I thoroughly enjoyed the last few minutes that I would have with her before heading out. I had, after all, 497 evolution points I could spend. I took the holy barrier and the elemental wall without even hesitating for a second. Those two spells would increase my defensive capabilities and cause me to do damage when my barriers were down to half strength.

I wouldn’t try it on purpose, but I imagined not getting hit forever was impossible. The barrier was likely to be far more effective during my next evolution, where I would gain additional defensive skills.

After these two skills, I still had 197 points left. I chose the wind gust next as I knew it would open up two more merged skills. I confirmed the choice and went through the internal changes. As soon as I had done so, I had the blessing merge the new skills and add them to my arsenal.

As the information filled my brain, I almost immediately knew that the thread manipulation skill was insanely useful to have. Not only could I use it to immobilize prey from a distance, I could also use it to create my shelter. Moving my abdomen around was starting to become a hassle. I couldn’t quite see what I was doing, and I didn’t have too much of a natural instinct regarding building something like this.

Being able to manipulate threads with wind and shooting them like a spell was a blessing when it came to something like this.

The other spell was, of course, High-Velocity Ice Lance, and as far as I could tell, its damage was directly linked to my Ice Lance spell. I considered upgrading my limb strengthening, but upgrading ice lance seemed like the better choice at the moment. A long-range spell with excellent accuracy would always have its use.

I kept upgrading the skill until it reached its highest level.

The Spider Thread skill became a lot more interesting as well with this merged skill. My silk seemed to have a separate reserve as well. The thread manipulation’s mana cost was extremely low. It would be a smart choice to upgrade it when I had the chance.

So my threads and limb strengthening were likely next.

“You’re still going through your skills, aren’t you?” Cellestra’s voice broke my concentration.

I nodded in reply.

“Take your time. I still don’t quite understand how it works, but I’m assuming you’re making careful choices here.”

I was.

And Cellestra’s smile was highly distracting…

I couldn’t wait until I was done going out all the time. I was longing for some time that I could simply spend with her without necessarily doing anything. A bit of relaxation would be okay before I was to set out on my adventure, right?

I wanted to believe it, but anxiety built up within me. I didn’t want to sit around while I was still unsure of my parents’ fates.

These feelings were becoming worse. I wanted to see her more and more when I was with her, but my new life would never allow for anything to happen between us. I would keep quiet about this to her. It just wouldn’t be fair. One more thing to deal with was nothing for me.

I turned to the letters again and started spelling out words. “Will go out now. Need anything for dinner?”

I’d be happy to bring back something to eat tonight. I didn’t know how much of the boar was still left. Besides, I was starting to yearn for something else…

It was the least I could do. She had plenty to do in a day as it was, and she would be helping me with my shelter tonight as well. I didn’t think she would have a lot of time to gather food on her own.

“Uhm,” She muttered, before putting a finger on her lips as she thought. “I’ll have plenty for tonight, but if you want to go and hunt for something for tomorrow, go ahead. Boar’s starting to tire me… and you too, I think.”

Yep…

“So if you could get something smaller, that’d be great,” She finished.

“Should be okay,” I replied.

“In that case, good luck, and take care,” She said as waved with one hand, a smile on her face.

Crap. I didn’t know how long I’d be able to keep this up. I hoped these feelings would pass away as soon as my mind accepted the fact that things couldn’t be.

I politely replied with a wave of my own and headed off in a direction I hadn’t explored yet; the southwest. I was starting to run out of creatures that would give experience. Last time, it took two days to find a bear. It did give a large amount of experience, sure, but I couldn’t spend days looking for suitable prey.

I hoped hunting in this area would be more fruitful.

I cast my multi-barrier skill as I departed and soon took notice of some smaller creatures in the area. I would focus on getting the achievement for healing a mortal wound with one of those. I wanted to get this achievement to upgrade some additional skills. The threads and limbs were great choices, after all.

I would use this opportunity to test out my thread manipulation skill as well. I shouldn’t have much of an issue restraining smaller animals with this level of my threads. Restraining them would also make injuring them in a careful manner much easier.

It was sickening to think about delivering a lethal wound to an animal to heal them right after. I was practically forcing them to go through hellish pain… I hated it.

I would release whatever I caught. While it was true I was going to search for dinner for tomorrow, I didn’t want to inflict pain on a creature, to then heal them, to then kill them anyway. I wasn’t that cruel…

The area wasn’t terribly abundant with smaller creatures, but a rabbit soon showed up as I continued. Hiding with my current size would be near impossible, so I combined my old nature of jumping on prey and my new spells to get it.

I jumped close to the creature and immediately fired my new spell: Thread Manipulation.

A thick thread materialized before me and shot at the creature before it could even react. I felt that I could control the direction of the thread as it flew, but I didn’t need that for now. I just aimed straight for the creature and had the line connect. After that, it was simply a matter of reeling in my catch.

To make it easier on the rabbit that was squirming for dear life, I fired a venom bolt to paralyze it. The creature was paralyzed within seconds and stopped thrashing about. I was then left wondering how I should wound it so it wouldn’t die too fast.

Before doing any of that, I decided to raise my healing light level by one for twenty points. Leveling a healing spell would never be a bad thing. I wanted to complete this achievement without killing anything I didn’t have to.

I wondered if I could inject venom into the creature to then cast detoxification, but that wouldn’t really be a wound, would it?

What would be considered a mortal wound, anyway? Would a wound that would bleed the creature to death over time be considered mortal? I assumed it would.

Expecting that to be the case, I walked up to the creature and stabbed it with one of my legs. The creature bled profusely, which caused me to wince as it was obviously suffering for my gains. As soon as I’d created the wound, I cast the strongest version of healing light that I had and watched the wound close for the most part. I cast the spell twice more before I was confident that no internal damage was left.

I was glad to see that it had been enough. This achievement had me in mental pain.

I removed the thread from the poor creature and stood guard over it until the paralytic venom wore off. I figured that was the least I could do for this rabbit. I didn’t want other predators to get it while it was defenseless because of me. It just didn’t feel fair…

As soon as the creature beneath me could move, it jumped away and ran off as fast as it could, still slightly wobbly from the venom’s effect.

Now that that was behind me, it was time to figure out what to spend my new evolution points on. I chose the limb strengthening and spider thread upgrades first, costing me 135 points, leaving me with 122.

It would seem I was starting to rack up a decent number of points. I imagined the thermal vision skill would allow me to see creatures through vegetation better, so I decided to take that upgrade next.

Before I did so, however, I first made sure the other enhancements had completed, before choosing a large tree to climb.

I was told this thermal vision would allow me to see heat as if it were colors. I had no idea how that worked, so in case my vision was messed up and took time to adjust to, I would be safe up high.

I then hoped it wouldn’t make things worse as I confirmed the upgrade.