all around gains

The next day she was waking up by her aching wounds, she sat up with a small groan of pain and cleaned her makeshift bandages and put them back on. She decided to give herself a rest for the day to let her wounds heal a bit more, she had enough food left for the day and from the looks of it the worm meat hadn't started rotting yet.

Speaking of meat, I could go for some. And with that she started cooking some more of the worm meat and took a few sips of the water, pushing past the pain. While the meat was cooking she had decided to start making some new equipment, even with her lacking recources.

2 forearm bones, a strip of cloth from her broken hatchet, a decent amount of worm leather and a few worm teeth was all she had. The first thing she started on was a dagger. She broke open the top part of the bone with one of her hatchets and put one of the worm teeth in it. And to finish it off she tied it together with the strap of cloth from her broken hatchet.

Not bad, not bad at all. I don't think it's going to be any good for cutting but it's a pretty good puncture weapon. She mused to herself while admiring her new dagger. Next up she wanted to make a protector made of worm leather, but first she had a quick meal, you can't craft on an empty stomach after all. She chuckled to herself.

Having finished her meal she started working on her protector, she started making small holes in the leather to strap them together with cloth. She shortened a few parts ands tied them together. By now most of her shirt was gone by now, used up in crafting. Honestly I might as well call it a top at this point, I don't think this counts as a shirt any longer. But after a few hours of hard work she had managed to make her chest protector. She quickly tried putting it on, it covered most of her torso, although it was a bit tight and uncomfortable, but she happily traded some comfort for some decent protection, especially if she had to be hit to boost her [anger] skill. Unfortunately it had no sleeves, which was a bit of a letdown.

She had wanted to make a few bracers as well but she had ran out of worm leather already, so instead she walked to the small water poor she had made to test one of her skills: [mana locator]. She tried using her skill and realised a problem, she had no idea how to push mana into something. Ugh, that's going to be a problem. She thought to herself while she sat down again.

So how do I push mana into things, no scratch that what is mana in the first place? She pondered to herself, realising how problematic her lack of knowledge was. When she thought about it she found it strange, she knew how to craft things like a hatchet, dagger and chest protector but didn't know what mana was. Was she a craftsmen before she had lost her memories? No that couldn't be right, she knew she had been special.

"This is getting me nowhere godsdamnit!!" She yelled out in a fit of anger while striking the floor, and much to her surprise and worry she heard the sound of something breaking after she had struck the ground. She quickly looked over and saw that it wasn't her hand that broke: but the floor.

"Wha- how?" She said before remembering her [anger] skill, it couldn't be just that right? No, it can't be. There's no way in hell such a cheap skill is that strong. But what else could it be? My strength stat is far too low to get a result like that on it's own... She thought to herself, before deciding she had to test it out.

Ignoring her plan to calmy rest to let her wounds heal she walked down the slope of her little camp, hatchet in her right hand and the dagger in her left, and walked through the mushroom forest looking for one of the worms.

Instead she found a small dog like creature covered in white chitin, it's having two large pincers with a bleak white liquid dripping down them. The beast let out a low growl, and she felt fear flood over her mind before being replaced by anger. This creature had dared to try and threaten her? She would make sure to pay it back for that insult.

While she was thinking that she saw the beast charging at her, it was slow, awfully slow, but she saw the strength in those steps, of course that didn't matter to her, just like the ground earlier she would crush the beast.

With a large jump the creature jumped towards her chest, likely to try and bite her. Unfortunately for the beast she had already swung her hatchet with all the power the could muster, and as it came close the hatchet got lodged into the side of the beast with a sickening crunch, it's chitin shattered.

She watched as the creature was thrown to the ground to her left, giving it no chance to get op she threw herself at the breast and plunger her dagger into it's head, bypassing the chitin with ease, the dagger sunk into the beast's head as life drained from it's eyes and she recovered from her anger fuelled state.

Quickly recovering her weapons she started dragging the beast back to her camp as she thought back on the battle. [Anger] was far more effective then she could have hoped, not only did her strength immensely improve it also helped mitigate her fear of battle. Unfortunately is also had another aspect that went far beyond expectations: the increase in her anger. During the battle she saw it as natural, but the anger had made her reckless, and immensely focused on attacking while abandoning any notions of carefulness.

During the battle she had been vulnerable, incredibly vulnerable. If her enemy wasn't as slow or if she had missed an attack she would have been ripped to shreds, she was sure of it. She desperately wanted to get rid of the skill, but she couldn't deny it's value, it had made the battle far easier than the one with the worm, even making her come out from it without a single skill, she just wished the anger wouldn't be so much!

[Steadfast mind (low) unlocked]

Wait what? Where did that come from? What did I do to unlock a skill like that! She mentally screamed to herself, she quickly threw down the corpse of the beast and activated her sigil to take a look at the skill.

[Steadfast mind: Reduces the effect of anger on the mind]

[Allocate 13 mana?]

Hold on a second, did the contruct just give me this skill just because I thought about wanting to reduce the effect of anger on the [anger] skill??? No way right? Must've been a coincidence. But if it wasn't then... that would mean the construct is intelligent, and capable of reading my mind. But the more the thought about it the more sense it made, what if it didn't give her fear resistance because she felt a large amount of fear but because she had wanted a way to deal with that fear. As much as she wanted to deny it, it just made sense to her.

On the other hand maybe I don't need to worry about it being capable of reading my mind, it clearly has the best in mind for me since it's helping me. It would mean that getting skills according to what I need would be a lot easier, and if I can figure out how to make it talk maybe it could even tell me about before I lost my memories! She felt a smile creep up on her face and decided to be nicer to the construct, it did help her after all so she might as well be nice about it.

She quickly thanked the construct for it's help and dismissed it before starting on dismantling the beast. She threw the chitin aside, while she originally thought it might have been useful it seemed too heavy to be of any use in making armor. She threw all the meat and organs aside, she wasn't about to eat the meat of a poisonous and or venomous creature, nuh uh. She already decided to forego poison resistance so she wasn't risking her life like that!

She did keep the bones of course, bones had been a wonderful material for her crafts so far. Last but not least she managed to snag another mana orb, this one being green. It was a lot larger than the last one was this one around the size of her pinky, so definitely not something she could fit down her throat, which was a problem of course. An object which could give her more power was right in her hands and she had no way to use it.

At least that was until she got an idea: why not grind it to dust and drink it together with the mana water?. Not only would it be easier to consume it would also be safer, as she could take it in smaller doses. She immediately got to work, starting by making a bowl by splitting a small rock in two before hollowing out the middle.

Then she grabbed one of the chitin pieces and started breaking down the mana orb in pieces, which it did surprisingly easily. With a bit of work she managed to make it into fairly small chunks before adding in the water. She stirred it a bit with a bone and sat down, preparing herself for the hell to come. She knew how much it hurt last time, and this was even more than then.

What followed was what felt like hours of excruciating pain, if she had bought the pain resistance skill it would have definitely leveled up multiple times by now. But she went through with it, all the way until she had finished every bit of the painful mana soup. Luckily for her her efforts paid off.

[large amount of poison mana absorbed]

[poison mana in a subtype of water mana, transform poison mana into water mana?]

She quickly told the construct no, poison mana sounded way more useful than water mana in her scenario.

[poison mana has been used to increase poison mana capacity by 11]

"Wait 11? By the gods that's a lot..." She said, surprised by the large amount of mana she got at once, normally it was far less. But her surprise was interrupted by another message from her construct.

[poisonous breath (low) unlocked]

Intrigued by the new skill she sat down in the sigil again and felt her mana rush into it.

[name: - ]

[mana: 17/19 (21 allocated)]

Arcane mana: 2/2 (18 allocated) Earth mana: 6/6 (0 allocated) Water mana: 0/0 (3 allocated) Poison mana: 11/11 (0 allocated)

[stats] (8 allocated)

Strength 10 Dexterity 4 Agility 8 Vitality 7 Toughness 7 Intelligence 3 Wisdom 4

[skills] (13 allocated)

anger (low) 1 (10% effect) fear resistance 2 (low) (10% effect) mana locator (low)

[available skills]

pain resistance (low) (18 mana) poison resistance (low) (9 mana | 4 poison mana) earth manipulation (low) (9 earth mana) poisonous breath (low) (8 poison mana)

The first thing she noticed was the change in cost for poison [resistance], that was pretty nice, but if she wanted [poisonous breath] she had to lead [poison resistance] go.

[poisonous breath: grows a small organ in your lungs which can change air into poison at the cost of poison mana, various poisons may be available]

[allocate 8 poison mana?]

While the growing an organ part sounded really icky to her she couldn't deny the potential benefits of this skill, not only would she get another way of attacking it seemed like she would even get better poisons over time!

She immediately purchased the skill and braced herself for the pain to come. Unfortunately bracing was in fact not enough as she felt her chest being ripped apart from the inside, luckily it didn't last nearly as long as taking in mana did. She examined herself but she didn't feel any different, which made her wonder if the skill had failed.

[poison system unlocked]

Which apparently it didn't, in fact she even unlocked a new system because of it! She quickly opened it.

[name: - ]

[mana: 8/11 (29 allocated)]

Arcane mana: 2/2 (18 allocated) Earth mana: 6/6 (0 allocated) Water mana: 0/0 (3 allocated) Poison mana: 0/3 (8 allocated)

[stats] (8 allocated)

Strength 10 Dexterity 4 Agility 8 Vitality 7 Toughness 7 Intelligence 3 Wisdom 4

[skills] (21 allocated)

anger (low) 1 (10% effect) fear resistance 2 (low) (10% effect) poisonous breath 1 (low) mana locator (low)

[poisons]

weak hallucinetic poison (gas) 2 poison mana

[available skills]

pain resistance (low) (18 mana) poison resistance (low) (9 mana | 4 poison mana) earth manipulation (low) (9 earth mana)

That was...underwhelming to say the least. Weak hallucinetic poison didn't really inspire much confidence, but it was better than nothing she supposed. Not that she could try it out considering her poison mana was drained, for now she just decided to perform a few more upgrades to her equipment while she cooked up some more worm meat.

She started with securing the ribs of the armored creature to her chest protector with the help of some cloth from the bottom of her pants, which were now closer to shorts than pants really. Having finished that endeavor she made a pair of bracers from chitin, while the material was heavy is was also sturdy, so the bracers could take a hit if needed.

She debated making bracers for her legs and upper arms but the chitin wasn't really suited for that, she'd use it for a helmet but honestly she had no idea how to make one from chitin so she had to give up on that idea as well. She decided to make leg and upper arm guards later from more worm leather, once she got her hands on more.

For now she dug into her worm meat, decked out in her newly upgraded armor of course. After that she decided to call it a day, she'd accomplished a lot that day and was feeling rather tired. She slowly fell asleep, satisfied with her accomplishments for the day.