Fate is a fickle thing. Ulric had always felt like there was an element of chaos which operated in the background. Sort of a universal baseline "Fuck You" which reality enforced on all the sapients that occupied it. Some people said he was negative. Others said he was a real glass has a hole in the bottom of it kind of guy. He told them to prove he was wrong or go join a hippy commune cult and, please, before you reproduce, drink the cool-aide.
Having committed himself fully to living this life to its utmost, Ulric refocused his efforts on identifying a proper foliage to apply his half-remembered basket weaving skills. Palm fronds would work best. This was not a tropical forest though and most of the plants seemed to be more of a deciduous nature. It wasn't semantics, it mattered structurally. Deciduous plants lost their leaves yearly. They did not invest unnecessary structural material into leaves which would be shed a mere seven months later and were therefore not of comparable rigidity or integrity as tropical plants, which would grow year-round.
He would need to find a small tree or shrub that grew with a sturdy midrib and waxy enough to have the strength for a weaving. Or, perhaps, a tree with an appropriately fibrous inner bark. He'd need to use many more ribs than he had in his seminar, to account for the shorter leaves. No, wait, he thought, he'd make a wood wire frame and weave into it. The leaves wouldn't have to make up the structural portion of the basket in that application, and could simply be woven tightly enough to make a water barrier. Maybe a thin layer of the glassresin to finish, like a glaze. Might be closer to a pot than a basket, but whatever. When you got lemons and all that.
Having some sort of mental image of what he wanted, Ulric hefted his spear and searched through the low thicket that was growing around the half buried trunk of the dead arbor, whose mass yawned across the majority of the glade, nearly bisecting it.
The break of a low limb was the only warning he got before the wolf-bear charged. A loud snap on his seven-o clock turned his head. A roar louder than anything he could have imagined coming from a living thing accompanied the rush of a shaggy furred monster about the size of a pick-up truck. He didn't get much more of an impression than that, it moved impossibly fast for something that big. Too fast. It closed a distance of thirty meters in about three and a half seconds.
Ulric was, yet again, in debt to the Watcher's blessings. He was tired. He was mana sick. He was vaguely hungry. He was also at the absolute human peak of his life. No scar tissue, no damaged joints. And, fast as the horror charging him was, it wasn't faster than the metabolic response to an absolute shitload of adrenaline.
To understand what Adrenaline is, you have to understand that the average person walking around is a shitload stronger than they look. That lady over there picking through oranges to find one she likes? She could pull your arms out of their sockets and crush your head in her hands. If she were sufficiently motivated. The body has natural limiters to prevent it from ripping its muscles apart in daily life. Professional athletes learn to turn those limiters off, which is how they tear their bodies apart jumping, sprinting, or performing motions that don't look like they should cause that kind of damage. Adrenaline also turns those limiters off. It's the body's all bets are off, there's no tomorrow, let's goddamn go juice.
Ulric's body was moving before he'd even had time to think about it. Brain off, he was diving shoulders turned towards the beast's front leftmost paw. The spear clipped the massive form as it rushed by nearly tearing it from his grip, the blade must have made good contact because it yowled as it went, sliding in a pivoting turn six meters past where he'd dove. The angle he'd taken had prevented it from being able to turn its massive head past even more massive shoulders and bite him in half.
The musky stink of it was loud in his nose as he rolled to his feet and braced himself, spear held two handed, blade freshly broken in half. He was also able to get his first solid look at the monster hunting him. It really was the size of a truck. Better than three meters from haunches to way too goddamn big toothed maw. Like a mix between wolverine’s snout and bear body, it wasn't graceful. It didn't look like it needed to be, anything that took that charge square was meat. Claws as long as his hand, four of them per basketball sized mitts, dull like bear claws and not recurved like a cat's. Good news, they weren't scalpel sharp, they were dulled by being used to gain traction. Bad news, anything that strong wouldn't need them to be sharp to rip him to wet pieces.
A thin line of reddish orange wetness on its left foreleg showed that it was, at least, capable of being harmed. His glassresin blade had penetrated deeply off the thing's shear momentum. He had a second to wonder if the wound would deter it before it growled deeply enough for his ribs to vibrate and set itself. Ulric thought it would charge at first until it reared up on hind legs and blasted him with a roar that contained all the power of a creature of untold fury and with a life steeped in blood drenched claws and dripping fangs.
The next part wasn't conscious. The lizard that lived somewhere near the base of his spine had run the numbers and concluded that if the monster charged again, he'd be killed instantly. The only reason it hadn't been able to get him the first time was because it was fully expecting the speed and violence of the first charge to be enough, it always had been, and the softness of the ground hadn't allowed it to change direction at that speed. Prehistoric calculus concluded that the only response possible in the face of overwhelming violence was more violence.
Which is why he was screaming towards the monster, having thrown his broken spear at it, belt knife somehow in his hand, with a hate he'd never known he had in his heart. The spear hit it in the head bouncing into the brush. He hit the monster in its chest, knife burying in its abdomen and breaking off immediately, wound inconsequential to the foe. His hands grabbed its head as it dropped to the ground burying him. The monster would never have imagined he'd attack it, it had been readying its charge, not readying itself to be charged. The stick had barely made it blink and the wound meant nothing. It would bite his head off as soon as it could set its claws on his body and pull him free. Screaming. Hate. Rage. It was his second chance. It was his last chance. No. Hurts, slights, agonies of body and mind, countless nights drinking hoping he'd never wake poured through his mind like a dam opening. He willed death on the creature, willed it with all his soul. His soul listened.
Magic, like a river of violent light poured through Ulric's hands, lightning running a Jacob's ladder from finger-tip to finger-tip through the creature's brain. Channels that had been prepared but never used filled to overflowing inside his body, fever burning out from the heat of the power unleashed as his core emptied. All the fire in the sun raced through his body washing away pain, emotion, and thought. Lightning raged for an endless moment, the monster spasming as its brain boiled inside its skull. Ulric blacked out.
Consciousness returned slowly. The first sensation was warmth. Not fever, but simple warmth, like a blanket. Next was pressure, he couldn't move his legs. His chest was heavy, it hurt to breathe. Actually, it kind of hurt all over. Just some general whole body hurting. In spite of the pressure though his body felt somehow lightened. Ulric opened his eyes to see the maw of the creature, clearly dead and small streams of vapor occasionally whisping into the air. It couldn’t have been long, the thing’s brains were still smoking. The immense corpse was only partly resting on him, it having thrashed sideways at some point while his death grip, literally it would seem, had kept him from being thrown free. His legs had caught under its chest which was why they wouldn't move. One of its forearms was draped over his chest. He lifted it away with an effort. It took several more minutes to slowly pry his legs free. Thing had to weigh at least a ton. His ribs and legs were bruised where it had fallen on him.
He felt an odd detachment from everything around him. Like he was piloting himself from somewhere above. Slowly, looking at the enemy dead before him, it came crashing back, and he realized he had tears on his cheeks. Not sadness. Joy. He was alive. He was more alive now than he'd ever been. He started laughing, deep and rolling, his hands reaching up as if to hold the suns in them. He came back to himself with a rush of exhileration.
He yelled into the twilight of the forest, a sound of pure victory. "THAT'S WHAT YOU GET! Fuck outta here with your shaggy fucking dead ass! I am motherfucking ALIIIVE!!"
*PING*
"What!?" he was still too keyed up and he turned a fast circle looking for threats before he remembered that he'd heard that sound before when he was sitting in his shelter.
Fuck. His status had gotten him again. He realized he was naked, his kilt not having survived the battle. As he looked down at himself, he looked at his hands, palms spread up. Hands that had drawn power through them and destroyed a monster with lightning. With magic. He clenched them into fists and let them fall before calling to the Akashic record
[Status]
Good news, Ulric had come through the fire apparently. The changes to his status indicated that he might have been correct in that his mana sickness was a thing born of naivety towards mana, not an aversion to it. It wouldn't have made sense that an organism would actively destroy itself. Like evolving a stomach and stomach acids but not a stomach lining to protect it from its own digestion. His core, once untempered, now read as tempered. That was probably due to the use of it to channel mana, the system had been primed, so to speak. He was so relieved he could couldn’t believe it. A Damocles sword was gone and, in its place, was opportunity. Magic.
He'd gained a title. Damn straight. Killing the monster had increased his stats by a significant margin. Did his level have anything to do with it? Because he’d gone from zero to twenty in a single jump. And there were numbers with the experience values, like those old games he’d played as a boy. But what were the numbers based on? Interesting that, and it got his engineering mind turning, there was a scaling there. Was it exponential? Logarithmic? Was there an upper limit or merely an asymptotic growth that soft capped human potential? Why had it gone up? Was it because he'd learned to use his body a little better? Ulric was struggling under the load of too many unknowns, a near death experience, and a metric shitload of stress hormone side effects.
“Ok there Chief.” Ulric spoke aloud to curtail the budding mental spiral, “Let’s just calm down and get a handle on this. I have one data point and that is not fucking curve.”
A battle with a monster. Who’d have thought? And his new body had carried him through. He'd never actually pushed himself to that degree since waking in this place. Maybe an intense exercise regimen would further increase those stats, a thought he tabled for now, as he had bigger problems than a work out, like not starving to death. Or meeting another one. He shuddered and avoided thinking further about that.
He'd gained a trait, Core Capacitor, which seemed to be related to the way he'd released mana in the attack. He wished he could remember it better but the whole thing was a blur. He hadn't had a clear thought since the great fucking thing had reared up like a tsunami and roared at him. If he'd had anything more than that foul worm in his body he'd probably have shat himself. As it was he'd almost certainly voided his bladder. Memory was hazy. He'd figured he'd never make it if it charged him. He'd thrown his spear, badly. He'd knifed it and done, like, no damage to the fucking thing. It had collapsed on top of him and tried to tear him apart. He'd grabbed it and done…something. All he had of that moment was the feeling of drowning in anger and hate. And wanting that thing dead.
"No. Not wanting, WILLING. I didn't want it dead I willed it dead." Ulric said quietly. There was a difference and that difference is probably the only thing between him standing there over the Forest Lord's body and being messy shreds inside it. Magic was desire made reality. It was a call to the universe that the universe couldn't ignore. Awesome.
Speaking of awesome, the spell was listed now.
He could tell clearly how the bear-thing had died. He'd run high current through its brain until it had melted. Probably the reason it hadn't been able to kill him in its dying moments. Electricity run through a brain like that would have destroyed nervous control. It didn't kill him because it couldn't, the muscles of its body weren't able to do anything but fire randomly without direction. There were multipliers there, based on his stats and the amount of mana consumed, which had been 100% of his core, apparently discharged instantly. It was a hell of spell. And it wouldn't have done anything except piss the monster off if he hadn't had a hold of its head. A critical hit, so to speak.
His level had increased. Had increased rather a lot. What the hell even was a level? It corresponded somehow to experience, that much was more than implied by the status. Some kind of determination about combat capability? A rough measurement of the danger of an individual? Like…cosmic threat detection, somehow. He was guessing and he only had half a mind on it anyway. Most of his attention was fixated on the dead thing at his feet and the remaining sense of wonder at being alive. What in the hell kind of level could that monstrosity have been?
Fate is a fickle thing. Ulric had always felt like there was an element of chaos which operated in the background. Sort of a universal baseline "Fuck You" which reality enforced on all the sapients that occupied it. Some people said he was negative. Others said he was a real glass has a hole in the bottom of it kind of guy. He told them to prove he was wrong or go join a hippy commune cult and, please, before you reproduce, drink the cool-aide.
Having committed himself fully to living this life to its utmost, Ulric refocused his efforts on identifying a proper foliage to apply his half-remembered basket weaving skills. Palm fronds would work best. This was not a tropical forest though and most of the plants seemed to be more of a deciduous nature. It wasn't semantics, it mattered structurally. Deciduous plants lost their leaves yearly. They did not invest unnecessary structural material into leaves which would be shed a mere seven months later and were therefore not of comparable rigidity or integrity as tropical plants, which would grow year-round.
He would need to find a small tree or shrub that grew with a sturdy midrib and waxy enough to have the strength for a weaving. Or, perhaps, a tree with an appropriately fibrous inner bark. He'd need to use many more ribs than he had in his seminar, to account for the shorter leaves. No, wait, he thought, he'd make a wood wire frame and weave into it. The leaves wouldn't have to make up the structural portion of the basket in that application, and could simply be woven tightly enough to make a water barrier. Maybe a thin layer of the glassresin to finish, like a glaze. Might be closer to a pot than a basket, but whatever. When you got lemons and all that.
Having some sort of mental image of what he wanted, Ulric hefted his spear and searched through the low thicket that was growing around the half buried trunk of the dead arbor, whose mass yawned across the majority of the glade, nearly bisecting it.
The break of a low limb was the only warning he got before the wolf-bear charged. A loud snap on his seven-o clock turned his head. A roar louder than anything he could have imagined coming from a living thing accompanied the rush of a shaggy furred monster about the size of a pick-up truck. He didn't get much more of an impression than that, it moved impossibly fast for something that big. Too fast. It closed a distance of thirty meters in about three and a half seconds.
Ulric was, yet again, in debt to the Watcher's blessings. He was tired. He was mana sick. He was vaguely hungry. He was also at the absolute human peak of his life. No scar tissue, no damaged joints. And, fast as the horror charging him was, it wasn't faster than the metabolic response to an absolute shitload of adrenaline.
To understand what Adrenaline is, you have to understand that the average person walking around is a shitload stronger than they look. That lady over there picking through oranges to find one she likes? She could pull your arms out of their sockets and crush your head in her hands. If she were sufficiently motivated. The body has natural limiters to prevent it from ripping its muscles apart in daily life. Professional athletes learn to turn those limiters off, which is how they tear their bodies apart jumping, sprinting, or performing motions that don't look like they should cause that kind of damage. Adrenaline also turns those limiters off. It's the body's all bets are off, there's no tomorrow, let's goddamn go juice.
Ulric's body was moving before he'd even had time to think about it. Brain off, he was diving shoulders turned towards the beast's front leftmost paw. The spear clipped the massive form as it rushed by nearly tearing it from his grip, the blade must have made good contact because it yowled as it went, sliding in a pivoting turn six meters past where he'd dove. The angle he'd taken had prevented it from being able to turn its massive head past even more massive shoulders and bite him in half.
The musky stink of it was loud in his nose as he rolled to his feet and braced himself, spear held two handed, blade freshly broken in half. He was also able to get his first solid look at the monster hunting him. It really was the size of a truck. Better than three meters from haunches to way too goddamn big toothed maw. Like a mix between wolverine’s snout and bear body, it wasn't graceful. It didn't look like it needed to be, anything that took that charge square was meat. Claws as long as his hand, four of them per basketball sized mitts, dull like bear claws and not recurved like a cat's. Good news, they weren't scalpel sharp, they were dulled by being used to gain traction. Bad news, anything that strong wouldn't need them to be sharp to rip him to wet pieces.
A thin line of reddish orange wetness on its left foreleg showed that it was, at least, capable of being harmed. His glassresin blade had penetrated deeply off the thing's shear momentum. He had a second to wonder if the wound would deter it before it growled deeply enough for his ribs to vibrate and set itself. Ulric thought it would charge at first until it reared up on hind legs and blasted him with a roar that contained all the power of a creature of untold fury and with a life steeped in blood drenched claws and dripping fangs.
The next part wasn't conscious. The lizard that lived somewhere near the base of his spine had run the numbers and concluded that if the monster charged again, he'd be killed instantly. The only reason it hadn't been able to get him the first time was because it was fully expecting the speed and violence of the first charge to be enough, it always had been, and the softness of the ground hadn't allowed it to change direction at that speed. Prehistoric calculus concluded that the only response possible in the face of overwhelming violence was more violence.
Which is why he was screaming towards the monster, having thrown his broken spear at it, belt knife somehow in his hand, with a hate he'd never known he had in his heart. The spear hit it in the head bouncing into the brush. He hit the monster in its chest, knife burying in its abdomen and breaking off immediately, wound inconsequential to the foe. His hands grabbed its head as it dropped to the ground burying him. The monster would never have imagined he'd attack it, it had been readying its charge, not readying itself to be charged. The stick had barely made it blink and the wound meant nothing. It would bite his head off as soon as it could set its claws on his body and pull him free. Screaming. Hate. Rage. It was his second chance. It was his last chance. No. Hurts, slights, agonies of body and mind, countless nights drinking hoping he'd never wake poured through his mind like a dam opening. He willed death on the creature, willed it with all his soul. His soul listened.
Magic, like a river of violent light poured through Ulric's hands, lightning running a Jacob's ladder from finger-tip to finger-tip through the creature's brain. Channels that had been prepared but never used filled to overflowing inside his body, fever burning out from the heat of the power unleashed as his core emptied. All the fire in the sun raced through his body washing away pain, emotion, and thought. Lightning raged for an endless moment, the monster spasming as its brain boiled inside its skull. Ulric blacked out.
Consciousness returned slowly. The first sensation was warmth. Not fever, but simple warmth, like a blanket. Next was pressure, he couldn't move his legs. His chest was heavy, it hurt to breathe. Actually, it kind of hurt all over. Just some general whole body hurting. In spite of the pressure though his body felt somehow lightened. Ulric opened his eyes to see the maw of the creature, clearly dead and small streams of vapor occasionally whisping into the air. It couldn’t have been long, the thing’s brains were still smoking. The immense corpse was only partly resting on him, it having thrashed sideways at some point while his death grip, literally it would seem, had kept him from being thrown free. His legs had caught under its chest which was why they wouldn't move. One of its forearms was draped over his chest. He lifted it away with an effort. It took several more minutes to slowly pry his legs free. Thing had to weigh at least a ton. His ribs and legs were bruised where it had fallen on him.
He felt an odd detachment from everything around him. Like he was piloting himself from somewhere above. Slowly, looking at the enemy dead before him, it came crashing back, and he realized he had tears on his cheeks. Not sadness. Joy. He was alive. He was more alive now than he'd ever been. He started laughing, deep and rolling, his hands reaching up as if to hold the suns in them. He came back to himself with a rush of exhileration.
He yelled into the twilight of the forest, a sound of pure victory. "THAT'S WHAT YOU GET! Fuck outta here with your shaggy fucking dead ass! I am motherfucking ALIIIVE!!"
*PING*
"What!?" he was still too keyed up and he turned a fast circle looking for threats before he remembered that he'd heard that sound before when he was sitting in his shelter.
Fuck. His status had gotten him again. He realized he was naked, his kilt not having survived the battle. As he looked down at himself, he looked at his hands, palms spread up. Hands that had drawn power through them and destroyed a monster with lightning. With magic. He clenched them into fists and let them fall before calling to the Akashic record
[Status]
Good news, Ulric had come through the fire apparently. The changes to his status indicated that he might have been correct in that his mana sickness was a thing born of naivety towards mana, not an aversion to it. It wouldn't have made sense that an organism would actively destroy itself. Like evolving a stomach and stomach acids but not a stomach lining to protect it from its own digestion. His core, once untempered, now read as tempered. That was probably due to the use of it to channel mana, the system had been primed, so to speak. He was so relieved he could couldn’t believe it. A Damocles sword was gone and, in its place, was opportunity. Magic.
He'd gained a title. Damn straight. Killing the monster had increased his stats by a significant margin. Did his level have anything to do with it? Because he’d gone from zero to twenty in a single jump. And there were numbers with the experience values, like those old games he’d played as a boy. But what were the numbers based on? Interesting that, and it got his engineering mind turning, there was a scaling there. Was it exponential? Logarithmic? Was there an upper limit or merely an asymptotic growth that soft capped human potential? Why had it gone up? Was it because he'd learned to use his body a little better? Ulric was struggling under the load of too many unknowns, a near death experience, and a metric shitload of stress hormone side effects.
“Ok there Chief.” Ulric spoke aloud to curtail the budding mental spiral, “Let’s just calm down and get a handle on this. I have one data point and that is not fucking curve.”
A battle with a monster. Who’d have thought? And his new body had carried him through. He'd never actually pushed himself to that degree since waking in this place. Maybe an intense exercise regimen would further increase those stats, a thought he tabled for now, as he had bigger problems than a work out, like not starving to death. Or meeting another one. He shuddered and avoided thinking further about that.
He'd gained a trait, Core Capacitor, which seemed to be related to the way he'd released mana in the attack. He wished he could remember it better but the whole thing was a blur. He hadn't had a clear thought since the great fucking thing had reared up like a tsunami and roared at him. If he'd had anything more than that foul worm in his body he'd probably have shat himself. As it was he'd almost certainly voided his bladder. Memory was hazy. He'd figured he'd never make it if it charged him. He'd thrown his spear, badly. He'd knifed it and done, like, no damage to the fucking thing. It had collapsed on top of him and tried to tear him apart. He'd grabbed it and done…something. All he had of that moment was the feeling of drowning in anger and hate. And wanting that thing dead.
"No. Not wanting, WILLING. I didn't want it dead I willed it dead." Ulric said quietly. There was a difference and that difference is probably the only thing between him standing there over the Forest Lord's body and being messy shreds inside it. Magic was desire made reality. It was a call to the universe that the universe couldn't ignore. Awesome.
Speaking of awesome, the spell was listed now.
He could tell clearly how the bear-thing had died. He'd run high current through its brain until it had melted. Probably the reason it hadn't been able to kill him in its dying moments. Electricity run through a brain like that would have destroyed nervous control. It didn't kill him because it couldn't, the muscles of its body weren't able to do anything but fire randomly without direction. There were multipliers there, based on his stats and the amount of mana consumed, which had been 100% of his core, apparently discharged instantly. It was a hell of spell. And it wouldn't have done anything except piss the monster off if he hadn't had a hold of its head. A critical hit, so to speak.
His level had increased. Had increased rather a lot. What the hell even was a level? It corresponded somehow to experience, that much was more than implied by the status. Some kind of determination about combat capability? A rough measurement of the danger of an individual? Like…cosmic threat detection, somehow. He was guessing and he only had half a mind on it anyway. Most of his attention was fixated on the dead thing at his feet and the remaining sense of wonder at being alive. What in the hell kind of level could that monstrosity have been?
