In the New World Dungeons serve many functions. One of the most important of these is the absorption of Wild Mana. Mana permeates every living being in the new world and is responsible for external magics, magics that seek to rewrite the laws of reality according to their users will. Many studies, such as those of Isaac Bleak and Henry Lockler, show that most uses of Mana are subconscious. Minor affects utilizing incredibly small amounts of Mana can be observed nearly everywhere. Plants will draw pollinating bugs using minor mind magic to gain their attention. Animals will use purification magic to detect what water is safest to drink. This affect can be seen in humanity when observing the Luck stat. The actual effects of this will be further explored later in this book, but for now the important point is that all beings subconsciously expend Mana. As Mana is energy and can be neither created nor destroyed, it will then continue to exist unbound in nature. This Mana is Wild Mana and naturally accumulates everywhere there is life or active magics. Left unattended this can have any number of potentially dangerous affects. Dungeons are one of the ways the New Reality filters Wild Mana to prevent natural disasters as it builds. - History of a New Age, pg 31.

According to Asher’s watch, she had been running for almost three hours before she finally stopped hearing the hoots and chuffs of her pursuers. She had learned through far too personal experience that while they could move incredibly quickly in short distances, their stamina was generally poor. Thanks to her Thundertraps, Thunderstep, and the ash cloud, she had managed to use that failing against the Certilia to lose them repeatedly throughout the afternoon. Unfortunately, these reprieves were invariably short as the reptilian predators would quickly find her trail and she would be running once again to remain ahead of the pack.

Thankfully, long before the sun had started to set and a deep red had stained the sky the poison debuff had faded from her status window and left behind simple headache that had been pounding away at her psyche all day. While by no means ideal, this was far preferable to the original debilitation that had left her head fuzzy while she experienced extreme boughts of nausea and dizziness. This effect had been followed by chills and aches throughout her body, along with the headache that still persisted now.

Despite all this, she knew luck had been on her side today. She would likely already have died if any of the larger members of the pack had crossed the lava flow. The pack had been visible for a while before making it to the ash cloud, maybe fifty Certilians of various sizes. From the size of her hand to larger than a black lab the monsters had poored out into the clearing in response to her opponent’s cries. The nemesis in question had been one of the more average sized members of the pack, with maybe a third of them larger than him.

These larger specimens, through some twist of fate, had been unwilling to cross the flow. She theorized that they were simply too heavy to affectively glide across. Scarface had barely made the crossing himself, and these newcomers easily displayed a greater mass to wing span ratio. While she couldn’t be sure of the reason, at the end of the day the reason they had refused to cross wasn’t incredibly important. The fact that they hadn’t crossed was. The large dog sized monsters of scales and fangs would not be among those pursuing her and that offered her a chance at actually surviving.

Throughout her afternoons flight, she had noticed several other differences between the larger and smaller members of the species. Most notable was the change in each Certilia’s speed and endurance as they increased in size. The small ones were far and away the fastest, but they could barely maintain their top speed for twenty feet. By comparison, the mid-sized ones could maintain a comfortable lope for hours on end.

“As far as I can tell Bob, they seem to sacrifice speed for endurance as they age. Or am I missing something?” She asked the mysterious entity that had become a staple in her life.

“That would appear to be the case mistress.”

The pack used this difference to their advantage, with the small ones closing the initial distance and doing their best to slow her. This would then be followed by the larger members trying to either corral her while she was distracted or harry her if she managed to get out. Between attempts, the larger members of the pack would carry the smaller ones so that they could use their explosive speed when a moment presented itself.

Scarface, as she had decided to name the creature based off the handprint that covered half his ugly mug, seemed to be the main transport for the youngest members of his pack, though she couldn’t tell if this was due to his status as largest or for some other reason. The result was a combination of speed and endurance that, while unable to overwhelm her so far, had gotten close several times. If the size to endurance trend continued like that, some of the thigh high members of the pack would likely have ensured her capture by now had they followed. If they continued to display greater and greater endurance, she would have eventually collapsed simply from exhaustion.

In comparison, their current situation meant she’d been slowly losing them. The last time she had gotten away it had taken almost fifteen minutes for them to catch up with her again. The main reason she had hope of having actually escaped this time was that this was the first instance where she hadn’t been able to hear their calls to each other after her break away. Every other time her entire time after losing sight of the ensuing pack had been set to a back drop of angry cries slowly gaining on her. This time those calls had ceased almost twenty minutes ago, though that hadn’t stopped her from trying to add as much distance between her and the pursuers as she could manage. She had kept going until the threat of their reappearance simply hadn’t been enough to keep her on her feet much longer.

After finally completing her get away she had been tempted to throw herself to the ground and rest without concern for the consequences, but the insistence of her instincts to find a clearing and escape the fog pushed her on just a little longer. The clear line of sight would let her know if anything was sneaking up on her of course, but it would also just be a lot less depressing than the grey blanket that currently surrounded her. Plus, she thought it looked like the color was lightening ahead and to the left though it was hard to tell as the sun’s light decreased.

Ignoring her bone deep weariness, she called out to Bob once more, initiating an actual conversation for the first time since her confrontation. “Hopefully that’s a clearing ahead, I really don’t want to sleep out here in the ash cloud Bob.”

“I suppose you will have to check mistress.”

“Real helpful buddy. Well, let’s see if we get to sleep in comfort or not.”

“I do not sleep mistress.”

“I…well I didn’t know that for sure, but I assumed that was the case, Bob. I was trying to lighten the mood.”

“As you say mistress,” came the flat response.

#

Thankfully, her suspicion was correct and Asher found herself in yet another eye in the ash cloud. This one was home to absolutely massive cacti, easily rising in ten- or fifteen-foot pillars all around her. Rather than obvious thorns, these were covered in a hair like substance that she was simultaneously incredibly tempted to touch and extremely warry of. They look so soft, but they’re cacti! It has to be trap.

Besides the Cacti, a number of shrubs covered most of the ground and created a treacherous walking surface for those passing through. It was easily the most vibrant area she had seen so far. It was also very conspicuously missing the massive population of insects. They weren’t entirely nonexistent, a handful of the Emberwings and dragonflies buzzed around the area, but they were far rarer than she had seen before.

Thankfully that mystery was solved a short while later when a strange creature peaked its head from a hole toward the top of one of the cacti. The creature looked like a viper with large heat pits and no eyes. The creature had a large hood around surrounding its head, edges pointed forward similar to a satellite dish. As it continued to slink out of the hole, she saw multiple sets of feathered wings protruding from its side and propelling it into the air. It was almost like some kind of centipede with small wings instead of legs.

The creature was not large by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a good two or two and a half feet long and perhaps 2 inches wide not accounting for the wings. As she watched, the strange creature swooped downward with alien movements, wings rolling like a wave from head to tail. Something in her senses bugged her as she watched the thing fly, a vague glow seeming to surround the creature despite it not letting out any light. She felt like that must be her sensing the expenditure of mana given that it flew far faster and easier than she felt should be possible with such an unnatural propulsion method. As the strangely hypnotic winged serpent divebombed a dragonfly and drug it to the ground, she shot a question Bob’s way.

“So, Bob, am I right? Is that glow magic? Also, what is the name of that thing and the dragonflies too now that I think about it.”

“The ‘glow’ as you put it is the mana escaping as the creature performs magic. As no magic caster is perfect, the inefficiency in usage results in waste energy released as light. Or at least something that most mortal species perceive as light. This is not exactly the case, but is a close enough analogy that your brain will interpret it as such. Efficiency can be increased with practice and natural magical abilities are generally significantly more so then learned abilities.

The creatures you are observing are a Zalcoa, a flying predator noted for consuming anything small enough for it to swallow, hunting an Anisodrach. Zalcoa are noted for their infrared vision and echolocation, along with strong jaws. They rely on surprise strikes from above and getting their jaws around their prey’s cervical spine or equivalent to hunt. Anisodrach are large insects known as voracious predators of smaller bugs. Anisodrach bites are mildly venomous, though no single one possesses enough venom to endanger an adult human in any meaningful way.”

“Well, guess we found one of those intermediary members of the food chain between Certilia and the insects. The little ones could subsist on Emberwings and Anisodrachs, but no way even Scarface could subsist on just those. Them and whatever the pack was chasing earlier.”

There had been blood on some of the larger members of the pack, so they had obviously caught the thing in the end. Hopefully she could figure out what it was sooner versus later. It might be a source of food for her in the future. Then again, snakes were edible. Maybe she could catch one of the Zalcoa for tonight’s meal. Reminded of the fact she had had nothing to eat for the entire day, Asher’s mouth quickly started watering and her stomach rumbled. She wasn’t in danger of starving, but she would much prefer to get something in her stomach now versus later.

As she expected, more Zalcoa had made their presence known and began swooping through the air. The things did not pay much attention to her, clearly not expecting her to be a threat as they hunted their insectile meals. This made it easy for her to wait until one dive bombed an Emberwing a little too close to her. Using Feedback, she was able to stun the thing just long enough to land a Thunderbolt.

Congratulations, you have gained 2 Racial Experience (x1 Zalcoa, 2 XP). As you have no class, you have gained 0 Class Experience You have gained 1 Evolution Point.

The Zalcoa were obviously more intelligent than she expected, as the others quickly made distance from her after witnessing her kill. That was unfortunate, there were enough here that she half expected she could manage a level up if she killed all of them. She was surprised she gained any evolution points for such an easy kill, but when she asked Bob about it he explained she had been rather lucky with this first kill. Apparently, most creatures had set chances for gaining a certain amount of Evolution Points when you killed them, based on your level. As a level one human, Zalcoa had an approximately hundredth of a percent chance of dropping two evolution points and about a two percent chance of dropping one evolution point.

“Bob, anything you can tell me about butchering this thing? I have no idea what I am doing here.” Perhaps it was optimistic to expect his help with something so basic yet vital for survival. Thankfully, he actually was able to help her at least butcher the thing to the point where it was safe to eat. She had to spend four points on a small cooking knife and sheath, but she figured the blade would pay for itself in helping her prep whatever food she managed to catch. Unfortunately, the process of butchering the creature had left barely enough meat for a meal, and most of that was practically shredded with her inelegant attempts to remove the creature’s organs and bones.