After running a long while with body strengthening magic, I finally reached the river I planed to follow. This world has domesticated dogs, but they were domesticated from wolf monsters. It already took balls to try and domesticate a god damn wolf, but to do so with one the size of a god damn horse? I have to commend this world for the bravery of its people. As a result of comming from a monster, dogs are bigger, faster, and have a better sense of smell. The search party looking for me will very likely have these hounds to help out, considering my "father's" love of fox hunts. This means that If I want to properly get away, I need to throw off my scent trail.

 To do this I intend to take a dip in the river and let it carry me down stream. It'll quite literally dampen my smell as well as allow me to travel a bit quicker as the current will be to my back. The main risks to this is the various aquatic monsters that are likely in the water. Thankfully that shouldn't be a problem as I have my fancy new lightning powers. With a short phrase and a flick of my wrist, I end up committing a fish genocide. I can't really use all the fish as carrying all of it is impossible, but I do grab a few choice carcasses for dinner later on. The water is a little cold but I ignore that and let myself be carried away.

---

I'm starting to feel the effects of fatigue so I get back on to land to prepare for camp. In my old world getting pneumonia or hypothermia would be a big risk to this method of travel, but with magic that's a non-issue. Using water magic, I take control of the water in my clothes and the blankets and put it into a cup I made with earth magic, instantly drying me off. Furthermore because water magic is only moving H20 the water should be safe to drink. I found that purifying the water by moving it with magic is a lot more cost effective than making it magically. 

On the topic of my magic reserves, with the combination of the staff reducing the amount of mana it takes to use magic and the increase in reserves due to the necklace, I still have about 75% of my mana available. This is after running using body strengthening for a few hours straight as well as multiple wind spells to silence sounds and a fe enchantments. Even though my reserves have increased due to practice with complex spells, the benefits the items I stole provide are terrifying. Just how the hell did these end up in the hands of a marquis? This stuff is good enough to be in the hands of the royal family as sacred treasures.

My drastic increase in power aside, I start off with traveling a bit off from the river and then creating a stone box. With the staff I have a finer control of the shape so I fashion a chimney of sorts filled with multiple grates for ventilation. I also sink the box into the ground to make it more difficult to notice. Finaly I make a hatch with a lock so I can enter and exit without having to remake it. 

Now is the problem of a fire. Usually a fire would create smoke, which would be a dead give away to where I am. I could get around this with a magic fire because it wouldn't make smoke, however this is very mana intensive as I'd have to litteraly burn mana to keep the fire going. There is another way, however. It's actually quite simple to make a fire that doesn't produce smoke even without magic. To the best of my understanding, smoke is incomplete combustion. So if I remember the video I watched's explanation correctly, raising the heat of the fire helps the combustion process so there is much less smoke. An easy way to raise the temperature of the fire is to make it in a hole in the ground. To make sure the fire gets enough oxygen you need to make a second slightly smaller hole a slight bit away and connect them with a small tunnel, usually made by digging out the bottom half of the dirt wall inbetween, making a tunnel you can fit your hand through. 

Making the holes and tunnels are simple enough with earth magic. Afterwards I collect a few sticks and make a frame for the fire in the bigger hole. It only takes a little bit of fire magic to get the fire going. To finish it off I make a little iron grate with earth magic and but it over the big hole to make a makeshift grill.

I thoroughly enjoy my freshly caught and grilled fish before forming some stone rods with magic in the ground and use my blankets to make a hammock. It's been awhile since I last got to camp due to the demanding hours of my job. It'd be kinda nice if I could enjoy this a little more without having to worry about the organization. Maybe one day, I think before finally drifting off to sleep.

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In the morning I find something on my roof. Looking through the chimney I see its a corrupted kolanb. A type of monster from the game. kolanbs are like the mascot of the game. A sort of Kuala/sheep hybrid thats cute and marketable. A corrupted kolanb is a horrifying monstrosity, that defies the will of god, pretending to be a kolanb. The short stumpy limbs of the kolanb are replaces with spider legs that allow it to climb walls. Instead of a nice wooly coat, the corrupted kolanb has patches of dirty wool here and there, with the rest of its body is covered with a pale, rash infested skin. It also spits acid because why not. The developers really got the vibe of "OH GOD KILL IT WITH FIRE" down with this one. Unfortunately while the instinct to ensure it dies in holy flame is strong, it won't work. It's fire resistant. According to dev interviews, when they were designing the monsters they really wanted to make sure their world felt like fantasy Australia and while making this monster one of the lead character designers named Jeff Baxtor thought it would be funny to make  the corrupted kolanb fire resistant. 

Sincerely,  FUCK YOU Jeff Baxtor.

While I was having a mild panic attack about the horrifying monstrosity that could easily melt through my protective grates in my chimney, another monster swept down. Known as the quotal, it is a subspecies of dragons. It looks like a tsuchinoko, but has massive scaly wings. Lucky me as its a rather rare sight. Quotals are the natural predators of corrupted kolanbs and thank god something is working to keep their population in check. They produce a very effective antidote with their saliva, kinda like a reverse kommodo dragon. Said antidote completely fucks up the insides of a corrupted kolanb, instantly killing it, good riddance. There was actually an effective counter to corrupted kolanbs in game by using an antidote on them. As a side note quotals are worshipped in certain parts of the Esu island. Getting hit with the healing drool of one is considered a blessing. As of now It seems I've been blessed as some saliva landed on me through the grate. 

Good Omen, I guess? The saliva kinda smells bad though...