Which skill should I upgrade is the ultimate question. I know from the forums that upgrading a skill takes a large amount of Ether, so I can only do it once right now, even after my chicken massacre and bear eviction. I chose my magic skills very carefully. I spent weeks deciding, flip flopping back and forth before I decided on my current load-out. [Healing Magic] because I can’t go buying potions or play co-op with a healer when I am a monster. [Lightning Magic] as a primary damage dealer, I could have gone with fire, but as much as it pains me to say with the whole dragon thing and all, [Fire Magic] is kind of weak. You are forced to concentrate fire on an enemy for a long time to cause any real damage as you slowly roast them. You need to get to a much higher rank for [Fire Magic] to be effective.

  With my play-style and plans, I need higher firepower early on. And, lighting is just more versatile and can cover any cooking related needs as long as I do it right. Finally, [Blood Magic]. I chose it as a utility magic. Since it is a fluid I get all the flexibility of [Water Magic], aside from drinking water, and can even attack the blood in other people’s bodies! There are so many uses for [Blood Magic] that I don’t know why anyone chooses anything else.

  Those three magics make up my three affinities which is the maximum a person can have. Magic skills however are not stuck at Low Rank, no no no, they can be upgraded to higher ranks provided you pay the price.

  Upgrading a magic skill is not like suddenly getting a list of new spells, it just increases the range of things you can do with your magic and the overall strength. In magic, there are six ranks split into two equal pieces. Low Rank, Mid Rank, and High Rank make up the Common Ranks, while Knight Rank, King Rank, and Saint Rank make up the Royal Ranks. Each subsequent rank requires exponentially more Ether to acquire. As far as I know, very few members of the human races ever reach the Royal Ranks. Even among the top players only four have made it to King Rank in the two years since the game was released.

  I could upgrade [Lightning Magic] to Mid Rank, but it is already functioning as a good damage dealer so I want to focus on the other two magics for now. [Healing Magic] is a possible option because I will be able to heal a lot quicker once the upgrade is done. And while that would be incredibly useful, I have gotten better at dodging and fighting back against the chickens without getting hurt. So, I think I will go with [Blood Magic], which is my most useless magic at the moment, since I can only really blind things and make creepy blood hands.

  Readying myself I open the system window, a wide frosted glass panel appears in front of me with the prompt to begin skill evolution.

  [Would you like to evolve the skill [Blood Magic (Low Rank)?]

  [Y/N]

  Yeah, let’s do it! I quickly funnel the majority of my Ether into my [Blood Magic] skill and let the upgrade begin while mentally selecting the “Y” option on the menu.

  [Skill [Blood Magic (Low Rank)] will now evolve into the skill [Blood Magic (Mid Rank)!]

  I feel my maximum Ether drop rapidly down to a step below where it was when I first logged in. Whew, it feels like I just ran a marathon. As the exhaustion sets in from losing so much energy, I feel a warm sensation flood my body. Aww, no fun flashing lights or party streamers? I have been cheated! As the warm sensation fades a new window appears in my vision and the text is read out in the usual smooth and yet slightly robotic voice of the goddess.

  [Skill [Blood Magic (Low Rank)] has now evolved into [Blood Magic (Mid Rank)!]

  ooo, that’s an odd sensation. I can feel my blood now, and not just my blood, but the blood of the baulder in front of me. Hehehe, I can work with this. Staring hungrily at the big chonker I prepare to play with its blood a little.

  Time to test-

  Beep!

  Ugh! Stupid human body and its stupid human needs. A flashing warning appears in my vision, warning me that I am getting extremely hungry in the real world. Fine, I will eat something, just shut it already!

  Logging out, I quickly throw together something to eat using the magical invention that is a microwave and settle down in my chair to look over the forums for a bit and chat with the other monster players I befriended before I got the game.

  DragonGirl1234 : [Hey! Finally got the game. It is sooooo fun! I already killed a bunch of angry snake/chicken hybrids and a baulder, thus claiming a cave for my future dragon horde. Jealous?]

  SlimeToDemonLord : [Hey Drag, lol. If the chickens have a snake tail then they are called cockatrices by the way. Where did you even spawn?]

  TheLichQueen : [Girl yes! When you get strong enough come hang out in The Abyss under the Zerkal kingdom and we can one shot these weak ass humans together. Kekekek!]

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  DragonGirl1234 : [I know they are called cockatrices. :rolls eyes: But “angry chickens” feels more accurate of a description. And I spawned in Silkfall Kingdom if I remember my choices correctly, though I was not paying that much attention when I selected the spawn location to be honest. Oh! LQ I will 100% track you down once I get some wings and I can fly over.]

  SlimeToDemonLord : [...Dude.]

  TheLichQueen : [Bet, I am on the second level, so you will need to be stronk to meet me.]

  SlimeToDemonLord : [Wait! I just realized you said you killed a baulder! How?! You just started!]

  DragonGirl1234 : [Lightning Magic, duh. It was super easy to kill when you fry its brain.]

  SlimeToDemonLord : [It took me a month to learn magic on my own, and that is considered really fast! I totally forgot that you are obnoxiously talented at everything. It’s not fair!]

  DragonGirl1234 : [:P]

  Hmmm, looks like Silkfall is pretty far away from Zerkal. My meeting with LQ will have to wait. I think Slime-san said he was chilling out in Dagra a while back, which is directly south of me according to the map. How he managed to sneak his ass into the floating kingdom and survive this long is beyond me.

  Ya know, I should probably look into magic circles while I am at it. Once you choose your starting magic they are set in stone. You can’t learn any more magics after that. A shame, but I guess it is to keep people with too much time on their hands from becoming OP. In the world of Yisaria, the NPCs are meant to be granted their magic by the gods at sixteen, us players get to choose the magic we start with, so we get an advantage. Though, not much of one considering our magic only starts at Low Rank when NPCs can be blessed with higher ranks right out of the gate.

  There is one way around the magic limit though, and that is what I am scouring the forums for at this moment. Magic circles are a way to let anyone use any kind of magic even if they don’t have the affinity for it. Obviously, magic circles are not easy to make and a single mistake can blow up in your face, which is why they are rarely used in combat. I however, am looking for a certain circle in particular.

  Scrolling furiously through my search history I eventually manage to track the page down.

  Ah ha, found it!

  It took some digging on the magic circle thread, deep deep under mountains of more advanced magic circles, but I remembered seeing an illusion and stealth based circle to conceal an entrance. Hehehe. But it doesn’t end there, I just figured out a use for that giant corpse in the middle of my living room. Blood magic is really useful for sacrifices.

  Logging back in, I find nothing has changed around me and I am still alive. I would have been pissed if a “You Died” screen was the first thing I saw when I logged in. Thankfully, I was not logged out that long. Time to make an offering to the blood gods!

  Ripping the blood out of the baulder with my new [Blood Magic (Mid Rank)], I start painting the floors bright red. It takes several logins and logouts to triple check my work, but I finally get all the shapes and stuff in place. I mean, I understand why you can’t access the forums from in-game. Forum snipers are a huge pain in other games and kill the realism of having to use in-game communication systems. But that was still kind of annoying. Well, it’s fine. I got the circle drawn.

  Crimson paint covers the stony floor in a big ring around the slab of meat that is this cave’s previous occupant. Runes carefully carved and lines drawn marking the cave’s entrance. Now, let’s see if this works! Excited at the prospect of using a magic circle for the first time I can’t shake off the huge grin on my lizardy lips.

  Ether starts to leave my body as I channel it into the sacrifice circle. The thick red lines begin to glow ominously as tendrils of energy lash out and skewer the beast. Within moments the tendrils start to drain tiny particles of Ether from the corpse and feed it into the larger illusion spell around it. Bit by bit, the entrance to the cave starts to shimmer and solidify. A few minutes pass by as the circle fills with power and by the end of it, the whole cave entrance has completely sealed itself off.

  Now nothing but a large wall of stone blocks the way. Hesitantly, I press my claw against the illusion. Sinking into the stone without any feeling at all my claw passes through the stone. Good, no weird ripples when I do that. Good from this side.

  Charging out of the cave through the stone wall, I turn around to see a perfectly ordinary cliff face. Grey stone and a few bits of moss here and there, but no signs of a cave whatsoever. Awesome! It works!

  I go to launch myself into the cave when I suddenly realize that one slip up and I will likely find myself charging face first into a real stone wall one of these days. Better mark off the edges of the entrance somehow…

  A quick claw mark on the ground should be enough! Just gotta make it look like a natural scratch and not a proper marking. As I am carving away I hear a now annoyingly familiar sound off in the distance.

  Squawk!

  Damn it! That’s it, I am going full massacre and hunting down every last chicken on this mountain. I shall be the enemy of all poultry!

  I begin to charge towards the sound of the dumb bird when I come to a halt at the scene before me. In the woods is something beyond my wildest imagination. A chicken and snake turf war! There are half a dozen chickens facing off against a single large black snake. Ohohoh! I need me some popcorn for this.

  Quickly climbing up into a tree and casting [Concealment] on myself, I get in my perch and prepare for the show.