I haven’t had much of a chance to use. I’m glad I haven’t taken enough damage to level recovery or hard skin. I have been practicing my use of man, and thus have been living off my food rations until now, so I can probably expect gathering and skinning to level soon.

Later that day while meditating, I hear a squeaking, ignoring it as one of the sounds of the forest, I go back to meditating. Soon after I hear a lot of squeaking. This time taking it seriously, I stand up and look towards where I heard the sound. I see a sea of fur, teeth, and eyes. Mice, so many mice.

Then it hits me and everything snaps into place. Why I haven’t been interrupted before now by any animals until now, and why those four mice were so openly drinking the water without a care in the world, this was their territory, and they have been gathering their numbers to confront me. I raise my arm and shout

“Mana bolt!”

What? Why did I shout the name? Oh! I forgot! The author changed the spell system, here's the new screen for mana bolt

Mana bolt grade 0, neutral, destruction beginner 1 (0.00%)

The spell most following the path of mana learn mana bolt flings a bolt of mana out of their body

Activation: mana bolt

Cooldown: 5 sec

2/mp damage

Default 10 mp

You see spells can be used in two ways, one is called casting. the spell is used automatically after saying the activation word(s). For a damage scaling spell like mana bolt, it has a default mana use, in this case, ten. It also has a cooldown of five seconds, or in other words, I can only use it every five seconds. The second way is direct use. You use the spell manually doing it step by step. This allows me to use less or more mana in scaling spells like mana bolt, it also has no cooldown this way allowing me to use it to my heart's content, but to do it manually is harder.

With the explanation over, I get back to the present of my situation, I fire my bolt at the swarm of mice that were previously glaring at me. Now that they saw me fire my bolt, they started running at me. So I do the same and start running without looking at what my bolt did, but I could still hear the boom it made as I was running, I swing on a tree to turn left as I run, I don’t want to get too far away from my stuff. But as I do so I look back and see the mice are still running at me, seeing this I decided to hold my ground, why? Because I would lose energy much faster than a swarm of mice and would rather face them at near full energy than at near empty. I start using mana bolt manually, shooting each at one or two mana. Due to the splash effect, I've already killed about ten of the two hundred-ish mice. As they get closer they start to jump at me, so I pull out my knife and swing at them, I get some, but I'm inevitably knocked to the ground, so I start rolling, ignoring the bites that come my way. Staying on the ground I pick myself up into a kneeling position. The mice are still coming so I will keep killing, almost on second nature by now, I swing my knife at an oncoming mouse, but it’s getting bad my knife is starting to dull taking longer to rip through the mice. It’s not good. But I keep going, if I can’t knife them, then I kick them, I was able to kick a wolf, so how hard would it be to kick a mouse, a lot harder it seems, but since they were in such a big group, I couldn’t really miss as I kicked out

But in the end, there were too many, so with my legs getting tired, I did the least leg tiring thing someone can do, run! My legs are just about to give out but I keep pushing forward until I trip, I see all the mice running at me about a hundred are left so I do the only thing I can, I stand on my jelly legs and use all my mana to fire one large bolt. Similarly to my first time but on a larger scale, I'm launched through the air, but unlike my first time using mana bolt, I don’t hit the ground first, but instead a tree. After doing so my consciousness fades.

I wake up and immediately groan from a splitting headache I have. But after I finally am able to focus on something other than the pain I see I'm fully submerged inside of a large bush. I clumsily roll out of the bush, and get to my feet, ignoring the now prominent soreness from them. I see about thirty mice corpses flung about from that mana bolt I vaguely remember casting. If I had to guess, the mice ran away after seeing what I did, and thinking I could do it again, they retreated without a second thought.

“Well at least I won’t have to go looking for food now”

I say to myself chuckling at myself. I then slowly make my way back to my base, following the trail made from the many mice feet. After getting back I grab my pack, and start filling it with mice, bringing them into a pile near my base, after a few trips I'm done. Looking at my kill count, I look at my stats and skills.

Race human (100%)

Level 1 (262/50)+

SP:0

HP 98/120 (7/h)

MP 10/120 (13/h)

Str 7

Int 12

Dex 11

Wis 13

Agi 9

will 11

Vit 12

Def 2

skills

Identify

Monster beginner 1, hide, carving, crude item, plant

Active

Meditation beginner 5

Spells

Grade 0

Mana bolt beginner 3

pasive

Skinning beginner 1, recovery beginner 2, Hard skin beginner 2, gathering beginner 1, carving beginner 1, crude item crafting beginner 1, mana sense beginner 4, man manipulation beginner 6, blade mastery beginner 2

I take it all in, the fact that my mana is at ten, most likely being the source of my headache. How I Lost a surprisingly low amount of hp. The large and sudden xp boost. Or maybe the newly acquired skill, and newly leveled skills.

Deciding to not be overwhelmed I start at the skills.

Mana bolt grade 0, neutral, destruction, beginner 3 (7.93%)

The spell most following the path of mana learn mana bolt flings a bolt of mana out of their body

Activation: mana bolt

Cooldown: 4 sec

3/mp damage

Default 10 mp

Mana bolt leveled twice. I’m assuming that one level lowered the cooldown, the other raised the mp per damage. Not a huge improvement but a noticeable one.

Skill gained! Blade mastery C beginner 2 (10.35%)

You can wield a bladed weapon more easily.

Blade mastery? Not knife mastery? Seems strange, but not unacceptably so. But now for the moment of truth

Level up?

Y/N

.

Race human (100%)

Level 1 (212/120)+

SP:5

HP 98/120 (7/h)

MP 10/120 (13/h)

Str 7

Int 12

Dex 11

Wis 13

Agi 9

will 11

Vit 12

Def 2

Level up?

Y/N

.

Race human (100%)

Level 3 (92/270)

SP:10

HP 98/120 (7/h)

MP 10/120 (13/h)

Str 7

Int 12

Dex 11

Wis 13

Agi 9

will 11

Vit 12

Def 2

Two levels, ten sp. Sp? Stat points? Probably. I’m getting tired, my thoughts are kinda slow now. So I decided, early rest. So I hit the metaphorical hay and sleep