Minute Mage: A Time-Traveling LitRPG Progression Fantasy

Chapter 34: Life-Giving Water

We continued on our journey after the brief break, staying away from roads as we traveled in a roundabout way to the two monster territories.

While we traveled, we also kept alert for signs of water. We still had one or two days’ worth in our waterskins, but we’d run out eventually, and finding a renewable source like a river would help immensely. We also looked out for animals. We obviously had to be alert for any signs of the higher-Leveled monsters that roamed the forest, but we also needed something to eat.

As we scanned the forest for creatures, I caught the familiar gaze of something.

You have been inflicted with sickness. 12 damage. 6 Stamina drain.

Your Health is 22. Your Stamina is 41.

A Wood Wraith – one of those monsters I had fought in the past that had a poisonous gaze – was wandering through the forest and had caught my eye.

“Agh,” I stumbled back, doubling over in nausea. It wasn’t as bad as I’d experienced in the past, though; my higher Endurance Stat helped fight off the sickness.

I held out my hand and closed my eyes – both to help focus on my casting and to avoid the Wood Wraith’s glare – and began pushing Mana through the pattern I had recently learned. Once the Spell was ready, I cast, firing a beam of icy energy straight into the green monster.

You have struck Level 6 Wood Wraith for 31 damage using Ray of Frost.

You have cursed Level 6 Wood Wraith with Ray of Frost. For the next 5 seconds, its Dexterity score is lowered by 6.08.

22 Mana Cost. Your Mana is 358.

It growled in pain, and I cracked my eyes open to keep track of it, ensuring that my outstretched hand was always between my eyes and its. Its front left leg was covered in a thin layer of frost. I remembered the way the Spell was worded when it mentioned damage – it dealt up to 48 damage, based on how accurate I was. Considering it only did 31 here, I guessed a leg shot wasn’t considered to be incredibly accurate.

The Wood Wraith charged toward me, but I didn’t allow it to get close, casting Crippling Chill the second it began to move.

You have cursed Level 6 Wood Wraith with Crippling Chill. For the next 15 seconds, it loses 6.08 Health and 4.86 Stamina each second, and its Dexterity score is lowered by 12.2.

49.7 Mana Cost. Your Mana is 308.

Once both of the curses had been forced upon it, the Wood Wraith fell to the ground, unable to move. Its limbs twitched occasionally, but it was as though its four legs had been bound against its body by an invisible rope. It seemed like having so much of its Dexterity taken away had completely drained its capacity to function.

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Without ceremony, Erani held her hand out and shot an Explosive Firebolt at it, causing an explosion that blasted the monster against a tree. I got a kill notification that told me I’d gotten 21 XP.

I walked over to the monster’s corpse. Had it not surprised me, I wouldn’t have taken any damage from the encounter at all. I remembered when I was first lost in the woods, and killing one of these Wood Wraiths had been a major challenge. But now, not only had I killed it, I didn’t even need to touch it to do so.

I bent over and touched the green, semi-translucent skin of the Wood Wraith.

I turned back to Erani. “Dinner?”

“You really think we can eat this thing?”

“Well, I’m hungry enough that I could pretty much convince myself to eat anything,” I said. “Think you could cook it with Firebolt?”

“It’s really not that bad,” I tore off a bloody chunk of the desaturated green meat with my teeth.

“It is that bad,” Erani laughed, her own slab barely touched. “I don’t understand how you can stomach that.”

“Oh, my poor Erani,” I teased, “need I find you a silver fork to eat with? Or mayhaps you would find gold-coated Chimera meat to be more palatable?”

She just rolled her eyes. “I don’t think it’s that unreasonable to want my meat to have stopped bleeding before I eat it.”

“Hey, at least it’s cooked.”

“It’s charred and burnt! And the inside is still raw.”

I laughed, chewing the admittedly disgusting meat. “Honestly, I don’t think I’d be able to keep it down if I wasn’t used to this type of thing already.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot you’d pretty much already been through all of this before.” She looked around herself, the tall trees towering over us. “How’d you do it? Survive, I mean.”

“Well, it was mainly stuff like this,” I said, gesturing to the meat in my hand. “Doing hard, gross, or painful stuff, over and over, until it was a bit easier to do than before. I killed monsters and practiced my Spells, up to and past the point of what would be considered reasonable. You know me and my habits,” I said, showing off my fingers as a puff of Noxious Grasp’s fumes drifted from them. “Stuff like that kept me alive.”

Erani nodded and closed her eyes, looking serious. “It was my fault that we got caught by the Infernal. And I know you want to say I don’t need to apologize, but it’s true. Sure, it turned out fine that time, but what if next time I do something wrong, five Infernals show up to attack us? We barely fought off one. What if I have to take a break when we’re crossing through Banestinger territory, and get us killed there? What if I have too bad of a headache to cast a Firebolt that you need me to cast? I’ve been thinking about it, and I realized I’ve been thinking about this whole situation like a civilian. Like someone who’s just riding out the storm. But you’re wanting to fix it. To beat the storm. And, well, I think it’s about time I do that, too.” She held out a hand for me to shake. “I want you to train me to be better, stronger, more efficient. Beat the civilian mindset out of me. And don’t hold back.”

I squinted, a half-smirk appearing on my face in incredulity, but shrugged and took her hand, shaking it. “If you’re serious, sure. But do know that I’d say the first few days I was serious about casting practice were literally the worst days of my entire life.”

Erani blinked at that, and looked down at her hand, which was now covered in blood from the meat I’d been eating. “Y’know, actually, I might want to reconsider.”

“Too late,” I laughed. “We’re doing this. C’mon, you can train while we walk.”

As we traversed through the forest, I had Erani practice her Firebolts. Unfortunately, they weren’t like my Noxious Grasp or Crippling Chill where she could just cast it without actually having it do anything. The Spell had to shoot an Explosive Firebolt somewhere. So, she just shot them straight up, that way they would leave the effective range of 30 paces without exploding. The trees were tall enough that the Firebolts didn’t quite peek through the top of the forest, too, so as long as we were careful where she shot it, we weren’t likely to draw attention to ourselves. On my end, once my Mana had regenerated to full, I simply practiced Noxious Grasp like usual.

By the time the sun began to set, I could see a pained sweat begin to glisten Erani’s forehead. She didn’t say anything, but I could tell her headache was getting bad. That said, I didn’t tell her to stop. If she stopped every time it started to hurt and never pushed past that barrier, it would always hurt to practice casting. The only way I got to the point where the headache went away was when I kept going, even when it was agonizing.

We also went out of our way to kill any weaker monsters we saw for the XP. In total, after the hour or two that we’d been walking, my XP had risen to 71/350.

Erani shot off another Firebolt, the projectile flying off harmlessly into the air and fizzling out once it passed by the treetops. I noticed her hand visibly shaking as she finished her casting of the Spell.

“You okay?” I asked her.

“Obviously not,” she gave a pained chuckle, “but don’t worry about me. It’ll pass, right?”

“Uh, yeah. I mean, that’s what happened with me.”

“Well then, we’re just going to wait until it happens to me, too.”

“You’re really serious about this, huh?”

“Of course I am. It’s life or death.”

As we walked, she tripped over a fallen log, tumbling to the ground and groaning in disorientation. I knelt and reached down to grab her hand and help her up.

When I pulled, though, a sharp pain jolted through my chest, my fractured ribs screaming in pain. I yelled out and reflexively dropped her back down. She hit her head on the log and groaned in pain while I clutched my chest, eyes shut tight as I tried to ignore the stabbing feeling in it.

“Well,” I got out, “I guess neither of us are in very good shape right now.”

“Like two peas in a pod,” she laughed, still lying on the ground rubbing her forehead. “At least I don’t have to feel jealous of you.”

I helped her to her feet, successfully this time, and we continued walking.

Another hour passed, and we ate a ‘dinner’ of some more meat, plus some foraged plants that Erani identified as edible. She said she recognized them from the collection jobs she’d done for Alfo Arcian. The plants, uncooked and unprepared, were just as bad as the charred, bleeding meat, but I appreciated the variety.

It was beginning to get dark at this point – we could still see, but just barely. We probably should have set up camp a while ago, but we didn’t for a couple reasons. First, we didn’t have any of the camping supplies we’d brought on our journey from Ordensville to Carth, so we would need to figure out some sort of sleeping arrangement. And second, we were trying to find some source of water beforehand. I knew from experience how important it was to do so, so we were holding out hope that we might be able to find one before we slept and had to go an entire night without water.

While we were discussing this, Erani – her Mana reaching full once again – shot off an Explosive Firebolt into the air in order to practice, the same way she had been doing ever since she started training. Only, this time, instead of the Firebolt fizzling off into the air as it left its effective range, it collided with a stray branch that neither of us had seen in the dark, exploding suddenly in a blast of heat and sound.

Erani and I stumbled and crouched to the ground, surprised by the shockwave. And, soon after, we could see birds fleeing from nearby trees, scared off by the sound.

“Shit, do you think that was loud enough for any Infernals to hear?” I asked.

But Erani kept staring off into the distance, looking at something.

“What is it?” I asked her.

“The birds. They all came from over there,” she pointed.

“What? Why would they all be coming from one area?”

“Maybe they’re thirsty.”

I blinked, suddenly realizing what she meant. Animals normally gathered around drinking places, so if all of those birds were fleeing from the same area, chances were it was because it had water nearby.

We immediately headed in that direction. In no time, I could begin to hear the familiar sound of rushing water. We kept heading in that direction, and soon enough, I could see the river. The wide stream guzzled, the current crashing against rocks and flowing down a steep incline.

Once it was in view, I stopped, and stopped Erani, too. Rivers were life-giving, but they also attracted all sorts of other thirsty monsters. I wanted to be safe before rushing in.

Glancing around, I could see no immediate signs of Dire Bears or Drakes, but there was one strange thing that caught my attention. Next to the rushing water, a stump from a fallen tree had been shaved down, smoothed out, and carved to resemble a simple table. There were two rocks sitting across from each other, on either end of the ‘table,’ that seemed to act as chairs.

However, there was nobody around the area that I could see. Erani and I shared a glance.

“Hello?” I called out, trying to keep quiet enough that I wouldn’t get the attention of anything that wasn’t in the immediate vicinity.

“Is anyone there?” Erani asked as well. “We’re going to stay here for some time, and drink from the water. If you want us to leave, please tell us to do so.”

We waited for a few seconds, but there was no response. Cautiously, we both approached the river, and used it to refill our waterskins.

“Do you think it’s safe?” Erani asked me.

“I guess so. There doesn’t seem to be anyone around, at least. Where do you think we should sleep?”

But just as I asked that, two figures walked out of the forest. With their green, vine-covered skin, large, pure-white eyes, and dirt-brown hair, I immediately recognized what they were.

The two Nymphs held out their weapons toward us. One had incredibly long claws tipping its fingers, and the other held a whip that was covered in razor-sharp thorns.

One of them – the one with the claws – shouted something at us in a language I didn’t understand.

I leaned over to Erani. “What the fuck are we going to do?”