Chapter 8

  The fight of my life...

  ...

  I was pretty depressed seeing 5 giant hornets have come up for this patrol today!

  There's no way that I can defend and take down 5 at a time! I've never faced 5 of them before! This is serious! I'll have to pull off a miracle just to survive this!

  Shit...

  Right away they buzzed right at me trying to charge.

  I deflected the first one with the shield, bouncing it off entirely. Then I kicked it away (-4 damage).

  I swung the big axe harshly but clumsily since the axe is a bit too big to use well with the shield. I'm lucky that it still hit however on the second hornet!

  (-26 damage; 2nd hornet).

  Then I ran with the other 3 chasing me!

  I ran and ran but couldn't find an opening to strike back without accruing damage on myself through openings. I did bounce one off my shield, by luck. Then I managed to do it again, somehow.

  At first I was headed to the woods, but seeing another creature possibly in the woods turned me towards the edge of the cliff.

  Shit...has it come to that?

  I ran to the cliff edge where mountain has a sheer drop off near the edge of the meadow, but then whirled to stand my ground putting the shield up just in time to block a shield.

  I almost missed deflecting that blow!

  Then I had to deflect another from the fourth hornet. And then the fifth. Each hit almost knocked me over as these things are tough, and with the speed of their charge it makes them even harder to deflect! Their blows are heavy also, I almost fell off the ledge from the first one pushing me back so far (would have been instant death). Then I had to move to some rock outcroppings.

  How do I even get through this?!

  My stamina bar is dropping, but slowly. Each hit is costing me some stamina to block with the shield.

  I realized I can purposely bump them hard with the shield on a deflect, to give me more time to do reactionary hits on the next incoming hornet! So I did this twice more.

  I finally got an opening on another hornet! I hit it, and its the same damaged one before. I got in a hit (-42 combined total damage).

  But then I had to deflect with the shield for several times in a row.

  My meager skills aren't very strong yet. But they are managing to hold. And I've gotten a bit better. If I can just hold on...!

  !

  I became alarmed also when I realized that the hornets began to charge me in a formation of one after another in order to try to push me off the cliff and fall to my death!

  I grit my teeth and somehow threw the throwing knife into one of them. (-11 damage). (Lost 1 throwing knife.) With the throwing knife stuck in its abdomen its flying speed is slowed a bit. But I don't have more knives.

  But then I missed deflecting an attack with the shield (-19 damage to me).

  Shit! That hurts so bad. Current health bar now at 72.

  It took about five more minutes to find an opening to strike back after endless blocking. My hands are getting a bit chapped and sore also from trying to hang onto the shield in high impact hits from the hornets.

  I finally hit the same damaged hornet again, with a solid hit. He falls hard off the cliff, and is losing altitude, and possibly I'd hit one of his wings. If he's not dead from my hit, he'll die from the fall!

  Two can play this game! I now realized I can also strike the wings of the other hornets even as they are trying to charge at me to push me off the cliff! And if I do it right, they themselves will fall to their deaths if I can manage a solid hit to their wings! The wings are their strength! But its also their weakness!

  Yes! I can do this! My unexpected error at going to a place hard to defend will work in my favor after all!

  My stamina bar dropped to about 70 after another minute of defending. More charges by hornets.

  Then finally I saw an opening!

  Shpleeeck! I hit it hard where its wings connect with the body, and off the edge of the cliff he goes!

  "Yes!" I cried in joy. This is obviously a cheat, and its confirmed when my status screen registered a [giant hornet has been slain!] message. Dead from falling damage.

  Things got a bit easier.

  But then my health bar dropped to 52 when the hornets started to get a bit smarter with coordinated dive bombing attacks.

  I had to work hard just to not lose my footing when they also tried side snipe attacks from different directions.

  Crunch! I split one of them with the axe. (-28 damage.)

  Then I hit him again for (-37 damage).

  By the time the fight is over, I'm wheezing and trying to just breathe. My body is having a hard time just trying to stay on my feet. It was a long fight. But I did survive! I did it! I'm alive and against amazing odds!

  My health bar says 07/131.

  I'm almost dead, and so this explains why I feels o crappy. My vision blurred for a second and I almost passed out but caught myself.

  I hurriedly use the first aid skill on myself, which stabilized my body to 11/131 health. I also used creation magic to create some medicine pain killers and some bandages that I used right away. That also contained the bleeding from the cuts on my body from those giant wasps slashing at me.

  If I can only hang on until I can get enough mana to cast another [potion create] I'll be OK!

  Somehow I'm hanging on. I'm afraid to go to sleep, and think the hornet's have poisoned me.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  ...

  After the initial cliff fight with the 5 giant hornets I had barely kept my eyes open long enough to create another potion and drink it.

  I spent the rest of the day just trying to live.

  There was a skirmish with another goblin then at 5:23 PM. (I won...as you can tell because I'm still alive.)

  But how did he pass by the hornet nests? Thankfully it was only 1 goblin. But it worried me. If 1 can get past them then that means others can also. I need to also prep my defenses for monsters that are smarter; goblins aren't real smart but they are smarter than insects.

  And when I die, who is going to find my journal? I sure hope some goblin doesn't use it for toilet paper, or something awful. I really thought I was going to die today, though I tried to overcome it.

  I managed to later in the day use potion create a few times to get my health bar back up. That brought me out of the close major wounds zone. I even felt pretty good, though I wasn't even close to 100%.

  But after investigating this and walking around, I have seen the hornets killing and attacking the goblins with swarms. And in some cases I see 2 or 3 hunting goblins killing wasps, or hornets, as I watch over the edge of the meadow's elevation down into the valley trail that goes below us to the east.

  I fought 2 more hornets at 8:23 PM. (-19 damage to me). But by then my health bar had been stabilized already, so I wasn't dead.

  By now I know that without my current high mana regeneration stat level, I'd have died already. I'll continue to invest in that stat, which is perfect with my godly cheat item create skill. I'll create more potions now to get my health bar back up...

  Its now costing me -92 mana to create the minor health potion. And its giving me +14 health back to drink. This means it also takes me about an hour and a half to be able to summon one of these potions. I also have to go to bed exhausted in order to not waste mana.

  Its not really efficient. I'll have to see if I can improve that rate somehow...

  But its better than nothing. And I can still couple that with bandages and first aid, and some pain killers.

  The pain killers I made came out in the form of a pill bottle that said Maguprofin. It was a tiny white cylinder shaped pill in a small bottle that looks familiar...

  I began to get desperate now that I don't have an illusion projection guide there to help me by distracting enemies. The next three days I almost died over and over again as I tried to just XP. And its harder to watch for monsters also without help, when I have to balance that and resting also.

  But I'm hanging on still. And I'm winning the monster fights even if its only 'by the skin of my teeth'.

  I'd run into goblins more recently. The hornet patrols have increased to two per day. I've discovered a third hornet nest also. And I'd found out there's a huge giant honey bee nest that's on the sheer surface of the cliff below me also; and when I'd tricked the hornets to falling to death off that cliff, it had woken them up to patrolling this area also.

  The large honey bees are only about a foot long, but still fierce. They don't always attack me but they are interesting also. Bees are a sign of fertility and agriculture being possible. So I was happy to have them even if they aren't always peaceful. They are easier to kill than the hornets, and also mortal enemies with them.

  Bees are a different kind of creature and a prey animal, so in theory when they are aggressive its because of their neighbors. So far only about a third of the giant bees I've seen are aggressive.

  And I'd always been fascinated by bees. But still if they are a foot long that's too much for me to study right now.

  With the bees and hornets rivalry...

  I'd figured out I can play them off against each other by bringing them to each other when one starts to chase me. If they see their mortal enemy while chasing me they will immediately stop and fight each other instead. (This trick has saved my life many times, as my health bar seems to always be really low.)

  And its not easy to stay alive at night either.

  I now have a camouflaged pit that I've been sleeping in separate from the big on. This new one is about the size of a sleeping bag, and is covered with logs, and then covered with dirt, with grass sod (alive) over the top to disguise that I'm sleeping there. So you can really go right by it and not know its there, when I have the camouflaged grass cover lit over the top. (it has air hole slots that are hidden too).

  I hope I can survive there, but there's a chance some things will eventually detect me.

  Because I'd had to use mana almost exclusively for small health potions, I haven't had any chances to really do much else. And by bouncing this strategy back and forth I managed to hang on for several days in a row longer.

  But one day, after I'd lost track of time of how long I'd been here, I was relieved when there's a ping in my system, showing that I have a level up!

  Ping!

  Name; Javen

  Race; Administrator class (Censored)

  Job class; Life/Creation Wizard

  Level; 4 --> 5

  Age; NA

  Health; 31/131 --> 38/139

  Mana; 36/641 --> 38/651

  Stamina; 52/121 --> 56/126

  Health regen; +11 per day

  Mana regen; +72 --> 74 (hourly)

  Str 30

  Agi 32 --> 33

  Con 65 --> 66

  Int 101 --> 104

  Wis 102 --> 104

  App 100

  Skills; Survival, Mana Sensing, [Censored], Summoned Danger Sense Turret(human shaped), Smash, Defend, Create Item , First Aid, Meditate, Axe Mastery, Pain Resistance 1,

  Traits; Memories have been censored, Blessing of the Heavens, Mana Genes, censored skills & traits, Life Affinity, Intermediate Life Affinity, Mana Efficiency, Advanced Life Affinity, Creation Affinity, Intermediate Creation Affinity, Intermediate Creation Affinity!

  Unused stat points; 7 --> 0

  Equipment; Leather Gloves, Wizard Robes, (Unknown type?) Shield, Splitting Maul 34" Axe, Backpack, Coat, Throwing Dagger (5), Hunting Knife, Flashlight, Combat Boots

  I need to get more tools and up my game. I've steadily upgraded my gear. And I look like I've got the right tools now. But from this point onward I need to work on something else to help me besides what I'm carrying.

  Its true that I've slowly leveled up, but its a form of bloody trying to avoid falling into the pit while hanging half in it metaphorically speaking.

  I need to somehow create a game changer or I'm going to die.

  Somehow I need to up my defense and attack power...

  I had also found out a couple days ago that the system won't let me bring guns to this world. This was part of why I'd had set backs, because I needed to think of another way around this when I had thought that only guns would work. I'd had a few item create spell fails trying to bring in guns and explosives. It didn't refund me the mana on those failures.

  But besides guns what else is there that will work?

  Crossbows and normal bows take mentorship and lots of time to learn how to shoot. Or skill books to teach you their secrets but even then you need a lot of time training to shoot. I don't have hundreds of hours to practice before the next attack, and a moving target like a giant wasp isn't going to be as easy to hit as say a deer or a bear would be. Although I don't want to fight any bears.

  You can't just get the skill over night. And it may take years to figure them out with bows and the like...which time should instead be used to working up mana.

  Item creating nitroglycerin or dynamite is out I found out too. It said it was restricted though, not that it couldn't make it.

  Spell formulas?

  I wish.

  I have to know what the spell formulas look like in order to create them. And I have no clue. So trying to create them with my skill won't work.

  I'm beginning to get more desperate.

  ...

  Slowly here and there when not facing death, which wasn't often, I began to experiment with mana and trying to simulate its effects. In theory, I could simulate patterns with mana that mimicked the health potions energy I reasoned.

  To do this I wasted a few potions by spilling them on top of a tree stump and then pushing my mana through the liquid. Then I tried adjusting the thickness of the mana I pushed into the liquid. I did this a few times hoping to trigger some type of status screen effect, which could be turned into a skill. Or to try to boost the medicine's effectiveness.

  I did that experiment several times over.

  ...

  And time passed by with me barely surviving from 1 day to the next. Before I knew it several days had passed.

  By what, two weeks, or is it three weeks, after Alice is gone I'm sitting there in the cold wind, face and hands chapped, and severaly chilled as I worked. Its kind of cold up here also.

  I almost fell asleep after the second potion today is wasted.

  Shit.

  Is this not going to work?

  But then I realized I could feel what the mana felt like as it passed through the spilled potion contents one day, on day 9.

  Ping!

  [System notification; you have created a [Life Wizard] skill!]

  [Minor Heal] has been created!

  [Minor Heal] skill has been acquired!

  [System updating!]

  [Error...skill censorship detected...rerouting pathways...]

  Huh? Why is it saying that?

  Is that thing saying someone is trying to block me from acquiring skills!

  "Is this why I didn't get any starting spell formulas?!" I blurted out loud.

  My hands are so cold and raw right now also!

  I looked at the new skill.

  [Minor Heal]

  The description says...basically similar to the potion.

  I tried it out by targetting myself with the minor heal...

  Success! The skill triggered and went off right as it should, though a bit slow since it was my first time using it.

  (-30 mana, +10 health +1 health per level.)

  Yes!

  This is way more efficient than the potions also! This is fantastic! I have a first magitek spell!

  I now have my game changer!

  I can now give those monsters a beating and not be all jammed up for hours afterwards!