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  New Spell Developed!

  Alchemic Heal – Nature Magic Spell – ★☆

  This spell allows the user to replicate the effect of healing potions through their magic.

  Mana Cost: 10

  I smiled as I saw that this spell registered as half a star higher than my others, but afterwards I laid back on the giant leaf and let myself fall asleep. It had been a long day, and the sky was already dark after I finished practice.

  Chapter 8: Vengeance Rides Upon the Wind

  A few hours later, I awoke with a start, my body drenched in a cold sweat. Fucking bunnies…

  The experience the day before had actually left me with a nightmare, where I was being chased through the woods by a pack of horned rabbits with blood red eyes. Of course, I was the one rabbit sized, and they were giants. The dream ended with them picking me up and slowly eating my body, one adorable nibble at a time.

  Looking outside, I saw that the sun was just starting to rise, so I decided to head on out for training. They might plague my dreams, but I can at least get revenge on them now that I’m awake! On my way, I decided to go ahead and sell off the last of my potions to Lisara, who bought them for five copper each. At the same time, I took note of the exact shade her potions had. If nothing else, that would help me make a better one in the future.

  With my new 45 copper, I decided to buy a basic guide to the nearby herbs from Lisara as well. While it didn’t tell me any recipes, it did list all of the medicinal and poisonous plants in the area, and roughly said what their use was. For instance, I found out that one of the black mushrooms I saw on our hunts the day before was actually a rare herb that could paralyze anyone that tried to eat it.

  Once I was done with that, I checked my contacts list to see if I could team up with Jacobs. Unfortunately he was still asleep, so that wasn’t an option. He had apparently gained another two levels after splitting up yesterday, so I needed to catch up. Next few levels, need to work more on my mana… If I suck this bad at fighting with weapons, then I need to make sure I won’t run out of spells as easily.

  Outside of town, I made my way back to the area where we had seen the fluffy hordes. Specifically, I wanted to see if I could find that black mushroom again. If I could copy that, then I’d have a good stun spell for my arsenal. And similarly, I was collecting any plants along the way that were listed in the book I bought, whether they were for poisons or for medicine. I found that after reading through the book and learning its contents, my Herbology skill jumped up from Beginner Level 1 to Beginner Level 7 in one go.

  Anyways, where was I? Oh yes, hunting the horned rabbits. It took me about five minutes to find the first group of them, but what I found surprised me. Rather than the groups of four or five I had seen yesterday, this was a group of at least twenty! My need for revenge wasn’t strong enough to commit suicide against that many people, so I moved on to the next group…. Which was just as large. All of the areas that we had hunted the small groups of rabbits the day before now had much larger groups today.

  They knew… I don’t know how, but they knew I was coming for them! I groaned, shaking my head and resigning myself to return to town. Logically speaking, there was no way that those rabbits should suddenly have that many at all the spots we hunted before, so I could only ask a guard.

  “Hmm? Oh, you tried to go out and hunt?” The guard showed me a knowing smile, as if guessing what the issue was.

  “Yeah… but…”

  “But there were suddenly a lot more of them, right? That’s a pretty common thing around here. It’s the reason we’re willing to pay people every day to exterminate them. They reproduce so fast that they can completely refill their population overnight. Most likely you found them before later on, after their numbers were thinned out for a bit. If we were to leave them alone for a full week, they’d be everywhere.”

  So that’s why…I guess that means morning hunts are the worst. I sighed, shaking my head at the news. “Thanks. I take it adventurer’s tend to team up to start taking them out every day?”

  “Hmm? No, the wolves tend to bring down their population by about half. That usually takes till around noon, and then the adventurer’s go in and clear the rest. We just stay out of their way until the wolves are done with their part.”

  “Well… there goes my idea to get revenge. Or does it…” I suddenly had a thought occur to me, and a wicked grin spread across my face, before I raced back to the edge of town, leaving a guard standing there with a confused expression.

  Wolves, I’ll be borrowing your experience for a bit! I thought to myself with a sadistic grin. As soon as I was out of town, I sat down and pulled a couple of plants out of my inventory. These were two other poisonous plants I had found while walking, though neither were as powerful as that black mushroom. One, an orange wead similar to blood weed, included a weak paralytic, while the other, a green flower with tiny yellow spots, caused slight internal injuries.

  Using the steps I had so diligently practiced the day before, I started matching my mana to the two herbs. It was fairly easy to find out which parts of the plant caused the negative reactions, thanks to the aura itself. Basically, whenever I felt the aura for the poison, it suddenly felt like my mana was moving through tar. This was far different from the warm and gentle feeling I received from the two healing herbs.

  This also made it harder to replicate the effects, making me feel like I was starting from scratch. All in all, I had to wait for an hour and a half before I had the two mana signatures copied to a sufficient degree. Then, I spent about another ten minutes mixing them at different ratios to determine the most volatile mix. What I came up with was a 4:7 ratio, with the flower holding the majority.

  I felt that this alone would already be a fairly potent spell, but I wasn’t done yet! No, no, far from done. The next step would be what really made this dangerous. Now that I had the spell ready, I set aside a bit of my mana surrounding it to attune to Wind Magic, and then integrated the two together slowly. What I got as a result made me giggle hysterically.

  New Spell Developed!

  Alchemic Poison – Nature Magic Spell – ★☆

  This spell allows the user to replicate the effects of poisons through their magic.

  Mana Cost: 15

  Combination Spell Developed!

  Alchemic Poison + Wind Magic = Poison Spores – ★★

  By infusing the poison with the power of the wind, you are able to spread it over a wide distance and effect numerous targets at once.

  Mana Cost: 25

  Yes, yes… soon, they will pay. 25 mana is a small price. I kept my evil grin up as I stored the two herbs and made my way back to the area where I had seen the rabbits. Keeping low to the ground, I took full advantage of my dexterity to try and make as little noise as possible. Soon, I was back where I had found them, and the fight had already begun. There were only four wolves, all of them looking fairly young, fighting this horde of rabbits. Three of the fluffy white menaces were already lying dead on the ground, and one of the wolves was limping.

  I felt a brief moment of regret, since I was also catching the wolves in my trap as well, before I cast the spell. Once it was gathered in my hands, I simply blew it out towards the fighting groups, carefully hiding in the bushes. Thankfully, they were too distracted with each other at this time to notice me, or I would have been a dead man for sure.

  With the barely perceptible spores gently gliding over the area, there was an almost immediate effect. Both the wolves and the rabbits started to gradually slow down, which made the job easier for the wolves that no longer had to content with their super speed. I kept watch, not sure how long the poison would last, and ready to recast it if I saw them speeding up again.

  About five minutes later, and two of the wolves had fallen, through a mix of the rabbits and my poison. Apparently this spell only lasted for five minute
s, as I had to recast it once I noticed the rabbits starting to speed up. Once the spell was cast again, they looked even worse than before. A few had thin lines of blood leaking from their mouths, or gave cute little coughs after a deadly lunge. However, there were only five rabbits left, so the two remaining wolves gathered some of their prey and darted back while they still could.

  I waited for another minute before acting, making sure there was plenty of time for the wolves to get away and the rabbits to take some more damage, before I leapt out of the bush with my dagger in hand. Thankfully, it seemed like my spell wasn’t affecting me if I didn’t want it to, so I was able to quickly slaughter the slowed, injured rabbits. And once the last one had fallen, I was bombarded with a series of messages that had apparently been waiting for combat to end.

  You have gained a title!

  Vengeful Heart

  10% damage against creatures you hold a strong grudge towards.

  You have developed a poison, and spread it among a large group, causing collateral damage, purely because a rabbit poked your leg. You truly are a vengeful soul.

  You have leveled up!

  You have leveled up!

  You have leveled up!

  You have leveled up!

  Your actions have caused animals to bring poisoned food back to their pack.

  10% Exp for kills caused by this poison will be awarded.

  Four levels, plus possible future experience from the wolves eating the poisoned rabbits… I think I just found my favorite hunting method! I was laughing hysterically, and then gathered up all of the remaining rabbits, as well as the two wolf bodies. I had to cut down a few vines to tie them up, but afterwards I was happily dragging a trail of bodies back to town, humming a tune as I did so.

  Once I arrived at town, the nearby guard was surprised by my catch, and when he asked I answered honestly that I had used a spell to poison them. Hearing that made him cringe a bit, and he was only able to offer half the usual price for the bodies. I wasn’t surprised, they wouldn’t really be paying for poisoned meat, after all, just the other parts. Still, that was seventy copper in my inventory again, which made me happy.

  Another thing that made me happy was what I got when I split my 20 free stat points between wisdom and intelligence.

  Name

  Falenel

  Race

  Half-Elf(Woodland)

  Titles

  Vengeful Heart

  Fame

  0

  Level 9

  37.4%

  Class

  Novice

  Health

  100/100

  Health Regen

  0.17

  Mana

  310/310

  Mana Regen

  0.21

  Strength

  12

  Wisdom

  40

  Agility

  20

  Intelligence

  31

  Dexterity

  17

  Charisma

  9

  Vitality

  10

  Luck

  14

  Points Remaining

  0

  The part that made me happiest was that my mana regen had tripled. Even though it took 25 mana to cast my poison spell, I’d easily earn that back by the time it was needed to refresh it. I was still a long ways from being able to not worry about my mana when it came to attack spells, but at least I was doing better than before.

  If I could figure out the exact formula behind the mana regen, I could work on min/maxing myself. But for now, it was enough just to spread it evenly between intelligence and wisdom. Once I was earning one mana every other second or so, then I’d start working on my agility and dexterity again.

  A few of my skills even got a rather nice boost from my rabbit hunting spree, and I was tempted to go for another group. However, by now the other rabbit and wolf groups would be finishing up with their daily brawls, so I would need to wait until tomorrow. Though, I did feel much better about myself now that I had vented my anger on a few not-so-harmless bunnies.

  Chapter 9: Decisions Decisions

  Since there wasn’t as much point in hunting the fluffy menaces right now, I decided to head back to my usual training spot and practice magical alchemy! I still had a fair amount of other herbs saved in my inventory, six different varieties. I knew that blood weed and fireflower petals make healing potions, and that maple bloom mixed with heart grass made my slow damage over time poison. That still left two other plants I haven’t touched, as well as god knows how many combinations.

  The first thing I did was to memorize and replicate the mana signatures for the last two herbs, which didn’t take as long as my previous attempts had. From what my handy book of plants had told me, one of the herbs, a leafy plant which had leaves in the shape of six pointed stars, was able to numb the skin on contact. He could vouch for that one personally, as I had brushed my hand against one of the leaves while trying to get a clipping. The other, a small red mushroom with a series of web-like cracks on the cap, was said to increase metabolism. There was a small note in that section saying that it was a common ingredient in beginner mana potions, but I wasn’t sure how that worked.

  Now that I had finished that, I started the process of testing combinations. First, I tried combining the two new herbs, stillleaf and spider cap, together in various ratios to try to get a result. None of the combinations seemed to feel right to me, like it did with the poison or the healing spell. It was always too unnatural. Kind of a square peg and round hole deal.

  So, next I tried mixing spider cap with the other herbs, one by one. I actually got two combinations to work, one from mixing it with blood weed, and the other from mixing it with maple bloom. Strangely, when I found the most potent combinations of each, I was awarded with the following message twice.

  New Spell Developed!

  ??? – Nature Magic Spell – ???

  ???

  Mana Cost: 15

  Is it because I don’t actually know what effect the combinations would have? I wasn’t really all that keen on being a test subject for a potentially poisonous spell, but I had to try something. After giving it some thought, I cast the first variant on myself, and waited. Keeping an eye on my status, my health was not dropping, my hands were not slowed, and my mana was not recovering faster. I even opened up my character window to check my stats, and my health and mana regen were not increased. Well, I know it’s something…

  There was only one other thing that I figured it could be, given the nature of the two herbs, but I was not going to like testing it. Casting Alchemic Poison on myself, using the paralytic poison from the Heart Grass, I felt my body tense up, refusing to follow my commands as it should. Then, I quickly channeled my mana to cast the newest spell on myself, and that feeling faded away. At the same time, details for the spell appeared in the windwo.

  New Spell Developed!

  Alchemic Antidote – Nature Magic Spell – ★☆

  This spell mixes the mana signatures of different herbs to create an effect that will dispel poisons. The dispelling effect will only work on poisons equal or weaker to the strength of the antidote mixture used.

  Mana Cost: 15

  I smiled slightly, seeing that I now had an antidote spell in case something went wrong. Though, I was hoping that would have been the combination for a mana potion. Looks like I still need to find the last ingredient for that. Anyways, I sat down and waited a couple of minutes for my mana to recover,
before I tried the second spell.

  This time, the information window changed, no longer displaying this as a new spell. But at the same time, I coughed up a mouthful of blood. To no surprise, this combination had created an accelerated poison, which if my insides are being honest caused rapid internal bleeding. Never again!

  I quickly cast my Alchemic Antidote and Alchemic Heal spells on myself, coughing up another mouthful of blood after I recovered. Okay, next time one of the spells includes a poison substance, I am going to go find a rabbit or something to test it on!

  Next, I started from the beginning, going through the combinations with blood weed to see if there were any other spell effects. To my surprise, there actually was not. After that was the fireflower petals. I was tempted to just search the mana signature of the entire plant, but the herbology guide said that only the petals were useful. And once I mixed together fireflower with stillleaf, I ended up with another unknown combination. Trying it out on myself was probably not a smart idea, but I didn’t consider stillleaf’s numbing effect to be a toxic enough effect to warrant an external test. I probably should have.

  A while later, I woke up at the same spot I had been sitting, unsure of how much time had passed. Looking around, I saw I had a message from Jacobs, asking how I managed to level so fast. Of course, what caught my attention was the other window that had appeared.