Chapter-3: Let's go step by step

"How long have I been here?."(Protagonist)

As I looked at the sky with tired eyes, and I realized that I had been laying here for quite a long while, which is naturally dangerous considering I'm in a forest full of monsters. It seems I was not strong enough.... as expected, someone like me doesn't become competent just because I got my hands on power. If I ever want to actually be someone this time, I'll have to work for it.

As I questioned myself how long I was here and decided to work harder, I remembered how I got knocked out in an embarrassing way, as my opponent was barely alive when I was knocked out.

"There's no use in thinking about my weakness now, all I can do for myself is get stronger."(Protagonist)

I said so while having a determined look on my face which is a little hard to tell because of my ugly goblin face.

"Sophia, for how long have I been here?"(Protagonist)

"The user has been laying on the ground for approximately 4 hours."(Sophia)

"That long... I thought it had only been here for about half an hour..."(Protagonist)

I said to myself surprised by how long it's been. I didn't feel the need to rest or feel tired at all despite the fact I was severely injured just a few hours ago, and the only reasons I rested were to get my thoughts together and heal.

I only survived this because I had learned one spell beforehand and if I hadn't I would most likely be dead. Thinking of all this, I decided to hunt something I can deal with, and the only monster I could think of.... Is a slime.

"You were lucky to even survive, to have recovered in only 4 hours is a great feat and the user should be proud of it!!"(Sophia)

Is it me or does she sound a little angered at my comment.

"Well, If you say so, I guess it must really be amazing and now that I think about it, if it was my old body I would for sure be dead."(Protagonist)

I said with a wry smile because I was finally understanding how absurd it is for someone who was one step away from death to recover completely in only 4 hours.

Well, now that I have killed that goblin first I should look at my status, skills, and magic, to confirm if there are any changes.

Considering that the goblin wasn't very high leveled, I probably didn't even level up once, and with how my life usually goes I wouldn't doubt it if I somehow got a penalty for almost dying or something like that.

Anyways, leaving it for later won't do me any favors, so I'll just check it now.

[Status(new content only)]

C.Job:spearman,mage,thief.

State:thoughtful

LV-1

HP:5/5

MP:672/672

STA:1,000,000,000,000/1,000,000,000,435

Exp:54/100

Skills:

Mana manipulation-lv-3

Shortened chant

Stealth-lv-2

Throwing-lv-1

Steal-lv-1

Short spear mastery-lv-1

Chantless

Magic:

light magic-lv-2

Oh, there seems to be a new piece of information added to the status exp, it seems now I can know how much I have left until the next level.

And I got three C.Jobs(combat jobs), I understand why I got mage and spearman, but did I really get thief from stealing the short spear of the goblin? Is it not too easy to be classified as a thief.

"Sophia, did I get the thief job from simply stealing the goblin's short spear?"(Protagonist)

"Yes, it is indeed easy to get classified as a thief."(Sophia)

"I see."(Protagonist)

I got some skills, and the magic that saved my life leveled up. Even mana manipulation is doing well as it is my highest leveled one.

Sophia told me that skill's levels goes from 1 to 15. It also seems that most people don't even get to level 6 and stay stuck in level 5 or below.

"Well, I guess now I should check the corpse of the goblin."(Protagonist)

As I said that I went closer to the corpse that wasn't far away from me.

"Well, let's store it up."(Protagonist)

Then something unexpected happened, cause when I tried to store the corpse of the goblin in my inventory, it didn't disappear as it was still in the same place. Out of curiosity, I check inside the inventory to see if it got stored, and to my surprise, it was, and not in a simple way as I could see goblin meat, goblin skin, goblin ears, and goblin loincloths inside the inventory, while the body outside my inventory wasn't affected at all, so that meant I could store the item type part of monster corpses and still use the physical corpse normally, this is just too good to be true.

I tried to store the same corpse again, but it didn't work, I guess there is a limit to how much I can cheat my way up. Well, it's still one hell of a cheat.

After I was done testing my new cheat, I once again looked at the corpse, and I decided to try and cook it.

"This is a good chance for me to try and learn fire magic and not only that, but other elements as well, the more magic I know the better it will be for me."(Protaginist)

I said to myself as I decided to not only learn fire magic but wind, earth, water, darkness, ice, and thunder magic which with light magic make all the basic elements of magic in this world, there are other types of magic besides basic elemental magic, but I'm not interested in learning them just yet, I'll leave it for later.

When I learned my first magic spell that is <light magic: flash>, I was instructed by Sophia on how to do it. Elemental magic in this world is a subproduct of the conversion of pure mana into elemental energy.

What are mana and elemental energy? Those were my questions and to answer them, mana is the base of all magic and the pillar that holds its existence, so basically, mana is the basic and most important component of all magic as it acts as the main resource, it is the agglomerate of particles of energy that powers all magic. In short mana is magic in some way, or at least that's what I understood.

As for elemental energy as its name says is the energy produced by the elements of nature in this world, for example, the ocean's water produces particles of water element, and those particles accumulate and form 'water-energy'. The information I got on this is very limited and so all I can say is that with many you can synthesize elemental energy which is what is used to control each element during magical spells. But there is a clear difference between mana produced elemental energy and natural elemental energy, as for exactly what the difference is, I'm not sure since Sophia won't tell me.

Anyway, the fact they are different is already pretty interesting, but since I have no way of accessing natural elemental energy I can't differentiate them. I can however explain a bit of how mana elemental energy works, to sum it up you need to be able to first feel the mana in the atmosphere and then separate it from the mana inside of you, as all creatures have mana in them.

Once you separate the mana inside you from the one on the atmosphere you gain a bit of control over your mana and receive the mana manipulation skill to slowly learn how to shape your mana, which is pretty much all the basic stuff you have to go through before you can learn how to use magic spells. The moment you can stabilize the mana inside of you with your mana manipulation you can properly use the simplest magic spells.

Now to use elemental magic, there are two ways I know of, since Sophia said this is all I need to know for now, the first is to learn magical formulas as it seems in this world someone developed a whole magic elemental table for the magic elements and it's variants, and this table is as expected incomplete.

In my personal opinion, the second way is much simpler and consists of using your imagination to visualize the spell before using it, those who use this method often use chanting to give them a better mental image of the spell they want to use, but the biggest problem with this method is that in comparison to the first it is much harder to control especially when it comes to the spell's output power and the mana consumption it will take to launch said spell.

The problem with the first method is that while it allows you to use the spells properly and in the exact way you want to use it with little waste in terms of mana, is that it is many times harder to learn and master as it takes many years to master a single element.

"This is exactly why I only learned a single spell from yesterday to today, cause even if the second method is easy compared to the first it's not simple either as you will need scientific knowledge about the composition of each element or you'll have to find the perfect chanting for you as not everyone can use magic with the common chants for each spell... "(Protagonist)

I say to myself as I try to get mentally ready to focus on casting the spell, as your state of mind affects your chances for casting the spell during the first couple of times, it lessens as you use the spell more and more, but it's always pretty troublesome especially if you have to fight something fast.

Magic is quite more complicated than I initially expected considering all the stories I read where it was as simple as 'think of this and it will work' and while there are elements of it here, it's not that simple.

"It took me about 9 hours to properly cast <light magic: flash>, just how long will it take with a harder spell? Cause flash is one of the most basic spells out of all the basic elemental spells...."(Protagonist)

"The user does realize that normal humans would take at least 54 hours of work to learn flash, while normal goblins take 81 hours to accomplish the same. The user should be proud of his progress as the system is working properly to optimize the user's progress through magic as much as possible with the currently available information."(Sophia)

It seems Sophia is dissatisfied with the fact I said her teachings are too slow.

"I know you're doing your best, I just think it would be good if I could master the spells faster."(Protagonist)

"....." (Sophia)

"What? Did I say anything weird?"(Protagonist)

"The user does realize that you are advancing at least 3x faster than most people? Cause that would be impossible in normal cases..... At least considering the information limation, that is."(Sophia)

"That's exactly my problem, I know a faster way exists, and I just don't have access to it yet."(Protagonist)

"..."(Sophia)

"Forget it, I'll just keep doing it this way."(Protagonist)

After that Sophia didn't say anything else, I almost thought I broke her, but she was just silent.

I started my magic practice with the <fire magic: torch>, as it is the same level of spell as <light magic: flash>, and the concept is similar, while <flash> is a distraction spell that blinds the enemy, the <torch> is an illumination spell that emulates the flame of a torch. There is a spell that does the same thing in light magic, it's a spell called <light magic: illuminate>, which creates a sphere of light. Both spells are popular among adventurers, explorers, and archeologists, basically, anything that requires exploring caves, dungeons, and labyrinths, at least that's what Sophia was on about when I asked about its uses.

"Ok, I must breathe slowly and concentrate, then visualize the spell and direct the mana flow in my body and regulate the correct amount of mana consumption while separating the rest of the elemental energy from the 'fire energy'."(Protagonist)

I say to myself focusing on the spell.

"Arrrfggghh!!"(Protagonist)

I scream in pain as I feel a pulse of mana vibrate my whole body with energy for a second before going back to normal.

*huff* *huff* "This is going to be a pain...."

I breathe deeply as I get ahold of myself and easily recover then continue to try and master the spell. I once again sit down in position to meditate and start breathing calmly as the wind of the forest breezes by and the trees dance at its rhythm.

-16 hours later-

"Ok, enough training for now. Let's try to cook some goblin meat."(Protagonist)

I said to myself as I stretched my arms and legs, after this long training session. Unlike expected, the <torch> spell only took me 5 hours to learn how to use properly, and since it was that fast I decided to try the next spell on the fire magic list <fire magic: flame>, which is a cooking spell that is used to heat up or cook food.

It took me almost 11 hours to properly learn this new spell because it's apparently more complex than the other ones. Once I was done with its basic mastery, I decided to rest for a bit.

Then after I was fully rested, I used <fire magic: flame> to cook the goblin meat in my inventory.

"that was delicious, eating it raw was quite good but when properly cooked it's simply delicious."(Protagonist)

I said excitedly as I for the first time tasted cooked goblin meat.

*plilin* The job beginner chef and the skill cook have been obtained.

I think I've been getting jobs and skills too easily, and even if it's because of my race or whatever bonus I have..... in the end it might be detrimental to how fast I can adapt to this world and it's laws. I better not get too distracted or absorbed in my powers.

"I'm still the same unlucky dude, I just have a different body in a different world..... sooner or later things will go wrong and I have to be ready for it."(Protagonist)

I couldn't help but to feel that way after having lived my past life the way I did, I just can't put myself to believe that this one will be completely different just because I have a better start.

"It's best if I take some time to familiarize with myself and the forest a bit, after all thanks to <No boredom>, I have all the time in the world."(Protagonist)

-somedays later-

Lately, I have been living quite peacefully, eating the goblin meat in my inventory, and because of me cooking it, my fire magic has improved in terms of control but not it's level.

I've been searching for slimes to hunt for the last 4 days, but I've found none up until now. I also want to test my weapon on moving targets, and I'm talking about the short spear the goblin used, it was slightly damaged during the battle, but it's still fine to use as long as I don't abuse it.

"I can't seem to find a single slime in this place... Do slime not exist in this area?.... Or is it just my bad luck kicking in?"(Protagonist)

I question as I start to think that maybe there are no slimes in this area.

"Wasn't I supposed to be lucky in this life?!"(Protagonist)

I shout slightly pissed at my unluck, and just as I do so, I hear noises coming from the bushes and suddenly find myself surrounded by a bunch of slimes their round jelly bodies.

"This isn't what I asked for!!"(Protagonist)

I complain as I'm surrounded by more than 20 slimes.

"Whatever, let's go step by step and I'll eventually get there."

I say while I breathe deeply and prepare myself for the battle.