During my week with Thoth, he taught me as much magic as he could, mainly survival spells such as, create/destroy water, create fire, basic transfiguration, and the magic missile spell. Thoth also bought me all of the crafting knowledge up to High-end and by the time the week was over I had a pretty good handle on the stuff he taught me.
Now was the time for the first quest to start, with a wave of goodbye to Thoth I was transported to an open field with grass that reached my chest, in the distance I could see a thicket of tall trees. I slowly made my way to the trees making sure to watch each step I took, after all I didn't know if there were any snakes or traps. Thankfully I didn't encounter anything on my way, and after making camp I opened up my interface and read the quests description.
System Message: The quest “Prove Thyself” has been activated.
Quest Objective(s):
Completion reward: end of the tutorial
Failure penalty: Death
Bonus Mission (repeatable): Kill the field boss(s)
Bonus reward(s): ???
‘Seems simple enough,’ I thought to myself while I set up camp. I lit a small fire pit and built a sturdy lean-to. I also set up a couple of snare traps in the hopes of a small game, but I didn't count on it. With the last couple hours of daylight, I gathered whatever I thought was useful, such as some fibrous plants, a couple of rocks I found, a decently long stick, and a good chunk of flint from a nearby stream.
Using my magic I get rid of the moisture in the fibers and fashioned a decent twine, using a flattish rock I knapped some of the flint into a spear head, afterwards I used the pieces that came off to debark and straighten the wood as best as I can, I also condensed my create flame spell to carefully burn out a slit for the spear head, finally I affixed the spear head to the shaft with the twine I made as well as some tree sap I had gathered nearby. I looked over my creation and despite not having any modern tools I think I did quite well with what I had.
System Message: The Hero grade item “Barbarian spear” has been created
Barbarian Spear stats:
Attack: 20
Speed: 30
Special effect(s):
Rage: once a day the user can go into a rage quadrupling all physical abilities for 30 seconds (requires mana to activate)
Piercing: weapon ignores 25% of the opponents armor
Bleed: each strike has a 20% chance to cause the target to gain the bleed effect
‘Seems pretty good,’ I thought to myself briefly. Putting it next to the lit fire I gradually fell asleep as the sun set.
That was my first mistake.
Howling, that's all I heard when I woke up. Fortunately, the fire was still going strong, unfortunately the fire destroyed any night vision I might’ve had. I closed my eyes and focused solely on my hearing, I could hear the gentle chirps of crickets, the various field mice scurrying through the underbrush, but below all of that there was the sound of something approaching from behind, barely discernible from the rest of the natural sounds in the forest, I slowly picked up my spear and waited for it to get closer, it stopped after getting to the edge of the firelight and waited. It felt like forever, but I could hear its muscles creak as they tensed and it eventually leapt into the air, whirling around. I tried to stab it, only to watch it disappear for a second and reappear farther away.
‘Short range teleportation?’ I thought to myself. Looking over the beast I now saw that it was some sort of large black cat, much like a puma, except it had two tails. I widened my stance and prepared for it to lunge at me and watched it as it circled me. I racked my brain for anything that could help me as I knew that this beast would easily overpower me in physical combat.
‘create/destroy water!’ I thought, ‘Blood is composed of a majority of water meaning if i destroy the blood in its brain it'll suffer near immediate death.’
With this thought in my mind, I started preparing the spell in the back of my mind while I focused on the teleporting cat. We stood there staring at each other for a little before it disappeared again, swinging my spear around like a bat, I heard a crack and what I assumed was the cat scampered away into the bushes. I stayed alert to make sure that it didn't feign fear.
I slowly relaxed after a while, putting some more wood on the fire. I cast the alarm spell so that I wouldn't be caught off guard again.
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A couple hours later
I woke up, the sun golden had just risen over the mountains in the distance shining light over the fields and trees, and though it felt warm upon my skin I still felt cold deep within my bones. I checked my traps to see if I had trapped any small game, to my delight I had captured a small rabbit. I hesitated, I loved animals, but I had to survive. Putting the small blade up to it neck and closed my eyes as I quickly slit its throat, I felt it try and struggle to get out of my hands but, I only tightened my grip as I felt its movements slow down and eventually all I felt was twitching, skinning it carefully I took any meat i could easily cut off and cooked it after rekindling the fire, and after drying the hide I poked some holes on the edges and slid some twine in them making a small bag. I didn't have the capacity to make it into a void pouch, but some additional storage is better than none. I put up my camp and started exploring my surroundings more thoroughly.
I did find a few more useful plants and what could possibly be the tracks of the teleporting cat. Though I did also find some tracks of a hooved animal, however I don't trust that it's a moose or some other herbivore considering the teleporting cat, but I didn't have much of a choice as I needed armor if I wanted to face any of the bosses or at the very least get rid of the cat so I could (hopefully) sleep peacefully.
It had been a couple of hours since I started following the tracks and I had confirmed one of two things. It was either injured as I had seen a thin trail of dried blood or it had killed something and was carrying it in its mouth, and that it was most likely walking on two not four hooves. It wasn't very long until I was hit with the smell of decay, a pungent smell that threatened to overwhelm my senses, I felt bile rise in my throat, the smell threatening to overtake me.
‘Definitely not a moose’ I thought to myself as I covered my nose in an attempt to block out the smell. I heard something snap from my left. As I slowly turned towards the sound, I saw one of the most horrific creatures I had ever laid my eyes on, it had a lanky emancipated body, long claws extended from its hands, and instead of a head there sat a large deer skull with two glowing sickly green orbs, where its eyes would have sat. We stared at each other for an instant before both of us moved, it lunged towards me, its claws extended, I lunged into its guard and stabbed at its chest. I barely scratched it, I tried to jump back but its claws scored deeply across my chest. The force flinging me into a nearby tree. *crack* I heard it before I felt it but I knew something was broken. I screamed in agony, as I felt myself start to slip, when a single thought wormed into my head.
‘THE SPEARS EFFECT!’ The thought struck me like a lightning bolt, unfortunately the spear was a ways away and that thing was approaching me slowly. I called up whatever little bit of strength that was left within me and started crawling towards the spear, I watched that thing pause for a second before it continued to stalk me. I was sure it thought I was trying to flee but I would have the last laugh, hopefully. I eventually made it to my spear with the beast nearly on top of me.
‘Rage,’ I thought, activating the skill, I felt strength surge throughout my body and the pain within my back diminished greatly. If I focused on it, I could feel a twinge of pain, but that didn't matter right now. I charged the monster with my spear, it attempted to swat me away once again as one would do to a pesky fly, however I stood my ground and while it was painful, I kept going and started desperately stabbing it as many times as I could in the chest. After about 20 seconds of me repeatedly stabbing it in the chest, it finally collapsed into a heap. Using my last few seconds of strength, I mangled its arms and legs just in case it was playing dead.
I collapsed in a heap as I felt the buff's effect end and the agony in my bones made itself known. It took hours to mend them, constant cycling between using the various healing spells and waiting each agonizing hour as my mana regenerated. I had gotten a notification about something, but my focus was on fixing myself. After hours of mending them little by little I was eventually able to stand with little to no difficulty, so using my magic I started the slow trek back to camp with the dead monster in tow.