Art

When I woke up I was still in the same place, and it was still bright outside. I could tell because of the large glass dome that made up the roof above me. Before I fell asleep I had decided to take the path of the artist so I got up and walked to the door, despite the aged look of the door and its hinges, it made no sound upon opening. I suddenly felt a weight in my pocket. The leather bound book from earlier was there all of a sudden. It now had a paint brush stamped onto the front. I decided to look inside it and take a more thorough look. Before, I hadn't paid much attention to anything because I was more occupied with having lost my power, and looking at the surroundings. It read, Level : 1 | Beginner Artist | Stats: Vitality : 5, Mind : 10, Endurance : 5, Strength : 5, Intelligence : 5, Soul : 10, Instinct : 5, Tinkering : 5, Luck : 0 | Skills: Language. "What are these stats?" I thought. As I was contemplating this the lower part of the page started to ink itself in very quickly. I looked. It read "Stats are just numbers representing a certain area. Strength being how strong you are, vitality being how much life force you have, and soul being the strength of your soul for example. The higher the number the stronger in that area you are." "This is pretty amazing!" I thought "Not even before I lost my powers would I have been able to create a book that can read your mind and print out answers to your questions." I decided to ask another question "How do you raise your stats? Through training?" Ink started to appear again quickly and the reply read "You can raise them through training and applying stat points to the area you want." "And how do you get stat points" I asked "normally you get them through leveling up. To level up you must complete quests and defeat monsters." I had a couple more questions but I decided that could wait for later. I put the book back into my pocket and took a look around. There was another door in front of me and before the door there was a small chest. I was a bit excited to see what was inside so I went over to open it. I unlocked it and upon peering inside all I saw was a stick with a leaf on it and a piece of paper. "What the hell is this, why even bother putting this in a chest." I picked up the paper which read "Given how great you were in your past life starting with just this much should be nothing." "So I really did die, probably." I thought. "Anyway, what am I supposed to do with the stick?" I decided to ask the book but it remained dormant this time. The stick was just a small brown stick with a green leaf near the end of it. From what I remembered about art, they use tools called brushes, so I figured that maybe this was just a really bad brush. But I wasn't given any ink or paint or anything either so I would have to find something. The door in front of me opened to a nice lush looking forest area that stretched as far as I could see, which wasn't that far given I was in a forest but I figured I would explore a bit. I turned around to take a look at the building I was just in, but there was nothing there. Just more forest all around.

Not dwelling on it, I started to walk through the forest. After a while of not finding anything I sat down and started to draw in the dirt. After a couple of minutes, it was clear that I was going to need a lot of practice. I also had no clue about training my soul so I started to absorb mana instead. Normally, it would not be too hard for me to dry this area of mana in a couple of seconds and leave it barren for a year or two. But now, with a body that was unused to absorbing or using mana. It was tough to even sense the mana. If it wasn't for me being me, it would have taken a couple of days or even weeks to get a sense for recognizing the mana in the surroundings. But I was able to manage in a couple of minutes. Every living/moving creature had some mana inside their bodies, and the next thing I had to do was use that mana to take the surrounding mana. Then I would be able to use magic. Time passed quickly and when I had finally had some success, it was already night time. Climbing up the tree I was in I managed to find a semi comfortable place to sleep.

I was woken up by some rustling sounds below me. I looked over the edge of the tree and barely made out a human silhouette. While it certainly seemed human, It didn't move much and just tottered around, and one of its legs seemed to be bent in the wrong direction. There was also a kind of eerie feeling that only the undead gave off, so I figured that was probably what it was. I went back to sleep. The next time I woke up I was annoyed because of the current lack of light. Just like last time, something woke me up and I looked around again and saw some fast movement darting between the trees. I couldn't make anything out about them this time. I decided to not go to sleep again in case there was some creature that I should run from. So while staying alert, I also practiced some magic until the area started to brighten up. By the time I stopped I had already managed to cast some basic light, water, ground, and fire spells. Remembering the leather book I took it from my pocket to see if anything had changed. Surprisingly, my mind stat had gone up from 10 - 14 and my intelligence stat went up from 5 - 7. I had also gained the skills Mediocre Mana Control(level 3), Elementary Mana absorption(level 4), Elementary flame magic(level 2), Elementary ground magic(level 1), Elementary light magic(level 1), and Elementary water magic(level 1). It made sense that I would have gained so many skills if each category of magic was a skill. What I called fire magic was switched to flame magic, but that was all. The only reason I learned these was so that I could defend myself against any creatures that I might stumble upon while in the woods. There seemed to be some things here after all.

After walking for another couple of hours, my feet were getting a bit tired. After all, I was used to flying everywhere and I hadn't walked even a couple of miles in a couple of years. That paired with my current weak body made the feeling of being forced to walk for a couple of hours on end very tiring. Plus I hadn't eaten in a while so I was really hungry. As I was lamenting my current situation I heard a rustling next to me. Looking over there was a knife growing closer to my face. I dodged as fast as I could, almost being able to completely avoid it and saw that a small green creature was holding the blade. It had arms that almost reached the ground, a bloated stomach, eyes much too large for its head, a large smile filled with sharp pointy teeth, and a pair of pointy ears. "Hello there," I said. It lunged at me again. This time I was ready and taking a step back, I gave it a fireball to the face. Unhappy about this it attacked again so I repeated my previous attack. On the third try it finally fell, dead, then vanished into thin air, leaving only its blade behind. "What a bizarre creature" I muttered.

After a bit, I noticed that in the bottom left corner of my vision, I could see a glass sphere filled with a blue liquid. Well, it wasn't quite full, it was around an eighth empty. After thinking about what it could be for a while, I realized that I had used around an eighth of my mana. "First the updating book, then strange creatures, and a visual representation for how much mana I have used. What is this place?!" It truly was strange. And on the topic of the updating book, I felt it vibrating in my pocket. I grabbed it and looked inside. Some text was bright blue and seemed to be new. It said EXP and it was currently at zero out of 10, and looking up a bit my level was now at level 2! I had also gained 3 stat points and 1 skill point. According to the book, you could allocate these to either stats or skills respectively to raise the stat by one or the level of the skill by one. I decided to hold off on using the skill point but I put all three stat points into soul. Afterwards, I felt more… grounded.