BT - Book 1 - Chapter 26 (Patreon)

Micah’s air knife slipped under the shadow ogre’s guard, scoring the tough flesh of its torso. It bellowed its frustration at him, swinging a clawed hand at neck level.  Micah brought his spear up, willing mana into it to wrap the weapon around the ogre’s fist.  His toes left the ground as he let the momentum of the attack transfer through the spear’s haft and carry him back a handful of paces, safely outside of the monster’s reach.

It looked down at its hand dumbly, the hardened wood of the spear curled around its forearm.  Experimentally it tried to punch him again, only for Micah to jump into the air once more.  It cocked its head, growling at its captured arm.  

Another air knife hit it in the face, shaving off a couple more hit points.  This time, it yanked backward with its bound hand, trying to pull Micah toward it.  He let go of the spear, allowing the momentum of the ogre’s action to pull it off balance.  Stepping closer, he unleashed a sonic bolt into it at point blank range.  

It staggered and listed to the side as the spell burst its eardrums, sending the room spinning around it.  Micah was well acquainted with the feeling.  Over the past couple of years he’d been forced to use sonic bolt in enclosed spaces more than once, and each time his balance just wasn’t the same until he healed himself.

As the ogre fell to the ground, he grabbed the shaft of his spear, sending a pulse of mana into it to return its shape to normal.  Withdrawing the weapon, he set his feet in the first stance of Wind Spear and unleashed a gale thrust, jamming the weapon up through the chin of the disoriented ogre and into its brain.

The critical hit using the martial art did the trick, finally killing the monster.  Heaving a sigh out of his aching body, Micah turned to check the status of the rest of his party.  The Onkert Daemon he’d summoned before entering the dungeon struggled to hold down a shadow ogre while the stag rammed its horns into the struggling monster’s sides.

Micah frowned slightly, noting the blood oozing from a quartet of gashes on the stag’s back.  Clearly the ogre had managed to rake the deer with its claws.  Mumbling the spell quietly, he cast heal, wiping out most of his mana reserves to close up the wounds at distance.

Cautiously he approached the trio of creatures, waiting for an opening and then thrusting his spear into the ogre’s thigh.  Even with all his strength, the weapon barely made it an inch or two past the monster’s tough skin before it was stopped dead by its densely packed muscles.  

He withdrew the weapon and stabbed once more, knowing that each point of hp and drop of blood he drew from the monster would bring it one step closer to dying.  Finally, the ogre weakened enough for the Onkert to pull back its torso, exposing its chest and neck to the stag  which promptly gored the struggling ogre, removing a good portion of its throat.

The monster clung stubbornly to life, thrashing against the Onkert’s steady grip for almost a minute before blood loss claimed it.  The Daemon let the body slump to the floor, sniffing it casually before losing interest. 

Micah walked over to the stag and collapsed against it, exhausted.  The warmth of its white fur and the steady movement of its chest as it inhaled and exhaled calmed him.  Its wet nose poked into his cheek.  Without looking, Micah reached up and began stroking its muzzle.

Over the last two years the stag had become his constant companion.  The week after he earned his class, it joined him in a run through a beginner’s dungeon.  Between the two of them, they made short work of the leaflings and pygmy dryads.  As he grew in level, Micah began using the stag’s temporal energy to summon an Onkert, slowly restoring the animal’s youth.  It might not be able to speak, but it’d shared dozens of life and death struggles with Micah.

Between his work at Keeper Ansom’s library and his constant sojourns to the forest to level, Micah began to suspect that he spent more time with the stag than his parents and Esther.  Still, the stag understood him.  They both wanted to grow stronger, every time he drew temporal energy from it, Micah could feel the primal energy in its body accumulating.  It was only a matter of time before it evolved, and he couldn’t completely restrain a pang of excitement as he tried to figure out what the stag would turn into.

It wasn’t common for a blessed animal to evolve, but it wasn’t unheard of.  As far as Micah had read, it seemed that evolution once they gained enough experience was the primary method by which blessed animals improved.  Given the almost constant fighting the two of them had engaged in over the past two years, it made sense that the stag would evolve sooner than it otherwise might.

Two years.  A bitter smile flashed across Micah’s face as he leaned back into the stag’s soft hide.  He’d be turning sixteen next weekend.  Then it’d be time to officially ‘announce’ his blessing so that he could devote all of his time to leveling.

Micah still hadn’t decided what to do.  His first instinct to conceal the depth of his abilities was clearly the right one.  Being enslaved by the ‘benevolent rulers’ of the Kingdom in his last timeline more than proved that point.  At the same time, he didn’t know how he could get the outside assistance he’d need to fight back against the Durgh incursion without revealing himself.  Even joining a guild like the Lancers seemed problematic.  He’d have to slow down his own leveling in order to avoid revealing the depth of his abilities.

Sighting, he called up his status sheet.  He had time until his mana recovered so he might as well go over his options once more.

Micah Silver

Age 15 [ERROR] / 25

Class/Level Thaumaturge 11

XP 1,740/8,000

HP 230/230

Attributes

Body 10, Agility 10, Mind 21, Spirit 21

Attunement

Moon 9 Sun 1 Night 7

Mana

Moon   103/307 Sun 159/291 Night  132/303

Affinities

Time 10

Wood 6

Tier I - Refresh 10, Mending 9, Plant Weave 9

Tier II - Augmented Mending 8, Root Spears 8

Tier III - Heal 4

Air 5

Tier I - Gale 7, Air Knife 14, Air Supply 4
Tier II - Wind Shield 6, Sonic Bolt 6

Tier III - Updraft 2

Blessings

Mythic Blessing of Mursa - Blessed Return, Ageless Folio

Skills

Anatomy  7

Enchanting  11

Fishing   1
Herbalism  5

Librarian  5

Ritual Magic  16

Spear   10

-Wind Spear 7

Spellcasting  22

The increased body and agility had certainly helped Micah’s solo adventures, but as soon as he hit ten in each of them, he’d focused the remainder of his free attribute points on mind and spirit.  Mind increased the effectiveness of spells while decreasing their cost, but the biggest impact from the Thaumaturge class was on his mana.  Every level he gained added about twenty six mana to each pool, precisely 125% of his spirit attribute.

Already, at level eleven, Micah had almost as much mana as he did at level twenty in his previous life.  Given that each point added to spirit also retroactively adjusted the mana gained from previous levels, Micah fully expected to have the mana to cast his fifth tier time spell well before level nineteen without having to resort to a dangerous ritual.  

Still, those were just numbers.  The thaumaturge class made Micah much more powerful than any of his peers, but it was still far from sufficient if he planned on challenging a being of true power.  On the horizon, the Durgh incursion lay like an inkstain, spreading ever closer to the present as each grain of sand passed through the proverbial hourglass.  For all of his efforts, they represented an insurmountable obstacle.  Unless Micah revealed himself and surrendered his freedom, to garner the attention of the Royal Knights, he had no way of beating them.

Sighing, Micah stood up, the stag snorting behind him at being disturbed by his movements.  His mana had recovered enough for another fight, and he only had a couple hours left on the Onkert’s summon.  Clearing the boss room without the Daemon was a laughable prospect, meaning he’d have to hurry if he wanted to make it all the way through the dungeon.  Any dawdling and he risked losing out on the bonus xp and gear from the boss fight.

The rest of the dungeon was pretty straight forward.  The Onkert took the lead, and Micah healed it whenever it set off a trap.  If they encountered a creature, the Daemon would help subdue it while Micah and the stag finished off their enemies.  For a normal party, this would’ve been a war of attrition as the wounds built up on the Onkert, but Micah made sure to heal them almost as soon as they were inflicted.

The dungeon wasn’t designed to accommodate something of the Daemon’s power, so long as he made sure to heal it quickly, the regular foes might pose a challenge, but never a proper threat.  It was a bit strange he reflected, in all of the stories he read about heroes and legends, the tale had always been about a warrior or a spellcaster.  Despite that, Daemons were incredibly useful tools, granting him the ability to raid dungeons well beyond his level.

Maybe it was simply the Church of Luxos altering the histories to minimize the impact of summoning, he certainly wouldn’t put it past them.  It might also be that most summons required a serious sacrifice, something that he could circumvent by removing a couple of months of age from the Stag.  Of course, it also might be a cultural blind spot.

As far as Micah could tell, things weren’t run particularly well in the Human Kingdoms.  He wouldn’t be surprised if summoning were at least partially frowned upon because it allowed a skilled user to overwhelm a much higher leveled foe so long as they had time to prepare.  He suspected that the Royal Knights wouldn’t be keen on such a threat to their power if they became aware of it.  

It was something worth considering.  He’d already developed methods to allow him to lower the cost of summoning a Daemon.  It might be worthwhile to see if he could find a way to improve his methods further.  After all, a squad of Daemons that lasted for days would let him challenge even higher ranked dungeons.

Finally, they reached the boss room, and Micah stopped.  Dungeons changed their layout slightly, changing the location of traps and the content of rooms to keep adventurers on their toes, but he’d never heard of them making major structural changes.

The main doorway to fight the boss was there, an imposing edifice of iron and stone, just like it always, but next to it was a smaller door marked with a yellow crescent symbolizing Mursa’s moon.  One that wouldn’t accomodate a Daemon or a stag.

He walked forward, almost in a trance and laid his hand on the door.  An electric tingle ran up his arm.  Micah turned back to the stag, his hand still on the frame of the door, and an unasked question lurking just behind his teeth.  It walked up to him and nudged him gently with its muzzle, pushing him in the direction of the smaller door.

“You’re really okay with me leaving you behind?” He asked it softly.

The stag snorted, gently pushing him with its snout towards the doorway once more.

“Thank you,” Micah smiled at the deer.  “I don’t know what it is, but it’s calling to me.  I think I need to go in.”

It snorted again and turned to leave, its hooves clopping against the stone of the dungeons floor as it made its way toward the exit.  Micah took a deep breath and turned the doorknob, stepping through and into a world of dimly lit mist.