Aftermath

Feeling the flow come to a stop, Lucras forced himself to look away from the bear before he puked. Even though he had seen blood, he hadn't seen this cruel side of a fight… He never saw the light leave the eyes of the lizard, and he was too focused on himself to look at the dying wolf.

Seeing the bear painfully die, with shock seemed to bring him a reality check that he desperately needed. Death wasn't all fun in games, he shouldn't act like a brat and should be happy with what he had. He remembered the time he balled his eyes out because he couldn't use magic like he wished to. Maybe it was because of stress or disappointment, but he should be happy that he was here. He shouldn't have been too greedy with his new chance at life.

While Lucras was thinking about death, multiple pings rang through his mind, which he ignored for a solid few minutes as he consulted with himself about death and stuff. As he was feeling wrapped up thinking about death and such, he heard a voice ring through his mind,

[Are you finally realizing this is not a game? Hmmmmm? Well good then, cause you would have died if you didn't. Life and death aren't something to mess with, and if you went into battle thinking everything is going to be fine, a lot of people would die. Now then, look at your quest quickly as you need to get out. Oh and also to view quests, just think 'current quests']

After getting slightly annoyed with Ava's comments but decided to ignore her because he knew she was right. If he hadn't had this reality check, people around him could have gotten hurt or worse. After calming down more, he thought '[Current quests]'

[[Ongoing Quests:

- Survival

Completed Quests:

- Unexpected encounter

]]

After clicking on the 'Unexpected encounters' box, the screen seemed to react to him. And for just a brief moment, he felt something physical before it disappeared. Then the screen changed

[[Quest name: Survival

Subquest: Unexpected guest

Description: Your battle was interrupted by a new enemy, and now you must prepare to fight against this new enemy. Fate has shown its hand as this must be finished before the time limit or a large consequences will happen.

Objectives:

- Kill both creatures (2/2)

Duration: 45 minutes (39/45)

Reward:

- Full recovery of the body

- Increased stat in stamina by .3 and mana factor by .02

COMPLETE!

Please accept your rewards by saying 'accept'.

]]

After he accepted it, he began to feel the energy flow through him again like it was the completing side of the energy obtained from the lizard and bear. He felt himself start to recover quicker and his exhaustion decreased rapidly as well, and he felt some more mana around him. Feeling like his body was being reborn again, he treasured the moments this wondrous feeling gave him.

[Stop bathing in the sunlight that is your recovery, and quickly run… You should start to see why in a few minutes but I don't recommend waiting]

Deciding to take Ava seriously, Lucras ran over to where his backpack was and quickly grabbed it. Then looking at all the things he killed he felt bad that he couldn't eat some of them. He was sick of berries and salad, and he didn't know if he would find monsters to get food from…

Deciding to risk it all for some good food, he went over to the wolf as its wolf had the least damage of the bunch and he could probably get some fur off the wolf. He rapidly approached the wolf carcass with his sword in hand, and once he reached it, he quickly started to hack off areas he thought would be good to eat. Which was mainly just the legs as they didn't have organs and there were no slash marks on them.

As he finished hacking off the first leg, he finally realized why Ava warned him not to be here, as chilled air started to move in and frost seemed to spread along the ground. Looking around he found an area with the fog becoming substantially harder to see though, eventually becoming like a thick soup.

Realizing it was time to leave, he quickly sheathed his sword and took his wolf leg, and ran. Dashed away from his apparent pursuer and quickly dived into some new fog, he felt good and decided to check his stats.

[[Status

Name: Lucras Tiller

Title: Swordsman

Effects: Ghostly Friend,<Hidden>

Health:(50/50)

Mana:(15/15)

Stress(5/100)

Stats:

Strength: 0.9

Speed: 1.3

Stamina: 0.8

Health Factor: 0.5

Mana Factor: 0.15

Intelligence: 5

Passive: Anxiety(-), Green Thumb(+) Lv 3, Sword knowledge(+) Lv 2

Active: Last strike Lv 1

]]

He realized that he had some major increases in his stats compared to when he first entered the forest. His stamina stat being four times higher than before was the greatest shock to him.

[I may not be able to directly increase your strength, but I can make the energy transmission from monsters a lot easier and quicker, as long as it is a quest. Also, don't get too excited yet. Your current massive increase in stats is because you are so freaking weak. After reaching about a 1, it will be hard to increase them.]

'Wait, what about that increase of .3 after killing that wolf?'

[That's because of a couple of factors, the main one being your body was still like a dry sponge. Trying to absorb whatever it could, and the second main reason is that your body naturally was going to be faster than others, it's just that it was undernourished.]

'So what will be my caps before it becomes a lot more difficult to increase them?'

[[Stats caps:

Strength: 1

Speed: 1.5

Stamina: 1

Health Factor: 1

Mana Factor: <UNDEFINED>

Intelligence: 5

Body Level: 1

]]

[There, are you happy? You will have to balance them out and strengthen your body before the caps move.]

'Ok, please answer this one… what does the <UNDEFINED> mean? And how do you level up your body'

[Nope, Suffer]

Giggling rang through his mind again, as Ava decided to be annoying and leave him with questions he wanted answers to. Hoping that he will get the chance to find out, he ventured deeper into the fog.

Traveling for a few minutes, he decided to stop and check if whatever was following him was still there. While he was waiting, he started to appreciate the unique portion of land he was on. He was on top of what looked like sand, except that it was midnight black. Deciding that the sand looked cool enough, he decided to pick up the sand and inspect it closer. As he was trying to look into it, a green screen popped up much to Lucras's relief.

{{Midnight sand

Quality: Rare

Description: A high-quality sand that can transform moonlight into mana. Used inside of some alchemy recipes for the property it contains. Usually found near water and in very high mana concentrations, with beasts loving to live near them.

}}

Relieved that the ghost was finally awake after its long nap, he decided to read the screen. Shock quickly flashed across Lucras's face as he started to grab more sand and pack it away in his bag next to the plants. Even though he couldn't contain it with his bag only having 3 small crude pockets, as long as it was mostly in one of those pockets he would be happy. Taking one of the large plant leaves, he found Lucras quickly tried his best to store it to the best of his abilities.

After around a minute of gathering this magnificent sand, he looked around to check, and to his disappointment, he found that more frost was building up around the edges of his bubble zone. 'Why does it keep following me?' He thought before deciding to try and get as far as possible away, so he sprinted through this small goldfield getting sand all over his clothes in the process.

After running for a bit, he realized that whatever was behind him seemed to disappear again, but instead of slowing down, he proceeded to speed up to make whatever was following him completely lose him.

Finally, after what seemed like an hour he stopped running, feeling lightheaded from all the insane running he had just done. Collapsing on the ground, he continued heavy breathing for quite a few minutes, and even then he could still feel his racing heart rate. Believing that he had lost whatever frost fog creature that was following him, he started to take in his new surroundings, where he would hopefully stay for at least a hot minute.