Level Up!

by RisuUmbra

Ch 8: Out of the Woods

Chapter 8: Out of the Woods

“Heh… “ The once cloud filled skies started to slowly let warm rays of light down into the forest, shining more light on the impossible act we had done. I was shaking pretty heavily and I don’t know if it’s from exhaustion or from electrocution, David and Morgana seemed to be feeling the same. None of us had moved from our spot in front of the fresh cloud lion carcass, though some of us didn’t really have the energy to move in the first place. I never thought that I would ever actually kill something so… large in my life, a rat maybe but nothing like this. The timber wolves I destroyed first don’t really count in my eyes. I guess this empowering feeling is the reason why most people hunt for sport… maybe I dunno I’m not a psychologist.

“Heheh… “ I am really tired… I've been tired before obviously but never to this extent. Having both my mana and stamina bar completely empty at the same time seems to have a pretty big drawback, both bars are refilling at a snail's pace. Out of the corner of my eye I saw David start to brush some of the slightly dried mud off of his coat, a quick once over of myself and Morgana’s state showed me how bad we were and I wasn’t really surprised to see that we looked pretty roughed up. I had mud caked onto half of my body and Morgana’s nice dark purple mane had been turned black by a layer of almost fresh mud, if we were going for the jungle dweller look we certainly nailed it.

“Hahahahaha!” At this point the other two had joined me in laughing, each of us for different reasons. I was laughing because my suppressed stress and panic was starting to crack out while I'm pretty sure Morgana and David were laughing from how ridiculous all of us looked. I had to take a few deep breaths to calm myself down before I started crying uncontrollably. Shaking some mud off I approached the cooling corpse of the cloud lion and started wondering what to do with it, if video games have taught me anything it’s that most monsters have valuable and useful materials. A quick glance at my bars showed me that both are still under a quarter full so I didn’t have the necessary magic or energy to move it on my own so I settled for the most obvious thing… getting a few trophies.

“I’m gonna take some of it with me” Leaning down to it’s slack maw I reached for my quarry, the massive saber teeth that almost tore me apart earlier. The first touch zapped me a bit, it didn’t hurt but after everything I felt prior to this I was understandably jumpy. Morgana and David drew nearer concerned after seeing me frantically throw myself away from the body and getting more mud on me in the process. Getting back up to my hooves and wiping some of the excess mud off of me I felt a shiver run through me from the sudden burst of adrenaline and fear. Letting it leave my system I approached the corpse again and without any warning I yanked one of the saber teeth right out of it’s mouth quickly fooled by the other one. The first had come out cleanly while the other had snapped at the root leaving one longer than the other, while being held in my telekinetic aura the two fangs started to give off a bright blue internal glow.

Skill Prerequisites Met!

Summoning: New Summon Available!

Fledgeling Thunder Lion Summon: A deadly creature that is spoken of in both

terror and reverence, worshiped as a sort of protecting spirit by most pegasus

tribes this creature is able to harness the power of lightning and strike down its

prey before they even know what has happened

Mana Cost: Medium

Skill Level 0: 0.00%

Requirements:

2/2 Thunder Lion Materials

Felled 1/1 Thunder Lion(s)

Cost: 1 Sp

First creation of summon requires 1 minute of initial cast time, over time the lion shall level up until it reached maturity

Be warned, the slaying of a Thunder Lion is a mark of strength in most cultures and the knowledge of your kill will attract challengers

This… this is fantastic! I don’t think now is the time to summon it sadly, I don’t want to know what other monsters we attracted with the fighting. I turned to relay the skill I had just got and saw that Morgana and David were staring off into space just as I was… I’m just realizing this would look really weird to any regular inhabitants. Putting that aside for later I read out the skill I got and Morgana’s response made both David and I laugh again.

“What are you? A Pokémon Trainer?” She got me, I will admit. It felt nice to laugh like this after everything that’s happened. Especially so with new friends around me and I don’t mean that in a ‘Friendship is magic’ kind of way, most of my friends back on earth went to different colleges so we keep in touch via discord or video call. Talking and laughing with other people who are physically here is… nice, it’s something I haven’t done in a long time. I could feel the soft fond smile grow on my face while I was thinking about how well I was doing socially so far… and then my smile was quickly ripped from my face when the loud cry of some kind of bird pierced the silence startling the three of us out of the warm atmosphere we made. It was like the forest had come alive in milliseconds with that bird cry being the signal to start. Bugs buzzed and hopped about, small birds fluttered about taking advantage of the fresh mud to hunt, prey animals scurried around in the underbrush foraging. In a matter of moments the once scary and foreboding forest we had ventured through had become beautiful, the apparently noon sun shone down rapidly drying the mud beneath our hooves blanketing the forest floor in a thin fog that only added to the atmosphere. The trees and plants sparkled from the raindrops that had been caught on them, the only outliers in the sudden spectacle of nature was the lone charred apple tree and a few similarly charred spots here and there where the lion's attacks landed.

“Wow…” The awed voice of David snapped me back to the present and jaw dropping scenery or not we need to get out of this forest. I slipped the two glowing saber fangs into the bag Morgana gave me with a slightly singed in a few places but was still holding strong. I also took a moment to try and rub off some more caked on mud, my mane was a lost cause until I could get some running water to it.

“We need to move, we might be close to the edge if all these animals are less cautious around us” I know that some animals can be pretty bold around humans once they’re used to their presence… stupid seagulls. David and Morgana nodded along with my logic but Morgana wanted to get a few claws from the lion and David still needed to extract his sword from the chest of the lion which I had completely forgotten about. It took the combined effort of all three of us to roll the body over to pull the thankfully in one piece blade out and however morbid this sounds, it’s fur was just as soft as I thought.

We decided not to change our course past the now charred apple tree and simply continued though the now much more pleasant forest. After our fight with the lion the atmosphere has been much lighter and at times… fun. I found myself smiling and talking to the others during some points of our trek, like we aren’t lost and are just on a hike with a couple of friends. Along the way we picked up berries and edible mushroom for our inevitable dinner, all the while keeping up the pleasant conversation.

“So you’re telling me the first time you ever tried to cook, you actually burned water?!”My incredulous tone only worsened the embarrassed blush on Morgana’s face, David was down on the ground laughing his butt off from Morgana’s story.

“No-no, only the pot caught fire. There just happened to be water in the pot…” I was actually speechless, I didn’t know whether to laugh or try and console her… yeah, I chose to laugh. A clearly fake offended look grew on Morgana’s face and with an over exaggerated scoff she walked off ahead with her head point straight up without David and I who were still trying to return the air to our lungs.

“W-wait for us haha-” Morgana eventually did wait for us, but only after she made both of us tell the next embarrassing story. David told a story about how he used to sleep walk when he was younger and in the middle of night his parents came downstairs to him apparently trying to make orange juice in his sleep. The only issue was that he was using the orange juicer and an onion, his father had to bodily stop him from drinking pure onion juice. The moment is apparently framed in their house entrance, that story sent Morgana and I into a giggle fit which descended into a full on laugh attack when Morgana asked him if he would sleep fly now.

I was about to tell a pretty embarrassing but funny story that happened during high school when I was spared by the sight of some glorious, the edge of the forest. We had been walking for a good few hours and the sun had been moving across the sky pretty rapidly bathing the sky in a vibrant orange. The three of us understandably started to sprint out of the forest in excitement and when we finally left the tree line we saw something we really were not expecting, campfires… many campfires.

“Huh…” I don’t know why I was expecting us to be the only ones who made it out here. Outside of the forest was a rolling slightly hilly grass plains and nestled between some of these hills or settled on top of others were campfires with groups of ponies around them. Some groups had three or four ponies around the fire while here and there were small two pony groups, it was hard to get exact details about all these ponies in the low light but I could tell two things, these were all players, and they were all watching us.

“Play it cool…” My whisper seemed to ease some of Morgana’s tensions but David was still quickly shifting his eyes from group to group, I started walking down the edge of the woods picking up a few sticks and bits of dry grass for our fire. Morgana seemed to quickly realize that I was simply going to ignore them and softly bumped David to get his attention and make him follow. There was an open spot at the top of a small hill to my left so I set that as our camp spot, none of the other players came forward to speak to us or welcome us… they just stared. Setting up the fire this time was easier than previously, Morgana grabbed some more sticks and dry grass to use though the night and David finally stopped watching the other players and started taking out the berries and mushrooms we had found along the way out of his bag. A few of the nearby groups seemed to flinch in surprise when I kneeled down and lit a silver fire instead of everyone else's normal orange fires.

“Watch the food for me, I'm gonna summon my wisp real quick” Morgana and David nodded with a serious look on their face, the tense atmosphere getting to them just as much as me. With a familiar detaching sensation my wisp was brought into existence and with the usual command ‘Patrol’ it started its slow lap of our camp, now that it was a high level I was able to put a bit more meaning behind the command. Anyone that isn’t welcomed by me that approaches will be attacked, I don’t think anyone here who actually wants to speak would approach unannounced.

“Food’s almost ready” The smell of the roasted and seasoned mushrooms reached me before David’s voice did, drawing closer to the warm fire. I could see that Morgana made the right call in foraging for both food and spices for dinner, taking a quick look around I could see that most of the other camp weren’t eating anything. Out of the three of us in this group Morgana might just be the most important, now that we were on a slightly higher elevation I could see that there are eight separate campfires with around three to four ponies around them with a few outliers of course and now that I’m paying more attention there was one larger bonfire down in the center of most of the camps.

“Here you go Markus” I turned back and accepted my berries and mushroom skewer from Morgana and thanked her, it was well and truly night now and the campfires looked at their brightest. I’m starting to realize that being around other players might not be completely safe, I know enough about pop culture to know that there are some people out there that cope with disasters in the worst ways. Shaking the dark thought from my head I continued to eat my food before it got cold, remembering my extra skill points I opened my menu. That fight with the Thunder Lion taught me a few things, first is that the wizard is always squishy, second is that while my attacks are precise and accurate they don’t do a lot of damage. I pondered the thought of simply getting a shield spell but after a bit of searching I found something that was perfect for me.

[Blink: The users sends out a arcane marker to a location within sight then is

rapidly sent to the desired location

The user is still physical during this process so any obstructions with cancel the

spell and depending on the distance traveled might damage the user

Current Range Limit: 100ft

Limit can be raised with higher levels or with supplementary skills

Mana Cost: Small

Cost: 1 Sp

I found it in the beginner page a few levels below the [Mana Control] Skill, there were quite a few useful skills on this page but most of them I could replicate with a high enough understanding of magic. I had 2 Sp remaining so I could dedicate them to my attack skills, I went for the obvious into to elemental spell and chose [Fire Magic Control].

Fledgling Fire Magic Control: Gives the bearer basic control over the the primordial magic of fire and bestows the lowest forms of fire magic fire bolt and ember imbuement

Further levels in this skills will improve magic efficiency and power

Skill Level 1: 0.00%

Cost: 1 SP

Fire magic was just as I expected it to be except the ember imbuement part of the spell, apparently this is an extra skill given to me because of my experience in summoning. It let’s me imbue the element of fire into my wisp… which does something to it I don’t know yet but I am excited to try it. Seeing how I'm going to be using my wisp much more I actually put the last point into [Wisp Summon]

Adept Wisp Summon

Level Up!

Level 7→ 12: 0.00%

The wisp visibly grew larger, it started at the size of a golf ball and after five consecutive level ups it was the size of a soft ball. Now the floating silver flame had a dark black oval in its center, it kinda looked like a cute little eyeball… it probably isn’t but I’m gonna pretend it is. I had finished my food and was about to close my menu when suddenly my now much larger wisp fired a beam right towards me and over my shoulder. I felt the wind as it passed dangerously close to my head and instead of just flying off into the night, the beam actually struck something directly behind me. Everyone in our camp and the camps nearby were startled and when I whipped around to see who was behind me and that a thin dark grey earth pony had snuck up on us but was stopped by a blast to the chest. Still startled from the sudden blast and seeing how there was a random stranger super close to me I did the first thing that came to mind… I socked him in the face. The sudden burst of frightened adrenaline made the actually pretty painful punch much more effective than it should have been. The earth pony was sent rolling down the hill scrambling to regain their footing-hoofing? Either way my fright had turned to logic quickly, he shouldn’t have been able to get past my [Perception] skill unless he had some kind of sneaking skill that was higher. So either he has been here longer than everyone else and was able to train up a sneaking skill or… he’s a thief and already had the skill. Logic gave way to anger and indignation and seeing how other players were also approaching I threw any hesitation out of the window and approached the fallen thief. Telling my two friends to wait there I quickly jogged down the hill and with a quick mental flex of my magic sent the thief back to the ground when he tried to escape and held him there.

“Whoa whoa, calm down there fella. What’s going on?” Approaching me and my newest prisoner were four players, all from different camps and all without cutie marks. The first one who had spoken to me was a giant of an earth pony, he seemed to be a mottled blue and grey with what might have been a black mane that hung down in a braided ponytail. One look at this guy's brown eyes told me that this was the definition of gentle giant and his actions mirrored this observation as he approached and immediately sat down and made a calming motion with his hooves like he would to an animal. I wasn’t offended as it looked unintentional, the next two to walk up were both unicorns and wildly different. The first was actually wearing a stereotypical wizard robe with all the magic designs and unneeded straps to go along with it, one look told me I wasn’t going to like this unicorn. She has a pink coat and a platinum mane and it doesn’t help that her nose was actually pointed up into the air as she looked me up and down in what I think is perceived disgust. The other unicorn looked to be the complete opposite of the other, he walked with his shoulders back and his head forward. His mane was a close cropped bronze and his coat a dark yellow almost gold, the last pony to arrive didn’t walk over with the other three as he had come dashing down the hill after the other three. His coat was the same shade of grey as the thief except his mane was oddly bright green while his counterpart had a black mane and of course it goes without saying that all of us looked pretty rough from staying in the forest for a few days.

“Let go of him!” The green mane’d player tried to bodily shove me away from his apparent companion but since I was holding him down with magic I just stepped around him and continued to hold him down.

“He was trying to steal from me and my group” This seemed to really get the attention of the other two unicorns who up until this moment had looks of disinterest on their faces, the gentle giant seemed to panic slightly before looking over to the other two unicorns. I took another look at green mane to make sure he wasn’t going to try anything again and when he saw that I noticed his approach he stepped back intimidated. I just realized that my face had twisted up into a glare without knowing so I took a moment to breath and school my features. Being angry doesn’t get anything done, I just want to get rid of him and make sure he won't try anything again.

“Well it looks like you got him thoroughly subdued” This was the bronze mane who had a small grin on his face, he took a few steps forward and took a closer look at the still struggling thief. A glance at my mana showed me that it was regenerating faster than he could deplete it, gentle giant and robes got closer as well seeing as I had calmed down and was willing to talk.

“I think he’s learned his lesson this time, but if he does this again then well all have a word with him… how about that'' Bronze sounder vaguely sinister saying that but all of us caught his meaning and I didn’t really like it. There was something about Bronze that felt weird to me… but I couldn’t place what, it seems I wasn’t the only one who was uncomfortable with what Bronze said as the giant seemed to shuffle away from him slightly and the entitled pink one grimaced slightly. Green mane had an alarmed look on his face and sent me a pleading look, one that I did not ignore. I wasn’t mad anymore and was mostly worried for the guys safety so I released him, he quickly scrambled up and away from Bronze and went back with his friend who quickly followed him back to their camp.

“It’s late so… why don’t we all talk in the morning, we were going to leave yesterday but wanted to wait for more groups… yours was the last one for a while” Giant spoke again and what he said was pretty concerning, no one else had left the forest after us so either we were the last ones in there or they left a different way.

“Alright, we’ll meet here early in the morning. I don’t want to be near the forest for too long and it might be a long walk so we’ll need the daylight” the other three seemed to agree with my assessment and turn to walk back to their respective camps. That was way more tense than expected… though I'm starting to realize something, why are there no Pegasi?

Author's Note:

The boys during Morgana's Story

Yayyyy! We're finally out of that forest! Now it's time for more walking!
The question of where the other races are will come up but first they must make first contact before worrying about the second and third.
I hope your enjoying

Comments

[Teraunce]

Now I want to try onion juice.

[Lexiebommel10]

11077353
And never kiss a girl again :p ew

[Teriven]

Burning a pot SOUNDS bad, but it is possible. Improperly cleaned, probably with oil from earlier cooking still on the surface. One of my friend's exes and her friend tried boiling eggs. They forgot about the eggs. The eggs exploded, and there are STILL shards of egg shells embedded in the wooden roof over the oven, over a decade later.