Leafy Marionette, Return

Aura leapt up and began to earnestly scan the forest floor for movement. He needed to find his target and capture it quickly. Now was the best time. Right after The Awakening, monsters were just born and would be greatly weakened. If he waited too long, monsters deep in the forest would begin to absorb mana and level up, becoming a huge danger.

Aura heard a rustle behind him. A giant light grey spider slowly crawled out of a hole in the tree behind him. It was a Grey Forest Spider, one of the most common wood type monsters. It could be found in almost any area with trees, and besides their ability to shoot webs, they're quite worthless. Aura saw another spider crawl out in the distance. It was a race against time. Right now the monsters were disoriented, but they would soon realize their newfound abilities. If they wanted to attack, Aura would have no way to fight back. He was beginning to become nervous. Was the monster he was looking for truly that difficult to find? Keep in mind that the small area he was in was one of the only three such areas where the monster was known to inhabit.

Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Aura saw a leaf twitch. He took a deep breath. It was the same color as he knew the target was supposed to be! Aura urged the blue orb in his mind and expended two mana to evaluate the monster in front of him. Lines of text appeared in his head.

[Leafy Marionette - Wild]

Type: Wood/Mystical

Level: 1

Health: 12/20 (disoriented)

Constitution: 7

Strength: 4

Agility: 3

Defense: 3

Mana: 3/32 (recovering)

[Skills]

Leafy Costume - Leafy Marionette covers the target with leaves, greatly increasing it's constitution and defense, but decreasing it's speed

Puppet Strings - Leafy Marionette attaches puppet strings to the target, inflicting damage to it's soul and creating a slight controlling effect

Aura took a deep breath. "As expected of the rare monster in my mind, even at level one it has two useful skills. It's only weakness is it's poor stats." This is a common trend with mystical type monsters, they are physically weak but make up for it in their high mana capacity and powerful skills.

Before the monster could recover, Aura began to create the soul contract. He closed his eyes and stretched out his hand towards the Leafy Marionette. A blue glow enveloped his hand and shone on the wild monster. Aura could feel it struggling against the contract, but it was too exhausted and his soul force was too powerful. As it gave up resistance, it turned into a beam of light and merged with his body, becoming a small orb of light orbiting his two souls. Aura summoned it again and it appeared on his hand.

It looked exactly as it had looked on the pictures he had seen in the past. It was about the size of a young child. It had the appearance of an origami man made of folded leaves, with modulated joints so it could act like a puppet. It had two lines for eyes and a curve for a mouth, like a smiley face. "Hmmmm, I think I'll name you Puppet."

After naming and admiring his first monster, Aura started to run out of the forest in the direction he arrived from. He even used the most basic soul technique, a technique where one expended mana to gain stats from a contracted monster, to run even faster.

A journey that originally took many hours was shortened to just one with Aura's boosted constitution and agility, and he took his tired body onto the express hovertrain towards his home.