After verifying that the painful wound was not going to kill him anytime soon, Kalamedra set out to loot an entire bandit gang. He already had their money, which had come to 122g52s23c, added to his 57g37s103c, which gave him the whopping total of 179g89s126c. If there was another player 6 days into the game with that kind of money, he would be surprised. But you never knew what those power gamers were capable of.

Leaving the boss for last, he went from bandit to bandit systematically searching them. Most of their weapons, armor and gear were so degraded that he didn’t even bother stripping it off them, but there were a few pieces worth saving. He put 3 shortswords, 2 daggers, 4 longswords and a longbow in the spatial ring. He also acquired 2 maille hauberks in sellable condition. He did find a number of rings, necklaces, and bracelets that the thieves had obviously stolen, and pocketed those as well.

System Notification Skill Increase: Search is now Beginner 5 (+1)

He found a nice black gi-style shirt that wrapped over itself, and a nice red sash-style belt. Putting those in his ring for now, he planned to put them on over his maille hauberk after he repaired the new hole in it.

He picked up a bunch of travel food, such as sealed hard cheeses and ropes of sausages, as well as milled oats and rice. He took a nice small pot to boil things in, and 10 skins of wine.

Nice to get some more traveling supplies. As long as I have such a killer magical storage device I might as well make the most of it. That was some of the best money I ever spent.

Finally making his way back to the elven boss, he rolled the man over and started doing a real serious search on him. He found a couple rings which looked like they might be worth identifying, as well as a necklace. The man’s armor and weapons seemed to be of good quality, but did not give him that feeling that they might be magical.

After all this, he was feeling pretty good about his finds but then he considered the pile of stolen goods by the side of the camp. Most of them were not really what he was looking for; large containers of grains, amphorae of wine, and huge stacks of skins. It looked like the bandits had raided an actual merchant caravan and most of it was the goods they had already traded their civilized luxuries for. He did find a couple chests of personal items, mostly clothes and would have passed by them quickly but he got a hunch and started looking through one that had some robes in it, checking to see if he could find any kind of hidden partitions or items.

System Notification Skill Increase: Search is now Novice 1 (+1)

Bingo! What have we got here? Looks like this chest has a false bottom. I wonder what I’ll find in here? This si so exciting, like opening birthday presents!

Skillfully using his sharp dagger he dug up the floor and found a book wrapped in a piece of linen. With shaking hands he pulled the book free of the chest and opened it. This was definitely a book of magic, the first page had a spell he could read, even if the characters seemed a little weird. It was the spell ‘Identify’, which would come in very, very handy he thought. The next page had the spell ‘Firebolt’, and he felt like it was Christmas x11. The only other spell he could read was ‘Summon Familiar’, the rest of the book was crammed with spells but these were written in another form of script that was unintelligible to him.

Ok, this fucking rocks! Even if it’s just a couple basic spells I can try and learn them using Shadow Spell, and hopefully after a while I will have the skill to learn more. I have plenty of money so I can buy spells, but who knows how many hoops you have to jump through to get them here. Also, I am in the back end of beyond at the moment. Thank the VOID!

YOU ARE WELCOME! BUT REALLY, IT WAS MERELY THE GIFT OF RANDOM CHANCE I HAVE BROUGHT INTO THIS PLANE. YOU ARE ONE OF THE ‘LUCKY’ ANYWAYS.

Shit, shit, shit! Note to self, you know who can hear his name even in your thoughts. Remember that!

Deciding that he needed to find a place to fully digest all of his new skills, and learn even more, as well as identify everything he found, Kalamedra prepared to leave the bandit encampment. He left the rest of the loot as it was, thinking that anyone else who found it might have a need, and it wasn’t going to benefit the thieves anymore. He cut the horses loose, knowing that they would only hamper his movement through the wilderness. With his Shadow Form, he was far more mobile than if he was on horseback, and he wasn’t in a hurry to get anywhere until he had learned a spell or two. It was hard to keep a grin off his face.

He set off in to the woods, traveling for a few hours in a general eastern direction as he looked for a camping spot. Eventually he came across a little shack sitting next to some overgrown fields. It was clear it had not been inhabited in a long time, the whole thing leaning precipitously, but the roof looked decent. He finally managed to get the door open, only to be welcome by a cloud of dust and the odors of the animals who had denned here in the past.

Sitting down gingerly in a wicker chair that groaned under his weight, he wiped off the tiny kitchen table with a scrap of old curtain he ripped down from the window. With great reverence he brought the book out of his spatial ring and set it in front of himself on the table. His eyes glistened as he looked at the finely crafted leather, old-fashioned cord binding, and detailed silver inlay on the cover.

.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*IMPERIAL AGELASTAN MAGE CORPS GRIMOIRE*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.

This is the reason I originally got into fantasy gaming; Magic! In the “real” world I played with swords and armor doing Historical Reenactment, but the closest you could come to throwing a fireball was tossing a beanbag at a LARP, or chucking some d6s at the kitchen table. When I open the cover of this book to really start trying to learn my first spell, this reality is going to surpass “reality” for me. I think this might be the happiest I have been in my entire life.

Carefully looking through the book, he noted that he could still only read the 3 spells at the front of the book. The other spells were basically in another language. No doubt there was a many more hidden barriers to the sharing of magical knowledge in Koral, but the first seemed to be a magical script.

No matter. If everything was solved easily, would this game be fun? Just one more mystery to solve. At some point I need to get in to a real city and find out how all this shit works. I have no real idea if I am ahead or behind the curve. Certainly the locals have the advantages right now. Ok, but which spell to learn first? Gotta be ‘Identify’ I think. Least chance of something going wrong with a simple spell like that, not going to end up summoning something to devour me or burning this shack down.

He flipped back to the first page and intently started reading the information on the spell ‘Identify’. The book made clear that this was a spell of no particular affinity, and was the recommended first spell to learn because of that.

He remembered that one of the few details of spell-casting that had got out after the Alpha was that it used an affinity system. Some spells only required mana to cast, the appropriate Intelligence to comprehend them, and any affinity. Other spells required a particular affinity for the type of magic the spell used.

He stared at the page for a while, reading the instructions, and still felt like something was lacking. He didn’t know why, but the chants and hand movements the spell called for didn’t feel right to him. As he looked at the page he tried to mentally activate his Shadow Spell skill. After staring intently at the vellum for a few more moments, he noticed that shadow was beginning to leak from his pores, and every time he exhaled.

The started to move towards the writing as if there was a current, rolling and cresting like tiny waves. He could actually feel a weird tingling sensation when the shadow tendrils started to crawl all over the writing, licking at the ink like so many little tongues. One of those weird shudders went down his spine, and he noticed that the words were actually disappearing from the page. The shadows started to retreat into his body as the page finally was cleared of scribblings, and Kalamedra’s mind started to feel exceedingly strange. He slumped forward onto the table.

His body was still, but his mind was racing. Images of mathematical equations, esoteric symbology and wafting clouds of shadows swirled madly leaving him feeling disoriented. When he finally roused from his stupor, and pushed himself up from the table, he took a deep breath.

Holy shit! Magic is no joke here! This is why this game is so far beyond anything I’ve played before. It is just more and more reality, and less game, all the time. That was literally the simplest spell in the book!

System Notification Skill Increase: Shadow Spell is now Beginner 3 (+2) New Spell: Identify Discovered

He looked outside and saw that it was nearly noon, so he had been unconscious for at least an hour or so. He felt mentally drained, but his body was feeling a little better and he saw that he had regained some hitpoints. Taking a break, he got out some sausage and cheese and started eating, but stopped a few seconds later as a wry grin came over his face.

“I’d like to say a prayer of thanks to the god of fools, who let those bandits be so overconfident and easy to kill. Thanks for the sausage and cheese you lousy sons of bitches!”

He thought he heard a voice giggling in the distance, but wrote it off as his imagination. He quickly went back to eating his food, feeling rather good about the day so far. He carefully brushed the food crumbs off the book as he finished eating.

Brushing himself off, he put the black-lacquered scabbard and blade on the table, and removed 2 rings and a necklace from the spatial ring. These were all items that he felt he should try the ‘Identify’ spell on.

He focused his gaze on the weapon, which he knew from mundanely appraising it had some hidden attributes. Identify.

Ka’vanth Sword of Rending This sword and accompanying scabbard are the work of the Ka’vanth Clan, and are works of exceeding Mastery. Know across the Dark Elven kingdoms for their weapons, this stands at the pinnacle of their efforts. Sharpness: The scabbard keeps this blade exceptionally sharp, ignores 5 Defense Repairing: The scabbard repairs any chips or knicks in the blade every night at midnight. DMG: 2-8 Slashing Weight: 3.0lbs

Hell yeah! Not only does ‘Identify’ fucking rock, this sword is so much cooler than I thought! Gotta say, I noticed that this one spell-casting cost me almost 20% of my mana though, so magic ain’t cheap. Good thing I have started working on some martial skills. Spellsword-Assassin or something.

He decided to wait a little while to see how fast his mana pool regenerated and discovered that he currently was regenerating about 1mp every 3 minutes, and the spell had cost 20mp. He could derive a formula for that, but he definitely wasn’t sure of variables and how that formula changed over time or with leveling so it seemed pointless at the moment, just noting in his memory this fact so that he could properly budget his mana pool.

He moved on to identifying the 2 rings and the necklace next, repeating the way he used the spell previously.

Ring of Stamina This ring was crafted by a master mage to provide a bonus to the wearer’s stamina pool. This is a Low-Level Magic Item. 10 Stamina Points Weight: .1 lbs. Ring of Regeneration This ring was crafted by a holy healer to provide it’s wearer with the sacred power of regeneration. This is a Low-Level Magic Item. Regenerates 1 Health Point per minute Weight: .1 lbs. Necklace of Night-Sight This necklace was crafted by a master mage for a rogue to enable her to see in the dark. This is a Low-Level Magic Item. Access to skill ‘Darkvision’ while worn. Any skill rankups are only applicable while necklace is worn. If the necklace is removed the skill ceases to function. Weight: .2 lbs.

Kalamedra quickly put on both the rings, marveling as he saw his SP bar increasing in size, and as he could feel his flesh start to heal much faster. The necklace he put back in the spatial ring as his sight would not benefit from such an item.

Well, that’s awesome! Two useful items is a great pickup, nevermind the whole magic book as well. Also, due to the harsh death system, any kind of item with regeneration is well worth me seeking out. The amount it heals is not that useful in combat, but if I can flee and heal it will be much harder to put me down. I can surely trade that necklace to someone without my ocular benefits. Seems like robbing robbers is an efficient way of getting the good shit, probably because they murdered who knows how many people to find 3 magic items, even of a Low-Level variety.

After all this excitement, Kalamedra decided to take a nap before he moved on to learning any other new spells. He put the book back in his ring and climbed up on the table to rest, not trusting the surely vermin-encrusted bed in the corner. His rest passed dreamlessly as always in this world, but he awoke a few hours later feeling refreshed. His body was now fully healed up, and he had regained a little over 50mp, which brought him up to almost 75% of his max.

He got down off the table, sat back down on the chair and pulled the magical manual out of his ring and placed it reverently on the table. He turned to the second page, entitled Firebolt.

Time to learn my first offensive spell!