“Fucking, FUCK!” Mike swore as he pulled himself further behind the tree, feeling the hot pain of whatever the ooze had done lance up his leg with every movement.

Crosse who was actually breathing hard for once looked back at him with stern concern. “What happened?” he asked concisely, stepping towards Mike's prone form and looking him over for wounds.

“Fuck!” Mike swore again in response, then explained, “Leg, one of the damn needles got me in the leg.”

Crosse squatted beside him. “Which leg and where?” he asked.

“Right leg, Front of my thigh I think,” Mike replied through gritted teeth.

Crosse just curtly nodded and grabbed Mike by the shoulder and in one smooth motion rolled him onto his back. He then grabbed Mike's ankles and turned him so that his head pointed at the trees, backing him up from there with Mike’s help until his back was against the sturdy wood.

Crosse and Mike Looked down at his right thigh at almost the same time. There were almost five centimetres of gold needle sticking out of Mike's thigh. Mike cringed at seeing it. He couldn’t help but think that this was his only pair of decent travelling pants as well, as pointless as the thought was.

Crosse moved around him to the side with the wound and pinched Mike’s pants to either side of the needle. He pulled to the sides and the fabric ripped like paper around the puncture.

Mike’s queasy feeling increased as he could see the needle sticking directly into the flesh. Crosse took off his pack and took out his medical satchel.

“This is too small to stitch, but is otherwise just a flesh wound, it could be pretty deep but there isn’t much we can do about that until Lady Ina gets a look at you. Right now we need to stop the bleeding and there is one easy way to do that, but it is going to hurt probably twice as much as actually getting stabbed did, at least at first,” Crosse explained as he took out his bandages, a short wooden rod wrapped in leather, then grabbed his bow.

He offered the wrapped wood and said, “Put this in your mouth, don’t want you hurting those teeth.” Mike took it, he had an idea as to what Crosse was considering but had to ask.

“You’re going to cauterise it with the arrow?” he asked, he knew the answer even before Crosse nodded and gripped his bow. Mike felt himself go paler and his head got dizzy, but he shook it off and put the piece of wood between his teeth, ready to bite down on it when the pain came.

When Crosse had pulled the arrow out all the way, he rubbed the shaft in a quick motion across the grip and the sharp wooden head lit with the burst of fire mana that Mike had seen before. Crosse then put down the bow and reached for the needle. His eyes met Mike’s asking wordlessly if he was ready.

Mike wasn’t, but he nodded anyway.

Crosse yanked to needle out of the wound and Mike barely felt it. He felt the hot blood that started to run from the wound though and then he felt the excruciating heat of the wooden shaft, lit by Fire magic, press against the wound and twist.

***

Mike’s eyes fluttered open. He must have fainted, again. He lifted his head to see Crosse right in front of him, in the process of wrapping Mikes thigh in a bandage, pant leg and all.

“How long was I out?” Mike asked groggily as he blinked at the light.

“Less than a minute. Didn’t you hear me earlier when I said that not getting hurt was a much better option to getting hurt and getting treated? Well, I hope this little experience teaches you that lesson better.” Crosse said gruffly, but not without some wryness.

“Duly noted. At least it was better than becoming a pincushion, well, more of a pincushion,” Mike said. He looked around the tree in the direction they had come. “Is it still back there?” he asked, not sure what to feel.

“If it was, it would have come for us, Gold-sap Oozes are more aggressive than tree-sap ones, they want the metal in our blood and bones to grow. They are heavy fuckers though, and they really only move around as you saw at first. Those huge bursts of power that propel them into something, preferably whatever it wants to kill I imagine.” Crosse said, well, crossly.

“How is the leg?” Crosse asked as he tied off the bandage.

Mike tentatively attempted to move it. He interestingly didn’t feel any pain. His leg just felt kinda numb. “Did you use that salve again?” Mike asked.

“Yes, I also gave you a drink of something that helps with pain, you should be good until we get to the village and Lady Ina can heal you.”

Mike didn’t know what to think about whatever medicine Crosse had given him while he was out. He supposed he shouldn’t expect this society to follow his society's expectations of consent when it came to medication.

He sighed, leaning his head back against the trunk. “Thanks, have any idea what did happen with the ooze?”

Crosse shook his head, “I was just about to go and check what it’s like, but I think it’s either gone or dead.”

Mike nodded. “Go and check, I’m not going anywhere,” Mike replied.

Crosse nodded and stood, picking up his bow and taking it with him as he rounded the trunk of the tree. Mike just put his head against the tree and shut his eyes, breathing. Three times in two days, he had almost gotten killed.

Crosse was only gone for a few moments and he came back around looking angry, “It's dead, we need to go.” he said and offered a hand down to Mike.

Mike took it, and Crosse heaved him to his feet. Mike was hesitant to put weight on his leg, despite the lack of pain.

“Don’t worry, you should be fine to walk on it normally until we get back,” Crosse said as he gathered up all of his medical supplies and took something that looked like a burlap sack out of his pack.

Mike then followed him back around the tree to the scene of the fight. The entire area was littered with needles, there had to be thousands of them. The spot where the ooze had embedded itself in the ground was now a crater almost two metres wide.

They approached the edge of the crater and Mike saw why Crosse was sure that the ooze was dead. The crater was full of a shiny golden sap, it looked like honey almost but more yellow, inside that sap were a few objects of interest.

The most disturbing of which was what appeared to be a full set of human bones, right next to it, a longbow that looked almost Identical to Crosse’s own. Lastly, there was a golfball-sized lump of amber that seemed to be attracting a decent amount of both Wood and Metal mana to itself in the Aether.

Mike looked over to Crosse, his angry expression making more sense now, “Is that…” Mike didn’t know how to ask tactfully.

Crosse nodded sharply. “Yes, that’s Connor, his bow is unique.” Crosse didn't say any more as he stepped into the syrupy sap and started collecting the bones, one by one, putting them into the sack.

Mike stood at the edge of the crater and watched in silence for a few minutes. He could tell that Crosse was mourning and in pain, but he had no idea how to help or comfort him. He seemed angry most of all, at Connor? at the ooze? Or at Spirit beasts and the world in general?

Not knowing what to do or think about the situation, Mike’s head and attention turned to that lump of amber. That was the core of the ooze that Crosse had described. The way that the AI had described the Plunder system had made sense, but Mike didn’t know how it would react to a creature that didn’t have anything close to a head or a heart.

Mike supposed that he also hadn’t really been the one to kill it. He took a step towards the pool of sap but stopped. “How do we know it isn’t playing dead to draw us in?” he asked Crosse If it was still alive and they both stepped into that sap…

“It’s dead, It wouldn’t willing to reveal its core like that if it was alive. Whatever it was that you did to it must have convinced it that it was dying. So it tried to take us with it in that last burst. That used up too much of the metal in it though and it died.” Crosse explained, not halting in his task of collecting the bones.

Mike thought about it and decided that he may as well trust the hunter’s judgement, he had been right about most everything so far. So Mike stepped down into the shallow pool of sap and made one more step to reach the core.

He examined it from this perspective without touching it. It wasn’t perfectly round, it looked like a gnarl that had been cut out of a piece of timber. The mana in the aether formed an aura around it, much like how it had when the ooze was alive.

Mike finally bent down to touch it with his right hand’s fingertips. He was surprised when the notification appeared in front of him, but he supposed Crosse wasn’t paying him much attention at the moment. He moved to be between Cross and the window and it rotated to keep facing him.

Congratulations! You have defeated Level 9 Gold-sap ooze!

EXP gained from fight

45% Physical EXP

25% Mental EXP

+1 Mental aspect Level!

50% Magic EXP

+1 Magic aspect Level!

+1 Average level

Skill Levels gained from fight

Mana sight +1

You have unlocked the Skills

Metal Magic Resistance

Fire Magic Resistance

EXP Gains from plundering Gold-sap ooze’s Magic EXP

65%

Congratulations! Your Magic aspect has reached Level 5!

You have gained 1 Magic Skill Slot. What would you like to equip?

Magic Skills

Skill Slots

✓

3

Mana Sight

✓

ATU/PER

Amateur

3

Light Magic

AFI/CON

Amateur

4

Light Magic Resistance

RES/ATU

Amateur

1

Dark Magic

AFI/CON

Amateur

4

Dark Magic Resistance

RES/ATU

Amateur

1

Arcane Magic

✓

AFI/CON

Amateur

1

Metal Magic Resistance

RES/ATU

Amateur

1

Fire Magic Resistance

RES/ATU

Amateur

1

Congratulations! You have gained 1 Average Level!

Name

Mike Sven

Age

22

Sex

Male

Height

180cm

Weight

58.2kg

Wizard Level

2

Wizard EXP

20%

Average Level

4

Physical Statistics

0

Level

4

Exp

50%

Strength (STR)

10

(+/-)

Endurance (END)

10

(+/-)

Agility (AGI)

12

(+/-)

Dexterity (DEX)

10

(+/-)

Mental Statistics

2

Level

3

Exp

5%

Intelligence (INT)

15

(+/-)

Wisdom (WIS)

12

(+/-)

Perception (PER)

11

(+/-)

Willpower (WIL)

10

(+/-)

Magic Statistics

2

Level

5

Exp

70%

Affinity (AFI)

16

(+/-)

Attunement (ATU)

11

(+/-)

Control (CON)

11

(+/-)

Resistance (RES)

7

(+/-)

General Points

2

It seemed fights were a great way to progress, two-aspect Levels and an Average Level was great for less than five minutes of working for it. Though he still preferred the way he had trained last night.

He had also unlocked two new Skills, both Metal Magic Resistance and Fire Magic Resistance. He could find out if he could use them to unlock the respective control skills for those mana types.

He had quite a few skill points to spend again as well, he would need to think about what to do with them

Seeing as he had just gained a new Magic Skill Slot too, he figured that he might as well try it. So he equipped Metal Magic Resistance in the empty Skill Slot.

He could immediately sense the amber core in front of him. Dismissing the notification, he looked to it and tried to parse what he was sensing. The Metal mana felt impenetrable and sharp.

Which he supposed made sense, those were likely the main ways that this ooze had used its access to the element. This was the first of the five core elements that he had sensed, and it felt more cohesive somehow than the others.

Light and Dark mana gave him mixed signals with light giving him the impression of scientific understanding and Dark the feeling of emptiness and apathy. Metal mana felt like, well, metal. It could be hard and it could be sharp, it wanted to be hard and sharp because those were the reasons it was valuable.

Mike reaches out and picked up the core, it was likely as useful an object as the pouch of Dark mana gems, though he would need to equip arcane logic to measure exactly how much mana it was attracting to itself.

Though he supposed if he trained with the skill he could work that out on his own, that was the point of the Skills after all. He stood up straight, turning the core in his hands.

He turned to look to Crosse who was still collecting the bones of his dead friend, mumbling to himself in what Mike assumed was Manish, the Human language, even though to him it sounded like completely random noises strung together.

“Would you like some help?” Mike offered, it was the least he could do.

Crosse paused in reaching out towards a bone. “Yes, thank you,” he replied, sounding resigned his anger seeming to have faded some.

Mike nodded and stepped through the thick sap, leaving behind boot prints. He helped Crosse collect all of the bones for what felt like an hour. It was morbid work and Mike couldn’t help but shiver as he thought of the fact that these were real human bones not some display or mockup in a science lab.

This had been a person, a hunter from the village of Inasholme, who had devoted himself to protecting his home from monsters. If Mike had been wary of the idea of helping this village before, he was fucking sure he would now.