I moaned in pain when I woke in the sweet embrace of actual mattresses and blankets. My arms felt like they were being ripped apart and my muscles spasmed as a migraine recreated the Third Calamity’s rampage in my head.
\\Pain Tolerance is now level 3!
It didn't feel any better after the level up. I thought about my home, about how it was largely a known quantity. It sucked but I had others in similar circumstances and even when they were not friendly, it meant that I had a herd to follow instead of figuring out everything on my own. Sure the world I was in now was probably better once I made my way to civilization but I didn't know how far that was. I didn't even know if I could make the journey. I missed home. It was a horrible place but the horror was known and just surviving was my only impetus. Here I was alone and I was expected to kill gods. And the only ally that I could count on was a spider monster designed to bring civilizations to ruin.
After acquiring Medea and then somehow managing to climb into the carriage to raid its supplies, Cold Blooded had decided that I was no longer in any immediate danger and I'd crashed. Crashed hard. Both the weariness and minor injuries I had collected slammed into me all at once accompanied by a long overdue panic attack.
I must have spent an hour just crying and whimpering while cuddling Medea like it was the world’s ugliest plushie. I didn't want to know how it had gotten inside but I appreciated its presence. God, I was thinking about a giant man eating arachnid monster that I had enslaved like it was a beloved emotional support pet.
I didn't know what kind of horrible monsters were waiting for me on the way, or at my destination. I had made a point to not think about arriving at the place and being thrown into a factory farm for experience. No, that was a different problem that I would not worry about now. The journey was already daunting enough. Maybe a dragon or something would eat me. Or maybe it would be that the nearest human settlement was so far away that I would die on the way. Did the carriage even have enough supplies?
One thing I'd forced myself to check before I had collapsed entirely was how much supplies I had. The camper had a few decently large gourds filled with water and some hard brick like bread that would last me for about a week or so if I didn't eat any more than what was strictly necessary. And that was assuming I didn't get food poisoning or something. Nothing here looked particularly sanitary. My throbbing skull told me in no uncertain terms that I was not even allowed to look at the booze. At least the carriage had a toilet not dissimilar to what I'd expect to find in a train.
Another unwelcome discovery was that the erstwhile owner of the carriage was probably someone important. It looked to be more of an early industrial age European contraption to me with oil lamps that used 5 mana to ignite and three pairs of wheels. I mean, what passed for such in the media I knew. It was large, larger than what I'd expect from a personal carriage, both longer and more armored with spokes and supports of steel reinforcing the frame. It could also be fully sealed from the inside. This thing was probably made for crossing vast swathes of dangerous land, like say spider-scorpions territory and it showed. I doubted that it was horses that had pulled this thing. Then a few notifications interrupted my musings about the origins of my new abode.
\\Spider-Scorpion whelp slain
\\Enslaved Familiar's Bond is now level 7!
\\Tame Lesser Insectoid is now level 12!
\\[SWARMCALLER NOVITIATE] is now level 11!
At some point Medea had extracted itself from my grip to go secure our location from other predators. A few mana rabbits and a spider-scorpion whelp had already died while I stayed inside and hoped against hope that I wouldn't complete my class too soon. I couldn't take the pain now.
“Are the spider scorpions increasing?” I asked the black ceiling of the carriage out loud while nibbling at bread. The ceiling didn’t answer. How rude!
I knew that it was dangerous to eat a lot after being hungry for long but it hadn’t been that long. I had faced actual starvation before. Still, I only ate little and slowly while Medea continued to slaughter its kin. It was looking like I had landed in a spider scorpion habitat. I'd encountered a lot of the supposed solitary hunters by now. The answer came from my skill. Modern spider-scorpions were territorial unlike the swarming hordes of antiquity and Medea, like all spider-scorpion adults, was constantly facing challenges from potential upstarts trying to secure territory. No, it was struggling to claim territory. Medea was the reason I hadn't encountered any other large predators until now.
I could command it to ignore them but in that case, we would eventually have to deal with trouble actually looking for us. And it probably would, spider-scorpions were territorial solitary hunters but also tend to have territories that bordered and increased aggression meant that overpopulation had compelled them to fight for territory or expand into unoccupied lands. That, or something had been driving them away. That meant that with time, we would be dealing with more and stronger spider-scorpions than what we were seeing so far. We had to leave, and quickly.
\\Diverse Insectoid Physiology Knowledge is now level 4!
Hours later, I forced myself to crawl to the open front of the carriage; I stared at what looked like a Victorian era car dashboard. Two parallel slabs of sloping dark metal and wood were affixed at a slight angle before me. One above the other with the upper one protruding so that it started at the same distance as the one below before angling away from me.
First I examined the top slab. There was a blue pyramid on the left that lightly glowed, a red pyramid on the right that didn't, something that looked like a brass circle affixed to a stick, and what I thought looked like a circular compass on top of it. If it was in fact a compass then I was facing south-west right now. That is of course, if this compass pointed to the north. If it was a compass. Nothing in the upper slab seemed excessively complex, I was afraid that it would be a monstrosity that no one without the skills could even comprehend. The second slab had a rectangular glass screen with a needle that was rapidly oscillating vertically and far too many knobs and needles that were beyond me.
The carriage was comfortable, and safe if I stayed in it. If only I could move the damn thing. Medea was almost certainly not strong enough to pull it, and even if it could, I didn't want to tie down the only combat capable part of this duo. Anya and her man eating bioweapon! I fished out the charms and once again asked for the location of the nearest town. North West. Well I had to try to make it. Somehow. But first, another nap.
I had figured out how to use the lamps accidentally while trying to force my mana to move. I had slipped and some of the flowing energy had touched a lamp. It ignited as my mana decreased by 5. I had not paid the crystals in the driver’s compartment much attention earlier but the lamps had a small similar crystal at their base, hidden by dark painted metal. If I was correct, and that was another big if, then maybe the vehicle operated on the same principles.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
The ‘Dashboard’ didn't seem that complicated after all.
I touched the blue pyramid and nothing happened. I touched the red pyramid and my mana bottomed out entirely, faster than I could even see the flow of mana. The brass circle unfolded into three concentric rings each attached by a single rod that ran through the middle of the entire thing horizontally to a much diminished circle. The red pyramid shone feebly. Yay for progress.
After calling Medea back to me, I began to fiddle with the rings. The outermost and the largest ring could be pushed and held up or down from its resting position to make the vehicle move forward or backward, the middle ring was for turning but the purpose of the third one eluded me. But who cared? I had a magical automobile. A magical automobile that worked. I laughed even if I was still woozy and instantly emptying my mana made me feel even worse. ANd so began my hopefully uneventful journey.
Far too soon, the carriage stopped and the ring once again retracted in a flat circle. The red pyramid was dark again. But now I had an idea. I touched the blue pyramid again and tried to imagine the reverse of what using the red pyramid felt like, what the lamp felt like, instead of mana draining from me, I imagined mana entering from outside. At first it didn’t work, but when it did, it all clicked into place and the blurry mana flowing around me snapped into crystal c;ear focus..
\\Skill Mana Direction learned
Mana Direction: 1
You can direct the flow of your mana, you can push it into appropriate receptacles or drain it from charged mana crystals.
EFFECT: With each level, your mana loss during mana transactions decrease by 1% and transfers are 3% faster. Current bonus: 1% and 3% respectively.
The blue crystal had a lot of mana and I was pretty sure that it was regenerating by itself slowly. Every so often I would gain Mana Direction or Lesser Bone Augury levels as we made our way across the forest. If we were attacked or Medea became hungry then Enslaved Familiar Bond would level up.
We had stopped finding so many spider scorpions and that was encouraging but nothing else so far gave me as much experience so [SWARMCALLER NOVITIATE] became the first class that I had active for more than a day. I was almost missing the pain I had started to associate with stat gain.Almost.
One thing that I was happy about was discovering a set of black tunic and pants that fit me reasonably well. I had found it among a bundle of clothes in a corner of the carriage. There was a lot of clothing in a wide range of sizes. Maybe Medea’s victim had been a merchant. Oh well, nothing I could do for him at this point. That coupled with a Victorian style top hat made me feel at least vaguely presentable. Of course, the monocle was too much even for me. Until I looked into a small wall affixed mirror and decided that it completed the look far too well, that is.
Then finally, around two days after I had figured out how to drive, Lesser Bone Augury reached level 30.
\\Lesser Bone Augury has reached its highest level and has absorbed Fossil Identification to evolve into Ossific Communion
\\Ossific Communion: 30
Some Northern Shaman-Prophets use their skills to directly commune with the spirits of the dead that inhabit this world. Such spirits are of the recently deceased and lack the mental or magical facilities of actual spectres and similar undead.
By using bone charms and the expenditure of some mana, you can ask them to point you towards places and people that you seek. Furthermore, you get a small vision of your destination. As usual, places or people with a high amount of magical power can evade or confuse your spirits. You can also know the identity along with some additional information of the dead by examining their remains. By using mana, you can even relive the moments of their death.
Uses 30 mana per use.
So that's why actives don't improve per level. The new skill was superior in every way and also removed an otherwise unused skill, something I was grateful for. Both my passive and active slots were full. It cost more but the blue pyramid had a lot of mana in it. I was probably already burning it faster than it could regenerate but I wouldn't run out anytime soon unless I used the skill every thirty minutes or something.
If all skills evolved at level 30 then Lesser Bone Harvesting or Lesser Bone Crafting could realistically be maxed out in a day or two. They would also merge, right? I still had my crutches and a bone knife made from Godtouched bone to work with. I could carve some designs on my crutches to begin but I just didn't have much energy to do so between driving and resting for the night. Repeatedly emptying and refilling my mana was very exhausting. Medea usually travelled alongside the carriage instead of inside but I knew it would come inside if I willed it to and I always recalled it inside at night. If something tried to attack me when I was sleeping then I would have it close.
\\Skills at level 30 and above are more volatile and can consolidate and evolve freely instead of at fixed levels. Better skills will increase the possibility of unlocking superior classes and other similar skills. Beware that better skills come with a proportionate increase in costs
My newly evolved skill also gained no levels in the meantime, it was almost torturously slow compared to how quickly Lesser Bone Augury had grown but it was not an immediate problem. I had seen my destination as a vision when I augured with it, an industrial town lightly covered in what looked like green smog that sometimes glowed. Great towers belched out the gas all night but went silent as the sun rose. Numerous lamps and street lights pierced the smog when it inevitably destroyed all visibility. Didn’t look like the cheeriest place but I had been expecting a medieval town or something like that.
On the fifth day, I finally mastered my class.
\\Gemstone Krait slain
\\Enslaved Familiar's Bond is now level 13!
\\[SWARMCALLER NOVITIATE] is now level 15!
\\Class mastered [SWARMCALLER NOVITIATE]. +2 to VITALITY, ACUITY, WILLPOWER AND ATTUNEMENT
I spasmed and cried out as the vitality increase remolded my body again. But one way or another, I was getting better at dealing with it. New class time. I had unlocked [BONEMAGE] after evolving Ossific Communion but I was pretty sure I was not ready for a 20 level class just yet. Maybe after one or two more class ups. And anyways, I actually had a class patiently waiting for me.
\\BLOODMAGE INITIATE (0/15)
A BLOODMAGE INITIATE uses her blood to both heal and harm. She speeds up the natural healing rate of the body for allies and induces internal or external bleeding in her enemies at this small step on the Eternal Ziggurat of the BIOMANCER.
At higher class levels, BIOMANCERS can regrow entire bodies, regenerate from small traces of DNA, mutate themselves or others into great monstrosities and absorb biological traits from their foes who find their very bodies in open rebellion against them.
MASTERY BONUSES:
+2 to STRENGTH, VITALITY, WILLPOWER AND ATTUNEMENT
\\Class [BLOODMAGE INITIATE] selected
\\Skill Blood Sense Learned
\\Blood Sense: 1
There are many reasons that one may have chosen to walk this path, maybe you are a hunter stalking your prey, a detective trying to solve a murder or an aspiring vampire queen but you have learned how to sense blood around you. No more shall your enemies sneak up on you or bloodbaths be hidden from you.
You send a pulse of energy centred on you that informs you of all sources of blood over a sufficient quantity around you in a sphere, be it in a living body or otherwise. Drops, small stains or exceptionally small creatures will not be sensed by you.
Uses 20 mana per use.
\\Skill Blood Bag Learned
\\Blood Bag: 1
The average adult human body produces around 43 mls of blood per day after experiencing blood loss until it regains the amount lost. But not you, you regenerate your blood faster than most and it will only become faster from now on. Beware that your body will not produce something from nothing and iron, nutrients and so on will be consumed to produce the extra blood.
EFFECT: Your body produces 5% more blood per level. Current bonus: 5%
//WARNING: Passive skill slot limits exceeded. You can replace a skill or refuse to equip your new skill. Unequipped skills can’t be equipped again for a period of time determined by their power. Unequipped skills do not confer any benefits but exist and count for consolidation purposes only.
\\Blood Magic spell list unlocked
\\Blood Magic Spell list
Induce Bleeding: 35 mana
Dilute Blood: 20 mana
Coagulation: 20 mana
