World Seed: Game Start (11 page)

The
part that made me happiest was that my mana regen had tripled. Even
though it took 25 mana to cast my poison spell, I’d easily earn
that back by the time it was needed to refresh it. I was still a long
ways from being able to not worry about my mana when it came to
attack spells, but at least I was doing better than before.

If
I could figure out the exact formula behind the mana regen, I could
work on min/maxing myself. But for now, it was enough just to spread
it evenly between intelligence and wisdom. Once I was earning one
mana every other second or so, then I’d start working on my
agility and dexterity again.

A
few of my skills even got a rather nice boost from my rabbit hunting
spree, and I was tempted to go for another group. However, by now the
other rabbit and wolf groups would be finishing up with their daily
brawls, so I would need to wait until tomorrow. Though, I did feel
much better about myself now that I had vented my anger on a few
not-so-harmless bunnies.

Chapter 9:
Decisions Decisions

Since
there wasn’t as much point in hunting the fluffy menaces right
now, I decided to head back to my usual training spot and practice
magical alchemy! I still had a fair amount of other herbs saved in my
inventory, six different varieties. I knew that blood weed and
fireflower petals make healing potions, and that maple bloom mixed
with heart grass made my slow damage over time poison. That still
left two other plants I haven’t touched, as well as god knows
how many combinations.

The
first thing I did was to memorize and replicate the mana signatures
for the last two herbs, which didn’t take as long as my
previous attempts had. From what my handy book of plants had told me,
one of the herbs, a leafy plant which had leaves in the shape of six
pointed stars, was able to numb the skin on contact. He could vouch
for that one personally, as I had brushed my hand against one of the
leaves while trying to get a clipping. The other, a small red
mushroom with a series of web-like cracks on the cap, was said to
increase metabolism. There was a small note in that section saying
that it was a common ingredient in beginner mana potions, but I
wasn’t sure how that worked.

Now
that I had finished that, I started the process of testing
combinations. First, I tried combining the two new herbs, stillleaf
and spider cap, together in various ratios to try to get a result.
None of the combinations seemed to feel right to me, like it did with
the poison or the healing spell. It was always too unnatural. Kind of
a square peg and round hole deal.

So,
next I tried mixing spider cap with the other herbs, one by one. I
actually got two combinations to work, one from mixing it with blood
weed, and the other from mixing it with maple bloom. Strangely, when
I found the most potent combinations of each, I was awarded with the
following message twice.

Is
it because I don’t actually know what effect the combinations
would have? I wasn’t really all that keen on being a test
subject for a potentially poisonous spell, but I had to try
something. After giving it some thought, I cast the first variant on
myself, and waited. Keeping an eye on my status, my health was not
dropping, my hands were not slowed, and my mana was not recovering
faster. I even opened up my character window to check my stats, and
my health and mana regen were not increased. Well, I know it’s
something…

There
was only one other thing that I figured it could be, given the nature
of the two herbs, but I was not going to like testing it. Casting
Alchemic Poison on myself, using the paralytic poison from the Heart
Grass, I felt my body tense up, refusing to follow my commands as it
should. Then, I quickly channeled my mana to cast the newest spell on
myself, and that feeling faded away. At the same time, details for
the spell appeared in the windwo.

I
smiled slightly, seeing that I now had an antidote spell in case
something went wrong. Though, I was hoping that would have been the
combination for a mana potion. Looks like I still need to find the
last ingredient for that. Anyways, I sat down and waited a couple of
minutes for my mana to recover, before I tried the second spell.

This
time, the information window changed, no longer displaying this as a
new spell. But at the same time, I coughed up a mouthful of blood. To
no surprise, this combination had created an accelerated poison,
which if my insides are being honest caused rapid internal bleeding.
Never again!

I
quickly cast my Alchemic Antidote and Alchemic Heal spells on myself,
coughing up another mouthful of blood after I recovered. Okay, next
time one of the spells includes a poison substance, I am going to go
find a rabbit or something to test it on!

Next,
I started from the beginning, going through the combinations with
blood weed to see if there were any other spell effects. To my
surprise, there actually was not. After that was the fireflower
petals. I was tempted to just search the mana signature of the entire
plant, but the herbology guide said that only the petals were useful.
And once I mixed together fireflower with stillleaf, I ended up with
another unknown combination. Trying it out on myself was probably not
a smart idea, but I didn’t consider stillleaf’s numbing
effect to be a toxic enough effect to warrant an external test. I
probably should have.

A
while later, I woke up at the same spot I had been sitting, unsure of
how much time had passed. Looking around, I saw I had a message from
Jacobs, asking how I managed to level so fast. Of course, what caught
my attention was the other window that had appeared.

Great…
now I have a sleep spell, too.. Shaking my head, I dismissed the
notification and opened the chat with Jacobs. “Hey, sorry I
didn’t get your message before, had a bit of a mix up with a
new spell.”

It
wasn’t long later when he replied. “No worries, I just
sent it a minute ago. But seriously, man, how’d you jump four
levels already? I was grinding like crazy last night because the
guards said that the morning was the most dangerous time to hunt.”

I
chuckled, doing my best to contain my joy as I spoke. “Oh,
nothing much, just poisoned a big group and a few wolves while they
were fighting each other.”

“…
.That’s
totally cheating. You know that, right?”

“
Yup.
But don’t worry, it’s not like I’ll be able to keep
that up forever. I mean, how useful is it going to be once we get to
the level where everyone is carrying around health potions or
antidotes, and wielding the more high-tech weapons? Alchemy is only
going to take me so far for now, unless I stumble on a really good
recipe. On the other hand, your Gravity Magic will probably be a
useful spell school no matter where you are.”

He
chuckled at that, and I could almost hear him nodding his head as he
replied. “True, true. Going to be working on learning
Enchanting today. Got the feeling it’ll be pretty useful
later.”

“
Probably
a good idea.” I nodded, and there was a distant ding in my mind
as I thought about how all of the current tech in the game was fueled
by mana. Since they wanted this to be realistic, then obviously any
tech developed here would work the same as in real life. But since we
had yet to leave our own solar system in real life, that meant that
they had to fill in the gaps with magic, like a mana-powered FTL
drive, or a portal gate between worlds. “Don’t know if
I’ll be picking up another skill yet, or wait until I get to a
bigger town. I can’t really get anything tech-related here.”

“
True,
again. I figure I’ll keep carpentry mostly for crafting
furniture, get myself ready for if I can get my own house.
Enchanting, however, is my go-to skill for making magical items.
Maybe there’ll even be a branch of it to cover Magitech
crafting.”

“
No
idea. I don’t know anyone that would be high enough level to
ask.” I confirmed with my contacts list, and aside from my mom,
who may not have even met a colony yet, I didn’t know anyone
else with a level in the double digits.

“
Well,
going to go and find out eventually. Wish me luck!” He laughed
into the connection, and then dropped it, likely going to learn his
new skill. With the call dropped, a message appeared in front of me.

I
blinked slightly. Okay, sure, I might have actually been proud of
myself for inadvertently causing the death of an entire wolf pack. I
definitely felt proud of myself for reaching level 10, and the option
to choose a class felt very nice.

Opening
up my character sheet, I saw there was now the option to change my
class away from Novice. Clicking it, I was shown a wide list of
possible choices. They seemed to be listed in the order of relevance
to my current skills.