OK done. Sorry readers, I had prioritize my real life stuff for a long time so I haven't had time to work on this story until now. Anyways, you'll probably need to wait a while until the next chapter because I think I may be busy very soon for school and other stuff. I basically do this when I have free time so yeah. I think that's all.
Now, I hope you enjoy this chapter. Please point out any mistakes I may have made
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Not long after I arrived at the northern gate, I see Philrei walking over with a large bag. I starting to think that this might be a regular occurrence.
"Sorry, did you wait long?"
"Don't worry, I got here a few minutes ago. So, are we all set to go?"
"Yes, we've got everything we need."
We promptly set off, going in a straight line towards the forests. The forest was very nice to walk through. It wasn't dense and it was quiet.
"This forest is quite nice isn't it?" I say while turning to look around at the forest
"It is. Though I've seen them so many times."
"So, what's the closest quest?"
"uh, we have an observations quest. We just need to look at our surroundings and note down anything. We'll need to go further in though."
"That's convenient. I was thinking of looking around anyways so now I can do the quest and enjoy the scenery as we go to the cave"
"Well, since we don't have anything to write, we should focus a bit more than enjoying the scenery."
"Yeah, you're right.
That reminds Philrei, you are quite mature for a teen. You are a teen right?"
"What's a teen? Is it a term from your home? Anyways, I'm considered a young man if that answers your question."
"Well, I would say you're quite mature for a young man. You don't get distracted, you prepare the necessary equipment for a trip, you are thoughtful and aren't careless when it comes to quests and fighting. Where I'm from at least, people around your age would be expected to be pretty... stupid."
"Well, I'm just a beginner adventurer so I need to be careful so I don't die out in the wild. This is all necessary for an adventurers survival. I decided to become an adventurer to gain experience so that I could join the military. It also provides some money so it was thinking it was a good decision.
When I told my dad, he then spent the next few days hammering in that I needed to be careful and to not be overly arrogant and careless."
"Well, you're better off than me."
"We both still have a lot to learn about adventuring so let's just learn together."
We proceed to go deeper into the forest. I begin looking around more closely at the surroundings and nothings seems to be wrong. I notice then that I had tuned out my Mana sight. When I first got it, I could see the mana in the air and ground like glowing substance that flowed and floated through everything.
Although since then I didn't notice anything like that. I think I just tuned it out. I looked around at the mana and I didn't see anything strange with it either.
"Philrei, do you notice anything?"
"I don't see anything odd either."
"Should we continue looking?"
"I think we should look for a bit longer maybe we'll find something."
We continued our observations until we ran into some monsters. They looked like trees twisted into the shape of a snake. The three of them crawls along the dirt and among the branches.
"Be ready, Akane!" Philrei exclaims
I prepare myself as my gaze is passed between the three snake like trees. Philrei draws his sword from it's sheath, dropping all the bags he was carrying as well.
One on the ground leaps towards me. I hit it upwards in the jaw with an irregular piece of ice I made in a panic. The piece of ice fractures and slowly disappears, while the snake thing is pushed away.
I quickly make three ice spear and use wind magic to boost them. Two hit the body shattering some of the bark while the third missed. I quickly made a wind blade and created a huge gash in what I assume is it's neck if a snake, or whatever this thing is, has one.
While it is stunned for a bit I take a quick glance at Philrei. He is currently grinding his sword against the snout of one of the snake.
"Akane... a little help!" he calls struggling with the snake
I shoot a ice spear to it's head, allowing Philrei to beat it to the floor and back away. I look back as the snake I was fighting was still moving, waiting for an opportunity to attack. Then I realize something
'Wait, where's the third one?!'
I look in the branches of the trees to look for the third wooden serpent. I see a dark green glow within the branches, coming from the snake. Seeing it prepare to jump down for an attack on Philrei from the side, I shoot five ice spears towards it.
It body is pinned to the tree from the ice spears. I put my focus back on the one I was fighting earlier. It lunges at me again with a gaping dark maw. I move back but the wooden fangs clamp onto my cloak. It tears a chunk of cloth of it as I pull it back.
It spits out the cloth and prepares to snap at me again. I form an ice spear and hit the side of it's head causing the gash in it's neck to deepen until it tears and the head severed.
I turn back to Philrei. When I look back to where he was and Philrei is now on the snake's back, sawing it's neck with the edge of his sword. He was almost halfway too. He notices me and shouts
"Hey, Akane, a little help with this!", the snake then thrashes around but Philrei holds on by using locking his arms around it's body. Unfortunately his sword is thrown onto the ground.
"I can't hit it while it's thrashing around like that!"
"Um... Let me try something"
Philrei then starts swinging side to side along with the snake making it's movements even more chaotic. The snake body twists and flops sporadically with increasing intensity. Hitting the ground the snake thrashed harder thanks to what Philrei was doing.
The snake smashes it's head into the ground, dazing it. He jumped off and yelled
"OK, Now hit it!"
That instant I fired a mixture of a few wind blades and ice spears at the snake which made cuts and ice punctured in the bark along it's body.
'It stopped moving.. is it dead? Oh right, I have [Soul Eyes], I can check to see if it's dead.'
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Serpent
Hp : 0/2859
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"Good. It's dead" I say with relief
"....*pant*.....*pant*... that's the last one right?" Philrei says in exhaustion
"Just one more, I pinned it to a tree. Right.... there." I correct him as I point to the stuck wooden snake on the side of a tree, "I'll take care of it so you can start resting."
I kill the snake with a slice of it's neck using a powerful wind blade. The cut ran deep and the head was separated as a few final fibers of wood and bark snap.
"*sigh*, well that's finally done." I walked back over to Philrei who laid flat on the ground, "Um, can you stand?"
"Don't worry, I can stand. Just.. give me a minute."
"You could have jumped off the snake instead."
"...That probably would have.. been a much better idea." he says with an awkward laugh
After a while he sits up and I drag over the three logs that were the snake's corpses. I looked at them while thinking for a moment
'Now, that I think of it. It is interesting how these things can move and stuff. Well, I've already seen a moving corpse, a golem and not to mention that I'm just as strange. Magic is amazing when I think about even more. I wonder what would it be like if magic existed back on earth. '
"Hey, Philrei, what are these things."
"uhhh, I'm sure I saw these when we were reading in the guild library. AH! Right, these are Kinbor Serpents. They are serpents with a body of bark and wood. Just like most monsters, they are brought to the world by mana and live in the woods where they hunt."
"So they really are made of wood. Can we sell these as well?"
"The wood will sell for a decent amount. Although, we don't have a lot with just three. If disassemble them ourselves we'll get more money and it will be easier to carry. But we don't have any proper tools to do that so, that's unlucky."
"We should note this down for the observation quest."
After finishing our observation quest we continued our way along the quest path. The next quest we had was a elimination quest. We travelled more but stopped since it was going to be night soon. I helped Philrei set up the camp. He made dinner which I managed to avoid but doing an illusion like that to needs quite a lot of focus.
'I really need to find a way to avoid eating or at least eat as little as possible.'
Finishing up dinner, Philrei went to sleep and I stayed up as lookout. I looked at the night sky seeing all the shining white dots, the stars, filling the dark back ground of the sky. You couldn't see something like this back in modern cities. Normally you would be able to see 1 or 3 stars in the sky.
Although, it is relaxing, it's boring to just sit here. Since, I have been unable to sleep, I've had to find ways to occupy myself but right now I can't think of anything. I've seen too much ice for today and wind magic is very limited in what it can do for entertainment.
I then remembered something. Back then, in the library, I read that spirits can change how they look. It said that since spirits are made of mana they can control it and change their appearance so if I just try to manipulate the mana in my body like my magic then I could change it.
'That should pass the time. First, how do I start with this.'
With an endless amount of options, it was extremely hard to choose what to change into as a test.
'Wait, I don't necessarily need to change into something different I could just stretch my limbs right.'
Knowing this, I started with trying to stretch out my arm. It slowly got longer until I stopped it at twice it's original length. I waved it around. It felt surprisingly normal. The arm, although longer, felt completely normal to use and move around.
I twisted, bent and waved it around. I then came to finally realize that I could twist and bend without limit since I.. well, have no bones. I really should have realized that sooner. I retracted my arm back. I then played around by extending and retracting my arm over and over again.
I was starting to get bored with just one arm so I stretched my other arm and flailed them about. Soon, the inevitable happened. My arms somehow got tangled. I will admit that I got carried away with playing around with my arms but it was fun.
Unfortunately, I can't phase through myself so I had to untangle myself normally. Thankfully, I can sill extend my arms further to help with the untangling. I was better at untying knots that my younger brother back on Earth but he was terrible at knots, so I'm not that good either.
...
After I'm not sure how long, I managed to untie my hands.
'Well, I guess I should try something else.. changing into objects should be doable right?'
If I turned into something small, my equipment would get in the way, and if I turned into something big, they would tear apart. So, I took off all my equipment and put them to the side.
I look around to see what I could find that would catch my interest. While looking around, I then thought of Philrei's sword. I look around for it and find it inside the tent near where Philrei was.
I took a good look at the sword before quickly getting out of the tent, in case Philrei suddenly woke up. I picture the sword in my mind. The sword was in it's sheath but I could probably imagine what the blade looked like underneath.
I picture the sword in my head as I shape the mana making up my body in the shape of Philrei's sword. The sword, well technically me, looked vaguely like Philrei's sword. I looked like a cross between a half baked paper mache sword and Philrei's actual sword. It wasn't bad but it didn't seem close to the original at all.
I grab all the images I had of Philrei's sword from my memory to try and tweak the appearance. After many edits, I looked almost like Philrei's sword. However, unless it was from a far, someone could probably still tell the difference straight away.
I decide to perfect the appearance later. I wave my blade around. Swinging up and down, side to side like a child playing pretend, except I doing it with a sword.. or technically with my body as a sword.
Just like earlier, it doesn't feel strange at all. The way my body is in the shape of a sword doesn't feel uneasy or discomforting in any way. Is this just the way spirits are? I guess so.
I changed back into my original appearance, put back on my equipment and sat down. The night calmly passed along as another day ends. It's going to be a long time until we get back to the city, well longer for me I guess since I have to wait out the night.
I continue to sit and wait for the night to pass