By the end of the day, Asher had spent a good four or five hours practicing each of her spells and she felt much more confident with them. Not just in regards to properly casting them, but also in anticipating how they would act. She had a much better grasp on each ability’s timing, area of affect, and targeting.

When practicing thunderbolt, she done her best to massacre the local wildlife. A great number of Emberwings, Anisodrachs, and even a pair of Zalcoa had been the target of various bolts of power. Between the one Zalcoa she had actually hit and so many lesser targets that she had gone on a one woman insect genocide, she had managed to collect thirteen experience and two evolution points by the time she prepared to settle down for the night. Just enough rewards to survive for another day.

Not everything had gone perfectly of course. There had been various times throughout the day where she had heard the Certilia whistling and hooting as they hunted her, but they had never managed to actually catch up. They seemed surprisingly adept at tracking her, they just couldn’t keep up with the pace she set through the dense ash cloud. Of course, that advantage only applied as long as she was moving. The seven hours she spent asleep was more than enough time for them to catch back up. As she’d previously noted the little ones rested and slept on the big ones during long trips, so they were able to track her down as she slept and attack her.

With that in mind, she came up with a plan as she ate dinner. She would sleep in two shifts to start. She had briefly attempted biphasic sleep during her time in college, when she worked a second shift job. It worked well enough. During the night she would sleep five hours and during the day she would find a chance for a one-hour nap. Five hours was still a lot of time for them to catch up, but she couldn’t just not sleep for an extended period.

She didn’t want to keep this up in the long run, she needed to deal with Scarface’s pack sooner versus later. Whether that meant killing them, permanently losing them, or simply dissuading them. None of those seemed particularly likely right now, but maybe if she leveled up she would have a chance. If she worked hard, kept hunting, and got better with actually hitting her spells; she bet she could gain enough experience to hit the threshold in a week or so. She wasn’t sure what would happen after that, but leveling up guaranteed she would be in a better position than she was currently.

#

“So that’s the goal Bob. Keep ahead of them for the next week. Practice my spells until I can use Thunderstep three times without negative effects. Kill bugs and fat little flying garter snakes until I level up. After that, we reassess and see where we are. If I’m lucky Scarface will give up the chase and go looking for something else to eat.”

“Sounds like a plan mistress.” The response was unenthusiastic and she couldn’t help but project her own disappointment into his tone. It was a lot to accomplish, and it didn’t do much more then delay in the meantime. It also relied on her being skilled and lucky enough to continue avoiding becoming dinner for a swarm of giant reptiles.

“I’m regretting not killing that Certilia this morning. If I hadn’t been so surprised, I could have used feedback and then blasted the little thing. I bet even the smallest one is worth more experience than a Zalcoa. Best not to dwell on it though, I just need to remember it for next time.”

“Of course, mistress. There is no worth in trying to change the past with wishes. You can only prepare for the future.”

#

The following days were more of the same. Fleeing from the pursuing pack. Hunting insects and Zalcoa in each clearing until her mana ran out. Sleeping when she could and eating what she hunted. More than once, that meant an Emberwing. She only attempted to eat an Anisodrach once, but the thing was so horribly bitter as to be inedible. She literally couldn’t keep the thing down. Emberwings, while not particularly appetizing, were at least palatable. They also were surprisingly filling and provided far more energy than she expected.

Time running on, she had discovered a new type of creatureon her third day of fleeing. A small deer that Bob had called a Blazehorn Deer. The creature had a deep red coat of fur and small flames burned around it’s hooves and horns, and given its size and the brief glances she had previously see she assumed this thing was the same as whatever the Certilia had been chasing when she first ran into them. She had attempted to kill the small ungulate, but the thing was very light on its feet. Easily dodged both thunderbolts and her thrown Thundertrap rock the deer had disappeared off into the ash without suffering a single scratch.

That wasn’t her only discovery throughout the week of course. She also discovered that some of the cacti bore fruit after a lucky trip into one of the various clearings. The fruit had a red and black rind with light pink flesh on the inside, and was filled with delicious juices. She had managed to collect 8 of them, each about grapefruit sized, as a delicious addition to her meals, before the approaching hoots of her pursuers forced her to leave. Picking the fruit had also helped her practice her Thunderstep. In an experiment, she had attempted to teleport seven feet straight up to get ahold of one of the fruits and, to her great surprise, had been able to without difficulty. Landing had been unpleasant, as by that point she had been low enough on Mana to experience the full side effects of the ability. The resulting disorientation had left her barely able to grab the fruit before she fell to the ground in a bruised mound.

The resulting bruises were a reminder of her reckless nature and the dangers of playing with powers she didn’t fully understand. They were also a reminder that she didn’t really know the limits of her spells. A worthwhile trade in her mind at least.

Thunderstep wasn’t the only ability she experimented with. After much practice, she discovered that Thundertrap could be manipulated rather extensively. By either spending more mana or decreasing the effect, she could drastically increase the spells area of effect. Additionally, she could tweak how close creatures had to get to set the trap off. By increasing the trigger range, creatures would usually be affected less due to the greater range, but it also gave them less time to notice the magic. Decreasing the range had the opposite effect. With practice she had even figured out a way to make the traps directly controlled, only going off if she sent a small spark of power into their detection radius.

Feedback was similar. She could either increase the area of effect at the cost of power or decrease it. At the largest area, it was barely more than a minor static shock. If she shrunk it all the way down, it became almost a second skin that would send a powerful jolt through anything touching her. She could feel that at that level, the electricity elicited sustained contraction and made it almost impossible for most creatures to let go.

Shock Grasp was tricky. She couldn’t affect its range and the only way to up its power was by expending more mana. It could, however, be activated at any point on her body. It was easiest to choose a location and manifest the power at that spot from scratch, but with practice she had managed to find a way to send the electricity flowing from point to point. That had taken some getting used to. The electricity flow had felt like millipedes crawling on her skin. Not painful, but extremely noticeable.

Thunderbolt was perhaps the most stubborn of her spells. It resisted any attempt to modify it beyond changing its charge rate. She could charge it slowly without much mental effort and significantly better efficiency. That or she could charge it to her limit in five seconds by ballooning the cost to almost six times the cost of a slow charge. While rapidly charging a thunderbolt like this, the wasted power would produce a field of sparking lightning around her that was strong enough to knock an Emberwing out of the air - though not kill it.

#

In one particularly bug dense clearing, she had finally attempted her branching bolt enhancement. The clearing had been another with a dead tree in the center, Emberwings clumping the empty branches like a replacement for the leaves it had lost long ago. After entering the clearing and noting the situation, she had spent a minute packing as much mana into a charged Thunderbolt as she could manage before enhancing it. The result had been a burning tree, a small-scale genocide, twenty-seven Racial Experience, and six evolution points. The initial attack had instantly vaporized the first Emberwing it had hit, and each offshoot had done the same. These branching bolts of power had then spread into a second wave with each subsequent expansion slightly decreasing in power.

The last wave of bolts hadn’t been powerful enough to vaporize any of the victims, but they had killed the bugs and ignited their apparently flammable wings - resulting in the extremely dry tree quickly going up in flames and collapsing. Afterwards she could only admit that while the experiment had been successful, it had also been terrifying. She had tried to stop the spell halfway through the process, not wanting to wipe out the entire swarm, only to discover that she had no control over the spell after she launched it. It attacked anything that entered its area of effect without remorse and left her feeling disturbed. That could easily be responsible for a tragedy if she was a bit more powerful and not careful. It might even endanger her if she was too close to a target when she used the enhancement.

The experiment had put her ahead of schedule on leveling up though. Thanks to that, by her fifth day in the dungeon the moment had finally come. She had gathered one hundred Racial Experience. When she had killed the pair of Anisodrach that granted the final point necessary, a pang had filled her chest. This had been followed by what felt like a vacuum appearing in her core. A whirlwind of purple light grew around her as mana in her surrounding was consumed to fill this new void, lasting mere moments before the process was complete. Then she had received a new message, unlike any of the ones she had seen previously.

Congratulations, you have gained 1 Racial Experience (x2 Anisodrach, 1 XP). As you have no class, you have gained 0 Class Experience You have gained 0 Evolution Points.

Congratulation! You have collected 100 racial experience and leveled up! The core of your existence has strengthened as you pursue survival. You have gained 12 Free Stat Points to distribute. Access your status page to spend these and strengthen your chosen stats. You have gained 15 Evolution Points. As you are in a dungeon, the wild mana is extra dense. Additional Mana has been brought into your core. You receive one extra Mental Stat Point and 5 extra evolution points.

With the twenty evolution points added to her existing savings, she quickly used the resource to purchase the condensation canteen – finally relieving her of her daily survival fee. The canteen came empty unfortunately, but she could let it fill as she decided what to do with the stat points.

The level up had felt exhilarating, the new energy flowing into her and making her more than she was. More powerful, more capable, and more connected to her magic. It made her feel alive and made her crave the next time she leveled. It also felt like she had made her first advancement toward her goals. She needed as much power as she could get ahold of. Enough to live. Not just now, but in the future too.

At the end of the day only power could give her the freedom to live how she wanted. To explore and experience this new world. It was obvious without even getting out of this dungeon. As far as she could tell there wasn’t a hard limit on how strong any one individual could get, and that meant it was pretty likely that power would rule. She wanted the strength to make sure nobody could control her. Nobody could hunt her like these Certilia currently were.

She was experiencing something new and incredible, but the danger meant she didn’t get to enjoy it. She would make sure that didn’t stay the case. She would also make sure that wasn’t the chase for anyone she cared about. If Sarah was out there some-where she was hopefully ok, but she had always been rather pacifistic. Asher would have to hurry and get strong enough for them both.