I approached carefully to the top of the hill near the cabin, I wanted to see if I could sneak by them, but it was futile, as soon as I got to around 4 meters from the top the shuffling of feet announced that the creatures had detected me, sighing I prepared to attack, like previously 4 creatures all level 3 began the downhill charge and even though they were faster, my arcane shots prove to be faster taking 3 of them down before they could reach me, the last of them was led easily back to the bottom of the , as soon as the terrain was even I activated arcane blade for the next part of the training, the thing hissed in response of the ethereal glow emanating from my blade showing a reaction for the first time, then carefully try circling me, in response I let it left my vision for just a brief moment in order to draw an attack, the Paleling took the bait lunging at me, simply putting the blade and standing firm cause the creature impaled itself, as soon as the notification of the experience hit I deactivated the blade causing the creature to fell limp on the ground, my heart pounded noticeably, though a bit less than the last close encounter that I had. When I was back at the top and with no new level I noticed my arcana was still well off and considering that I had a source of light I decided to push through getting close to the back of the cabin and towards the woods, arcane blade off in order to conserve energy I waited to the sound of shuffling feet I reignited my magical blade to fight off the darkness revealing the outline of another group of Palelings, the creatures exploded from the woods and I didn’t consider that the staff was occupied with the blade and when I tried to activate arcane shot, the blade extinguished taking the light with it, my vision adapted to the dim glow felt blinded by its absence that was until the arcane shot activated half a heartbeat later taking one of the Palelings, a second shot was casted failing to hit any but revealing the location of two others, predicting the trajectory of both I release another ranged attack that connected close enough for a warm drizzle of blood to splash on my face, the second missed so I change back to arcane blade, revealing the third half jumping with the knife poised to strike so I angled the glaive the tip sinking in deep to the skull of the creature.
+5 experience congratulation you have reached level 9.
The message flashed in the interface causing me to celebrate a moment too early when I felt a sharp pain on my left side, I panicked and dropped the staff causing the world to go dark once more, only the warm sensation of blood sprouting from the wound was noticed by my senses, then another stab near the first wound, before the third one struck, I finally snapped back by grabbing the creature by the wrist stopping the assault and angling my body I throw the damnable thing from my hip falling on top of the damn creature causing a wave of pain to erupt from side, but with trained focused I quickly established side control. The creature tried to escape while passing his knife from right to left hand, that gave an opening to lock him in with an Americana (Joint lock that targets the elbow) going full force hearing a loud pop, the creature let go of the knife but never screamed even with his clearly broken arm, passing to mount I grabbed its own knife sinking the blade into his chest, anger made me stab the damn creature two more times until I was able to regain my wit taking a deep breath causing me to realize of the sharp pain still on my left side panicked my attention went to the bars and I let out a sigh of relief when I saw that I was still above 60% but decreasing at a steady rate. Without wanting to risk my life more than necessary I returned to the cabin and skipped dinner to focus on healing through meditation.
This time I didn’t find the usual difficulty to get into the meditative state, but due to the pain that still pulsed I found myself focusing on the wound, instead of my initial panicked reaction I found my noticing my mind growing sharper and calmer, being aware of my body and particularly the wound. In my mind’s eye I noticed that the first wound wasn’t as deep as the second who barely grazed my innards I focused on the accelerated process that came with the skill, contemplating the sensation I could feel my cells working extra hard aided by the still mysterious arcana, focusing on what the arcana was doing cause the process to speed up the previously slow process picking up speed, even ignoring the bars that marked my health and magic I noticed I was getting better until the pain stop, opening my eyes I noticed that it was day again. I refocus my attention to the bars I was a bit perplexed to see that even though my vitae was at a healthy 92% the rest of the bars weren’t full, Arcana was almost full at 20% which was a bit lower before my injury, but considering the supposed effects of meditation left me perplexed, so I checked the notifications almost immediately finding the culprit.
Congratulations trough effort the ability Regenerative Meditation (Tier 11) has evolved to Focalized meditation (Tier 11): Through general or focalized thoughts you may choose between the following effects:
*While in a meditative state boost the regeneration of the following: , Vitae 10% per hour, Arcana 20% per hour.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
*While in a meditative state boost the natural regeneration of Arcana or Vitae with a rate of 60% .
*While in a meditative state, increase the insight of concepts or abilities.
That was pretty damn good, that would make me more efficient while grinding for more levels, since I mainly used arcana, I try to check the book for more knowledge about the last part but there wasn’t a new page, so I went to check the progress on the quest
Time remaining 2 months 24 days and 10 hours.
Even though it was hard to track the time without a clock I must have spent at least 12 hours in meditation. That would leave me with enough time to work out and maybe kill a couple of Aragostas and only one group of the Palelings but since I just recently leveled up I don’t think it would make a difference so I decided to try to take it easy today. I started with breakfast, or maybe lunch due to the hour, then I began working out feeling sore with the first crunch I stood up realizing that I haven’t checked the wound so i moved the cloak around and I curse, not because of the scar barely visible under the bruise but due to the cloak, using Identify cause the information to show up.
Cloak of minor arcana regeneration (Uncommon)
Integrity 96%
“Chingado” cursing in my native tongue so far I have been surprised by the resilience of the fabric and catalyst but I guess it was a matter of time before something like this happened and the effect didn’t diminish so it was fine. Sighing I continue to work out of habit more than necessity, when I was done I still had some time left so I decided to try the third option of focalized meditation, first I try to focus on my situation, since the situation was something I was in was something available through in movies or videogames, analyzing things made me realize I have been ignoring many things, I didn’t know what lay beyond the woods, so far I was so focused on routine that I ignored exploring all together, also my routine wasn’t specific focusing on repetition instead of my most important resource being time. Opening my eyes I try to, and actually manage for only that part of the quest to be displayed on my screen. Feeling proud of that small victory I took the chance to delve into the topic of fighting.
Fighting has been a part of me from almost the very beginning. During my infancy I lived in a border city in a not so nice part of town, my father a distant figure who show up once in a while during my early childhood, and not at all during my teenage years, that absence whoever was filled in with a series of figures starting with my tae-kwon-do sensei, then a boxing coach, then a wrestling coach, then everything changed after I had a big fight with my mom, using the citizenship of my father to move to Texas with an uncle who was also of the opinion that my father was a bum, it took me a while to go back to martial arts but finally when I hit 19 I was able to train again this time Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu with coach Ernie. Martial arts helped me canalize the anger I had towards life in general and to this day was the base pillar of my mental health which made me a bit regretful not to pick the martial artist class. Having those bases made me think of the evolution of fighting as a whole, we passed from throwing stones and punches, to arrows and slashes, to shooting people with a range of guns and even missiles, despite that the last method was still the most prevalent way to wage war people still practice how to knock out and choke other people, hell there were people who focus on fighting with swords in this day and age. With that in mind I reflected about scales a missile would be needed to destroy a bunker, but it would be wasteful to use it on a single man, on the other end of the spectrum punching or shooting a single man according to the desired effect would be enough to dissuade or kill him yet it wouldn’t be enough to destroy the after mentioned bunker, this applied to my new reality was that the arcane shots were ideal to deal with the car size lobsters but more than a bit wasteful on the Palelings, considering the previous encounter even if they were fast, their strength was pathetic, the two successful attacks caught me off-guard and that wasn’t enough to get my vitae to half of its value, also I did managed to break the arm of the bastard effortlessly, the key was my arcane blade so I focused on that using it on my hand granted a blade similar in size to machete while using it on the catalyst made a glaive of around 1.4 meters, why did I earn that skill? The question rose in my mind followed by the realization that I used the knife to kill one, well two now, of the creatures made me think that there might be something there, the book hinted that depending how you used your abilities. Having a close quarters option was better than I thought, considering that cover something lacking for most mages, at least in modern media, and having access two different ranges would be useful in the days to come, but in order to make the most of it I needed to learn how to use it effectively since Not all enemies would be so willing to impale themselves like the Palelings, so I put extra focus on my mind’s eye and the machete form appeared, one time when I first arrived to my uncle's house I earned money doing odd jobs from delivery to gardening, and it was at the latter that I sometimes used a machete I try to incorporate the chopping motion to other concepts like timing and angles first slowly, then with fluidity until I moved to imagine who would I attack a Paleling which caused a surge to rise causing me to open my eyes. My vision felt blurry and dark, but checking the clock confirmed that it wasn’t my vision but the day who grew dark. Then I saw it on my notifications.
You have acquired a new ability: Blade Insight (Tier 11 P): Reinforces the base knowledge for bladed weapons.
“Fuck yeah” I celebrated out loud, releasing a mighty yawn noticing sleepiness that the previous days lacked, and after considering for a moment I took my cloak folded it into a pillow and decided to go to sleep.
