Aligning himself for combat, Logan was engaged in the pre-combat glaring competition, his opponents being six remaining vorkas. The vulture-wyvern hybrid monstrosities had already sent two members at the party from the sky, felled quickly by two volleys of Force each. The nearby carriage was in shambles, tossed onto its side and the driver flung into the protective grasp of Marcus.

At his suggestion, the driver was now hiding aside the carriage on the end that faced the treeline to the east. The horse continued to rear itself, failing to relinquish the reins and ties that bound it to the carriage. Marcus had drawn his crossbow in anticipation of the coming conflict.

During their morning routine, Logan had prepared a single cast each of Aqua, Frost, Gaia, and Wind, hoping to test out every spell to see their effectiveness. With his new Spellthief’s garb, he was able to prepare one extra spell a day, each of them being tier 2 except for Wind that was only at tier 1.

Planning for the fight that was about to commence, Logan felt a bit out of place in this combat, his buff from the deity Vokka that had given him combat expertise was no longer granting him the same boon. His innate survival instinct and that of his experiences during his first few days would have to see him through till the end. Sweat started to bead down Logan’s forehead as his eyes darted between each foe.

As he brought up his Spellthief’s edge, the vorkas all lept towards the antsy adventurer. Six large monstrosities with flesh-like fanged beaks, all prized open for their new meal. Waving his hand across the floor in a line Logan shouted out, “Gaia Wall!” to which the earth responded with an abrupt explosion of rock, mud, and roots.

A wall of earth nearing 10’ tall, 30’ wide, and 5’ thick, shot upwards in front of Logan and blocked the vorkas from their charging attacks. Three of the vultures landed headfirst into the massive wall, the roots wrapping around the avians tightly until they pierced the somewhat softer hide, drawing blood in their entanglement. Logan was thankful for this new alteration, especially since it had taken out three opponents for the time being.

The remaining three foes darted to the left, right, and above, all circumventing the new alteration that Logan had learnt from Darius a few days prior. Aiming to his left foe, as it was his open side, Logan shouted once more, “Frost Shot!” and summoned a large shard of ice from his palm, shooting as if by a ballista at the vorkas.

Chilling pain leapt over the target, piercing it through the left shoulder and coming out at the left hip, dragging the vorkas to the floor with both the propulsion and the 24 damage that felled it instantly. As his attention was elsewhere, and his foes were shockingly agile, the two flanking vorkas were able to close the distance on Logan.

The above vorkas came down onto Logan with a divebomb-opened peck attack, its beak edge and sharp fangs puncturing and grappling him in the left shoulder for 6 damage and swiping at his chest for 4 and 5 damage. The right vorkas came in low and wrapped its maw around Logan’s stomach, combining with talons for 3, 4, and 6 damage.

“Logan, you have 36/64 HP”, the System alerted Logan in his head.

With the wall in front of him, Logan could not see that Marcus had already begun firing at the three vorkas trapped within his wall of earth, as they were easy targets. One of the trapped avians had already been defeated by the time Marcus was able to get around the wall to see his ally trapped in a grapple with the enemy.

Bringing up his left hand, Logan grabbed a tight hold over the vorkas that had attached themselves to his left shoulder. The beak in hand, Logan shouted, “Aqua G-” but was cut off as the vorkas bit down even harder, both of them dealing 2 and 3 damage. Logan winced in pain as he felt a surge of power fizzle in his palm, spurts of water splashing onto the face of the vorkas but failing to do anything.

“Crap, I miscasted!” Logan realised. Resolving to break the pin, Logan twirled his blade around and stabbed towards his shoulder, piercing the eye of the vorkas with an accompanying window stating “Backstab” as his skill activated, inflicting 20 damage and blinding that vorkas’s eye. Writhing in pain, the vorkas let go to only be shot by an observing Marcus, hitting solidly for another 5 damage and bringing the avian to the ground.

An alert appeared to tell Logan that Backstab had progressed to tier 2, but now wasn’t the time.

The vorkas at his stomach continued to let loose on the Spellthief, dealing another round of 3, 5, and 6 damage, bringing Logan down to 17/64 HP. “Marcus, heal!” Logan demanded from his ally.

“Orb of all I call to thee, Pondress heal your children. Heal Shot”, Marcus recited as normal, sending a wave of healing energies over his ally as he approached closer, recovering Logan by 14.

Jabbing his blade into the beak of the vorkas around his stomach, Logan pried open its jaw to break free of the grapple, all the while the creature let out a shrieking screech. “Again”, Logan called out, Marcus repeating his chant to shoot another healing wave of 13 to his ally.

The wall of earth holding the first three vorkas began to show signs of cracking, the avian beasts flailing about or pecking at the vines to break free. With a final foe on their side of the wall, Logan and Marcus moved to take down this one before dealing with the others. Dashing forwards, Logan sliced out with his dagger but narrowly missed the vorkas as it dodged skywards.

A crossbow bolt was able to strike into the airborne foe for 5 damage, but the following Force was nimbly dodged as the foe started to learn the tactics of its prey. “Fire to its left”, Logan commanded, as Marcus began reloading. Darting to the side, Logan observed both his ally and his foe, awaiting the crossbow bolt fire. As the bolt soared through the air, Logan noticed the vorkas begin to dodge to the right to which he countered with another Force into its right wing, dealing a direct hit of 11 damage.

So close to death, the faltering avian let out several caws to its fellows, who had finally broken free of the Gaia Wall. A torrent of flapping wings and falling rock followed the freed avians as they joined their injured fellow in the skies, staring daggers at the adventurers. Lining up once more to do another divebomb manoeuvre, Logan prepared his left hand.

Diving to Logan, the Spellthief waved his hand over the floor yet again though this time he shouted, “Wind Wall!” creating a similarly sized, somewhat invisible, wall of wind scythes and blades. Cutting the air, his spell was seemingly unidentified by his foes as all 3 darted through it without question. The destructive winds tore apart the vorkas, dealing 10 damage to each of them, killing the already wounded one. Logan was again surprised at the effectiveness of the new alteration he had obtained from Darius and was glad he didn’t step through the Flame Wall earlier.

With yet another flurry of diving beaks and talons, Logan was barraged for a total of 30 damage, bringing him down to 14/64 HP. Yelling out for another, “Heal!” he recovered 15 points. The two wounded avians were grappling with Logan just like their previous allies, digging their beaks deep into both of his shoulders, but in such a weakened state all it took was another dagger strike into the left and a crossbow bolt into the right to have them both fall to the floor limply.

Breathing heavily, blood pouring to the floor and soaking his clothing, Logan called Marcus over for a Healer’s Caress. As he recovered slightly, the wall of mud slowly started to reform into the ground beneath but showed signs of its previous eruption. The horse continued to be startled in the background, but with the corpses lining the floors and Logan’s wounds stitching back up he let out a thankful sigh as comforting numbers appeared above the bodies.

“Level up! Gain: 8 HP, +1 Str, +2 Agi, +1 Con, +2 Int, +1 Wis, +1 Cha. You have 1 attribute point to spend”, hitting level 7 came with the usual odd-numbered increases displayed in a window. Logan spent his additional point on his Intelligence, bringing him even higher as it reached 33 with his item included. Logan gained a total of 1,832 XP, Marcus had gained 240 XP from the encounter.

“Still no more slots, I am about to give up hope on ever getting them. Darius was noted to have gained 2nd level spells on a training trip? He came back at rank 9, so maybe 8 or 9 will grant me the same?” Logan pondered in his mind.

Marcus ran back to the carriage, worried about the state of its driver during the fight. “Sir, are you still there?”

“Yes, yes. Are they all gone?” a quivering voice replied, showing the lack of fighting experience from the man.

“The vorkas are dealt with but stay wary of other dangers. Are you injured?” Marcus continued, as he circled the carriage to the side the driver was hiding.

Looking over the man, he had suffered two talon strikes, to which Marcus healed with his other use of Healer’s Caress. The man’s eyes lit up at the lack of pain surging through his body, though showed signs of doubt.

“Oh, sir, I cannot afford this. With my carriage in disarray I-” he began but was cut off.

“No pay needed, I gave without question. Let us look to your cart”, Marcus stated, moving to the roadside.

Logan started dragging the corpses of the vorkas to the opposite end of the road, away from the horse and carriage. Looking over his shoulder as well as listening in on the conversation. “He doesn’t seem too offended by classless, is it due to his work at the church? I am glad he’s helping others though, especially people just wanting to get by”, he thought to himself.

Walking back over to the carriage, with a now steady horse, Logan saw that the driver and Marcus were conversing about their travels as well as the state of the vehicle. It wasn’t overly wrecked, some minor repairs were needed to the sheet covering the back alongside a wheel having snapped. With all three working together, the men were able to push the carriage so that it was the right way up once more, landing with a loud thud in the mud combined with the creaking of wood.

“Mighty fine arms you have there sirs, from what I could hear you’d both be spellcasters?” the man asked, pushing on his back to crack it back into place.

“Yes, we’re on the long road to Gauntlet, on to better and bigger quests, sir”, Logan replied.

“Well, you’ll find plenty of quests in the capital, there’s not a day that the G-hall isn’t abuzz with activity. Strong magi such as yourselves, able to take down vorkas like that, will find ample requests for parties.”

“I am deft with a hammer, I can help you make some repairs to your carriage, my friend here needs to harvest our kills either way”, Marcus offered.

“Healing and repairs? I won’t turn down free help, I’d offer something if I could but it looks like the damage is going to be costly when I reach Tinte.”

“I can give you a few components to aid in that”, Logan also offered. “Having a higher opinion of us may add to his aid down the line.”

Before the driver could turn down the offer Logan had already started walking back to the vorkas corpses, eight in all. Through the use of Harvesting, and a quick flip through the book “Wild Components” Logan was able to find that the vorkas only had feathers to harvest, with few being of use. This confirmed what his Identification told him earlier. Taking five from the midpoint of the left and another five from the right Logan gathered a total of 80 feathers from the corpses, taking him a good 10 minutes to fully pluck.

With the feathers in his possession as well as using Identification, Logan found that each one was worth 2 copper for common quality.

“Vorkas Feather: The feather of a vorkas, plucked from the blue and green avian. Its duo-sided colour allows for two different forms of camouflage and makes for excellent fletching on arrows. 49x shoddy, 28x common, 3x high-quality”, the window explained to him. As Logan harvested the feathers another window popped up, alerting him that Harvesting had progressed to tier 3.

“A third less time? That’ll definitely speed up the process, I wonder if it will continually get faster at higher tiers? I’m not sure if I will even reach that point.”

In the time it took Logan to gather up the feathers, Marcus and the driver had seemingly been able to do some rough repairs to get the carriage in a good enough shape to make it to Tinte for a full restoration. Picking out 10 of the shoddy feathers, enough to get the driver at least a silver in return, possibly more since he was a merchant, Logan placed them in the back of the carriage.

“That is certainly a few feathers, are you sure it is fine for me to take, sir?”

“No problem at all, I doubt we’ll need them more than you. We got some ends to tie up, so we’d appreciate you not mention us back in Tinte”, Logan asked.

“Out of pocket and not wanting any fame? A strange situation, but I won’t pry. I know adventurers are nary kind to casters, but you’re good classed in my mind. My words won’t escape my throat, sir.”

The trio spoke for a few more minutes, the driver letting the adventurers know that he was a travelling merchant and was bringing plenty of arms and armour to Tinte in preparation for the rising numbers of goblins alongside the threat of trolls. A thought popped into Logan’s head about possibly stealing some of the wares, but he hadn’t reached that point nor did he want to. The driver was going to be out of pocket nonetheless with the repair costs of his carriage.

Saying their farewells, the driver climbed back into his seat, waved off the helping hands, and continued southwards to Tinte. Logan placed the feathers into the communal bag, whilst hiding the fact he was using the inventory mechanic to practice it further. Setting themselves up as higher ranked adventurers would give them wider access to selling off components at their leisure, a rank 7 wizard shouldn’t be too heavily questioned with that many foes defeated in a day or 10.

With the encounter, Harvesting, and discussion over, Logan recalled his Backstab skill as it had alerted him earlier it increased to tier 2.

“That’s a major boost, double the increase and the cooldown went down by 1 minute. Do Fighters get a similar damage skill? Maybe that Power Strike I saw at the assessment has a comparable effect.”

“Are we all good to continue on, Logan?” Marcus inquired.

“Yeah, hopefully, we won’t run into any other monsters today, I have just two spells left”, Logan replied, thinking on his periapt MP.

“I can manage maybe 4 more Heal spells.”

“Let’s stick to Healer’s Caress until we know we’re going to be in combat.”

“Sure, I can use them right now actually”, Marcus spoke as he used his skill two more times on Logan, bringing him to 48/74 HP.

The rest of the day’s travel was full of conversation and healing, Logan talking to Marcus about their aid of the passing merchant with the Devout stating that the man had dealt with enough today that he wasn’t going to withhold healing in return for payment. Bringing up the topic of gashriek, it seemed that Marcus was more shocked about them being in Tinte rather than having an aversion to the species as a whole. He did make mention that he didn’t have any grudges against the “other species” either, but Logan felt it best not to pry into that portion since he had a tome that would explain other species to him anyways.

Even with the extra experience gained from the main quest, Marcus was sitting at 4,920/6,000, it was a good bet that Logan could possibly reach level 8 before Marcus achieved level 4. Logan almost wished for a new quest to keep his ally relevant in combat, though his aim of leaving Avanar altogether was higher up on his list of wishes.

Just like he had learnt when chopping firewood in Tinte, the winds were getting colder and colder as the days passed by. Logan was happy to have his lupine outfit in reserve if the weather continued its downward leap into the cooler temperatures, though the constant walking and rare combat kept the pair warm enough for the most part. Logan again praised the Clean mick as it was able to remove sweat that made his clothes almost unbearable.

Thankfully, the day ended without any more hostile forces barreling down the roads, a few more traders here or there with more adventurers scouting far and wide for components and quest locations. Logan continued to use Identification on all he saw, noting a few adventurers of level 9 and even some villagers that had one or two levels under their belt. Logan saw some classless guards at Tinte who had a few levels, so was curious as to how villagers had gained them.

Settling down for the night, the pair had a well-earned rest from saving a passerby, their spirits lifted after doing a good deed. Logan spent some time before sleeping reading the “The Many Faces of Avanar” tome, easily completing the 100-page book. This particular book had some of the most valued knowledge, the species on Avanar. While there were plenty held within the pages, a few stood out to Logan.

Humans, resembling the same species on Earth, Avanarians had the same skin colours, heights and weights, as well as the capabilities of Earth natives. The average lifespan was a bit longer however, it was common for middle-class and higher citizens to live to see 150 years of age, commoners closer to 90 if illness didn’t strike. They speak in the “Ava” tongue.

Gashriek, humanoids that show signs of mixed blood from goblins, humans, and monsters. They have ridges over their face, neck, and body, which allow them to take a heartier beating than humans. In tune with the forest, gashriek have a close faith to the one above, Desma, and are not often found outside of their forests. Due to their close-knit society, their average lifespan is around 160 years. They speak in the “Shrieky” tongue.

Saebers, quadrupedal creatures that are surprisingly similar to the sabertooth cat or smilodon but with a lion’s mane. Clawed paws with five digits, one of them being an opposable thumb, the saebers also have tails that split in two, both ending in two more clawed digits that they can easily control. Easily 4’ tall when on all fours, and closer to 7’ when on their hind legs, these civilized folk are quite large. Saebers keep to larger settlements and the mountains, which is probably why none were spotted in Tinte. Males are called Saeben, females are called Saebree. Saebers have an average lifespan of 100 years. They speak in the “Saelong” tongue which no other race can speak, but can understand, saebers are able to speak in other tongues.

Diglaeta, a strange amalgamation of limbs and digits, this race has a centre mass akin to a torso but can have up to 20 sets of legs and 30 sets of arms protruding from it. The images made Logan think of strings of cheese that were segmented at the top and bottom. Mouths and eyes can be found within the palms of the diglaeta, these grow over time and are in set locations. Diglaeta are incredibly rare, with only a few being found in the capital cities. The book talks about how they are cavern dwellers, though no habitats have been found by other species. Diglaeta have an average lifespan of 150 years. They speak in the “Ava” tongue, which leads many natives to believe they are a different evolutionary track of humans.

Vampires, the common beast of fiction that Logan had both read about in books and seen in movies. They followed almost all the same rules he knew about, drinking blood to survive, aversion to silver and consecrated grounds, as well as a few others. One major change was their origin, vampires came into being by the one below, Asbella, who plagued the land with demonic blood causing humans to first turn into them. Even though they are demonic in origin, vampires are actually well respected in Avanar and hold many positions in the upper class, from nobles to extremely rich merchants due to their almost endless lifespan. The longer a vampire lives, the stronger they get, some even overcoming their weakness to the sun. Almost all races can become a vampire, except for diglaeta, and so their tongue is based on their original form.

Learning about the deity Asbella, Logan searched his memory for that entry in one of his previous books. Logan’s memory was becoming almost photographic with his Intelligence soaring so high, though it could still be another feature of reading tomes combined with his status.

Asbella, the mother of vampires and one from below. Her sign is that of a blood droplet. A demonic being who delights in the punishment and torment of mortals, even going so far as to inflict plagues, disease, and undeath into the lands. Her greatest failure, however, was that of the vampires, a force she had hoped would kill senselessly, actually ended up being a great and somewhat benevolent race. There are few that worship this demon, though those that do are often granted unholy powers.

With such a wealth of information at hand, Logan was feeling even more prepared for his arrival at Gauntlet. This book also informed the Spellthief about the “other species” that Marcus was talking about. The 3rd day over with, Logan fell to sleep in the hopes that the midway point of their travels would bring something better than vultures.

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