A walk in the park

Spending the entire afternoon reading a textbook wasn’t exactly unusual for John. He’d done the same thing for most of the subjects he was really interested in; half the reason he could slack off in computer science was because he had the entire thing memorized. Most afternoons’ study, however, did not end with a musical chime and the acquisition of magical new abilities.

The ritual textbook itself wasn’t half bad as textbooks went, although John was pretty certain the pages were changing as he read it - plus the exact size of the book didn’t seem to be constant. His suspicions were confirmed about half an hour into his studies when he tried to test the theory by flicking to a random page and found it completely blank save for the word “Yup” in curly handwriting that was completely different from the neatly typed pages of the rest of the tome. Flicking back to the same page (which he’d dog-eared) a little while later revealed that the message was gone, replaced with a set of thoughts on designing a suitable prayer to restore someone’s mood.

By the end of the study period, John was stiff from sitting still. He’d learned more about comparative theology than he had ever done in his religious studies class, but far more importantly had achieved his goal.

Two Skills didn’t seem like much for an entire afternoon of study, but the potential was there. Guiding Bolt sounded like a good all round addition to his non-existent combat abilities; having something to strike from range would be handy, even if the mana cost seemed a little steep. Invoke Blessing meanwhile looked like it would just be a hotline to Malal - or any other gods that he got friendly enough with - to get their help without having to call them up via a suitable idol. Useful, but mostly just a time-saver at this point.

With the bell ringing for the end of the day, John stored his book away and left Ashcroft in almost as positive a mood as he’d had when traveling to the academy that morning. He had a plan for the evening as well, and he was eager to get started. Normally on Tuesdays he’d head straight home on the bus and then dive into Globe of Fightcraft or whatever JRPG had currently gotten his attention by putting big-titted anime girls on the cover art. But today, his plans were different. During the more dull classes, he’d done some speculation and reached the conclusion that if there were entire guilds out there, it stood to reason that there would be shops catering to those guilds. To that end, he planned to spend the rest of the day looking around the side-streets and alleyways of Springfield in search of somewhere he might be able to purchase the things he needed for his Quest.

Two hours later, with sore feet and feeling frustrated, John dropped onto a park bench with a groan. He’d walked across half the town in search of magical shops or enchanter’s boutiques; aside from one slightly suspicious looking lingerie shop, there’d been nothing in the main mall, and he wasn’t entirely sure that he hadn’t just been staring at that store because of the contents rather than any actual suspicious vibes he’d had about it. Given he was after building materials, he’d not bothered to go inside in any case. The rest of the town had been a bust too - he’d found one promising looking shop, but it’d been shut, and to be honest mostly looked like it sold new age-y things, candles and herbs and stuff, rather than the timber and metal he was hunting for.

”There couldn’t just be a magical home depot in the middle of town, with nice clear signs pointing to it, could there?” he thought bitterly, kicking his heel against the edge of the bench. ”There really isn’t any other option; I’m going to have to go into a Barrier if I want to complete this Quest” The idea of going back into the weird alternative reality was not exactly appealing, but what choice did he have?

John sighed and glanced around. The park bench was warm in the fading sunlight, dusk was rapidly overtaking the town while around him street lamps were flickering on. Dragging his phone from his Inventory, he fired off a quick message to let his mother know that he’d be late getting home as he was working on a project, and checked he still had the walking-stick he’d used as a makeshift staff. There were trees all around this part of the park, so he figured if he made a Barrier, then hopefully the trees would also be present on the other side - and maybe one of them would be made of the magical wood he needed. If so, he could come back later with an axe or a saw or something.

Activating his Create Barrier Skill earned him a two-tone error noise ringing in his ears, and a pop-up informing him that artificial Barriers could not be created overlapping natural ones; it suggested using Barrier Transfer instead with a yes/****. Swallowing hard, John reached out and tapped the yes option.

The sky shifted overhead, early twilight replaced with the same oil-slick appearance he’d encountered before, only in more muted tones that he guessed was due to the lateness in the day. Looking around, John was glad to see that the park lights were still glowing dimly. Whatever mechanism powered them here he couldn’t begin to guess, but he was glad of their pools of light as the trees grew thicker around him than they had outside of the barrier, putting John more in mind of a forest than a town park. Opting for safety first, he gathered his Mana and tried Barrier Transfer once more.

To John’s relief, he slipped back into reality with no warnings about having to defeat enemies; it seemed that either there were none or natural Barriers were far more forgiving on their exit conditions. Returning to the Barrier, he pulled his stick from his Inventory and took a proper look around.

His first hope, that the Barrier would be empty of foes and he could just mine it for resources, was rapidly dashed a moment later. As John walked along the path through the park, trying to decide where best to start pulling bits off the trees in the hopes of finding some magical wood, a creature looking like a cross between a tiny wild boar and a green porcupine with leaves for spines sprang out at him from the foliage.

John dodged back from a swipe by the poodle sized animal, jabbing at it with his staff. In response, it reared back on its hind-legs and hissed at him before lunging forward, its jaws snapping shut right where his leg had been a moment before. Skipping backward, John brought his stick down hard on the beast’s head, earning a satisfying thwacking sound - but no explosion of xp. Instead, the hog swung its front paws again, catching his hand painfully as he withdrew his weapon for another strike.

*-5 hp*

Wincing, John jabbed forward again, catching the beast in the chest with his staff. To his relief, this time around the blow caused the creature to stagger back, collapse sideways and then explode into a cloud of sparkling dust. Steadying his breathing and leaning on his staff, he grinned to himself. “Alright, this isn’t so bad. Low level creatures equal reasonably easy kills and…” he checked his Status, “…also not a lot of xp.” Grimacing at the tiny amount of impact the herbihog kill had on his progress towards Level 4, he finished his analysis of the situation. “Still, on the plus side, if it lives in groups, there’s probably a few more around here. They’ll be good combat practice, I guess?”

Squaring his shoulders, he hefted his staff once more and stepped off the path in the direction the beast had come from. It didn’t take him long to find more of the weird creatures. Pushing past a tree and into a clearing, two of the porcine monsters looked up from where they had been feasting on fallen apples and growled at him menacingly. Given the smell coming from the fruit, John had a sneaking suspicion that was quickly confirmed by an Observe.

John had just about enough time to read the pop-up before the creatures charged. Jumping to one side, he attempted a cool swiping attack on them on the way by. Unfortunately, due to the fact that he was not an action-movie hero, he only succeeded at hitting thin air and totally failed to account for his own landing. Hitting the ground hard on his shoulder, he winced as he scrambled back upright, taking a battering from one of the hogs’ claws en-route. Dimly aware of the fact that he was getting yet another uniform cut into ribbons, John stabbed out at the beast; while it was another wild swing on his part, this time he got lucky and connected with one of the beast’s eyes.

The hog dropped back hissing as its partner circled John. “Alright, one half-blind, one very angry.” He panted, trying to keep his staff pointed towards the fully intact beast while his eyes flicked between the two. To no great surprise, the pair jumped towards him as one; opting to try and sidestep the blind one, John brought his weapon down firmly on the skull of the other. Claws barely clipped his arm from the one he’d almost dodged, while its companion gave a yelp of pain as the staff connected.

Both critters dropped back and returned to pacing around him once more. This time around, John opted to not wait - he’d already proven he could kill these things in a few hits, and the longer he took, the more likely they were to get in a more serious attack while he was facing two opponents. Opting to go for the blind one first, he darted towards it, swinging as he did so. His staff connected with the side of the herbihog more by luck than any great skill, and to his delight it seemed that he’d done enough damage between this hit and the blinding jab earlier as it exploded, sparks cascading around him as he skidded to a halt. With one down, John spun around to face the other which was already mid-charge. Taking a lesson from his fight with the ghoul the previous day, he braced his feet and after one swift spear jab from his stick he was up by another handful of experience. More importantly, this final hog also left something behind as the particle effect faded.

Reading the Observe as he shoved what looked like a bundle of ferns into his Inventory, John gulped. He had thought the Levels might be a little low, but if those poodle sized rodents had been junior hogs… The idea of facing off against something that might be significantly higher Level with the same sort of tusks plus tooth-and-claw setup was not exactly appealing and he made a hasty retreat back to the path, munching one of his cookies to top his health back up as he went. Who could tell what else might be lurking in the thickly wooded park? Of course, it was right as that thought crossed his mind that he heard the scream.