Chapter 3
Once Moon Dance had a moment to herself, she opened the notifications tab on her system and perused them. It had gotten annoying to just have pop-ups appear in front of her. So, she had asked the system to compile them in a notifications tab and it had obliged. It had fascinating implications for future use of her system if she could will certain aspects of it to change.
[Levitation Level up x 10] This must have been from levitating all her friends (who were all magically resistant) at such distances. Along with whatever she was levitating for cleanup.
[Alert – Mind-altering effect dispelled.] This one was concerning. Perhaps the ponies in the castle were not running around panicking only because of shadows but due to a powerful spell thrown over the land to cause fear? It would certainly make more sense than ponies jumping at shadows. “Then again ponies have been known to panic at bunny stampedes.” It was a mystery to be solved at a later time.
[Skill- Charisma- Level 1 – the ability to inspire or otherwise command. + 1 INT]
[Skill – Intimidate- level 1- Gives a chance to freeze or intimidate an enemy. +1 WIS]
[Skill – Pleasant touch – Level 2 – Your body is an instrument of please and desire. Gives a bonus to all sexually intended activities. +1VIT] Moon Daner quickly closed the window and tried to deny she was blushing to herself.
[Skill- Emotional control – Level 1 – You have some control over your emotions. Babies would be jelous. +1WIS]
[Quest alert- Save Lemon Heart, Twinkle Shine, and Minuette from the panicking crowd.]
[Bonus objective- Quell the panicking Crowd.]
[Failure- Major injury to friends]
[Quest and Bonus objectives reached.]
[Rewards- 100 Bits, - 1 X Tome of teleportation,]
[Level Up x2]
Moon dancer opened her inventory and the extra items and rewards were their already. A hundred bits wasn’t nothing, but it also wasn’t too much. It would cover maybe a week’s food budget.
She also learned that until she opened the notifications the stat points did not take effect. Because when she opened them up, she could feel her mana pool and other things growing and shifting. She could see the logic in needing to be in a private place before something like updating her skills happened. If it happened in a public area people would ask too many questions.
“Hmm, Status page.”
[Status]
Name: Moon Dancer/ Da#$#$@!
Level 6
Age:18
Race: Unicorn
Occupation: The Gamer
Title: Twilight Light.
STR: 6
Vit: 6
Dex: 6
INT: 24
WIS: 23
LUK:5
Points :30
She had only raised her status a tiny bit over the last day. But now she had points to spend. The only questions she needed to ponder was if she needed to spend them now or wait a bit and see.
“Insufficient data. I don’t know how useful and of these stats are a the moment. It would be wise to Wait for now and level up my stats normally and see which of them would be the most useful to me later on.”
Moon Dancer smiled to herself at the thought of all the lovely experiments she could run on herself over the next few days.
88888 888 88888
The Next Day
Moon Dancer teleported into her living room and collapsed onto her couch breathless and exhausted. She laid there for an entire five minutes, waiting for her magic to recharge before she should go into the kitchen and get some water.
She levitated a notepad over to herself and wrote “Note to self. Just because my Magic pool is not empty does not mean that I won’t get exhausted from repeatedly draining it.”
She bounced back from magic exhaustion way quicker then most ponies could, but it was still annoying to be laid out on the floor.
The magical tome she had received as a reward from the mission had been fascinating and had reviled several details her own teleportation book didn’t cover. Perhaps it was because it was a redacted theory book that she technique wasn’t supposed to have had access to in the first place. The book was very sparse and didn’t tell you how to do the spell. You would have needed clearance from the princess to get access to the actual spell unless you magicked to piece it together. But the magic tome her system gave her explained it all.
There was an option to absorb the book and learn the skill instantly but that felt kind of like cheating. It wasn’t even all that big a book, so she decided to read it fully first. It would be interesting to figure out if there was a difference between just absorbing the book and reading it.
At first, she didn’t have a magic pool large enough to teleport. It required at least a dozen more points then she had. So she took the excess points she had and chose INT rounding it up to 39 points. The increase to her magic pool was exponential and still startled her. Her Magic pool had doubled, and it was an incredible feeling of power that was very heady. Like a cold beer on a hot day.
With the extra boost, she was able to cast the teleportation spell and teleported across the room. Of course, she teleported into the air and landed upside down.
After a bit of practice, she could do three short-range teleports reasonably well. The longer the distance the more magic it took. The more teleports she did the more her Level increased and the easier it was to do the teleport. Each level making the actual spell easier and streamlining the cost to use less magic.
She had been porting all around the city in all the nooks ponies didn’t frequent just testing out her rang and ability.
All this porting around and training wasn’t just for her own amusement. It was all geared towards a singular important purpose.
[Quest alert – Explore the Castle of the two sisters.]
The sheer knowledge she could gain from the library in that old and decrepit castle would be worth its weight in gold. She didn’t know why Celestia or the castle workers at the time left so many books when they abandoned the castle. But their loss was her gain.
After making sure that her friends knew she would be out of town for the day and possibly night she finished up all her enchanting work. Gaining skill in enchanting and watching her skill rapidly grow had been fun since she felt a bit of pride in her work. She just needed the new orders to come in and those would take a week.
It was also nice to know that she would not have to re-learn all her old skills.
Moon dance grabbed her pack and headed out the door to the train station to buy a ticket to Ponyville and then hopefully find her way through the ever-free forest.
The train and station were sparse today since most of the ponies around the country or even the world was still reeling from the fact that the sun hadn’t risen last morning on time. Fear was at an all-time high around every city so most ponies chose to either stay at home or at least not travel.
Making the train ride to Ponyville empty of everyone else.
The train ride to Ponyvillle wasn’t all that long. It only took an hour at their current pace and before she knew it, she was disembarking and teleporting to the entrance to the Ever free.
There was no way on this Equine green earth she was going to stay anywhere close to twilight or her friends. Not while they could still feasibly shoot her with the harmony canon.
She was also feeling quite excited about going into the ever-free forest. There was just something about testing the metal that attracted her. She didn’t know if it was the new human (apex predator) perspective or the game’s influence but when she entered the forest, she felt giddy.
The Ever-free forest did somewhat deserve its reputation.
There were dozens of dangerous beasts and plants around the area if you didn’t know where to look. However, if you stuck to the bush crafters rule of thumb and could defend yourself you should be reasonably safe. Staying away from bright colors and anything that moved was a given.
But most ponies ignored all that and instead focused on the fact the weather moved on its own. The plants all grew wild, and the animals all took care of themselves. It was honestly rather irking considering that Equestria was the only country to control those things.
She entered the forest and could tell there was something different in the air. It wasn’t bad per se but it was different. Like hot vs cold.
The first hurdle was finding the dang castle. There were no maps, landmarks or stories telling her its location. What she needed to do was make her way to one of the tall hills in the ever free and then climb the tallest tree.
The EverFree was not only a forest but a rolling expanse of hills as well. It made traversing the forest a lot harder since everything was obscured by a hill just out of sight. Not all the areas of the forest had them but there were enough that you could reasonably hide a castle in it with no one finding it for centuries.
“Hu, maybe that’s why they moved castles? No one could find the dame castle to report trouble.” I mumbled as I stepped over another log to get threw a puddle of mud.
The trek through the forest was oddly peaceful. All the sounds of the little critters working away, the wind blowing chaotically, and even the plants growing wildly were soothing. However, she did pay attention to not get close to any bright colors. Most bright colors in nature were warning signals that screamed poison or danger. So, when she came across blue flowers or pink trees moon dancer decided to admire them from a distance.
When the forest became eerily quiet, she knew she had stumbled into somethings den.
She could not see anything but the feeling of being watched was not going away.
Looking around the small clearing she found herself in, Moon Dancer cast [Observe] on anything that looked suspicious. Until finally she got something when looking at what she thought was a downed tree.
[Timber Wolf – LVL 2]
STR -30
VIT - 100
DEX - 30
WIS- 20
INT -20
[A part of the forest that has been possessed by a spirit of wild magic.]
I gulped at the number associated with just a level 2 timber wolf. His strength and speed were no joke and it was more intelligent than I would have given it credit for. It was more than just a set of leaves and twigs flung together in the shape of a wolf. It was a fully functioning predator.
Then there was its VIT. It was off my dame charts. I’ve never even come across anything with stats in the triple digits. But how was it possible. It was well known that a Timberwolf would burst into splinters rather easily. Unless it counted the fact it could reconstruct itself as a part of its Hp pool. Perhaps one needed to deal enough damage to were it could not reconstitute itself?
Seeing that the wolf now knew its cover had been blown I teleported up into a tree. The branches were not as secure as I would like but they held my weight as I stared down at the wolf.
“OK moony. Just like I practiced. Condense the magic in my fingers, instead of your horn. Hold the magic for a moment then release while still supplying magic.” The official term for the basic unicorn beam attack that almost all unicorn knew was called Tactical’s Condensed Unifying Force Array. However, she preferred Daniels's name for it after reading threw the context. Her method was also a lot more accurate.
[Cero]
The condensed beam of magic hit the timber wolf dead center on its head. Bursting it's head open like a coconut. However, after a quick observe she could still see the Wolf had more than half its Hp left. And it was regenerating quickly. After a moment the pieces of the head began to fly up towards the head.
[Cero][Cero][Cero][Cero]
Moon dancer repeatedly shot down at the beast until it finally stopped regenerating and she could confirm that It’s Hp pool was now down to 0. The beast had taken a lot more shots then she thought it should to permanently keep it down. She even needed to slip into meditation once just to keep her magic pool toped off with magic.
[ 900 Exp gained.]
[Level up x2]
Moon dancer gaped at the sight of her level once more going up. It had taken so much effort to raise it a single level on her own and now one dead Timber wolf had given her two whole levels.
This not only indicated that the system was built for a combat role in its user's life but that It also took part in the defeated foes magic to run.
Before the last leap down Moony opened her Statues screen and placed one point into INT and one into WIS. The INT point would increase her available magic again while the WIS would help with Magic Regeneration. Her WIS score was actually hard to increase since you needed really clever thinking and not just logical processing to get point into it. Or the method to train WIS was just escaping her. But she was getting tired of constantly being low on magic and having to wait minutes for it to fill up again.
As she got closer to the Timer wolf corpse and accidentally stepped on its twigs a new pop up came up in her messages.
[Items collected – Timberwolf Stick.]
[Timberwolf Stick – A stick heavily charged with the magic of the timber wolf. Can be used as an alchemical ingredient or in magical tool production]
“Fascinating. I’ll need to run some tests when I get home to see who much of a charge it holds. I wonder if I can use it for my enchanting projects?”
She would have done more but a growl behind her had Moon dance instantly teleporting back up into the trees.
More Timberwolves started to come out of the woodwork. Their big bulking bodies somehow still able to run through the forest with barely a sound.
They began to sniff around the area that she had been standing in. Looking around and trying to hunt her. When the wind shifted and started to go upwind, they turned their heads as one and looked straight up at her. “Ok, that’s not creepy at all. But creepy or not, they are going down.
With her [Cero] blasts now being stronger and able to fire it more often she was able to start hitting the wolves with more power. Unfortunately, it only took one being put down permanently for them to start covering for each other. These things were smart. The one with the Highest health would block one of the shots for those with low health and allow them to regenerate their lost health before they took the now injured one’s place.
She needed to pull some tricks to finish off any of the wolves. At times she would try to do two consecutive fast-paced blasts at a lower Health wolf and managed to get two more down permanently before that wolves started to run around the trees as cover. Making double shots extremely difficult.
She tried a continuous beam attack that would just keep going and hitting anything in its path, but she could only sustain those for ten seconds at a time before her magic got so low that she needed to stop. It finished off one more of the Timberwolves leaving five left.
Thankfully she was steadily leveling up herself. Making the battle easier as each new level of proficiency to her skills made them a small degree stronger or less costly.
Seeing that they were losing the wolves pulled an unexpected move that she knew they could do but hadn’t believed until she saw it with her own eyes.
They merged themselves. Sticks breaking and sticking together, stones reforming into the shape of muscles and veins coalescing into the hair.
The resulting Wolf was three times the size of the normal timber wolf and far meaner. Its teeth and claws were bigger and now filled with thorns. Its head now sported vine-like hair running down its back and all its wooden body looked denser to her eyes.
[Guardian Timber Wolf]
VIT 300
Even with her [Cero] continually improving it barely made a dent in the wolf's wooden hide. And the vine-like hair was even worse because with it could be damaged easily it regrew rapidly back into place. Resulting in an ever-growing armor around Wolf’s body.
“OK, moony don’t panic. Just think this threw. Your safe up here in the tree for now. You have time on your side. Yes, the wolf’s regeneration is keeping up with my damage but it is getting hurt. I just need to find a way to damage it more than it can regen in one go. What’s Wood's weakness? Fire? No, its living wood. Only dry woods week to fire. Mabey ice? Freeze the liquid in its body to make it more brittle? But that won’t be enough. It could just replace parts of itself with more wood. An axe would be helpful since axes seemed like the natural enemy of wood. Even if it is living wood. Do I have a spell for that?”
She was ever so thankful that she had a full compendium of the spells she knew located in her system. It allowed her to parse threw them with a glace and see their strengths. Most of them were mostly useless junk you needed to know because the school demanded it but there were some useful spells here and there.
[Frosty] [Axe split]
The first was a cooling spell that was usually used to either cool your drink quickly or cool down a room. It was also a very inefficient attack. Used often by ponies as prank spells. But if she just didn’t stop the spell and kept hitting the wolf with it the water in the wolf would start to freeze up and become crystals. Making the whole thing a lot more brittle and slow-moving.
The second spell she also had to overpower as she cast it. It was taught to them one day when the school wanted them to build their own clubhouse. The spell split wood down the middle and was used with fine precision to make boards for building materials. Suffice to say their clubhouse came out looking more lopsided. But it was a fun day. Only ruined when Twilight sparkle became so over-eager to please the teacher, she cast a spell that tore down the building and reassembled it exactly to factory specifications. It had been a tremendous magical achievement but also incredibly boring for every pony else.
Suffice to say no one else used it after that.
But with both of them combined she was able to slice into the hide of the huge timber wolf. There was no way she could aim these spells right so she wasn’t able to get its head or feet but enough damage seemed to be getting past the vines and into the hide that the wolf took notice. It snarled and began to paw at the tree she was standing on. Rocking it in hopes of knocking her off.
With a little telekinesis, she stuck herself onto her branch while repeating the process of freezing and cutting the wolf.
For one moment she thought the whole tree was going to come down but then the Wolf's Hp hit zero and it finally stopped regenerating and burst apart into twigs leaves and logs she held her breath.
[ 3000 Exp ]
[Level up X 4]
Moon dance sighed in relief. If that last attack strategy hadn’t worked, she was prepared to have just teleported back into Ponyville and left for home. The books would e a great find but they were not worth dying over.
She made her way down to the dead Timberwolves and stepped on any she could find.
[Items collected – Timberwolf Stick X10]
[Item Collected – Soul shard]
[ 200 Bits]
[Soul shard –The condensed form of spirit magic that can be either used as an ingredient or collected to summon ???.]
She kept all of that in her inventory and trekked up the rest of the mountain to look around for the castle.
The castle was well hidden behind a series of craggy hills that would have made a very good defensible fortification.
She had just gotten dame lucky that the Hill and tree she was standing on was the perfect one to just get a glimpse of the castle. She had been only a little off when she began her journey. She had been going true north, but the castle was a bit more eastern from her starting point.
On the way to the castle, she ran into a manticore that was eating a dead deer carcass. They locked eyes but the manticore didn’t want to fight. It had its food and it wasn’t a monster. Just another creature needing to eat. It also senses a faint tingle of familiar magic from the small pony. This was not the small week pony from the little village this was someone who just saw a fight.
The manticore left her alone to her own devices. Letting her get to the river that blocked the path to the castle. Not wishing to get wet or swept away Moon Dancer teleported across the river.
She smiled since she liked that she was getting good at teleporting. Even if she still sometimes landed upside down.
The patch of the woods that looked like they were all trying to make scary faces all looked ridiculous in the daylight. Nightmare Moon would have had to have placed a strong fear spell to make them all feel scary. It was interesting to note that the scary faces were natural. Perhaps they evolved that way to scare away woodcutters?
Following down the paths she eventually reached the rope bridge that connected to the castle. It was a rickety old thing and she didn’t feel like testing its sturdiness. So, she teleported over it instead. The crags at the bottom of the castle looked sharp and painful just to looks at.
Unexpectedly she landed on her back rather than on her hooves as she had intended. The trip out to this castle was taking it’s a toll on her.
Moon Dancer sat down in front of the castle of the two sisters, gazing in wonder at the giant castle. The show did not do it justice. Not only was the castle rather gothic but it was much bigger than the show portrayed. She felt small next to something so huge. The sheer scale of the castle would have her poking her nose around it for most of the day and night.
“Well, no time like the present. To Knowledge.” She said as she opened the creaking door.
The main hall of the castle was just as dilapidated and dusty as you would think. But ancient pony masonry must have been something else because only a few stones were missing from the roof and most of the important structures looked sound.
There were a few banners based around the hall but none that looked like they were irreplaceable. The more important ones must have been taken when every pony moved out. The configuration of the architecture was far removed from what she knew of the palace.
Moon dancer started her search on the first floor. She found a kitchen with food so old it had molded rotted and turned to dirt again. A small administrative office with loads of desks but no files or paperwork as well as a few empty rooms.
It wasn’t too surprising. The Royal Canterlot castle has a similar set up were most common people would be able to handle the day to day administration of the kingdom. The throne room was directly above the stairs and would have been the only place on the second floor anyone could enter.
With nothing else to find Moony hiked up the stairs and made her way into the second floor. She left the throne room alone for now. The throne room was were Nightmare Moon had been defeated. If she went in there now there was no telling how long she would be in there for.
The first few rooms she looked threw were spartan and empty. A few nick-knacks, beds, and the occasional wardrobe or desk indicating that these were either guestrooms or other quarters.
There were hundreds of little rooms or halls in the castle and before she knew it the sky was descending on the horizon.
But finally, in the last room she tried, she found what she was looking for.
The library.
Rows of books filled the large room and gave it that musky paper smell. The room was lite with a dull light that came from some light crystals on the ceiling. These types of crystals were like glass but could reflect more sunlight into the room. They didn’t have quite as good glasswork back In the day so they needed to make intricate crystal chandeliers to help distribute the light.
Walking over to the first row of books Moon Dancer started her research.
After an hour of looking through books, Moon dancer was nearly jumping for joy. There were lost and restricted tomes here that history books had deemed lost ages ago. There were even a few skill books added into the mix. She would of course read them instead of absorbing them since they were priceless artifacts at this point. She placed each book inside her inventory with reverence. Making sure to pick the shelves clean of all the books she could.
She even magicked to find upgraded and more dangerous versions of her own spells. [Frosty] was upgraded to [Winder’s blast] and attack that delivered a ray of freezing cold energy that could freeze even a fire solid and [Cutter’s Woe] with was a cutting spell several magnitudes more powerful than her simple [Axe Chop].
It was when she was pulling and storing the last of the books that a ‘click’ befell the library. A bookshelf slid out of place and showed a long stairway to one book bound in chains.
“Hmm, isn’t that the book that made anything you wanted but started to drive you mad with power till you become a nightmare version of yourself? Why couldn’t Daniel have just watched that episode?”
Not wishing to be infected by the book without proper study and a controlled environment Moony tossed the book into her inventory.
Yes, she wanted to become powerful and better then sparkle but using an item of power that was nearly guaranteed to drive you mad seemed silly and cheap.
She had no way of knowing if the book could affect her with their partial Gamers mind. External mental intrusions were always hard stopped but if she took the book as a skill book and tried to absorb it wouldn’t that make the corruption internal?
“More studying to do.” She mumbled. Her list of things to try to do was getting longer and longer.
The rest of the Third floor contained an armory, a set of bedrooms that could only have belonged to the princesses, and what she could infer were magic rooms. The enchanting room was particularly interesting to her since it contained a fully functional Enchaining table, an alchemy desk, and a small forge.
She knew the amount of love and desire at the sight of those magical implements should have been a bit concerning but she could not help it. The amount of help these could give her work. The experiments she could run! The ideas made her shiver and just a touch wet.
Hey, don’t knock her till you tried her.
While Modern science has advanced by leaps and bounds do to the now easy access ponies had to electricity. The magical arts still tended to use the same old tools they always had. The only difference is that they became more expensive over time as fewer ponies found they wanted to follow the path of magic. Making the full enchanting table alone worth more bits then her whole house.
Moon dace cradled the enchanting table lovingly as she pushed it into her inventory slot. Going so far as to label it the number one item in her inventory.
The rest of the tools followed soon after in a flurry of magic as the one full room soon became baron and empty.
She did stay away from the princess quarters once she realized they were their personal rooms. It was one thing to take things from a castle that had been abandoned for a millennium. It was finders’ keepers at that point. But rifling through their old draws seemed more like an invasion of privacy.
Moon dancer valued her independence and privacy so she would respect every pony else’s privacy as well.
Even if she really wanted to know what ‘secret’ book or object the princesses kept in their nightstands. Every mare had at least one nighttime fun object and knowing would be funny. But she refrained for privacy’s sake.
Finally, she came upon the last room.
The room that held the elements of harmony and the sight of where Nightmare Moon was defeated.
Opening the large double doors, she walked into the room. It was bright and sunny inside now that the roof had a gaping hole in it. The sunlight and bird song just streamed into the room.
The pillars for the elements were not anything special themselves. Their original casings had been turned to ordinary dust after the elements chose new bearers. Their magic leaving the original stones to make those gaudy necklaces and crowns. Were the elements just follow magic as its leader because no one else got a crown?
Her opinion on harmony was a little mixed. On one hand, peace and prosperity were good. But on the other hand who were the elements to choose what peace and prosperity were? It seemed to have a will of its own and blasting people into statues didn’t seem very harmonic. Then again what else could you expect from elements grown from the seeds of past heroes?
It was in the corner of the room that she saw it.
A corner of the room where the light was dimmest and the sunlight didn’t reach.
Nightmare moons armor.
Walking over to the amour moony began to cast Observe on it to see what it was.
The majority of the armor was made of star metal. Not meteorite’s which were mostly armor but an actual metal called star metal. When made into armor it had an odd property that layered in onto itself. Each armor piece is composed of hundreds of layers of thin sheets of metal. And when one layer broke or was penetrated it shattered and flaked off. It was like bulletproof glass in that regard.
But the crowning jewel.
[Essence of Nightmare Moon]
[This helmet has been saturated with the dark essence of nightmare moon for a thousand + years. It holds a significant portion of what was once Nightmare moon. The true nightmare is dead and gone from the Blast of harmony energies, but this last slip of her essence remains. It holds no consciousness or directive and will soon fade from existence.]
[Do you wish to absorb this essence?]
Moon dance stared down at the helmet in wonder and bafflement. It sounded like Nightmare was indeed a separate entity from what the description said.
But to absorb her essence? To take in apart of nightmare moon. It was daunting and frightening. What if the spell was wrong and there was still a part of Nightmare moon in there? Just waiting for an unsuspecting fool to take up her mantle? There were just as many stories of things going horribly wrong with Nightmare as there were storied of things going right. Was it worth the risk?
She pondered that question for what felt like hours. Staring at the helmet.
Then she noticed something. The face staring back at her. It was still her face but tinted purple, in the helmet's shiny reflection. She grits her teeth as she recalled that first day of being the gamer. How she had felt when told by the system she herself was now a part of that she was nothing more than a week version of a different mare.
“NO, I won’t be left behind. I’ve always been second best, second place. Second choice for adoption, the second choice for a scholarship, the second choice for everything. Well not anymore.”
She pressed yes.
“ARG” She screamed as the dark purple smoke began to rise from the helmet and into her mouth. She could feel the mass of magic traveling into herself and settling into her magical core. But that wasn’t all.
She felt like she was being stretched thin beyond what should have been possible. Her magic reserves were expanded to their maximum capacity and yet they were still trying to reach further. Breaking them down and building her up again.
[Alert – Maximum level Species cap is being breached. Magic Spirit acquired and activated. Calculating Assentation routes…..Assentation Options…..Ali….Co..Bie…feat.]
The pain was getting too much for her. Tears in her eyes were blocking her vision. She knew that surpassing what it meant to be a unicorn would not be painless. But the feeling of having her skin be too tight for her body was getting too much. Not caring what she chose at that moment Moon dance slammed her fist into the screen in hopes of something happening. Hoping she had not just doomed herself to a horrible mistake.
After a moment the pain began to fade to be replaced with a strange feeling of growth and change. Like her muscles were being moved outside her control. Some spasming others contracting and new muscles outright growing. Before she blacked out, she was able to see one page.
[Evolutionary Assentation Process Beginning]