Rain slowly unclenched from a ball, coughing and spitting, trying to clear the horrible taste in his mouth. His head was pounding from lack of air and mana depletion and he was covered from head to toe in a layer of cold, icy, yuck.

Purify.

Rain concentrated, but nothing happened other than the throbbing behind his eyes growing slightly worse. He was completely out of mana, his refrigeration aura having saved him from death by suffocation, but taken his entire mana pool in exchange.

Fuck this. I'm doing it now, even if I haven't done the math. Attributes. Statistics.

Focusing on the attributes screen, Rain dumped 30 points into clarity, implementing the idea he had been toying with back at the guild. Auras consumed mana per second, and Rain wanted to be able to use them indefinitely, so he had hatched the idea of pumping up clarity as high as it would go. He still wasn't sure if that was a good idea in the long run, but right now, covered in unspeakable corruption, out of mana, and shivering in a dank sewer, he thought it sounded like a great fucking idea.

He verified on the statistics panel that his mana regeneration would increase to 500/day, then smashed the apply button.

Dismissing the menu, Rain shivered and waited as his mana returned with excruciating slowness. He tried to ignore his sense of touch as he lay in the freezing puddle, eventually standing and trying to claw off as much of the freezing slime as he could.

Five hundred per day is... divide by 24... something like 20 an hour? Divide by 60... one mana every three minutes? Ish? Fuuuuuck it is so slow. I might have just made a huge mistake.

Rain wanted to open up the options menu and see if there was a way to modify his statistics screen to change the units, but he resisted. Instead, he crouched down and tried to stay quiet, listening hard for any sound of another slime approaching.

The quest said to kill five, not that there WERE five. Ok, come on, I should have enough by now.

Rain's teeth were chattering and his health had dropped by about a quarter from the slime's acid, combined with the cold. His mana bar was still showing almost empty but he decided to try it anyway, focusing on the image of light and summoning his purification aura.

Yes! It's working.

The slime clinging to him started to dry, but Rain ran out of mana again and the purifying waves stopped. The pounding behind his eyes redoubled as he was forced to cancel the skill. The slime seemed to be a bit less sticky and he had more success in wiping some of it away. He removed his shirt, noting that the acid hadn't done it any favors, and wrung it out, globlets of slime dripping off it and to the ground. He wiped at his face with the shirt. It helped a little bit. His shirt ripped as he tried to pull it back on, the acid having weakened the fabric. He pulled it on anyway, the rip in the collar leaving his left shoulder exposed.

Damn it, this is going to take too long. I should start walking back. Rain felt around in the slime for his spear, reaching out with his hands and causing small, horrible waves in the slime as he pushed his hands through it. His hand bumped into his spear, but as it did, he noticed a faint glimmer as the slime shifted. Letting go of the spear, Rain reached for the spot, feeling around and looking for the light. He saw it again and went for it, his hand feeling a small, hard grain in the otherwise mushy slush. Pulling his hand back, he opened his palm to reveal a small, white crystal.

I guess they do drop Tel, but not all the time. Well, it is something at least. It wasn't worth...this.

Picking up his spear, Rain stood and started squelching towards the torch, holding his hard-won prize in one clenched fist and his spear in the other. He felt heavy, weighed down by the oily film of filth covering him.

He stopped when he reached the torch and activated purify again, thinning the slime slightly. Before he continued, he looked up. Seeing the torchlight revealing the bare ceiling of arched stone, Rain relaxed and slumped down against the wall to take a breather. Looking left and right down the tunnel, he felt that it would be safe enough to pull up his menu. He limited himself to a few minutes of exploration, stopping frequently to look up and down the tunnel to make sure nothing was coming.

One of the first things he did was to set all of his screens to 25% transparency so he could see through them slightly, rather than having them completely block his vision. He also found an option for the statistics screen units, allowing him to confirm his math from before hadn't been far off. He set mana regeneration to display per hour but left the others on daily.

Closing his menus, he sent off another pulse of purification, then did some more math, mostly in his head, but also drawing out some slimy figures in the dust on the floor. Pulling up the skills screen, he noted his new skill point. He invested it in the winter aura, to boost his mana regeneration. Casting a firebolt would probably be a bad idea right now, assuming that these are as flammable as the ones in the forest. Not like I have the mana for it anyway.

He was pretty sure that the extra 10% combined with his higher clarity would be enough to offset the cost of the skill, but it was more than possible he had made a math error somewhere. Confirming the skill, he selected it. The icon that appeared was hard to describe. It was more the feeling of a sharp winter morning than it was a picture like the others, yet he could see it with his eyes. The synesthesia was a little off-putting, but he ignored it as he concentrated on the skill.

He didn't notice any visible effect, but he did feel the aura activate. It was a very subtle feeling and he felt like he could maintain it without much effort. Pulling up his statistics, he smiled and pumped his fist in the air. Math powers!

Statistics

Total

Base

Modifier

Health

| 0%

H.Regen

/day

/day

| 0%

Stamina

| 0%

S.Regen

/day

/day

| 0%

Mana

| 0%Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

M.Regen

.9/hr

.8/hr

-1/hr | 10%