Chapter 9

With curiosity, I reached out, with that new sense I had developed while learning to control mana and used it to touch the mind of the imp. Thanks to the intricate magic of Solomon's seal, through our bond a number of sensations and memories flooded me. I saw parts of his past and life among his native flock. I saw scenes of hunting and battles with some of his enemies. I saw his curiosity about our new world and the energies it held. I also saw his fear when I put the seal on him. I saw it all and tried to calm him. To my surprise, the imp heard me over the link and slowly calmed down. This exchange of emotions went on for a while longer and then I withdrew.

I'd been practicing a lot on how to use the sensors on various summoned creatures in the past week and so I ordered the imp to scout around. Since our connection wasn't strong, and neither was my mana, he couldn't be more than about 100-150 meters away from me. For now. However, this was quite sufficient for short reconnaissance flights.

Through the eyes of the imp, the view of the streets of the ruined city unfolded before me. I took note of the various groups of zombies as well as the surrounding buildings. Then I made a plan.

"I'm going to try to kill some of these zombies so I can learn to wield my creatures in battle, and maybe practice with my crossbow. Also, I think it's a good idea for me to explore this city," I thought.

Then I called the bear and the imp and we went down to the street. There were two zombies on the street corner and I decided to test my bear's powers first. I gave it a mental command and it rushed at them. They slowly turned towards it, and it attacked them with its heavy paws and sharp claws.

I felt my summons reluctance through our connection. These zombies were unnatural creatures and it wanted nothing to do with them. However, I imposed my will, and even managed to convey the feeling that they were enemies of the bears around the world and liked to eat little baby bears. This enraged the bear and it attacked them with vigor.

That was interesting. I didn't expect that I could influence my summons like that. I started to wonder, what would happen if some demon started summoning people? What if I was one such summoned? And what if he started manipulating my feelings and perceptions? What if it's happening right now and it's all one big illusion? Is anything at all real in this world? Strange French words started appearing in my head and the vague feeling of something moving and spinning in a distant grave somewhere.

"It's probably René Descartes - the philosopher, turning in his grave", I said to myself.

While I was trying to philosophize, the bear managed to deal with the zombies quite successfully. It turned out that I didn't have to rip their heads off or anything. Just a few blows of the bear's heavy paws, sharp claws and teeth were enough.

Before I had time to stop it, the bear picked up the body of the last zombie that was no longer moving and threw it about a meter away. I hurried to stop the bear and called it back to me. I looked over the bear's body for wounds and found none. "Will the baer turn into a zombie if it gets bitten?", I thought and clutched Solomon's book. "Whatever, if that happens, I'll just bring it back to its original world and soon everyone there will become a zombie....It's not a big deal. Maybe someone would write a book about that!"

I continued down the street, and with my imp's help, I found a lone zombie and approached it slowly with a loaded crossbow. When I got on just a few meters from it, I aimed my crossbow, and fired.

My bolt flew and even though the zombie was slowly walking towards me, the bolt managed to hit it in the head. "My training in the class selection room is paying off," I grinned evilly. "If only that ghost had left me in there another year or two, I'd have become a real expert with the crossbow."

I continued forward, selecting another small group of three zombies, which I attacked with my bear. This time, however, I tried my mana ball on them.

When the bear charged them, I approached at speed and fired a ball of mana from close range. It flew slowly from my hand hitting the body of one of the zombies. The effect wasn't very big. Its skin changed color slightly, and a little later it cracked and it reeked disgustingly. I hurried away, and the zombie chased after me. While running away from it, I managed to muster some concentration and threw another ball. I could partially control the flight of my mana balls, making them relatively easy to use.

It wasn't long before my bear tackled the other two zombies and attacked the legs of the third zombie. After breaking them it moved away, and I stopped to take a breather.

"I'm glad I practiced every day, both in the selection room and afterwards with my coaches. Especially Nathan and Ralvek, who often had me training to fight against various summoned creatures.

"You have to learn to control your emotions. A true fighter doesn't falter when attacked," Ralvek often said. And he was of course right. Our modern instincts, I think, were set on how to be protective of others, not how to hurt them. "I even had nightmares after the first few days of training with the other creatures," I thought to myself as I concentrated on yet another ball of unstable mana.

This time I had time to aim and managed to hit the face of the zombie crawling towards me. The effect was better, and it even slowed for a moment, then kept crawling. "Damn, these zombies are tough," I thought to myself and continued sending balls towards its head. On the forth ball, it finally stopped moving and its eyes went out.

"Now let's try to absorb its energy!". It was easier said than done. I only had three days of time with my necromantic instructor, with almost no time to practice so I could absorb as much theory as possible for future development of this skill. However, in that time I had gained some understanding of how to use the skill I had unlocked for quite a few points.

I focused and soon began to feel the necrotic energy of the creature I had struck down. I could see how it had almost no life energy and how it was somehow corrupted. I then sat up and slowly began to absorb the mana released by the zombies' death. After a few minutes a small stream of mana touched my body and I shivered. The "taste" of this mana was disgusting. It was almost easier to just sit down to meditate and absorb than the normal mana that abounded around me. "Maybe I made a mistake with this skill," I thought reluctantly.

I hurriedly left that street as larger groups of zombies began to gather. I ran and a few blocks ahead I stopped and continued to fight using my bear, energy balls and occasionally my crossbow. I didn't rely on my spells because of the little damage they dealt, but rather I wanted to practice and develop my skill. Besides, I knew that at this stage of my development as a mage, it was important to use my mana as often as possible so that my body could learn to channel it through the various energy "channels" I had developed during my training.

These channels had to be carefully created and strengthened, with advanced mages having an intricate system of channels that could carry mana from their core, to any point on their body. Also, various alternate channels had to be developed in order to use them to precisely combine the elements. It was absolutely impossible for beginner mages to mix two elements in their body. They had to channel the respective elementals through different channels and mix them outside.

When I used up my mana, I either had to stop to "meditate", that is, to stop and focus my senses on the ambient mana and start slowly directing it towards me and absorbing it. A rather complicated process, or I could just do nothing. In any case, my mana was slowly recovering on its own, through my breathing.

I had enough mana to shoot about 20-23 balls. Something I knew from practicing with my mana manipulation instructor.

My goal was to get a dozen balls off and keep my remaining mana reserves at about that level. I knew that when your mana is between 50% and 75% percent, you regenerate fairly quickly while still having the resources you need in case something happens and you need to use your mana urgently.

So, I started to slowly kill the surrounding zombies with the help of my bear, crossbow and also throwing balls of non-stable mana every now and then. My imp was constantly flying around scouting, helping me find lonely zombies.

Soon I found that a multitude of zombies were gradually coming from the center of the city and pushing me towards the outskirts. So I had to make a choice, either to get out of the town and search for other people, or stay and try to kill more zombies and explore.

"I don't even know if I'm winning anything by killing the damn zombies.". As a compromise, I decided to stay in the city but move closer to the outskirts. The buildings there were taller, denser, and I could easily use them to escape in case of an emergency.

With the help of my imp, who was perched on the tower of a tall building, I selected a suitable group of buildings fairly close to the edge of town and started running in that direction. Every now and then I had to stop and adjust my route, because of an unseen obstacle, a large group of zombies or just to kill a lone zombie or two in the way.

Eventually, though, I came close to the buildings I was aiming at, but as I neared the edge of town, I realized that zombies were getting fewer and fewer.

I slowed my pace and paused to take another look at my bear. I had noticed that it was getting slower and her strength was diminishing.

"The bear's powers are weakening. I think it's time to summon a new summon, it's a good thing I headed to these safer places. If I had stayed further into the city, I would have been in quite a bit of danger," I thought to myself.