Once I pressed the confirm button I once again found myself looking around my internal world where I could see new cells swimming around in the water much like I had many times before, however unlike any of these previous times these new cells resembled something I was familiar with and were enveloping other cells and digesting them. This told me that I was looking at the first primitive amoebas. Yet another odd thing was that I was getting the feeling that I had an important choice to make and I blinked as I was returned to my body and started reading the new notifications that had appeared in front of me. Whatever this new choice was would reveal itself when I got to the notification regarding my Soul Aspect.
I nodded as I read this notification, already I could feel that everything was slightly clearer to my senses. Perception was an interesting Stat as not only did it increase how sensitive I was to my surroundings but it also gave me greater control over my senses, I could even focus on a specific sense and increase it slightly by sacrificing the others, it would be very interesting indeed to see how this changed as my Perception increased.
Moving on I looked at the next notification with a slight sense of trepidation as I thought about the choice that I now had to make.
Holy shit. Looks like the big stuff comes after the milestone not on it because both of these Skills could be awesome.
I stared blankly at the notification in front of me for a few minutes, either of these options would give me a big advantage in the days to come and that was without even knowing what the other Skills that came along with them actually did. However, in the end I knew what option I was going to take. I had already lost my human body and I didn’t really want to go through any more changes like that any time soon. Besides the Amoeba Form Skill seemed like it was for a more physical combatant and I had already figured out I wasn’t much of a fan of melee combat so being able to pass that off on something else seemed like a good idea to me however cruel that might seem. I wasn’t sure what Control Points were but from the looks of things that was why I was also going to get the Minion Control Skill.
The Create Giant Amoeba Skill however was the first step towards solving something that I already knew was going to be a problem in the future. The simple fact of the matter was that I couldn’t do everything by myself and being able to summon creatures to help me out would allow me to do more things at once. This would become especially important when the barrier faded away and I had to sleep out in the open. Having something that could protect me while I was asleep just seemed like a big advantage that I would have to be stupid to ignore.
Making my decision and confirming it I waved away the first notification which was just the information about my new Create Giant Amoeba Skill that I had already seen and looked instead at the next one which told me about my other new Skill.
Alright so that explains how Control Points work, I was quite thankful that you got ten points before the Skill modifiers were added in or it would be impossible for me to use my Create Giant Amoeba Skill until I had Levelled Up so many times that it would be useless to me. Now if only I didn’t have to bring up the Skill information every time, I wanted to find out how many Control Points I had. Although the Skill did call Control Points a Stat so there was a pretty good chance that it would be included in my Stat Sheet now.
Oh well I have some Stat Points to spend anyway so I guess that I’ll find out right now.
Bringing up my Stat Screen I was pleased to see that a there was a new addition to the information provided by my Status in the form of Control Points which would make keeping track of how many I had much easier.
“Right,” I said as I rubbed my chin in thought. “Now that Willpower is more important should I add some points into it?”
It was a good question; Willpower would increase my MP regen slightly as well as increasing my Control Points, but the question was; did I want to actually focus on summoning other things to fight for me or on using spells to fight? In reality there was nothing saying that I couldn’t do both, but I did have to make a decision about the next Aspect that I was going to pick. In the end I decided to add 2 points into my Willpower and one into my Agility as I felt that Stat was lagging a bit behind where I wanted it to be. After all, sometimes the smartest thing to do is beat a retreat and to do so it was generally a good idea to actually be faster than the thing you were trying to outrun.
“Right, now that that’s done, I should try and repair my shirt I suppose,” I muttered.
As it turned out this was actually a bit easier said than done. I don’t know what my shirt was made out of but whatever it was it had been almost fused together into a single piece instead of being made of tightly woven threads but after a few false starts I eventually managed to patch the holes relatively well for someone who didn’t really know what he was doing. I had to take several breaks to Meditate and it was when I was doing this that I realised what I was doing wrong. The secondary effect of Meditation that allowed me to perceive the different types of Mana in my surroundings had clued me in to what I was doing wrong. Focussing on the shirt had revealed that whatever it was made out of had a combination of Earth and Water Mana that had fused together to make what I have been assuming was Nature Mana like what was in the trees. Now I couldn’t actually manipulate this Mana directly, but I could use small amounts of Earth and Water Mana to enhance the bonds between in the material. This was the first time that I had actually used Water Mana, it was an interesting experience quite different to using Earth Mana. Water Mana was actually easier to manipulate in some ways, almost like it wanted to move much like water itself.
“Well, that took a bit longer than expected,” I muttered as I looked down at my shirt which was looking considerably less tattered, a quick check with my Identification Skill told me that it had lost a point of Durability but there wasn’t much I could do about that.
A look upwards told me that it was starting to get dark, so I decided to do a bit of training before I cooked the Feathered Chimp meat.
Blinking I noticed that I had a couple of notifications waiting for me about my Affinities and at least one Skill increase so I brought those up before I started training, maybe this would help give me an idea on what I was going to do.
My eyes widened as I realised that my Water Affinity had increased by a whole 2 percent from using it to help me repair my shirt and this didn’t change when I saw the next notification.
Apparently, I was supposed to use my elemental Mana with my Nature Shaping Skill because this was a big increase and I made a mental note to continue doing this. Meditation had also hit a milestone which increased my Growth Rate, which was good to see, I had kind of been hoping that it would increase how much my MP regen was increased when I was meditating but maybe that would happen next time.
“Hmm, maybe I should focus on increasing my Water Affinity and then try and make a new spell,” I mused. I had a few ideas for spells that would use both my Earth Affinity and my Water Affinity, so this seemed like as good a time as any to try this out.
First I decided to spend some more time increasing my Water Affinity, I had learned my lesson when I had created my Earth Armour spell, trying to create spells that actually required a higher elemental affinity than you had was freaking dangerous and you shouldn’t do it.
Sitting down next to the spring I started Meditating again, eventually I lost track of the time as I absorbed the different elemental Mana from the world around me. Even though I was focussing on absorbing as much Water Mana as possible I did end up absorbing the other types of Mana that I had access to as well, not that doing that was a bad thing of course.
Opening my eyes, I was surprised to see that it was now dark, and upon realising this, my stomach gurgled like it was trying to remind me that I had been planning on cooking the Feathered Chimp meat that I had left sitting on a log.
“Yeah, yeah,” I chastised my treacherous stomach. I guess making new spells could wait a few more minutes.
Of course, as I thought this, I realised that I had yet another problem; I didn’t have any way of starting a fire. After thinking about this for a while I decided that there was something that I could try, it was a bit of a shot in the dark but even a small chance was better than none at all and I didn’t really want to eat the meat raw.
Quickly I gathered some wood and other stuff that I could use to start a fire and prepared the area where I was going to do my cooking. Once I had done this, I conjured a Mana Bolt into my hand which I placed up against the grass and leaves I was using as kindling. My theory was that Mana was energy and was hopefully going to produce enough heat that it would light the kindling.
Eventually this was proved to be true when the kindling started smoking and I bent down and started blowing on the small coal that I had created and soon I was looking into a small fire.
“I can work with this,” I nodded as I spiked the Feathered Chimp meat onto a stick and then held the meat over the growing flame. As the meat cooked, I went over the new updates to my Skills and Affinities.
Well this definitely made the length of time that I had spent meditating worth it. I now had a lot more options when I finally got around to making new spells, I wasn’t quite sure what spells I could make now that I had unlocked Nature Affinity, but I was looking forward to finding out. As I thought this, I realised that the meat was beginning to burn on the outside and turned the stick over and let it cook on the other side a little before removing it from the heat and leaving it to cool for a few seconds before carefully taking a small bite.
The meat was very hot, almost to the point where the juices were burning my tongue but that didn’t stop me from devouring all the meat in a couple of minutes. The flavour and texture of the meat were a bit odd but definitely still edible to the point where I only wondered whether or not it could be toxic after I had eaten it.
“Shit!” I swore as I brought up my Stats before relaxing as I saw no changes in my HP. Thankfully the meat didn’t seem to be poisonous which meant that I had successfully discovered something that I could hunt for food provided I was careful.
Patting my stomach, I brought up the Skill increases this time.
I now had three more Aspect Points bringing me to a total of eight which should be more than enough for me to reach the next lot of rewards for both the Aspect of the Scientist and my Soul Aspect, so I placed them all into the Aspect and hit confirm.
This time when I was flung into my internal world, I was greeted not by its ocean, nor one of the landmasses that dotted its surface but the planet itself which seemed to have a lot more ice than I remembered. Was my internal world going through an ice age? If so, what did that mean for me?
Blinking away my worries I started reading my new notifications once more, convalescing briefly on the oddity of how used to these blue screens appearing in front of me I already was as I did so. It had only been a few days now and already it was becoming second nature for me to check them.
Nice, any increases to my Wisdom was very welcome. With this latest increase I now had over a hundred MP which was a big milestone for me and with the additional increase to my MP regen I could almost cast an additional spell a minute. Sadly, both of the fights that I had been in had only lasted a couple of minutes so I wasn’t sure how useful my MP regen was going to be for a while yet but if I ended up having to fight multiple opponents then it would be useful.
Moving on I turned my attention to my Soul Aspect notification.
As I had suspected my internal world was indeed going through an ice age and I had received a new Skill that looked like it was useful as well.
As one might expect this Skill description was very similar to my Heat Resistance Skill and I wondered briefly whether there was any way that I could combine the two Skills. Actually, wouldn’t that be worse with the way this System works? Oh well I didn’t even know if it was possible right now so there wasn’t a lot of point thinking about it.
“Right I suppose I should try and make a couple more spells then,” I decided. “Now how to go about that. I guess I’d better start with something simple.”
Closing my eyes, I reached out to the Water Mana in my body and the Water Mana in the atmosphere and started drawing as much into one spot as possible. If this worked, it would solve one of the problems I was going to have if I had to leave the area after the barrier disappeared.
Feeling water begin to pool in my outstretched hands I opened my eyes and drank it. Success had never tasted so clean!
With a laugh I looked at the new notification that I had waiting for me.
“Well now I’ll never be without access to fresh water,” I said feeling extremely pleased with the results of my little experiment. “Now it’s time to move onto something that will be more useful in combat.”
Unlike the majority of my spells what I had in mind wasn’t going to be able to deal any damage to an opponent, in fact one could say that it was little more than a more powerful version of Condense Water.
Mixing the Water Mana with a small amount of Earth Mana I sent the magical energy into the ground a nearby and watched as it turned into thick mud that would hopefully slow down anything that got caught within. As two new symbols started blinking in the corner of my vision I grinned in triumph, it was getting easier to create news spells which told me that I had probably Levelled Up my Spellcrafting Skill and bringing up the notifications only served to prove me right.
“Alright,” I muttered tiredly. “I suppose I should try and do something with that failed version of my Earth Armour spell before I go to bed as well.
After thinking about it for a bot I decided that my only option was to try and use it on something else, even if it was a rock. Concentrating on my chosen target I tried to duplicate what I had done the other day and to my surprise the Mana reacted almost immediately and soon I was looking at a small mound of earth that had flowed up over the small rock.
“Well that was even easier than I had expected,” I said in wonder. I was guessing that creating this spell was so easy because I was adapting something that I had already made to another purpose which was an interesting hypothesis that I would have to look into later. Bringing up the description of my new spell my eyebrows raised in mild surprise.
This spell had quite a bit more utility than I had initially expected but what the description said made sense. Of course, I could use a spell that covered a target in dirt as a defensive spell as well as a control spell that should’ve been obvious to me and served to drive home the idea that spells and Skills could be used for more than one thing so long as you could think creatively.
Yawning I decided it was time to go to bed. This sort of thing was more exhausting than someone who wasn’t doing it would expect and I was well now well and truly ready to turn in for the night. “I guess anything else can wait until tomorrow.”
