“What the hell was that!?” Alex groaned, the rough bark of that accursed tree digging painfully on his back.

Blinking away dizziness, he looked at his hand as if it had personally offended him. Powerless street magicians with trick decks and hat-hidden rabbits would have done a better job than he did.

Amidst some bushes to his left, Peppa was throwing its head about, trying to snuff out the last sparks of the magical fire that were still burning on its snout. The charcoal-like smell of burnt hair wafted from the monster, tickling bitterly at his nose.

Alex needed to act quickly while it was distracted.

His legs moved to stand, only for him to yelp—more in surprise than anything. Glancing down, he saw there was a small gash on the side of his jeans. Skin showed under it, with blood pooling in a thin line on his upper thigh. Peppa must’ve got me with its tusk. It was barely a graze, but the red of it was vibrant and intensely real. A sobering sight after his short moment of arrogance.

His focus shot to the health bar on the edge of his vision. Forty two out of sixty, it showed. The damage was about as bad as the first time Peppa had hit him, except he’d gotten cut on top of thrown about.

Did vitality give him more durability on top of health? It made sense, and also increased the importance of the attribute in his mind.

Five points had also been shaved from his MP. A steep price for so little result, and he had to wonder if there were ways to be more efficient about it, less wasteful with his mana while producing something more powerful too.

His single skill point in fire proficiency had proved near useless in combat, but he still had a few cards up his sleeve. Before the disastrous showing, he had thought about diversifying his magical arsenal with the point he had left. After all, for all he knew, he was alone in a world of endless monsters. He didn’t truly think that would be the case, but he had to start considering more than just his immediate needs.

Water magic would be essential for survival; earth bending powers would be great to create shelter, and Arcane Proficiency sounded just mysterious enough to peak his interest. But he would just have to make up for that by getting more and more skill points by killing monsters, and to do that he needed to be able to do more than the equivalent of aggressively lighting a cigarette.

An angry snort from Peppa brought him back to the moment, and he realized it wasn’t time to get lost in the logistics of it all. He had to deal with the Wild Boar once and for all. Resolved, he once again put a point in Fire Proficiency, then poured five of the ten free points he had on the Power attribute, shoring it up to ten.

Hopefully it’s enough. And if not, I’ll just dump the rest too. Before he could think anything further, a wave of ecstasy swept through him. His whole body was pure heat for a couple of seconds, but even after it was gone he still felt the tingles on his limbs. Well then…

Rising to his feet with a new wind, Alex reached for the power inside him again. With a thought, flames sparkled to life in his right hand, a flash of bright golden-orange that sizzled and crackled the air above it, though the fire was heatless to his touch. Small as it was, it was still bigger than before.

This time, instead of just throwing it first thing out the gate, he tried to hold it in the palm of his hand, to mold it into a tight ball ready to be launched. After all, cliché or not, a fireball was a fireball.

Surprisingly, the fire fought back. Alex almost stumbled at that. Whenever he tried to condense it into a sphere, the fire leapt from his hand, forking into the air like a serpent’s tongue. It felt… alive, in a way. Alex could feel its hunger. It wanted to be released, to melt and scorch and reduce all to ashes.

At once, he raised his free hand to grip at his right wrist, holding it tightly. It was in the nature of fire to be combative, to be eager to burn. But Alex was its master. Had to be its master. If he couldn’t keep control of his own power, he might as well give up and let Peppa run him down.

He squeezed down on it again, jaw clenched with the effort; the fire hissed and spat as if in response, but he kept at it, his will pressing against it on all sides. Sweat beaded his brow. It almost seemed like he wouldn’t be able to wrestle control of it when the flames floating an inch above his hand began to shrink, suddenly twisting into themselves like a whirlpool, until finally they were compressed into a writhing mass of fire the size of a tennis ball.

Alex let out a small laugh, that or he was just breathing too hard. It was an effort of pure will, but it had drained him body and mind. Now formed, however, the fireball sat passively above his hand, and he felt like he could just as easily summon it in this form again. It still wasn’t anything impressive, but it would do for now.

All this he did in the time it took for Peppa to finally snuff out the fire and focus on him again. The monster was angry, to be sure, but it was hurt too. Just as he was. The boar had drawn first blood, but the fire left a black scar running across its long snout. And it blamed him.

As well it should, he thought to himself, face settling into a grimace. ‘Cause I’ll be doing worse to it now.

His feet crunched a scattering of fallen leaves when he shifted to meet the boar on more time. The beast snorted opposite him, the only thing separating the two of them was a patch of grass and the knee-high roots of the tree next to him. They extended to either side of the trunk like a set of open wooden arms rising from the ground.

The idea of facing the boar head on once again floated inside his head before he disregarded it completely. He would not indulge his ego at the expense of his life. Not again. And he didn’t know how fast the fireball could go, or even how far. He couldn’t have the monster dodging it.

So before Peppa could charge him again, Alex jumped back over the roots and hid behind the tree, the ball of fire still riding on his hand. If the boar wished to run him down, it would have to either jump over the roots, or go wide and around them, giving him plenty of time to see it coming. It was a classic playground tag move proven to be efficient, if highly annoying to everyone else involved.

He poked his head from behind the trunk and allowed himself a smile. Peppa proved to have a very one track mind, he noted quickly, as the level one boar did exactly what he expected. It took off at a run toward him, grass churning beneath its hooves, clearly intent on jumping over the roots to reach him the fastest way. It gave him a good idea of what to expect from monsters, at least the low leveled ones. In the pig’s case, running up and ramming its target seemed to be all it knew what to do.

“Let’s try this again,” he murmured, going to one knee. With a fiery palm extended forward, he braced himself against the tree and watched the boar approach. As soon as Peppa was off the ground, he hurled the flames into the air, aiming toward the highest point of the boar’s arc.

The fireball shot off with a whoosh of displaced air, faster than he’d expected, but not fast enough to bypass the flying pig coming its way. The magical fire met the pig’s head in midair, bursting against the monster with a small roar. There was a flash of yellow light over the roots—and above the roar of the fire, Peppa’s own howl of pain echoed in the clearing as the boar crashed against the ground.

Alex’s eyes instinctively blinked at the lightshow in front of him, and by the time he opened them it was all done. The boar had stopped wailing as soon as it started, and the roar of the fire was only a memory still echoing in his ears.

He knelt there hesitantly for only a moment before he gathered himself and stood to check on the monster. No need to be squeamish at this point. Not after the blood and guts of the Killer Sloth.

Peppa lay flat on the ground a foot away from the roots as he approached, defeated. The fur on the left side of its head down to its neck was still afire, only much less bright than it once looked flying out of his hand. Tendrils of gray smoke rose from the beast, and the smell of burnt meat was repulsively familiar to him.

It wasn’t exactly how he’d expected it, but it seemed he’d gotten his bacon after all.

Before he could take another step forward, Peppa’s body cracked into small pieces much like the sloth’s, black glass and dust rising and vanishing into the air. The smoke that came from the body soon dissipated too, taking the appetizing smell with it.

Alex was glad for that. He didn’t need another reminder other than his grumbling stomach that he was famished.

Then he was alone again, standing at the edge of the clearing, feeling almost lost. A breeze gusted past him, carrying away the smell of his fire and of the monster, and bringing back the damp, earthy scent of the woods. In the distance, he heard a pair of squirrels chattering like an old bickering couple.

Aside from a few stomped out patches of grass and the broken branch he’d used to kill the sloth, nothing seemed out of the ordinary from any other forest in his world. The big purple hologram was decidedly gone from the middle of the clearing, and were it not for his status page serving as a constant reminder at the edge of his vision, he’d never be able to believe the last few minutes had truly happened.

Deciding he needed to do something, Alex opened up his status page, only to freeze as he realized nothing had changed. Nothing had changed. He hadn’t leveled up after killing Peppa. Indeed, he was still at level two.

That had him worried, as the first levels of any game should be the easiest to bulldoze through. And as a consequence of that, his health and mana had not restored themselves.

HP: 43.2/60

MP: 36/50

Alex hummed, considering. On point with his previous prediction of a percent per minute recovery rate, his HP regeneration would be point six every minute now, with his MP following the same ratio. Given that two minutes had passed, it meant the small fireball had cost him ten mana from beginning to end. Not an insurmountable figure, but the idea that he was five fireballs away from being defenseless did not paint a pretty picture in his mind. And that only when he was at maximum MP.

Needing no more incentive other than the image of him being left gored and bleeding on the ground by a pair of Peppa clones, he invested three free points to Soul Affinity, bringing the attribute to a total of eight. His maximum MP instantly jumped to eighty, and his mana regeneration would get a sixty percent boost for that.

He left the last two points as a reserve, in case he needed a quick boost to an attribute. All of them were useful to him, though strength trailed the others by far. He had no plans of being a glass mage that a stiff breeze would topple over, but points in dexterity or vitality would be the preferable alternatives to power or soul affinity.

That done, all he could do was look around him, a mixture of wariness and a sick sort of homesickness weighing him down. Was it because it was his ‘starting spot’ that he didn’t want to leave this place? Alex snorted. This clearing had treated him like crap, in reality.

I need to go forward, he asserted. Always move forward. That bit of advice had served him well, even at the worst times.

Turning on his heel, he took off deeper into the forest in search of… anything, really. Civilization, in the best case scenario, and a water source at the bare minimum. He only stopped to bend over and pick up the arm-thick piece of wood he had used as a spear-grip from the ground. It was no more than a club now, broken as it was, but it was better to have it with him than trample around the forest barehanded. The weight of it on his hands was reassuring.

He didn’t think he’d get much use out of it, being a mage and all, but better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it, or something along those lines.