Chapter 16

Training And Exploring

When I woke up several hours later I felt refreshed both mentally and physically. Alright, I need to put a plan together to become stronger than I am. Let’s make a list, one of my favorite things to do.

Explore the area and identify potential threats and animals I can kill to level up. Practice Skills and Magic to level them up. Try not to fight anything more than half my level until I feel confident in using combinations of magical and physical attacks. Gain enough levels to feel confident in defeating whatever ate me in the pond. When I finally kill the thing in the pond move on to new area to train. Do not try and find people until I feel I could be as strong or stronger than the average person.

That looks like a good plan. I really need to watch out for number six. No matter how lonely I get I need to ensure my safety first. I feel like since I am a rather unique existence if I do not have the power to escape or fight I might find more trouble in “civilizations” than the benefits that I would receive from them. Well time to go and explore.

I exit my tree house and spend the next 6 hours roaming around and spying on everything within half a kilometer of the clearing. Direction Sense is finally helping me out. I can now sense the cardinal directions. I climbed to the top of the tallest tree I could find to reorient myself to the landscapes I saw earlier. The volcanoes and hills are almost due south of the clearing. To the North and East directions are endless forest, or at least as far as I can see. To the west is the large body of water that I had spotted on my first look around. I have gotten closer to the large body of water and the hills.

My estimate is that I have travelled about 20 kilometers to the south or where I originally turned into an Elemental Mantis and drifted 5-10 kilometers west and closer to the large body of water. I think once I am done training in the clearing I will continue south and try for my original goal of the hills and volcanoes and search out an area that is different from this terrain to train in. The more types of places I get used to fighting in the better.

In my immediate area I have spotted more Jungle Hogs, a variety of smaller mammal like creatures, all subtly different from their Earth counterparts, a larger Venomous Flying Squirrel, two types of Tree Snakes, several smaller birds, and finally a Three Eyed Owl. Each time I observed one of the smaller animals all I got was its name. However, for each larger or what I would term “monster” sized animal I received full information including level. It seems that not everything in this world can level and grow stronger. What I did see on my scouting trip was enough.

Tree Snake (Green Variant) Level: 12 Magic: Nature/Camouflage

Tree Snake (Common) Level: 7 Magic: Unknown

Venomous Flying Squirrel Level: 10 Magic: Unknown

Three Eyed Owl Level: 15 Magic: Unknown

Jungle Hog Level: 15 Magic: Unknown

I have discovered that I have to see the magic used for my observe skill to identify it. I was watching a lower leveled Venomous Flying Squirrel when I saw a blur strike out from the leaves and bite it and then wrap around it. As soon as I observed the new animal is when I got the information on it being a variant type of Tree Snake and it having magic. I guess seeing it come out of camouflage and strike was enough of a hint for my observe to classify it. After observing everything I have come up with my training plan.

Every morning I am going to get up and farm/hunt the venomous squirrels. They are lower level and I am immune to poison so I should have the advantage. In the afternoons I will practice my magic and explore in each direction just a little further. I will repeat this, every day until I hit at least level 20. At level 20 I will switch to the snakes and maybe an occasional Jungle Hog. At level 25 I will go after the higher level owls and hogs and when I feel confident enough search and destroy whatever is in the pond. This could change as I find other or different “monster animals” that fit into the level categories I created to fight.

So according to my schedule since it took my entire morning and part of the afternoon to scout the local area I should practice my magic or explore more. Since I have already spent most of the day exploring I will spend the rest on magic. I decide that I should probably travel away from my tree house to do this as my explosions will leave scars and definite signs that someone with magic is around. This should keep me safer. I travel through the trees to the opposite side of the clearing and then set up ten targets. The targets are vaguely humanoid and made using my plant shaping skill. I will make new targets each day to help with this spell.

I cast Elemental Mana Wings and fly around placing targets in a variety of areas. Five targets are going on the ground in different areas, three targets on tree trunks, and the final two targets up in the branches and leaves. I spend the next four hours running and jumping around while shooting at the different targets. I cycle through each of the spikes, but make sure to use fire and annihilation only on the ground targets to help prevent any problems with forest fires or trees being eaten away and collapsing. Every fourteen shots I rest and plan my next set. For safeties sake I do not want to be caught with less than half my mana.

After my training session I felt much better. If wooden dummies ever attacked me I now knew for certain I could change them into small splinters. In reality I did feel good about my practice. It felt like the spells were coming easier to me. I do not know if it was just repetition and familiarity with them or if they were actually becoming easier to cast as I leveled them up. No matter which it was, it felt good that I was more comfortable with a life saving skill. Time to head back to the old tree house and settle down for the night. I made sure to pay attention the entire way back. While I knew I had scared off many if not all of the local smaller animals, the noise of my practice may have attracted other stronger ones with the sound. I made it back with no problems and tucked myself in mantis style. Basically I just kind of relaxed while resting back on my four legs. No real laying down for bugs I guess.

The next morning, I set out for what I hoped was the first of many more hunts and leveling opportunities. Today I would be hunting Venomous Flying Squirrels. I was hoping to find enough that I could test each of my spikes on one to see how they responded to each magic attack. I quietly made my way through the canopy until I spotted my first target. Observe.

Venomous Flying Squirrel Level: 9 Magic: Unknown

Ok this guy is even a little lower leveled than the ones I spotted yesterday. This should be good practice. I will start with an Exploding Fire Spike. I sneak closer until I am within 100 meters. That seemed to be the average distance I could keep control of the spell yesterday during practice. I form the fire spike and send it at the squirrel. It moves relatively fast, but the squirrel must have heard it coming, because it looks up when the spike is about 20 meters away from it. I see the squirrel’s eyes get big and then the decision to start to move or dodge. However, it was too late. Since the spell had limited tracking it was easily able to make the slight adjustment needed to continue on and hit the squirrel in the side. One second later and it exploded.

It was not an instant kill, but it was close enough. When the fire spike spell exploded it seemed to stun the squirrel and the explosion was large enough to knock it off the branch. Since it was in a semi-stunned state it was unable to recover and the impact with the ground finished it off. I cautiously make my way down to ground level and place the carcass of the animal into my inventory. Time to find another one. 3 hours later I finished up my hunt for the morning and stopped to contemplate on everything I had learned over this morning.

First, the squirrels seemed to be weak against stone or earth magic. Both stone spikes I used on a squirrel were one hit kills. They basically blew up spectacularly. That spell should not have been any stronger in its explosive power than any of the other ones. This led me to believe that they had a weakness against that type of magic and I was doing extra damage. Next, every other type of exploding spike was not an instant kill but still a one hit kill. The Venomous Flying Squirrels were small enough that each spell stunned them and knocked them out of the tree they were in. Gravity took over from there, and the extra damage from the fall finished off the squirrels each time. Last Annihilation Spike is creepy and effective. It took two Annihilation spikes to kill a squirrel if it was hit anywhere but the head. However, the damage was enough that the squirrel would not have been able to put up a fight.

I did not get close to the victim after shooting it with an Annihilation Spike, because the last thing I wanted was to get that dissolving mana on me. It was creepy just watching the squirrels body disappear layer by layer. First the fur, then the skin, then the muscle. It happened relatively quickly also. So if you were not paying close attention it probably would have looked like some mysterious invisible monster just took a clean bite out of the poor things. I did not keep any of the carcasses of these squirrels. Too much to think about and deal with mentally to ever believe that I would actually try to eat their meat or use the hides of something that was dissolved like that.

All in all, it was a rather successful morning hunt and experimentation training time. I quickly head back to the treehouse. I am going to roast some more Jungle Hog meat over a Majestic Flame for lunch and then head west towards the great body of water for two hours and explore. While roasting and eating lunch I decide to go as fast as possible while still being careful and working my way back slowly. I have not really tried to go full speed yet and this will help test it out. The large body of water is about 70 – 80 kilometers away so depending on how close I get I should be able to estimate the speed of my new body.

I set out and travel through the canopy west cataloging as much as I can while maintaining speed. Squirrel, squirrel, new type of tree, snake, squirrel, owl, oh that one is new.

Tree Snake (Red Variant) Level: 16 Magic: Unknown

I may not know its magic for sure, but based on the green variant being nature magic I can guess pretty reliably that this red variant has to do with fire mana. Anyway keep going, tree, squirrel, snake, squirrel, birds, giant insect, wait what?

Giant Bee Level: 6 Magic: Unknown

This has possibilities. I must remember the area I saw it in. I quickly scan the area and make note of several unique trees and how they look. I need to continue on and stick to my two hour travel schedule. Snake, squirrel, squirrel, bee, birds, bugs, new tree, claws aiming for my head, DODGE IT. I quickly jump down from the branch I am on and cast Elemental Mana Wings so I do not splat onto the forest floor. It is a good thing that I actually practiced this escape technique. It was almost instinct and allowed me to dodge those claws. Speaking of which what was that. I loop around and OBSERVE.

Shadow Jaguar Level: 20 Magic: Dark

Well dang it. There goes my theory of being safer in the tops of the trees than on the forest floor. I could just continue on, but I really do not want to leave something this dangerous around knowing that it knows about me. My mana is almost full so I am going to go for it.