Chương 6: Forest Adventure

By midday, Ivan had killed three more monsters. Last night he had actively avoided monsters but after this fight, he didn't bother. He felt a little more confident than before. No, it was better to look for fights anyway. First was a Thornback Lizard (Level 8) that ambushed him from a tree. He'd seen it coming thanks to [Mana Sense] picking up its presence and finished it with [Ice Spike] through the eye. Two Dire Rabbits (Level 5) that attacked in a pair. [Fireball] for one, [Lightning Bolt] for the other.

Overkill, but he'd panicked. Once, Ivan's [Mana Sense] brushed against something heavy and sludge‑thick in a ravine. It was a Slime, sprawling across a deadfall like spilled tar. Slimes were utility monsters in cities, but they weren't always small and cute. You kept them chained under latrines and butcheries, let them eat what nobody wanted to think about, and they'd grow monstrous and powerful. Slavers liked them for the same reason since they were cheap waste-disposal that didn't ask questions.

Every kill brought experience, levels, and stat improvements he could feel taking hold in his body. [Human (F) has reached Level 4.] [Inscriber of Principles has reached Level 3.] His Strength ticked up from G+ to F-, and his Vitality from F+ to E-. The changes looked small, but after years without growth, they felt ridiculous. His body no longer seemed quite so fragile. But the real discovery came when he tried to loot the Thornback Lizard.

The corpse shimmered and dissolved, leaving behind a small pile of items. Three silver coins, a chunk of scaled hide, meat jerky, and a small vial of green liquid. [Lesser Stamina Potion]. Ivan picked it up. It'd been a long time since he'd seen monsters drop loot. He'd missed it… somewhat. He focused on his inventory and willed the potion into it. The vial vanished from his hand, and a new icon appeared in his vision. [Inventory: 18/50] Inventory was such a cheat in the wild.

It meant he could store whatever he scavenged. Food, water, and weapons if he found any. With this meat jerky, he wouldn't have to try cooking food. He could just focus on hunting. Ivan put everything in his inventory and continued walking.

The wolves died poorly. Ivan crouched behind a moss-slick boulder, watching three Razorback Wolves circle a clearing like they owned it. Well, this was a forest so they probably did. The alpha was a scarred brute with a ridge of bone spikes running down its spine, Level 15. The other two flanked it, smaller but no less dangerous. He'd been tracking them for an hour.

His boots were soaked through from wading across a stream, his fingers were numb from the cold, and his stomach growled loud enough that he worried the wolves might hear it. He needed this for some possible food drop. Three kills meant three levels, maybe four if the System was feeling generous. And I need every scrap of power I can scrape together. Ivan flexed his fingers and began sketching the spell circuit in his mind. [Lightning Bolt] was his go-to now.

Fast, reliable, and the geometry was burned into his memory after ten years of copying it onto scrolls. But he'd been tinkering with it over the last few days, streamlining the mana flow, cutting out redundant nodes. The result was a sharper and faster variant of the same spell. He drew his hand back, mana coiling between his fingers like a living thing. The circuit snapped into place in his mind, and he pushed. The bolt arced forward like a whip crack.

It caught the alpha mid-stride, slamming into its hind leg with a sound like thunder splitting wood. The wolf yelped and went down hard, its leg spasming as electricity coursed through muscle and bone. The smell of burnt fur hit Ivan's nose immediately. The other two wolves spun toward him, snarling. Ivan threw himself sideways as the first one lunged. Claws scraped against stone where his head had been a second earlier. His Agility was still garbage, but his timing was improving.

He'd learned to read the tells, the way their muscles bunched before a leap, and the flick of their ears when they locked onto a target. Memories from a decade ago helped. The second wolf came in low, jaws snapping for his ankle. Ivan drew the pattern for [Minor Shield] in the air, fast and sloppy. A translucent disc of force materialized just in time to catch the wolf's teeth. The barrier cracked on impact but held. Good enough.

He shoved the shield forward, throwing the wolf off-balance, and traced a new circuit with his other hand. [Fireball]. The geometry was more complex than [Lightning Bolt] for some reason, with overlapping nodes for combustion and projection, but he'd copied it a thousand times. His fingers moved on instinct. His hands were shaking from adrenaline and mana depletion. He pulled up his status and checked the damage. [Mana: 212/440] Still got enough to go.

The spell ignited in his palm, a roiling sphere of orange flame the size of a melon. Ivan aimed for the wolf's face and let it fly. The fireball hit point-blank. The wolf's head exploded. The superheated air inside its skull expanded faster than bone could contain. Its head burst with a wet, meaty pop that sprayed gore across the clearing. The body collapsed, steam rising from the charred stump of its neck. The smell was worse than burnt fur.

It was cooked meat and scorched viscera, the kind of stench that clung to the back of your throat. Ivan gagged but didn't stop moving. The first wolf was still down, twitching from the lightning. He drew another [Fireball], smaller this time to save mana, and lobbed it at the crippled alpha. The explosion caught it mid-snarl. Flames engulfed its torso, and it thrashed for a few seconds before going still. The last wolf tried to limp away through the brush.

Ivan snapped a quick [Lightning Bolt] after it, and it dropped before reaching the trees. Notifications flooded his vision. [You have slain Razorback Wolf - Level 14] [You have slain Razorback Wolf - Level 12] [You have slain Razorback Wolf - Level 15] [Human (F) has leveled up!] [Human (F) has reached Level 9.] [Inscriber of Principles has leveled up!] Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. [Inscriber of Principles has reached Level 7.] Ivan leaned against the boulder, breathing hard. The Level-Ups helped his reserves replenish, so the tiredness vanished in no time. It'd have been troublesome if there were a few more wolves. That was nearly three hundred mana gone in under a minute. Too expensive. Can I shorten the cost even further? The [Fireball] circuit had at least five redundant nodes he could trim, and the combustion angle was inefficient. If he could tighten the geometry, he might drop the cost to sixty per cast.

Something to work on later. For now, he had corpses to loot. Not every corpse dissolved into neat System loot. Sometimes the System gave drops, and sometimes you still had to cut out anything worth selling. Ivan approached the nearest wolf and drew a small knife from his inventory. The blade was dull and chipped, scavenged from a dead bandit he'd stumbled across two days ago, but it was better than nothing. He started sawing at the wolf's claws, prying them free one by one.

They were tough as iron and fetched decent coin from alchemists. The pelts were ruined, too scorched to sell, but the claws were salvageable. He was halfway through the second wolf when he heard it. Laughter. Ivan froze. Human voices. Distant, but getting closer. His heart lurched into his throat. Dammit, who are those now? He dropped the knife and crouched low behind the wolf's corpse. His mind raced. Bandits? Adventurers? Sky Reach patrols? None of those options were good. He needed to disappear. Fast.

Ivan reached for a spell he'd been experimenting with over the last few nights. It was [Refraction Veil]. Not true invisibility, that required understanding light principles far beyond his current knowledge, but it bent the air around him like a heat shimmer. Against someone with low Perception, it worked. Against a Mage with [Mana Sight]? He was fucked. Ivan traced the circuit in his mind, feeding mana into the lattice. The spell formed around him, a faint distortion in the air, and his mana plummeted.

[Mana: 460/530] Seventy points. Too damn expensive. The circuit had too many redundant nodes, he noticed. He'd tried a radial array, but it created overlap issues. A hexagonal lattice might work better, simpler geometry with fewer mana leaks. Note to self: test that tonight. Assuming I survive. The voices grew louder. Four figures stepped into the clearing wearing Sky Reach armor. Ivan's stomach dropped. He activated [Inspect] on instinct.

Their levels snapped into focus, and only then did he remember that high-level people could feel an Inspection. Stupid. [Human, Level 76] [Human, Level 72] [Human, Level 70] [Human, Level 68] Phew. Not Victor's elite guard. Those bastards were all Level 100 and above, but these four still outclassed him. The likely captain was Level 76 and wore B-rank enchanted armor that could probably shrug off a [Fireball]. One swing from the bastard sword at his hip would cut Ivan in half. They were talking, casual and relaxed.

"Told you we'd find tracks out here," a short, muscular man said in a rough accent.

"Bet you five silver it's a Razorback den."

"You already owe me ten," the woman said without looking at him. Her eyes kept moving over the treeline. A [Scout].

"And you're not paying that either." The captain chuckled.

"If we find a den, I'll let you keep the pelts. That fair?"

"I don't want your charity, Garrett. I–" The woman stopped mid-sentence. She crouched beside the nearest wolf corpse. Her fingers stopped on one of the scorch marks, and she looked up.

"What's up, Lysa?"

"Fresh. Minutes old." The group went silent. Captain Garrett's hand moved to his sword. Ivan's pulse hammered in his ears. He pressed himself flat against the ground, barely breathing. The [Refraction Veil] shimmered around him, but it wasn't perfect. Shit, shit, shit! If anyone looked directly at him, they'd see the distortion.

"Everyone be alert, the attacker is probably nearby," Lysa said and her eyes began to glow faintly green. That's when [Principle Interference] activated. [External Skill Detected: Tracking Sense] [Source: Lysa - Level 72] Ivan felt it immediately. A cold, invasive pressure brushing against his soul, like fingers rifling through his pockets. The Skill was locked onto the mana residue from his spells, tracing the signature back to its source. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. [Principle Interference] shifted.

A new interface erupted in his vision, overlaying the world in pale blue wireframes. He could see the Skill now, its structure laid bare. It was a simple tracking algorithm, designed to follow mana trails and report the target's location, level, and threat assessment. Ivan couldn't block it. The Skill was already locked on. But… he could edit it. His mind raced through the options. The interface was clunky, like trying to navigate a badly-designed spreadsheet, but the principles were there.

He focused on the output variables and started rewriting. Detected Target: Human (F) - Level 1 Direction: West (fleeing) Threat Level: Negligible The edit felt like shoving a boulder uphill. His head throbbed, and sweat dripped down his temple. He simply directed the Skill to the trail that he'd come through, as in, backwards. The data shifted, the false information overwriting the truth. It worked. Lysa frowned, her glowing eyes dimming.

"Got something. Low-level Human. Heading west, fast. Probably a refugee from one of the outer villages." Garrett snorted.

"Low-level? Out here? Impressive that he survived." The tall blond man who'd been quiet until now rested a hand on his sword.

"Should we pursue? The sweep's done. I could use the exercise." Garrett shook his head.

"Not worth it. If Victor wanted every peasant dead, the outer villages wouldn't still exist. We'll finish the sweep and head back." He glanced west.

"We can take that route." They left. Heading west. Ivan didn't move. He stayed flat against the ground until the voices disappeared. His legs shook, and his hands had gone numb. The [Refraction Veil] flickered and died as his focus finally broke. [Mana: 408/530] It cost quite a bit to maintain too. Only when the voices faded completely did he allow himself to collapse. He slumped against the boulder, gasping for air. His heart was still racing, adrenaline flooding his system so hard his vision swam.

[Principle Interference] worked. Barely. Lysa's Skill had been System-assisted, which meant it had vulnerabilities. The algorithm was predictable, easy to manipulate once he saw the structure. But if they had a Mage who decided to cast a Spell, something like Scan, something built from raw mana and principles rather than pre-packaged System code, he wasn't sure he could've fooled it. Skills were packaged System functions. Spells were mana structures.

Ivan could interfere with the first much more easily than the second. I need to test the limits. Skills versus Spells. Which ones can I manipulate? Skills and Spells looked similar, but Mages retained some knowledge of how their magic worked. Skills felt more like pressing a button and trusting the System. That difference might decide what [Principle Interference] could touch. The patrol mattered more. A week from Sky Reach, Victor's people still roamed freely. Roads and settlements would get Ivan caught.

I need another Champion between me and Victor. Territory protected by another Primordial-Blessed might blunt his reach. Otherwise someone with higher Perception would eventually find Ivan, and Victor only needed that to happen once.

"Let's see what I have at hand," Ivan muttered curses under his breath and pulled out the crude map he'd sketched from memory. It was barely legible, just rough landmarks and guesswork, but it was better than nothing. West led back toward human settlements. Villages, towns and eventually, another city. East led deeper into the Thornwood Wilds. A Level 30+ monster zone marked with a skull icon on every traveler's map he'd ever seen. No sane person with a civilian class went east.

Ivan stood, brushed the dirt off his pants, and started walking east.

Three hours later, as dusk fell, Ivan found the tracks. He'd been following a game trail, keeping to the shadows, when he spotted them in the mud. At first, he thought they were just deep puddles. Then he looked closer. They were footprints. Massive footprints. Each one was the size of a wagon wheel, clawed, and reptilian. The impressions were deep, like whatever made them weighed as much as a house. The edges were still sharp, the mud freshly displaced. Ivan activated [Inspect], focusing on the tracks.

[Track Analysis: Unknown Creature - Estimated Level 50+] Ivan stared at the prints until a laugh escaped him. It sounded wrong even to him. And here I was worried about Level 30 monsters. Fuck. His hands weren't shaking anymore from the earlier encounter, his mana was recovering, but now he was standing in front of evidence that something huge and deadly lived deeper in the forest.

"Well," Ivan muttered to the empty woods.

"At least the monsters are honest about wanting to kill me." Ivan stepped across the nearest print and continued east.