Nathan stumbled through the cave his mind muddled with thoughts of family, death, regret, and guilt. ‘I don’t know why I am so broken up about the darn lizard. It's not like it’s a person, hell I am not even sure it can think beyond its base instincts. So why do I feel so shit for killing it? Maybe it’s all the stress and tiredness, all this fighting is exhausting.’ Nathan thinks as he wanders down the tunnel before coming to a stop in front of a wall. He looks left, another wall then looks right at the only way he can go. “Ugh” he sighs ‘Guess the taking the left path plan is shot’ he grumbles before walking on.

The cave is as dark as ever with little changes other than an odd divot here or bump there, the monotony of it dulling Nathan’s mind as he trudges on devoid of emotion one second then awash with guilt or regrets the next. ‘Wander alone in a dark cave is so fun’ he thinks with dry humor. ‘I just want to wake up in my bed at home from a drunken night out on the town with my pals and maybe a few nice women with this all having just been a bad nightmare.’ “But NO! I am stuck here having to kill damn three hundred pound lizards! In some godforsaken cave or dungeon or whatever the hell this place is!” He screams anger welling up at the injustice of it all.

“This is so not fair I did not want to be stuck here with a parched throat and empty stomach with a burnt arm, that I might add I had to burn myself so I did not have to bleed to death. HAHAHAHAHAHA” he laughs “You here that GOD! I want out of this place! OUT I SAY! OUT! Hahahahahahahahaha ugh ugh ugh” he laughs into a hacking cough. “Damn place I hate it already.” He says in self-pity.

‘I am sure I drew something with all that ranting. So I best get a move on before it comes to see what made the sound’ He thinks as he walks with haste to get away.

Not far down the tunnel he hears more rumbling but not from in front but from behind. “Damn I have only regained enough mana for one more shot since the battle,” he says upset with himself for ranting and raving like that. “Should have known it would bring me trouble and I don’t want to try my luck again with only four Fireballs,” he says as he starts running down the tunnel. He moves the Candle LIght spell out in front so he can see where he is running.

Nathan is running but the rumbling is getting louder, slower than the last two times but still fast enough where he can notice a change. The rumbling stops but Nathan does not dare stop until a minute later. He looks behind him into the darkness. ‘What is going in, why did it just stop all of a sudden’ he thinks before turning back around and continuing to run. ‘I can not question it, I need to use this time to get away’.

Nathan runs till he is out of breath. Panting with his hands on his knees he looks behind him expecting something to pop out of the darkness and tear him to bits. The image sends a chill down his spine. Having caught his breath he turns back to continue on down the tunnel when the rumbling picks up again. Nathan looks back again. “Dammit,” he says and starts running again.

Running he does not stop to see where he is headed and only slows down when he needs to catch his breath but never coming to a complete stop as the rumbling gets louder and louder behind him. His mana has refilled sometime ago but he does not think of turning around to fight, he just wants to get away. Running down the tunnel the rumbling gets louder and louder before long he can’t think straight. Stopping he turns around catches his breath and readies a Fireball while moving the Candle Light out in front so he can spot the lizard before it is right on top of him.

‘Damn I really did not want to have to fight again’ he thinks as the lizard comes into view with its mouth open and blood dripping from between its razor-sharp teeth. The image frightens Nathan as he aims the Fireball at the lizard’s eyes hoping to burn them like the last lizard.

Nathan rolls out of the way and preps his next Fireball as the lizards screams then coughs. Nathan looks at the lizard to see it coughing the Fireball having gone into its mouth. Not waiting for it to recover Nathan fires the next shot at the lizards head. While preparing the next Fireball he watches the last one hit the lizard in its eye and burn it to a crisp.

“That is what you get for making me run so far you damn spiky bastard!” He says in mock anger, his heart not in it.

The lizard screams out in pain then growls at Nathan while with is one good eye it glares at him with hate and fury. Nathan lets loose the next Fireball, the lizard turns to the side as the fire hits scorching its hide. As the lizard screams out the next Fireball comes in and hits the lizard in the leg. The lizard rears up in pain on its hind legs as the next Fireball come in and hits its soft underbelly burning a charred hole into it. The lizard lets out one final scream before collapsing to the ground dead.

“Huh huh huh” panting Nathan looks at the dead lizard. ‘Another one dies by my hands. I am a monster! Why do they keep coming after me? Do they have nothing better to do?’ Nathan thinks as he checks on his mana.

[Name: Nathan Vellenger]

[Age: 21]

[Class:Fire Mage Lvl:1]

[Health:86]

[Stamina:13]

[Mana:20]

[Strength:11]

[Endurance:10]

[Vitality:12]

[Agility:9]

[Dexterity:13]

[Wisdom:12]

[Intelligence:14]

[Skills:Inspect, Fire Affinity, Mana Sense, Mana Channeling, Spell Creation, Concentration, Meditation]

[Spells:Candle Light, Fireball]

[Titles:Otherworlder]

‘I only have enough mana for one more Fireball! Had it survived that last attack then the next I would be dead right now’ he thinks morbidly. ‘Damn I almost died, again!’ the thought sends him reeling. Adrenaline wearing off Nathan collapses onto the cave floor worn out from all the running then subsequent fight. Looking up at the darkness he thinks ‘Why was I brought here? Or was it just some accident? If it was on purpose why drop me off in this horrible place and not say in some nice comfy hovel with a loving family to find me and take care of me and welcome me to this strange new world I am now in. That would have been nice.’ he smiles at the thought of it.

Nathan lays on the floor thinking of nice places he wants to visit when he gets home for the next twenty or so minutes before getting up and dusting himself off. He gives one last look at the dead lizard before moving on. As he walks he thinks about home and his family, how nice it was living with his parents and sibling when he was a kid. There trips to the pool on a hot summer's eve or curling up next to the fireplace watching tv after having been outside playing in the snow all day, even going to school and hanging out with his friends. Going to the movies, taking trips down to the lake to hang out and have fun. His first girlfriend and how horribly that went but it's kinda funny that he would consider that having been a good time now, having gone through all this and it was probably only going to get worse.

The cave split into many paths as he moved through them, he would just pick one at random when he came to an intersection having lost his way back when he had been running. With no idea oh where he was or where he was going he wandered through the dark cave, every so often he would hear some rumbling in the distance. He would stop and prep for a lizard to run out from the darkness but then the noise would fade and he would continue on.

After who knows how long he found a dead end not far from an intersection. Being as tired as he is he turned off the Candle Light so as not to draw attention curled up on the ground and tried to get some sleep. Sleep was hard to come by without him moving around he could hear rumbling every now and then that would jolt him awake. Staring into the darkness waiting to hear if the rumbling got louder or not, when it did not he would go back to sleep. The ground was hard and not nearly as even as he thought it was when he was walking, with little bits of jutting rock here and there poking into him along with dips in the ground made for a very uneven sleeping experience. Not to mention the ground was so cold that he would have to start Candle Light up every so often and bring it close to him to warm up, which ran the risk of attracting a bloodthirsty lizard to his sleeping spot.

When he could not get back to sleep after the rumbling woke him up he decided to just get up and move on.

‘I don’t think I am going to get a lot of good sleep for a while.’ He thinks while he stretches and kinks his neck. ‘And the ground is so rough, it will take time to get used to that as well. Not that I really want to get used to it’ he thinks to himself with pity. Sighing he dusts himself off casts Candle Light and set off into the darkness for another day of having fun wandering around cold dark damp caves and killing lizards.

__________

Setting off he wonders around for the next few hours or so trying to stay away from the lizards. He stops and cancels Candle Light whenever he hears rumbling in the distance and only recasts it once the rumbling has long faded away. He spends the rest of the day doing this, only running into one lizard which he hits two times in the eyes with a fireball blinding it, then waiting for it to run into a wall, once it is passed out he tips it over to kill it with his pocket knife.

Wandering around the tunnels is dull time interposed for a moment by terror from the occasional rumbling by a lizard running down the tunnels. The killing of the lizard was not fun and made Nathan's mood worse. By the end of the day he is moody and grumpy, the hunger and thirst amplifying it.

__________

‘I am so thirsty,’ he thinks as he grabs the pop from his bag. ‘I will drink this but I really need to find some water soon or I am going to die of thirst,’ he thinks as he downs the pop not letting a single drop escape then sets in for a restless night.

Woken up from more rumbling he sets off down the tunnels hiding from the passing lizards and killing the ones that come upon him. He spends most of his mana on a single lizard and has no plans to run into multiple at once. ‘If I do run into multiple I will just hit their legs or eyes and bolt as quick as I can’ he thinks as he hides in the dark from yet another lizard.

Hunger gnawing at him he stumbles through the cave when a lizard comes by. After killing it with six fireballs to its side he takes a break. About five minutes later he gets up and starts to walk away when an insane thought comes to his mind. ‘What if I eat the lizard?’ his mind and body immediately recoil from the thought. “No, no, no I can’t eat it! I could, but . . . “ he pauses “I am so hungry and just the thought is making me salivate,” he says as smoke from the lizard wafts by. “Even the smoke is starting to smell rather good.” his stomach grumbles as he licks his dry lips.

Having made up his mind Nathan turns around and walks to the non-burnt side of his latest kill. “Now what is the best way to do this? Should I really be doing this? Are they even edible?’ he says with trepidation as he flips the lizard onto its back and pulls out his pocket knife. “I know you are supposed to drain the blood before you butcher it for meat but I have no clue about how I should go about doing that? Do I just cut a hole and let it drain from there? I guess?” he goes around the lizard cutting into it in multiple places to drain the blood faster for good measure. He goes to sit by the wall as the blood drains from the lizard. ‘Now I am going to need some way to cook the meat? But the fireball spell is a bit much for just some cooking so I need to make another spell for it. I also don’t have a spit or something to hold it on over the fire. Maybe I can make a spell to impart heat into it kinda like a microwave or oven? Just heat it up without fire.’ he thinks as he gets to work on just that.

He spends the next while thinking about how best to go about that ‘I don’t want a fire just the heat from the fire. Maybe I can transfer the heat from the fire into the meat? Yeah, that could work.’ he thinks as he gets to work on the spell.

Once he gets to work on it he notices a specific rune called transfer that he had been using for mana channeling purposes in spells. ‘But maybe I could use it on heat instead?’ He gets to work with with the idea. He spends the next hour or so getting the spell structure to work right then the next thirty minutes trying multiple times to channeling mana into it then having to redo the structure when it fails but his hard work pays off.

[Spell Learned: Flawed Heat Transfer]

Perplexed Nathan immediately checks the description of the spell.

[Flawed Heat Transfer Lvl:1 This is an inferior version of heat transfer but will still get the job done but at reduced efficiency and increased cost. Spell Cost:30 Channel Cost:10 Per Minute]

Gobsmacked by the spell cost Nathan checks it twice just to make sure he read right. “Well at least it works at all,” he laughs to himself. ‘I hope it works as I want?’ he thinks on second thought. Wanting to test the spell right away he goes to cut out a piece of the lizard.

‘Now how should I do this? I guess I have to cut away the skin then get to the meat and cut out a chunk of it?’ he thinks and does just that but the process is harder than he would have thought the skins is though and does not want to cut very well and the bleeding did not reach the area Nathan is cutting so blood start pouring out around the cut. As he goes to cut into the meat it is though and does not cut nice and neat as it wants to slip away from the knife so he has to hold it in place the best he can through all the blood. Finally, with blood dripping through his fingers he pulls out a piece of meat and casts the spell on it with a Fireball come into being above the meat. At first, it seems to be doing nothing before the meat starts to sizzle in his hand as the blood boils off and the meat starts to turn brown in his hand over the next five minutes. Nathan turns off the spell and checks his handy work.

“It smells good!” he says as he licks his lips, his stomach grumbling in protest, even more, waiting for its nourishment. “Only way to see if it did its job is to take a bit” he does just take and takes a nibble on one of the corners of the meat. “Oh my god so good!” he says as he gulps down the first bit. ‘The flavor is hard to place? It has the texture and consistency of beef but tastes nothing like it? It is almost sweet? Or spicey? I can’t decide, I just know it is the best thing I have ever eaten.’ he thinks while scarfing down the meat. It is cooked all the way through with an even consistency in heat which is exactly what Nathan wanted the spell to do. ‘Cost a bit more than I wanted though’ he thinks as he looks at his mana.

[Name: Nathan Vellenger]

[Age: 21]

[Class:Fire Mage Lvl:1]

[Health:86]

[Stamina:13]

[Mana:40]

[Strength:11]

[Endurance:10]

[Vitality:12]

[Agility:9]

[Dexterity:13]

[Wisdom:12]

[Intelligence:14]

[Skills:Inspect, Fire Affinity, Mana Sense, Mana Channeling, Spell Creation, Concentration, Meditation]

[Spells:Candle Light, Fireball, Flawed Heat Transfer]

[Titles:Otherworlder]

“Oh well, at least I can fill up before I move on. And maybe I can do something with the lizard's skin?” he thinks out loud as he sets about cutting more meat out of the lizard while he waits for his mana to refill so he can cook the next portion.