Adjustment 2.5

Adj 2.4           Adj 2.6
Yawning I wake up and stretch out on my bed. I feel fuzzy underneath the comforter, like a cloud floating through the air. Smiling I open my eyes and gasp. On the wall is another message, this too carved into the wall. It reads “or else”.

Ominous, but I already decided to treat this as real life. I will not worry about the consequences of something I’m planning to avoid. Equipping my armor I head out of my room. I give a quick greeting to Ivan as I leave The Lucky Night inn and head off to Titania’s forge.

“Hail hunter! Did you gather the materials so quickly?”

Shaking my head I decline to answer her. “I just need some basic repair work on the blade. It took some acid and I want to make sure it stays in working condition.”

“So you fought some Antlions I take it. Did you manage to kill any without hitting the acid sack?”

“A few…” I don’t quite see what the point is of that question is, but I’ll humor her.

“Good, then you could probably manage it… Someone recently discovered that if you take the acid pouch of an Antlion and dry it into a powder , you can use it as a catalyst during forging to create acid resistant iron.” She pauses. “It would be a big help to the village if we could get enough to forge some axes and picks for the lumberjacks and miners. I might even be willing to rework that iron if yours.”

Intrigued I ask her to go on.

“Well we’d need at least 50 sacks to make that a deal though.”

Coughing I almost refuse, but what kind of message would that send if I left the villagers to their own devices so soon after resolving to treat this as real.

“I… I can manage that.”

“Thanks I thought you would be able to! Leave your spear and I’ll have it fixed up by the time you’re ready to leave.”

I eat breakfast at Ivans and then head towards Mira’s general store. I don’t see anyone inside so I take some time to really scan the available books. At the very end of the last table of books is what I was looking for. A tome titled “The Essence of Magic”. By reading the book you can gain the ability to sense mana. That’s just a short jump away from being able to use magic itself. I got really lucky that I chanced upon teleport without having to learn the mana
manipulation skill first.

Book in hand I approach the register. No one seems to be in here until I notice a soft snoring coming from nearby. Looking down I see Mara curled up on the floor hugging her knees, right behind her counter.

I call out to her and she bolts upright. “Yes what do you want son—-ny.” She is interrupted by a massive yawn.

“I want to purchase this book here.”

A week quickly passes as I attempt to regain some measure of control over the mana surrounding me. It’s a lot harder than I remember without the [Skills] helping.

So far I can fling slightly moist air and dust at monsters as they savagely rip me to shreds.

I had picked up the skill [mana sight]
after reading the newly purchased book. But no matter how I tried I couldn’t get mana to move at anything beyond a glacial pace.

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