Chronicles of the True Wizard

Similarly to how the last fight started the wall opposite where Felix entered the arena disappeared. After a few moments, a bear slowly lumbered it's way out. Felix already had a Fire Bolt prepared and he held a dagger in each hand just in case.

[E - Common] Bear (Lvl 11)

Seems a little smaller than what I would expect a bear to be. Maybe it's low level means it's young? Oh great so I am about to kill a child, lovely. Does that mean the Hyenas were all children as well? I mean that would make sense, I don't think even with my stats I should be able to take out five full grown Hyenas. I've watched discovery channel.

As soon as the spell was ready, Felix shot a small ball of fire towards the creature and scorched the bear's snout. He immediately began preparing another Fire Bolt as the Bear started running at him. Felix ran in the opposite direction and threw his daggers at the bear's legs to try and slow it down. He managed to land one of them in its foot but the bear only stumbled for a single step then seemingly forgot it was there.

Felix's legs were still sore from the injuries he sustained in the last fight. Every step brought pain but not agony and thankfully his legs weren't actively bleeding. He summoned a couple more daggers and threw these two at it's face. He only managed to hit one of them but he managed to hit it in the eye. The bear stopped running to paw at its face earning it a Fire Bolt on the other side of its head.

Felix was pretty sure there was some sort of critical hit bonus for head shots at this point because the Boars and Hyenas took less hits to go down if he had hit them in the face or snout. Felix prepared a Fire Blast and threw every dagger he had to try and slow the bear down and buy himself time.

The Bear, now just a few meters away from Felix, rose to its full height on its hind legs and lifted it's claws into the air. Felix dove to the side and positioned his spell form right in the bear's face.

Ding You have slain a [E - Common] Bear (Lvl 11)

The bear's body fell right on top of Felix trapping his legs. Felix stowed the corpse in his inventory, retrieved all of the daggers he had thrown and pulled out a battery. Felix sat down and began meditating.

Combat Dungeon C

Round 3 will begin in 30 minutes.

Start now?

Yes

No

No.

After thirty minutes had passed Felix stood up and faced the opposite wall where he knew his opponent would come from. Felix prepared a Fire Bolt, as his highest damage spell, possibly behind Fire Blast, as it was his safest bet. Felix had fully restored his mana thanks to the battery and managed to restore his health to about three quarters thanks to meditating.

Once again a section of the wall simply vanished. Felix waited for something to walk out and silently hoped for something a little less mundane. So far he'd only fought earth creatures. He wasn't sure if The System was choosing those on purpose for acclimation purposes or if he was just lucky so far. They were easier to fight since he knew what they could and couldn't do, but they were less interesting.

Before Felix saw the next challenger, he smelt it. The pungent smell of chemicals crept out of the dark opening into the arena followed by small clouds of purple gas. Worried the enemy might initiate with a ranged attack Felix began to strafe side to side as unpredictably as he could, just in case. He was proven right a few moments later when a slimy pink tongue shot towards his location just a moment ago.

The tongue retracted and a large purple and white toad jumped out of the gathering fog landing in the arena with a loud boom. The toad was almost 3 meters tall and equally as wide. Felix wasn't even sure how it moved, let alone jumped, given how large its body was.

[E - Uncommon] Toxic Swamp Baron (Lvl 13)

Well shit, I don't really have any way of dealing with toxic gas. If it manages to fill the entire arena, I won't be able to breathe and it also might be flammable. Meaning, my highest damage spell is out.

Testing his theory, Felix set loose his prepared Fire Bolt at the Toxic Swamp Baron and aimed low so it passed through the toxic fumes spewing out of the toad. As soon as the Fire Bolt got near the toxic fumes, they ignited. In a series of small explosions, all of the toxic fumes were consumed around the toad. Unfortunately the small explosions and fire didn't seem to affect the toad much at all.

Well shit. Either I land a Fire Ball in it's mouth where it's hopefully less fire proof or I just slowly whittle it down with Mana Bolts. The only issue with that is, I think that tongue is going pull me into his mouth long before I manage to do any real damage. It's too fast for me to reliably dodge it every time. All of that is assuming it doesn't do anything else like jump on me.

Felix started running to the side around the arena and circling the toad as he prepared and fired Mana Bolts as fast as he could. After three or four Mana Bolts, Felix had to prepare and fire a Fire Bolt to get rid of the toxic fumes that kept trying to fill the arena. Felix had been successful in dodging the tongue four times now. It was easier than Felix thought it would be because luckily for him, the Baron had a tell.

Whenever the Baron shot it's tongue, it leaned forwards slightly and tensed the underside of it's jaw. Felix saw the Baron tense once again and he strafed back. The tongue missed again and Felix continue running in the opposite direction.

Getting sick of having his prey run circles around him, the Baron lifted it's massive body and jumped into the air. Due to the lighting of the arena coming from all directions, the Baron cast no shadow. Felix assumed it was aiming to land on him or right nearby so he ran as fast as he could in a random direction.

He prepared a Fire Blast to get rid of the fog and hoped the extra umph would help push the fog away. As he ran he pulled out two daggers. He doubted the daggers would injure it much considering how it bathed in minor explosion earlier but he was better off with them in his hands and not needing them than otherwise.

That jump was definitely some System assisted bullshit, how the fuck can something jump that high when it's that fat. Fucking skills.

The Baron fell with a deafening boom right where Felix had been just a few seconds ago and its jaw tensed. Felix tried strafing but from this distance, there was no chance. Felix quickly positioned his Fire Blast spell form as far in front of him as he could and readied his daggers to stab into its tongue. As soon as he was hit he pumped mana into the spell form and stabbed down into the slimy appendage rocketing him into the Baron's mouth.

Felix didn't trust his reaction time with the spell given how fast the Baron's tongue was so he hoped that if he just fired it now, the timing would work out. The spell fired off into the Baron's open maw and the gas inside exploded. The timing could have been better if the spell was inside the Baron's mouth, but Felix wasn't complaining.

Felix felt the heat wave from the ignition as he was pulled into the Baron's waiting maw. The entrance immediately shut and the smell of chemicals and mold grew stronger. There was no light, but Felix didn't doubt it was filling its mouth with fumes to slowly poison him to death. Lacking better options, Felix wrestled with the tongue trying to free his hands.

He managed to break one hand free and as soon as he did, he summoned the great sword and stabbed upwards with all his strength. In hind sight, a dagger might have been better as Felix was not used to handling a heavy weapon in combat.

Ding You have slain a [E - Common] Toxic Swap Baron (Lvl 13)

Ding You have gained a level in [E - Common] Caster

Felix held his breath as long as he could as he sawed through the appendage he was still stuck to. He finally managed to cut himself free and then used the great sword to pry its jaw open. Felix pulled himself out and ran free of the remaining fumes.

Felix gasped for fresh air and took a quick peek at his health. He had around 25% health left, but it was still dropping fairly quickly. Felix scrambled to start meditating to try and counteract the poison. His health was going down slower but it was still dropping. At 15% health Felix was worried, at 10% he put his 3 free points into vitality, just in case.

Not knowing how long the poison would last was the worst part. He didn't know if it was close to subsiding or if his efforts were futile from the start. If it lasted an hour he was done for. He tried to exhale and empty his lungs, in case there was any poison left lingering in them, something he probably should have started with.

Felix growing desperate, tried imagining his body cycling its energy through him. All throughout his body, accelerating his metabolism and aiding his immune system. He imagined it empowering his cells and enriching his blood to help clear out the foreign substances.

After a few minutes, he quickly peeked at his health. He was sitting at an uncomfortable seventeen health out of two hundred and fifty. After watching it for almost a minute Felix sighed in relief as his health seemed to have stopped decreasing.

He had no idea if his imagining the energy in his body and trying to cycle it had helped at all. The System didn't seem to recognize it as a skill, or more likely, he just hadn't shown sufficient proficiency with it yet. He was pretty sure some of his energy was consumed but he wasn't certain as he was a little preoccupied and hadn't thought to check it before he started.

Even if it did go down though, it probably had nothing to do with his efforts and was simply used by his body to fight the poison on it's own. Whether or not it worked or had any tangible effects, it made Felix feel better and helped distract him so that had to count for something. He resolved to experiment with it more later on.

Felix quickly opened his eyes to check on the state of the arena. He needed to keep meditating to regenerate some of his health but he was worried some of the remaining toxic fumes might be spreading. He quickly shot Fire Bolts at all the remaining pockets of gas he could see then sat back down to continue meditating. Just before he did so, he noticed a screen he had missed.

Combat Dungeon C

You have successfully completed 3 rounds. Would you like to continue, change the difficulty or exit the dungeon?

Continue.

Change Difficulty

Exit

Felix saw no timer and therefore no reason to do anything with the screen just yet. He resolved to meditate until his health was at least half full. He also pulled out a battery to top up his mana, just in case.

As he always did when he meditated, Felix practiced his spell form construction. It was difficult to practice his aim when his eyes were closed so he didn't actually fire the spells. Even so, he noticed a marked improvement in his construction time.

Once his health was half full he timed a few full casts of Mana Bolt and Fire Bolt. He hadn't timed them in a while as he had no need to for combat, they took as long as they took and timing it wasn't going to change that. He clocked the full cast time of both spells at just five seconds, which was a huge improvement from when he last measured it.

Five seconds was still a really long time in a battle. A good archer could draw, pull, fire, hit, and probably kill Felix in that amount of time. In that situation, he was probably dead anyways though, considering he remained essentially buck naked with boots and a fox pelt wrapped around his unmentionables.

I really need to find something to wear. I also need to figure out some sort of defense. Those two could be the same thing, but I would prefer to wear clothes instead of armor. Armor is heavy and would probably get hot. What I really need is some sort of mage armor or something like that, and robes. Ugh, I just need clothes.

Felix carefully collected all of his belongings from the arena floor. He didn't bother trying to fish his daggers out of the Baron's tongue and just stowed the whole body in his inventory. He could deal with it later.

Felix had more reasons to leave now then he had to stay. He needed to regenerate his health and wanted to work on Fire Blast. He wanted to try messing with the amount of mana and thickness of the rest of the spell form. Fighting the Hyenas he realized he didn't really have anything except single target spells, unless you counted his melee range Fire Blast.

Theoretically he should be able to produce more fire, then with a similar push to it or maybe even with a bigger outer ring he could theoretically create a spell that spewed a cone of fire. At least that was the theory and he was hoping it would work.

He also wanted to find more spells to work with but had no idea where to even start on that.

Exit.

Combat Dungeon C

You have successfully completed 3 rounds of +2 - +5 difficulty. You chose not to claim rewards.

Congratulations.

Felix found himself back in the expansive field outside the rock that held the dungeon's entrance. He quickly scarfed down a meal from his inventory and downed a canteen then began running back. He was already pretty tired but he didn't want to camp out here in case the animals had gotten significantly more aggressive since the grace period had lifted.

Felix ran north stopping at the stream to bathe and refill his water supply. There were no boars drinking from the stream this time so he didn't get to test their aggression. He did however pass a boar almost three quarters of the way back to the fort. It didn't seem any more aggressive than it had before.

[E - Common] Field Boar (Lvl 9)

I guess even with their aggression unbound, boars just don't fight each other much and with nothing else here to fight I guess they don't get to see much XP. It's sad they aren't really worth fighting anymore. I guess they can still be a decent food supply. Also why is it a Field Boar now? Either my perception attribute is high enough now to see that or it has to do with my class being the same level as it is. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .