Minute Mage: A Time-Traveling LitRPG

Chapter 33: Aftermath

We had killed the Infernal, but now I was pinned underneath it, the beast’s giant body completely smothering me. I pushed up against it, trying to lift the Demon up so I could get out, but the damned thing was too heavy.

“Erani!” I yelled. “Help me get out!”

I heard a muffled response, and after a few seconds of waiting, I felt her struggling to lift it. I pushed with her, and, with our strengths combined, we managed to get the corpse up for long enough that I could slide away. The corpse crashed to the ground the moment we let go.

I got to my feet, breathing heavily from the fight, and immediately noticed something different about the way I could move. My muscles felt more limber, like I had a wider range of motion, and I felt more aware of my surroundings. Then, I remembered the Level up I had gotten, and how Recursive Growth had activated, giving me an extra point of Dexterity. I wasn’t used to such a feeling, having only ever raised Endurance, Conjuration, and Intelligence from Levels. Sure, I’d gotten my 10 base Stats back when I was Unclassed – everyone got 1 in each of their Strength, Endurance, and Dexterity every two years until they turned twenty – but it felt very different when there wasn’t a seven-hundred-day buildup to the Stat increase.

I looked down at my body, but all I saw were my completely ruined clothes. Dirt, mud, and blood – both my red blood and the Infernal’s blue goop – coated them.

“Damn it, these were new,” I muttered to myself.

Erani snorted at my comment, but then suddenly looked worried. “I, listen, I’m really sorry.”

“What? No, I’m not actually upset about the clothes,” I laughed.

“No, I mean, I was the one that needed to take a break, and I was the one that fell asleep. It’s my fault we got caught.”

“Oh. I mean, you didn’t know they would find us. We took a risk, and got unlucky. It happens. The wilderness life takes some getting used to, anyway, so it’s not like I don’t understand needing to sit down for a bit.” I looked around and found a ledge to the trench that wasn’t as steep as the others, and began to crawl my way up. “C’mon. We got pretty far away from those other Infernals, so I don’t think they heard us, but they’ll probably get suspicious once they realize this one isn’t coming back. We need to get out of here.”

“Uh, yeah. Okay.” Erani began climbing up behind me.

Once we got to the top of the miniature ravine, we immediately left the area of the fight. “We just need to get away from the roads for a while,” I said, “at least until my Health isn’t so low.”

“Oh, what are you at?”

“29.”

“Oh my gods, you’re almost dead,” her eyes widened. She immediately rushed over and began checking my bruises and cuts. I felt a sharp pain when she poked at my chest. “Where’s the worst of it?”

“Right there,” I winced, “Ribs. System said they’re fractured.”

“Oh!” She immediately drew her hand back, “I’m sorry!”

“Stop apologizing so much,” I laughed, but the chuckles quickly turned into a pained groan.

“We need to get you rest,” she said worriedly.

“I am not resting after what happened last time,” I smiled. “Besides, we need to find water. We should stay away from roads for a while, so this’ll be a good time to do it. Waterskin’s still more than half full, but our supply wouldn’t last forever. We should keep moving until we get to a river. Then we can rest and–”

While I spoke, I tripped over a rock, failing to catch myself and tumbling to the ground.

You have agitated an open wound. 3 damage.

Your Health is 26.

I gasped and clenched my fist tightly as my ribs screamed at me. Breathing heavily, I struggled back to my feet. I’d gotten an additional point of Dexterity from my Level up, and I certainly felt better for it, but it obviously wasn’t enough to help out much if I fell. It was only one point, after all.

“Yep, that dealt damage,” I groaned.

“You really need to rest,” Erani said, helping me up.

“Fine. But not here. We have to get out of danger first.”

After another hour of agonizing walking, once we were deep into the forest, I felt like we were safe enough to sit down. Or, rather, to collapse onto the ground, as that’s what I did the second we stopped.

“Alright, I’m gonna be out for a few,” I said, breathing heavily. “I gotta manage a Level up.”

“Oh, you gained a Level?”

“Yeah. Spell Choice. I’ll let you know what I get.”

Clearing my mind was difficult, considering the pain I was in, but eventually it died down and I was able to enter a mindset where I could manage my Level up.

To start with, I looked at my Spell Choice options.

Choose one Spell to learn:

Ray of Frost

School: Cold, Curse

Type: Activated

Cost: 20 Mana

—

Shoots a beam of icy energy from your hands, traveling up to 25 paces and dealing up to 40 damage, depending on where it hits, on a direct collision with a being. Upon being hit, targets are cursed with frostbite for 5 seconds. While they are frostbitten, their Dexterity score is lowered by 5.

Intelligence information:

If you choose this option, your next Spell options will be:

Betrothed of Fire

Spiritual Guardian

Gravity Well

Bioshift

School: Alteration, Curse

Type: Activated

Cost: 80 Mana

—

Choose up to two beings within 3 paces of you (can include yourself). You may have those beings get either +10 or -10 to Strength, Endurance, or Dexterity for 30 seconds.

Intelligence information:

If you choose this option, your next Spell options will be:

Growth Spiral

Neoform

Battle Mastery

Bonfire of the Damned

School: Demonic, Fire

Type: Activated

Cost: 140 Mana, 25% of your maximum Health (45 Health)

—

Blasts out a fiery wave in a 20 pace radius around you, damaging all other beings equal to 25% of the Health you are missing from your maximum.

This Spell also knocks beings back with force proportional to the damage dealt.

Intelligence information:

If you choose this option, your next Spell options will be:

Black Sun’s Zenith

Tarfire

Geosurge

Once again, it seemed like the three options offered to me would push me toward three different styles of fighting. Ray of Frost would help fight at more of a range, giving me a more significant source of damage than Crippling Chill that would work from far away, Bioshift would help me fight more up close, allowing me to target my enemy’s weaknesses while simultaneously making me more capable in hand-to-hand combat, and Bonfire of the Damned seemed to support a more Endurance-focused fighting style, taking damage and then dishing it back out to my enemies.

While Bonfire of the Damned certainly seemed flashy and powerful in the right person’s hands, it didn’t seem like it would work for me. I didn’t have much Health to be spending on a Spell like that, and with my low maximum, it wouldn’t be dealing much damage, anyway. The idea of damaging all enemies in a large radius seemed useful, but not enough to justify the downsides.

Which left Ray of Frost and Bioshift. Truthfully, I’d be happy to receive either of them. While I had been running out of Mana during the fight with the Anacaps – trying to keep Crippling Chill active on both monsters at the same time was very straining on my reserves – when I was facing off against the lone Infernal, I noticed that I finished the battle with hundreds of Mana to spare. And it made sense. Crippling Chill could only be cast once every fifteen seconds, and Noxious Grasp was limited to only when I was touching my target. So getting either of these would provide me with another Spell to sink my Mana into for added power.

Ray of Frost was a tempting addition to my arsenal. While Crippling Chill was a good option to have at a range, it still didn’t do much damage. So, with the addition of Ray of Frost, I’d finally be able to attack my enemies without making physical contact with them. Of course, Noxious Grasp still remained the most Mana-efficient way to damage things, but having the ability to stay back would be helpful. I remembered back in the trench with the Infernal. Having something like this that could allow me to fight back against the monster while still running away from it – that would’ve been incredibly valuable. Not to mention, it also lowered the target’s Dexterity, which would stack with Crippling Chill for an even more dramatic decrease.

Bioshift, on the other hand, went in the opposite direction, focusing on my up-close combat potential. The range on the Spell was so close that it may as well have been contact only, like Noxious Grasp. As for its effect, it would let me choose two different beings, and make them both either stronger or weaker, essentially. I felt like the main use for me would be to make myself stronger and an enemy weaker simultaneously, in order to maximize the gap in the particular Stat that I chose.

One thing to note was that I wasn’t sure whether the Spell would be able to stack with itself or not. If I cast it twice in succession, would it give the chosen Stat +20?

“Erani,” I said, making an effort to keep my eyes closed and stay in my meditative state while speaking to her. I read the description of the Spell to her – and the rest of the Spells, too, while I was at it – and asked her whether it would stack with itself.

“Oh,” she responded once I was done, “yeah, it would. You can tell because it doesn’t specify a status condition. Ray of Frost, for example, says that the target is ‘cursed with frostbite,’ right? So that means that, if you hit them with it again, it’ll just refresh the curse back up to 5 seconds. But Bioshift doesn’t say anything like that. It just says that their Stats are directly changed. That means that each individual change is tracked separately, rather than all of them falling under a single modifier like Ray of Frost’s frostbite.”

“Huh. I’ve never even heard of that distinction before. I didn’t know there was a difference”

“Yeah, that’s the type of stuff you learn when you have a researcher for a… sister.” I could hear the pain in her voice once the topic of her sister got brought up. “A-anyway, which one do you think you’re gonna pick? Ray of Frost is actually offered to us Sorcerers, too, at Level 10, so it’ll be offered to me not long from now.”

“Right, I think I remember you mentioning Ray of Frost. If I picked that, would you still pick it for your Level 10 choice?”

“Oh, I-I don’t know – you can’t just drop that question on me like that,” she laughed. “I couldn’t tell you what I’m going to pick even if this whole Demon thing wasn’t a factor. I mean, Ray of Frost is certainly useful – and its Upgrades are powerful, too – but does that make up for the redundancy? Should I even care about redundancy? What if we get separated, what happens then? And what about after we’re done with the Demons? I don’t want to cripple my future by picking the wrong Spell here. But what if–”

“Okay, okay,” I cut her off, chuckling. “I now realize I made a mistake in asking that question. How about, what would you advise I take?”

“Um, okay. So, for now, at least, we need to figure out how to work as a team. And the fact that you have to protect me in battle, when you’re a Magic-Type Classer yourself, doesn’t work that well. Just in general, forcing yourself to fight up-close is going to end badly. Just look at yourself,” she gestured to my chest. As if on command, my fractured ribs ached. “Giving yourself some options to put some range between you and your enemies would probably be useful. So, in that aspect, Ray of Frost would be best.”

“Okay, so I’ll–”

“That said, you could also go a more specialized route, taking Bioshift and transitioning into a more melee-focused front-liner. You’d probably need to start putting Stat Points into Endurance if you did that, at the very least.”

I hummed. “Yeah, it feels like those are my two main options. There’s another aspect to this, too, though.” I went ahead and explained my Trailblazer Title to Erani, and told her the names of the Spells that would be offered to me in the future depending on the Spell that I picked here. “Do you recognize any of those? It could help us choose if you know what any of them do.”

“Huh. I recognize Battle Mastery – that’s a Spell that Wizards get at their mid-Levels. It makes another being you’re touching deal extra damage for a few seconds, essentially. You can’t target yourself with it, though. The rest I don’t know about.”

“Oh, so Battle Mastery would be useless for me, then.”

“Yeah. One thing to remember when you’re in the undocumented territory of a Class – which I guess is everything, for yours – is that the System likes to offer Spells that are similar to the Spells you’ve chosen in the past. It essentially guides you into ‘builds’ – things like supporting others, melee fighting, or whatever else. So, if you take Bioshift here, the System might start offering a lot of Spells in the future that focus on making other people stronger, since that’s one of the uses of Bioshift.”

“Oh,” that made Bioshift much less attractive in my mind. I had a very specific use for it in mind, but it really seemed to have a wide variety of uses, many of which would be to make others stronger, while doing nothing for myself. If that was the part of the Spell the System focused on – which it seemed it might, judging from the fact Battle Mastery would be offered next – I could end up forced to take Spells that could only make others stronger. And in my current situation, that was useless. “I think that cements my choice, then. I was already leaning toward Ray of Frost, but I’d rather be offered Spells that focus on dealing damage.”

You have learned the Spell Ray of Frost.

Your next Spell options will be:

Betrothed of Fire

Spiritual Guardian

Gravity Well

After that, it was time to assign my three Stat Points. Like usual, I wanted to put them into Conjuration, here. With the newly-added Mana-sink of Ray of Frost, it was suddenly much easier to convert Mana directly into damage against an enemy, so getting more of that was always useful. And, as always, I wanted to be able to gather as much Spell XP as quickly as possible. And Conjuration was the best way to do that.

You have used 3 Stat Points to increase Conjuration.

Your Conjuration value is now 35.

Name:

Arlan Nota

Age:

20

Strength:

10

Class:

Minute Mage

Level:

6

Endurance:

18

Class Type:

Magic

XP:

37/350

Dexterity:

11

Health:

31/180

Health/Minute:

0.066

Conjuration:

35

Stamina:

53/85

Stamina/Minute:

0.558

Intelligence:

6

Mana:

350/380

Mana/Minute:

7.2

Spells:

Talents:

Titles:

Ray of Frost - XP 0/10

Recursive Growth

Trailblazer

Crippling Chill 3 - XP 1/20

Time Loop 6

Noxious Grasp 9 - XP 54/355

I opened my eyes and left the meditative state. My Soft Cap had increased up to Rank 4 when I Leveled up, which meant that Crippling Chill and Ray of Frost could both Rank up with minimal practice.

“I’m gonna test out my new Spell,” I said to Erani, who was sitting across from me in the small clearing we were taking a break in.

I found a tree that looked far enough away, held out my hand like I’d seen Erani do in the past, and closed my eyes, letting my Mana be guided into a new, unfamiliar pattern within my mind. After a few seconds, once everything had fallen into place, I felt a cool energy gather within my palm, and I expelled it. I opened my eyes to see a bright blue beam of icy energy shoot through the wilderness, colliding with the tree and covering the impact zone with frost. The tree shook slightly from the hit, and I could see pieces of bark flake off.

Threshold reached. Ray of Frost XP has reached 10.

Ray of Frost Rank has increased to 1.

Due to Ray of Frost Rank reaching 1, it has undergone the following changes:

Mana Cost: From 20 to 20.5

Damage: From 40 to 42

Dexterity Debuff: From 5 to 5.25

I closed my eyes and cast again, this time a bit faster as I got used to the pattern of Mana. The tree shook again. I repeated this over and over until the Spell got up to Rank 4.

Threshold reached. Ray of Frost XP has reached 11.

Ray of Frost Rank has increased to 2.

Due to Ray of Frost Rank reaching 2, it has undergone the following changes:

Mana Cost: From 20.5 to 21

Damage: From 42 to 44.1

Dexterity Debuff: From 5.25 to 5.51

Threshold reached. Ray of Frost XP has reached 14.

Ray of Frost Rank has increased to 3.

Due to Ray of Frost Rank reaching 3, it has undergone the following changes:

Mana Cost: From 21 to 21.5

Damage: From 44.1 to 46.3

Dexterity Debuff: From 5.51 to 5.79

Threshold reached. Ray of Frost XP has reached 20.

Ray of Frost Rank has increased to 4.

Due to Ray of Frost Rank reaching 4, it has undergone the following changes:

Mana Cost: From 21.5 to 22

Damage: From 46.3 to 48.6

Dexterity Debuff: From 5.79 to 6.08

Due to Ray of Frost Rank increasing to Rank 4, Ray of Frost has reached a Soft Cap.

Spell XP gain for Ray of Frost is 50 times slower until your Level increases past the Soft Cap.

Increase your Level to 8 to increase your Soft Cap.

Then, after that, I cast Crippling Chill, pushing my Mana through the familiar patterns of the Spell.

Threshold reached. Crippling Chill XP has reached 20.

Crippling Chill Rank has increased to 4.

Due to Crippling Chill Rank reaching 4, it has undergone the following changes:

Mana Cost: From 48.5 to 49.7

Health Drain: From 5.79 to 6.08

Stamina Drain: From 4.63 to 4.86

Dexterity Debuff: From 11.6 to 12.2

Due to Crippling Chill Rank increasing to Rank 4, Crippling Chill has reached a Soft Cap.

Spell XP gain for Crippling Chill is 50 times slower until your Level increases past the Soft Cap.

Increase your Level to 8 to increase your Soft Cap.

With that, all of my Spells had reached the Soft Cap. My Mana had gone down quite a bit from all the casting, now at 176/380, but it was nothing that half an hour of waiting couldn’t fix. I got up to my feet, my chest still hurting, but the pain offset by the sense of progress in my heart. I felt a lot more capable of handling fights like the one with the Infernal.

“Alright,” I said to Erani, “rest’s over. Let’s go.”