[Tained Lands] 10 – Home Improvements

How much time has passed? Two weeks. Two weeks have passed since I found myself experiencing this lifestyle change. I'd grown a bit disheveled and had a bit of a beard coming in, not that I minded, and my home, which was once sparse and lonely, was now lively due to the Golems I had wandering about, even if they were not intelligent enough to do anything but basic tasks.

I've done nothing but train, exercise, and play with magic for an entire week, leading to some decent gains.

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Name: John Constantine

Class: Arcanist

Level: 6

Health: 146/146 - (21) [] Mana: 106/106 (27.50) [] Stamina: 95/95 (13.00)

=[Attributes]=

Strength: 14/Agility: 13

Vitality: 13/Endurance: 19

Perception: 9/Reaction: 11

Intelligence: 14/Wisdom: 14

Focus: 17/Willpower: 24

Charisma: 10/Luck: 10

Insight: 25

=[Skills]=

Active: [Sprint Lvl 3]

Spells: [Mana Bolt Lvl 1], [Mana Shield Lvl 1], [Mana Infusion Lvl 10]

Passive: [Mana Manipulation Lvl 19], [Mana Perception Lvl 13], [Meditation Lvl 6]

Resistances: [Pain Tolerance Lvl 14]

Mastery: [Carpentry Lvl 12], [Throwing Proficiency Lvl 1]

Unique: [Rebirth], [King of Golems]

Unlocked Paths: [Novice Carpenter (0/25)], [Novice Cook (0/25)], [Novice Lumberjack (0/25)], [Novice Golemancer (0/100)]

Completed Paths: [Novice Mage]

Path Points: 117 Points

Level Rewards: 5 HP, 5 SP, 10 MP, and 5 Attribute Points

25 Free Attribute Points

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I've grown much in the past week, especially with a lot of my skills, most notably my mana-related skills, especially meditation, which went up eight levels, and mana manipulation, which went up five.

And yet, I still had not spent even a single free attribute point. That would change. I was expecting something to happen, maybe more of those monsters showing up at my place, but nothing. So, I looked through my stats and began assigning the 25 points I had gathered.

+1 Strength, +3 Vitality, +1 Endurance, +4 Reaction, +6 Intelligence, +6 Wisdom, +3 Focus, and +1 Willpower.

It was a relatively balanced stat allocation, but in an instant, after confirming my choice, I felt the change within my body. I felt my muscles tense and heat up, and my head tightened and squeezed before releasing a few moments later, causing me to groan in discomfort.

Leaning back on the dining room chair, I looked at my status, specifically at my unlocked paths. I had unlocked a few paths in the past week and accumulated enough points to unlock all of them or just one, and personally, I was really leaning towards the last option, [Novice Golemancer].

When I selected the path, my surroundings once again changed, and it continued to change as I placed more and more points into the path. 

[5/100: The Path of Golemancy is a path not many follow. The arcane art of molding the world around you into the shape of puppets is a path that can be difficult or tedious at times, yet you strive forward all the same. +5 Willpower]

[25/100: +5 Focus]

[50/100: Most give up before they reach this point, but you are not most. +5 Willpower]

[75/100: +5 Focus]

[100/100: In your time learning the art of Golemancy, you have learned to mold stone and wood alike with your bare hands, and yet, you realize that a mountain still stands before you]

[Mana Shaping Lvl 1 Gained]

[Mana Shaping (Active) Level 1 - Coat your hands in mana and mold material with just a touch, consumes five mana per second]

Activating the skill, through [Mana Perception], I watched as a sheen of mana coated my hands before I deactivated the skill due to the heavy costs of keeping the skill active.

This called for some tests.

…

I gathered some rocks, sticks, and a log and dragged them to my back patio, where I activated Mana Shaping and reached out for one of the rocks.

At first, I didn’t notice anything different, even as I rolled the rock around in my hand, but as I continued touching and pushing my fingers into the rock, I noticed the change. The rock still felt solid, yes, but now, with the skill active, it felt slightly malleable yet still very tough to change or manipulate.

When I moved onto one of the sticks, I watched as the stick folded like a pretzel with a simple clench of my fist when I grabbed it. 

Strangely, it didn’t break the stick; instead, now it looked like the stick merely grew into such an odd shape naturally. There were no marks outside of the divots where my fingers clenched.

Continuing to mess with the stick, I watched as the stick split apart with another clench of my fist, separating into two pieces with sharp stake-like ends where they broke apart, but they didn’t appear damaged or broken in the slightest. It looked like the sticks grew that way naturally. 

Curious, I moved over to the log, keeping the skill active but already feeling the draining effects. I even ignored the three songs I had gotten so far that notified me that the skill had leveled up. 

When I started pushing one of my fingers into the bark of the log, I felt some resistance, like pushing my fingers into thick soil, but the wood still parted ways between my fingers. When I pulled my finger out of the log, a hole with bark pushed in was left behind, and yet again, it looked like a natural formation.

I wanted to continue, but stopped myself. I had already been at this for less than a minute and was down to less than 12 mana, having had the skill activated for no more than twenty seconds in the past few minutes.

So, instead, I headed back inside and sat down in a lotus position on my bed. At [Meditation]'s current level, I had a bonus of 14% to my mana regen, which rose it from thirty-five points an hour, to nearly forty points instead while I meditated.

Setting a timer with an old-fashioned mechanical dial turner I found in the kitchen drawer to three hours, I let [Meditation] take hold, feeling my body relax and my mind clear. Before I even knew it, three hours had passed as my meditation was interrupted by the loud ringing of the timer.

Grumbling, I reached for the timer and reset it before climbing out of bed. I still had around four or five hours till it got dark, so I should have plenty of time to perform more experiments.

I wanted to see if there was a limit to the material [Mana Shaping] could mold or if I was stuck with boring old wood and stone. The second experiment I wanted to do was to see if I could make something that had no right to form naturally in nature. The last test I wanted to do was to see if I could use [Mana Shaping] to mold my already active Golems into different shapes without accidentally destroying them.

I could already imagine all the possibilities this new skill would grant me, and I couldn't wait to test them out, even if I didn't realize that the sky flashed red every once and a while, wth me not even noticing due to my intense focus and full attention on the experiments before me.