We hide the bodies of the goblins we just ambushed and move further down the path, setting up another ambush. Two more groups of four goblins come by as we wait a few more hours, and both are killed in the same way, quickly and quietly.
Daniel takes out the archer with his ranged shot, and I drop onto the others, stabbing deep into the distracted goblins picking up the metal. On the last ambush, I have to scramble to kill a third goblin as it dodges Daniel's hammer, but I’m able to dispatch it easily enough. I level up to level eleven after the third ambush, as the sun sets.
Daniel climbs down from the tree he’s in, picks up his hammer, and turns to face me. “That went well and was fun, but we should stop for the night. I’m hungry and almost out of mana.”
I sheathe my knife and sword, climbing back into the tree for my bag. From the branches I say, “I agree. Let’s find a good tree to sleep in. We can take watches throughout the night.”
Both of us, tired and drained of mana, walk for another thirty minutes until Daniel finds a tree that he thinks is defensible. I think it looks just like every other tree in this forest, but I figure the military man knows more about this than me. We climb up into the dense canopy and tie our bags to branches after getting out some food, water, and sleeping rolls. We eat in silence, and once Daniel finishes his meal, he says he will take the first watch so I can get some sleep. I fall asleep fairly quickly, tired from all the marching and fighting.
A small piece of metal hits my boot and falls to the forest floor below, waking me up from my sleep. It’s pitch black out, so I flare my spatial senses and notice Daniel looking in my direction trying to see if he had woken me up or not.
“I’m up.” I whisper, untying the rope that kept me in place.
I see Daniel nod and lie back to fall asleep.
It’s just after four in the morning, according to the quest timer, meaning I slept for almost six hours. My body feels well rested despite sleeping in a tree in a dangerous forest, and the extra levels recently have really helped my mana pressure issue. Maybe having a body saturated in mana and a heart that produces too much are making me recover quicker? It's too early to tell for sure, but Merrick never seemed actually injured or tired during our time as captives, and he seems like a high level.
With a few hours until sunrise and the forest near us quiet, I start on another project I have had in mind since yesterday. I snap a small forearm-length branch from the tree and hold it like a wand, pointing it in front of me. I feed mana into [Space Control], once again creating a tunnel that connects two points in space, one in front of the stick while the other floats mid-air five feet below me. I use my store of mana, larger than ever, to keep the two points connected for longer than a moment, like I did with the rock. Maintaining the connection puts a strain on my mind, but nothing that I can’t handle.
The ends of the tunnel look like ripples in the air, blurry and hard to define to the eyes. I poke the stick into the top end slowly, afraid it might explode or collapse upon contact with physical matter. The end of the stick disappears into the distortion, and I feel it poking out of the one below me with spatial senses, appearing from midair.
It worked! I can use this to extend the range of my attacks or grab things without moving!
As I celebrate discovering another use of my skill, it levels up, and I cut it off before it drains the last of my mana stores. Both sides of the spatial tunnel collapse, snapping the stick in the middle with a small, violent implosion. I wonder what would happen if something more solid, like a limb, was in there when it collapsed?
The next four hours as the sun rises and Daniel sleeps are spent regenerating mana while pulsing my spatial perception bubble to around fifty feet every few minutes, watching and listening for anything that may approach us. The forest is still quiet as Daniel wakes up an hour after sunrise, and we both climb down from the tree after eating a breakfast of dried meats and hard cheese.
I keep looking around, expecting Merrick to pop out from every tree. “Do you think the first lesson is done? He did say it would end this morning, and now it’s morning.”
My hammer-wielding friend shakes his head, responding with, “I would throw something else at us, I think. Yesterday went too well. I doubt today will be the same.”
I find myself nodding to that, thinking about what today could bring. “As crazy as it sounds, I’m kind of excited for what’s to come. My life on Earth was so boring compared to now, so safe. I’ve never felt more fear and anxiety than I have in the last week, but I’ve also never felt more alive. Fighting with my life on the line time after time using only my own power and skills has changed me. I’m afraid when we go back to Earth my friends and family won’t recognize me. I don’t think I can give up what the [System] has given me, what it has let me become. With mana and skills I feel like I can be someone big, more than just a face in a huge crowd, you know?” I tell the man next to me, feeling some of the weight lift from my chest as I voice some of my fears.
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Daniel looks me in the eyes, a smile on his face. “Yes, I understand. Many soldiers end up feeling the same, and they are never given magic or skills like we have. And from what I’ve heard from Morah while we were searching for the bus survivors, when a new planet gets initiated, like Earth, mana slowly gets introduced. We are supposed to survive this trial planet and be the first generation of powerful people on our planet. So we might end up being heroes, like King Arthur and shit.”
My head nods up and down as I consider that last bit. “That’s concerning. What if the guy who set the bus on fire gets really strong? Also, if Earth is getting mana, it’s probably also getting monsters, so we might not even go back to the same Earth. It depends on if mana is introduced to the planet when we are abducted or when we get sent back.”
“That does sound like a huge pain in the ass. I hope that big-ass bear ate him. Or he ran into a horde of undead or something.”
“Anyway, what should we do now? Just pick a direction and walk?”
That’s exactly what we do. Daniel leads us in roughly the direction we walked for most of yesterday as I keep up my spatial senses from the rear, watching our surroundings for anything unusual. After around a half hour of walking, we hear the sound of a tree branch snapping in front of us.
We both stop and listen, readying our weapons. Daniel is the first to see it.
“It's a single goblin, but it’s undead. And it came from the wrong direction to be one of the ones we killed.” He says as he walks up to it, quickly killing it with a single blow to the head.
Another two minutes of walking later, another undead goblin approaches us, this time from the left side. I quickly dispatch it with my sword, but more approach, this time from several directions at once.
“Uh, should we start running now?” I ask, noticing more approaching from all around my spatial bubble range.
Daniel smashes the head of one goblin, answering, “Yes! I don’t want to be stuck in a tree, surrounded by undead!” He takes off in the gap he made, using his hammer to clear any of the small trees in our way.
I follow close behind, killing any undead that get too close, but they keep appearing from every direction. The horde grabs at us as we pass by, often tripping one of us, forcing the other to quickly come to the rescue. And although the goblins are slow and the forest is dense, there are still too many to flee from unharmed. The undead have all lost their crude weapons, but they still have the sharp claws and teeth that all goblins come standard with.
Both of us are on the run from the horde for nearly an hour before we manage to get ahead of the mass and decide to stop. I choose not to use mana boosting on my body in an attempt to preserve as much mana as possible for later. We stand in a small clearing, panting hard and soaked in sweat. Small scratches and scrapes cover every exposed part of our bodies, my coat protecting me from the worst of it. The clearing is around a hundred feet to the other side, and right where we entered, a few of the larger trees have been knocked down, letting in more light.
“We should fight now that we’re ahead of them and have open space. I think they can track us.” I manage between breaths.
Daniel leans forward, resting his hands on his knees while his eyes search the clearing. “We can use those fallen trees to trip them up and kill them once they fall. Help me line them up into a row.”
I do as asked, burning mana to get the strength needed to move them faster. I know if I tried to move this much weight back on Earth, I would break something, but with mana, it only hurts really bad. We finish in record time. Four logs lay lined up end to end, stretching across most of the clearing, perpendicular to the direction of the incoming horde.
“How many do you think there were? I had already killed at least two dozen on the way here.” I ask, readying myself for the upcoming fight.
“At least a hundred, maybe more. The good news is they shouldn’t all come at the same time.” Daniel says as the first of the horde enters the clearing.
Just as we predicted, the undead goblins walk straight into the logs, falling over onto their faces. Most goblins enter the clearing in small groups every dozen or so seconds, around seven to ten at a time. A goblin would fall in front of me, and I would stab it in the back of the neck, put my left boot on its head, and pull my sword back out. Rinse and repeat. The bodies are all in various stages of decomposition, but over half of them seem fresh and have wounds like parts of them just vanished. Or more likely, died from void.
By the time the last undead gets its head crushed by Daniel’s hammer, both of us are drenched in sweat, watching the forest for any more signs of undead. That’s when our master finally decides to grace us with his presence.
“Nothing like a morning run and workout to get the blood flowing for a productive day, right?” Merrick says as he walks into the clearing, coming from the same direction as the horde.
“That was just the start of today’s training, wasn’t it?” I ask as I clean my sword off on the grass, panting.
“Yup! And you two did well. Again. I’m impressed with the ambushes you did yesterday. It was all clean work, but don’t let it get to your head. Undead and goblins are literally the weakest monsters in this forest, albeit they are numerous.” Merrick tells us as he looks over his two tired disciples. “Take a few minutes to rest. You guys killed the whole horde, and I didn't lead anything else here, so it should be safe.”
I was wondering how they kept up with us. How do you lead the undead? He was probably just using himself as bait or something equally ridiculous. Well, at least it was a productive morning.
[You have slain multiple creatures]
[Level 1 undead forest goblin]
[Level 1 undead forest goblin]
[Level 2 undead forest goblin]
…
[Level 1 undead forest goblin]
[Level 1 undead forest goblin]
[You have leveled up to level 13]