Frostbitten Wayfarer

Zoe wandered around the new section of the dungeon for a few months and fought many of the zombies with their different magics. Most were similar to the first one she fought — upgrades of the previous tool wielding zombies, sticks that ignited and magical bursts of power they shot from their hands.

But a few had no visible weapons and tried to keep their distance while they peppered Zoe with their various projectiles. Most tended to be of the simpler elements — fire, water, earth and air. Plentiful in nature and simple to harness. Though there were others that she found as well. Ice and wood made up the majority of the less common elements, but there was the odd zombie that ripped grass out from around them to fight or summoned bones from its body to fight with.

The magic power the zombies used was quite helpful with her attempts to accumulate as many elemental skills as she could, and she managed to get the Fire skill out of it. She was tempted to stick around and try to find even more zombies with different magic, but she already had the more common ones and the rarer ones were so few and far between that it would take her far too long to find enough of them to get a good understanding of their elements.

For a moment she had the idea of trapping a couple of them to study for months on end, but it didn’t feel right to her. Even if they were shambling husks created for the sole purpose of assisting her growth through whatever magic powered the dungeon, torturing them was too far for her.

She did manage to get both Bone and Wood resistances through the few fights she had with them though, and added that to her once again growing list of resistances. They brought her up to eighteen resistances, and she was curious to see if she would get a feat for them at twenty or maybe twenty-five.

Zoe spent some time studying her wispy ashen echo to try and see what was different between that and fire. At first when she heard of the Slayer of Cinders feat, she thought that it would just be a fire elemental. Simple, raw, fire. But after using the Seasoned Cinders class she saw that cinders was something much more than just fire. Heat was a big part of it, but so were ash and flakes of smouldering coal that floated through her echo.

Cinders was something entirely different to just Fire, it was a combination of multiple elements. But Zoe wasn’t sure which elements it would be. Was it just fire and ash? Or was ash itself a combination of some other more basic elements?

Her studying of the skill didn’t prove fruitful, though she didn’t dedicate an awful lot of time to it either being surrounded by dangerous zombies with powerful magic. One day when she had some time to spend on it, Zoe wanted to upgrade her Fire skill to Cinders. In fact, she’d like to upgrade all of her skills to their more complicated elements someday.

Zoe daydreamt of throwing around massive bursts of power, filled with every magic she could find. Blasts of space that ripped apart reality, and pulses of time that froze a falling apple before it hit the ground. Clouds of ash and ice that weaved through the air in beautiful patterns.

Magic was intoxicating for Zoe, and each new skill that she got made her appreciate the world she’d been teleported into so much more. Sitting at home and playing games was fun, and she wouldn’t mind having a chance to do that again someday if the opportunity presented itself.

But rushing through forests and mountains faster than she ever could have imagined, hurling raw magical power around her with nothing more than a simple thought? That was such a primal pleasure for her, something that had become so deeply important to her.

The thought of going back to a normal mundane life where she couldn’t even see the wisps of light that floated around her? Where she couldn’t summon a ball of ice and enchant it with feelings of happiness or excitement? Where everything she could ever want to learn was just a few clicks away?

It almost terrified her now, so many long years after she was whisked away to this world. The idea that she’d wake up and it would all have just been a dream. The beauty of this world, or even this entire universe was something so awe inspiring to her.

Zoe looked at the zombies off in the distant forest and chuckled. Maybe she’d like to spend more time around more well spoken magical company someday, though.

Each of the zombies left behind a small gem when Zoe defeated them, and she stored most of them into her storage bracelets. They were beginning to get quite full with her bed taking up most of one bag and the jagged ball of Frost still taking up an entire bag all on its own.

The gems were a lightweight thumb sized translucent crystal with different colours depending on the magic the zombie she got them from used. Fire zombies dropped orange gems, water zombies dropped blue gems. Ice zombies dropped a lighter blue gem.

On their own, they didn’t seem to do anything as far as Zoe could tell. But they were excellent for enchanting matching effects onto. The orange gems looked very similar to the firestarter gems she was using previously, and she was able to make a similar effect by enchanting one of the orange gems with her new Fire skill.

It seemed, to the best of her ability, that they were not much better for enchanting than a silver coin was, but were much more efficient with mana usage for elementally aligned effects. The orange gems used significantly less mana when she enchanted her Fire skill onto them than a silver coin would. But anything else didn’t seem to have any difference at all.

They didn’t do anything that she wasn’t able to do by simply being a better enchanter, but it did help her fit in more useful skills into enchantments rather than needing to always have Meditation and Enchanting on them to provide mana. But she still didn’t see much use for them for where she was now. Anything the gems could do, her icy splinters could do and probably do better.

The two grass mages that Zoe had fought interested her and she spent a lot of time wondering about their magic. It was definitely different to Earth, since she wasn’t able to manipulate the actual grass itself like the zombie could. She could move the dirt the grass was in, and pull it along with it. But she couldn’t rip the grass itself out of the ground and manipulate it around.

But even after trying to get the resistance and taking more damage than she’d ever needed to for a resistance, she wasn’t able to get it. Which made her think that Grass counted as Earth for her resistance, but not for her skill. Or possibly Wood, but she wasn’t able to manipulate grass with Wood either, no matter how much she tried.

Was Grass a basic element, or was it a combination of other elements? Zoe’s theory was that it was Earth and Water, two resistances that she already had. She already had both of those skills and according to Richard they should just combine if she gets ones that can combine, but they didn’t. Maybe it was Earth and Wood? Or Earth, Wood and Water? Whatever the case, she expected it to be a combination of skills that she already had resistances to.

She wasn’t sure how accurate she was, but there wasn’t another explanation that made any sense to her. Why would it be different to Earth, but not give her another resistance? None of her other resistances made any sense. Earth and Wind? Earth and Heat? That wasn’t going to make anything that could manipulate grass.

Which meant that the most logical explanation to her was that manipulation skills could be combined together to create a wide variety of effects, but they still only applied to the base level of resistances.

That got her wondering about her Frost and Water skills. Frost was water, in the most literal of meanings. Ice was just solid water. There was no real reason that she couldn’t manipulate ice with her Water skill to her understanding of reality. But in practice, if she disabled Frost then ice was inaccessible to her without reverting to her previous studies of the skill. Her Water skill provided zero help to the process.

And Frost was just as useless when it came to manipulating liquid water. But why was that? What would Frost be, if it were a combination skill?

In theory, Frost would be a mix of Water and Ice. But with the skill, all she could make was solid ice. The best she could do was a slurry of ice, but water itself was completely off the table for the skill. And yet if her theory was right, then if she wanted to acquire Frost without killing an elemental, she would have needed to evolve her Water skill.

Would doing so have removed her Water skill? Would she have been able to create water with Frost if she had combined it herself instead of acquiring it through an unfortunate elemental attack? Zoe wasn’t sure. If she evolved her current skills into grass or plants or whatever magic the zombies were using, then would she lose the ability to manipulate rocks?

Zoe had levelled up more than a few times over the months, making it all the way to level ninety. The number of stat points she was getting at this point was staggering. At twenty-five per level now, she had accumulated seven hundred twenty five points to spend as she wanted. She dumped them into Intelligence every few levels since it was just such a massive boon with each level now.

And at level ninety she reached her goal. She was at nine hundred seventy six intelligence, with a mana pool larger than she ever expected to have. And twenty-five free points to spend meant she’d be reaching four digits in one of her skills for the first time.

It was an odd goal she’d set early on while she was fighting the zombies. The levels flew in with now two classes giving her a bonus to experience through the passage of time adding to whatever the system rewarded her for the fights.

Richard had mentioned that all skills and resistances give feats when they reach level one thousand, but hadn’t mentioned anything about the stats. And Zoe thought that didn’t make much sense until she thought about Richard’s stat allocation.

If he lived for a thousand years, he’d only just be able to reach one thousand in any individual stat with only one extra point per year if he’d given up all other stats to get there. But would he have done that? Would that have made any sense at all?

For Zoe, if she had decided to go that route, building for a single stat for so long would be almost impossible. Her first goal would be getting enough health to not feel squishy. Maybe a few hundred years. Then enough physical stats to be able to flee from danger. Another few hundred years. A few more hundred years into her stamina and mana pools to make them more functional. And so on.

Spending her first thousand years dumping everything she had into a single stat would stunt her progression, it would make her unable to travel around as freely. Unable to experiment with magic as freely. And she thought there was a good chance that Richard would do the same and spread his stats out somewhat evenly to keep his unspecialized build balanced.

Which meant that Richard wouldn’t need to live for a thousand years to discover a feat for reaching one thousand intelligence. He’d need to live for multiple thousands of years. Two, maybe even three thousand years. Possibly up to almost six thousand years.

There was a very good chance that Richard just didn’t have any stats over one thousand yet when he wrote the book, and thus he didn’t know about them.

Another thought that Zoe had over the months was what happened when you reset a class. You’d lose all the stats you gained from it, all of the class bonuses and skills of course. But what about things you achieved with the class?

If Zoe got to one thousand intelligence with Seasoned Cinders and got a feat for it, then switched the class out what would happen to the feat? The intelligence would be gone, of course. But the feat was already given to her. She already earned it. Did she need to continue earning it, or was it always hers, even if she later no longer had the requirement for it?

She pushed the last twenty five stat points into her intelligence and smiled at the notification she was rewarded with.

*Ding* For reaching one thousand intelligence, you have been awarded with the [Archmage] feat.

[Archmage]

You have accumulated power beyond one’s wildest imaginations. A master of raw mana. With no more than a thought, the world bends to meet your demands. All classes gain a bonus to mana affinity. Increased mana capacity.

Zoe checked her mana. With one thousand intelligence and the bonus from her Chrono Enchanter class, she should have twenty thousand. But with her new Archmage feat, she had double that.

Before she got too attached, Zoe found a safe spot up in a tree and focused on her class selection. She replaced her Seasoned Cinders class with Elemental Master and bit down on her jacket as the system wreaked havoc through her body. Every fiber of her essence was rent apart and repaired by the system’s magic, and it took all of her being to not shriek in pain.

When the system was done, she swapped back to Seasoned Cinders and checked her stat sheet. She was reset back to level sixty-one, all her class levels were reset and all the stats she accumulated into Intelligence were gone. But at the very bottom of her sheet, after all of her other feats was Archmage.

Zoe smiled.