Stormborn Sorceress: A Fantasy Isekai LitRPG Adventure

The beep of an alarm woke Cass. She sat up in a panic. She was late to work!

Her head swam with the sudden movement, her vision blurring what must have been her bedroom into what looked like a smear of plants. Her confusion compounded as she searched for her blanket to toss from her body and the mattress to roll off of, only to find neither. Only empty air and muddy dirt.

There was a frustrated caw of a crow and the flap of wings.

Only then did Cass remember she wasn’t home.

She lay in a bloody clearing, surrounded by trees wreathed in a glowing understudy and the frustrated cawing of crows. The terrorcat lay in a gory pile beside her, the crows happily pecking at its cold flesh.

The pond had taken a sickening, rust-brown color, from the blood running into it. The air smelled of iron.

Her staff lay beside her, one end coated in blood. A reminder of her role in the scene before her.

The weight of everything crashed over her. There was no denying any of it anymore.

She’d almost died.

She’d been dragged to a fantasy world. She was alone in this godforsaken place. The wildlife was trying to kill her. She hadn’t a single clue on how to go home.

Kaye and Robin didn’t know what had happened to her.

She was crying again. Everything hurt. Her shoulder, her legs, her back, her arms. Her soul.

The air smelled of death and blood. Her clothing crackled from the dried blood as she moved.

She wasn’t cut out for this. She was a modern woman. She was made for desk jobs and paperwork. For ignoring office gossip and keeping her head down until she could go home. There was always the promise of going home that got her through the day.

Home to her chair and a book and hot tea.

Home to a soft bed and cozy PJs.

Home to Robin and Kaye and a cathartic rant about the nonsense a customer or coworker had said to her that day.

Her hands were soft. The consequences of failure there little more than social embarrassment.

She wasn’t cut out for this. What did she know about fighting? What did she know about survival? What did she know about extradimensional fantasy worlds?

She sobbed, clutching her arms close to her chest, barely aware of the world beyond herself. She was shaking. She needed to stop. This was more than she could handle. She needed it to stop.

She was cold. The tears had to stop eventually.

There was a pinging in the back of her head. It wouldn’t stop.

She was hysterical. She had almost died.

Everything that had happened to her flashed through her head on loop. The tentacles. The hound. The wombat. The deer. The terrorcat. The tentacles, grabbing. The hound, snapping and slashing. The deer, searching. The terrorcat, clawing and biting. Pulled under. Running. Hiding. Dying.

Cass curled tighter, her head in her hands. Tentacles grabbed her, pulled her apart. Her chest exploded, her body disintegrating into nothing. Claws raked her back, her legs, her shoulders. There was only pain and memory and nothing.

***

Something pecked her head.

Cass had no idea how long she’d laid there like that. An eternity. An eon. Barely a second.

But something pecking at her head brought her back to the present. She took a deep breath, walled off everything, and looked up.

A crow consumed the entirety of her vision. Its beak was in her face, its intelligent eyes watching her as it tilted its head one way and then the other. It pecked her forehead again then cawed in her face.

Plague Crow

Lvl 2

[A lowly scavenger bird, common to battlefields across the Continent. These birds are immune to the effects of all but the worst diseases but easily contract and spread them, making them a pestilence unto themselves. Few willingly approach these birds on the chance they are incubating a deadly disease.]

Cass sat up and it fluttered back cawing its avian curse loudly. There were a dozen of them. They looked just like the crows she was familiar with, except the tips of their wings were crimson, like drying blood.

Most pecked around at the corpse lying beside her. The terrorcat.

It was strange to see it lifeless beside her, its skin pulled open by the crows.

Cass had seen roadkill before.

This was different.

She’d done this. In self-defense. To live.

But she’d done this. This was a living creature that lived no longer. Because of her actions.

A crow pecked at the cat’s eye, pulling the orb out with a spurt of blood. It carried it off with a flap of its wings. Two of its fellows gave chase, cawing loudly after it.

Cass took a deep breath. It was kill or be killed. She hadn’t started that fight, she’d survived it.

The clearing was covered in blood, the pond had taken a gross red-brown tinge. She couldn’t stay here.

Cass pushed herself to her feet, surprised to find she wasn’t in pain. Just minor aches. The kind of thing she’d have expected after a long workout, not a near-death experience.

An image of the terrorcat latched onto her shoulder, its teeth sinking through her clothes to her soft flesh beneath flashed through her mind.

Her hand flew to her shoulder. There should be a sizable hole. She shouldn’t be able to move that arm.

The skin was scabbed and raw, but not gruesomely disfigured. She poked it, her frown deepening. The fabric of her PJs was completely gone, the sweatshirt and rain jacket above it were hanging in tatters. All of it was soaked in crispy, dry blood.

How long had she been unconscious? Would any amount of time make a difference?

Only then did Cass notice the beeping that had woken her again. System messages.

There were a lot of them. This was going to take a minute. She grimaced, looking over the clearing. This wasn’t exactly where she wanted to do this, but it would be foolish to push on without taking stock of her condition.

She settled for moving to the far end of the clearing and pulling herself into the lowest branches of what she Identified as a Stormwell Oak. Terrorcats couldn’t climb after all, and she wasn’t interested in repeating that fight.

As settled as she could be between the branch and the trunk, she started reading through the notifications she’d gotten from the fight.

Skill Earned: Staff Mastery (Lvl 1)

[Some call the staff the grandfather of all weapons. At home in the hands of enlightened monks, forgotten gods, and maybe now you?

Passively increases one’s familiarity with the staff as a weapon and tool. Follow its guidance to reach further mastery.]

Staff Mastery has increased to level 2.

Staff Mastery has increased to level 3.

Was this where her confidence with the staff had come from mid-fight? She remembered the moment when the staff had suddenly felt right in her hands. She hadn’t questioned it at the time, but thinking about it now, that was the only explanation.

Had she really tried to use it like a baseball bat? That was ridiculous. That’s not—

She shivered. She knew for a fact that wasn’t how one used a staff effectively in combat. And she knew there was a better way to hold it to leverage its advantages. And that she should stand in a couple of different stances.

Just as she knew she had not known any of that before the fight.

Where had this knowledge come from? The system? The skill?

Cass climbed back down the tree, picking her staff back up from where she’d leaned it against the trunk. She spread her feet and took a stance.

It was easy. It was natural. It was right.

She moved through a few strikes and blocks. She could see how the movement conserved energy and maximized her momentum.

And she had never been taught any of this.

Cass took a deep breath as she set the staff down again and climbed up the tree. Her hands weren’t shaking. She was fine. She was calm. So the system could put information directly into her head? So what?

That didn’t mean anything.

So she couldn’t feel the difference between something she’d learned to do naturally (like climbing the tree) and the system-taught skill? What did it matter? She was just not going to think about how much control over her it had.

Deep breaths, Cass. Deep breaths.

When she’d calmed down she looked at the next system message waiting for her.

Level Up!

Level Up!

Level Up!

+ 3 Dex

+ 3 End

+ 3 Ala

+ 12 Free Points

She’d leveled up three times for killing the terrorcat! That was a 21 point increase in stats and about a 30% increase to her current total.

Her eyes strayed back to the corpse in the clearing below her and any excitement she’d been building was instantly cooled. The crows were still happily tearing strips of flesh from the carcass.

That was the value of the monster’s life? Three levels and one avian feast. What would the terrorcat have gotten for killing her?

Cass shook the macabre thought aside. She was alive. She had survived a vicious and unprompted attack. She had come out stronger for it. Additional Dexterity and Endurance would only help her plans for avoiding future fights. Ala, whatever it was, had to be useful too. As for the free points, she’d apply them at the end, after she’d read everything.

She turned her attention to the next message.

Trait Earned - For defeating a monster from an antagonistic realm as your first kill: Extradimensional Damage

[You don’t want to be here and now, neither do they.

Bonus damage to all entities not from your home realm.

Bonus damage to all entities not from your current realm.]

What exactly did it mean by “home realm”? Did it mean Earth? Or was it referring to wherever slyphids were from? Were there normally slyphids here, wherever here was?

Making generous assumptions about “home realm” implied she’d do more damage against anything she ran into here. Even more if they had been summoned to this world as she had.

She wasn’t sure how much of a difference it would make or even how “more damage” realistically manifested, but she wasn’t about to look a gift a horse in the mouth.

Then again, maybe she should be cautious of this too. How many other people in this world had this bonus or a similar one? She’d be in trouble if most people were also doing extra damage to her.

Beginner Quest (2): Defeat an Opponent Complete

[Reward: Beginner Quest (3), Additional Bonus based on classification of Opponent

Opponent unclassified.

Using level differential and intent to assign classification.

Opponent classified as (S) for purposes of quest.

Additional Reward (S): 1 Choice of 3 options.

Bonus Str-based skill growth

Bonus Wll-based skill growth

Bonus Frt-based skill growth]

Beginner Quest (3): Slay a Monster

[Some practice with your new weapon under your belt, it's time to put those skills to work. Kill a monster currently living in the Uvana Valley.]

…

Beginner Quest (3): Slay a Monster Complete

[Reward: Beginner Quests (4-6), Additional Bonus based on level differential of slain monster

Level differential: 6 Flat, 7 Multiplicative

Additional Reward (7x): 1 Choice of 3 options.

Skill, Str based, empowered by Stamina

Skill, Wll based, empowered by Focus

Skill, Frt based, passive]

Beginner Quest (4): Slay the Lord of the Pass

Beginner Quest (5): Slay the Lord of the Forest

Beginner Quest (6): Slay the Lord of the Deep

Cass frowned. She’d completed two quests simultaneously? For killing one monster? That seemed odd. Why have two quests that could be achieved with the same requirements?

She looked at their descriptions more closely. One used the verb “defeat” whereas the other said “slay”. Were there other ways to “defeat” enemies that didn’t involve killing them? Maybe she could force enemies to yield or flee and that would count for level-up experience? Something to think about later.

Either way, she had some rewards to choose: an enhanced growth and a skill. It would probably be best to pick them in pairs to maximize her benefit.

But there was one more thing to check before she jumped to any decisions. She pulled up her current stats.

Name: Cass

[Race: Slyphid

Lvl: 4

Stamina: 27/27

Focus: 59/108

Health: 5/21

Str - 4 Dex - 10 End - 9

Wll - 16 Ala - 12 Res - 12

Frt - 2 Per - 5 Vit - 6

Free Points: 12]

Concepts:

[- Wind (Unapplied)]

Status Effects:

[- Beginner Reward: Bonus Staff Skill Growth]

Cass frowned again at her status screen. Specifically, that her HP was listed as 5/21.

Her health being so low was both understandable—she had almost died—and completely incomprehensible—Cass didn’t feel that injured. What was the disconnect? She had been more badly injured by the terrorcat than she had from the hound, and her health reflected that, but the pain she felt and the final state of her injuries did not.

She reached around to her back. The wounds the hound had given her had shrunk to thin scabs. She searched the rest of her body for cuts, tracing the places where her clothing had been torn through. Invariably, she found lightly scarred skin or mostly healed scabs. Her shoulder was the worst, but even that looked like it had been healing for a month not a few hours.

She could only think of two options: Either she’d been passed out a long time or she had super healing.

The terrorcat’s corpse seemed to deny the first option, which left only super healing.

Except, that still didn’t explain 5/21 Health. She was barely injured anymore. Surely, her still bleeding state after fleeing the hound was worse than this scabbed shoulder?

It didn’t make sense to her, but she had run out of angles to try to make the pieces she had fit. She’d just have to think about it later or find someone else and ask them what was going on.

In the meantime, she was just going to have to make the most of what she understood. And that was that she had a choice to make and 12 stat points to allocate.

Skill and bonus growth first, Cass decided. A new skill might change how she approached this world, which would change how she wanted to apply the stat points. Moreover, the skill might provide some hint at what the different stats did from its description.

She looked over her options again:

[1. Skill, Str-based, empowered by Stamina

Skill, Wll-based, empowered by Focus

Skill, Frt-based, passive]

There wasn’t a lot of information available to narrow down her pick, but Cass had two considerations in mind: first, which stats she already had an advantage in, and second, which resources she could more freely spend.

For the first, it was no contest, Wll led by a wide margin, 16 points compared to Str’s 4 and Frt’s 2. If she wanted a skill to maximize her current stats, option 2, the Will-based skill, was the way to go.

That being said, she had 12 free points. If she wanted to switch directions, now was the moment to do it. If she applied all of them to Str, it would be equal to Wll, and she could start increasing that difference with every level after that.

The second consideration was less cut and dry. She had a total of 108 maximum Focus and only a max of 30 Stamina. That seemed like a clear win for Focus, but Cass already had a skill that consumed Focus, Wind Step. It gobbled up 50 Focus with every cast. Which meant she only had 2 uses without resting and recovering her Focus. Throwing another skill in to consume more would only reduce that further.

Stamina on the other hand didn’t have any skills using it explicitly, so far it was only consumed by general physical exertion. Additionally, increasing either Dex, End, or Ala had increased her max Stamina, because that had only been 18 before her fight. (It was probably Endurance, Cass guessed). That meant her Stamina would only increase further as she leveled up.

It was also an open question if the two were scaled the same. Maybe most Stamina skills only used one or two points per use, while Focus skills used tens at a time. That would be an explanation as to why her Focus was so much higher than Stamina. However, Cass’s general lack of physical activity before her kidnapping and her lengthy study sessions in college also would go a long way to explaining the discrepancy.

Cass pursed her lips as she watched the crows going about their macabre business. She wasn’t any closer to making a decision. Would it be easier if she knew the skills specifically she was being offered, rather than some general characteristics? Would she even have the context to compare them if she had?

She chased the questions away. It wasn’t helpful. That wasn’t what she’d been offered. She had three options: Str, Wll, or Frt.

It was almost as if she was being asked a different question: How did she want to solve her problems going forward? With the Strength of her arms? With the force of her mind’s Will? Or with a Fortified body?

Put like that, there wasn’t a lot to think about was there? Present trial aside, she had no interest in solving her future problems with violence if she could help it. If she could think her way out of a situation or, even better, plan a path around the situation in the first place, that was what she wanted.

She hesitated all the same. This would mean committing to focusing on Will, wouldn’t it? What would increasing that stat look like? Would it change who she was, fundamentally? What did a more Willful person look like?

Should she rethink her choice? And choose what?

She selected the Wll option for both of her rewards before she could spiral into an endless loop of indecision.

Reward Selected: Bonus Skill growth with all Wll-based skills

Reward Selected: Skill, Wll based, empowered by Focus

Skill Earned: Elemental Manipulation (lvl 1)

[Your understanding of magic is colored by its interaction with the elemental forces of the natural world. Through practice or divine intervention, you have learned to manipulate these forces at will.

Attune your focus to an elemental force to summon and/or control that element.

Modified by Wll.

Focus Cost: 20 Focus (summoning), additional Focus per second based on commands given]