Before leaving the library I clean up the mess I made by throwing the book.

It'd be embarrassing to leave something like this behind, wouldn’t it? What if the person who’s been taking care of this place comes back while I’m away?

Just as I’m leaving the room, I glance back once more and my sight lands on the not so inconspicuous puddle of blood I had left on the floor.

I stare at the puddle in silence for a moment.

 “Aahhh, nooo…” I moan in frustration.

I didn’t remember this mess. The blood has already partially dried up. There’s no way to clean this until I find some water or learn to use Water magic. Why did I even bother spending the time gathering up the pages?

Now it’s literally a case of ‘no use crying over spilled blood’.

I guess learning Water magic takes priority over other elements then. It should be useful for other things as well, like keeping my clothes and myself clean. Just because I don't sweat doesn't mean I can forgo such things.

Hmm, the blood puddle is still mostly damp. Since I can’t clean it up anyway, should I leave a little message or prank..?

Never mind, I can’t think of any witty message that could get me more information or scare the person. I dip my finger in the blood and write a short message:

‘Sorry for the mess’.

…

I didn’t lose track of time so badly this time, so I should have a good amount of time to hunt and wander tonight. Hopefully I can find something larger to eat. Last night I only hunted on the southern side of the woods. The woods are split in half by the road so tonight my plan is to map the northern side, or what’s left of it. I’m not sure if the northern side has been damaged by the shockwave from Wave of Death.

I back track my route from last night back to the hill, including the gate lifting experience. Instead of my rusty old spear I now have my shiny new old but sturdy staff, an arm’s length shorter than the spear, in addition to my daggers.

As I’m running up the slope and nearing the top of the hill, I look at the still hard to believe sight to my right. The twin moons are still climbing and are reflecting from the sea’s surface in a bluish hue, the dark grey Bless being heavily overshined by the blue Lunea.

Without context it would probably be a beautiful scene, but to me it just gives the creeps.

At the edge of the woods I try my shadow magic again. In bright moonlight it’s much easier to notice how it blocks light. It was barely noticeable inside the library where there were no obvious light sources. Maybe there were tiny inconspicuous gaps in the ceiling.

I can still see through the shadow no matter how thickly I mold it, but the scene behind it looks dark and colorless. I wrap the shadow around myself and the sounds and smells of the nature abate noticeably, but not to a degree that I can’t hear the wind or smell the forest.

The shadow isn’t solid enough to allow me to step on it, but if I just cover my foot in it so that there are no gaps, it should effectively block the sound of my footsteps, I hope.

My range easily covers a large enough area that I won’t have to worry about giving away my location from the rustling I cause by moving in the thick vegetation.

I don’t want to test out my maximum limits at the moment, as I don’t know enough about how this whole ‘being made of mana’ thing works or how fast I consume my ‘reserves’, if I even have any. But the range can easily stretch out some hundreds of meters from what I can see with a little bit of testing.

This should be incredibly useful while hunting, assuming it actually works as it should against other beings. It will be useless if it works as weakly against my prey as it works against me.

Unless…

I turn into my mist form.

Yes! I can still smell and hear things. How does that even work? Same way as how I can see I guess? Neat!

I should be able to go through the woods silently without alarming any animals in my mist form. Just, gotta be really careful when materializing. I don’t want to end up splattered inside a tree. That'd probably be painful.

A neat extra feature I realized just now is that the clothes I’m wearing and things I’m touching also turn into mist. It would be a bit embarrassing and impractical if my clothes and weapons dropped off whenever I try to mistify.

Making sure I materialize high enough, I drop a couple of meters down before landing. Safe! I bow around me to an invisible audience.

The transformation will be plan B, for now I’ll stick to plan A and try how well my shadow magic works while hunting. I cover some distance around my surroundings in a dome of shadow magic and rush into the woods.

 

---

 

After some of hours of zigzagging and hunting a few small meals, I end up at the northern end of the woods. The woods have obviously been damaged here, since the trees are younger and the terrain is somewhat… unnaturally formed, as if someone had taken a huge shovel and dug out some of the hill away.

It’s just past midnight so I still have plenty of time and while I’m not hungry, I don’t feel exactly satisfied either.

Shadow magic has proven itself to be incredibly useful. I can easily catch animals by surprise, though I did adjust the size of my shadow dome to be smaller, a few meters in all directions around me. Animals can’t seem to hear or smell me, but if they see me approaching they panic and run away, which makes me quite curious about how it looks from their perspective. Is it just a huge ominous black orb approaching? Yeah, that’d be pretty spooky.

I did get some practice in with my oversized club, I mean staff. I should probably leave it somewhere and keep practicing with my daggers instead. Have you ever heard of a mage who bashes their enemies’ heads in with their staff instead of using magic? Yeah, I’m painfully aware of how weird it is.

Since I have plenty of time, I head further west with the plan of circling the entire woods to see where my hunting grounds’ borders end, before heading back to the city.

After reaching the western end of the woods and following its edge towards south for a while, I come to a halt as I smell blood.

The faint smell is coming from somewhere east, maybe around the road. As I get closer carefully, the smell becomes exponentially stronger. Previously I would have assumed for some kind of massacre to have happened, but I’ve learnt that my sense of smell is a bit too sensitive when it comes to blood so I shouldn’t rush into conclusions.

After moving as fast as I dare in the woods for about 10 minutes, the surroundings are getting slightly brighter as I get closer to the source of blood and I can hear the distant cracking of fire ahead and an increasingly loud but frequent snorting, vibrating sound. I slow down to a walk and reduce my shadow to cover just the area around me in an effort to not give myself away.

I can see the road some distance to the right from between the trees. It seems someone has made a camp on a clearing right next to it.

There are some bushes conveniently near the edge of the clearing, so I crouch and get behind the bushes to get a better look. It’s a semicircular clearing, about 100 meters in diameter, which is right next to the main road.

The first thing my eyes land on is the large camp fire, its flames easily reaching above my height. The next thing I notice is not whatever gives off the smell of blood as I was expecting, simply because there’s something much more eye-catching taking up the space around the clearing.

There are three gigantic creatures, two of them apparently sleeping and one presumably on night watch. It seems they’ve felled some trees for seats around the fire. The loud sound I’ve been hearing, which I now assume to be snoring, is coming from the two sleeping creatures.

They are humanoids, but I don’t remember seeing anything this large in my memories and this time my knowledge doesn’t seem to be reliable.

Are they ogres? Or maybe trolls? Probably either of the two, but I don’t know the difference. They are big at about four meters tall and thick all around, not just with fat but also bulging muscles. I should’ve read a humanoid species encyclopedia or something in the library. They shouldn’t be giants at least. If the history book I read is correct, giants shouldn’t exist on the continent anymore. Let’s just call them ogres for now.

For clothes they only have some huge animal pelts tied together around their waists. They have huge clubs over two meters long and almost as thick as the trees next to each one of them.

“Hah, isn’t this a bit too big of a difficulty jump from foxes? I don’t think the Adventurers’ Guild would ask a newbie to go kill these after reporting their first hunting kills!”

The smell of blood seems to be coming from that pile of bones next to the fire and from their clubs. The bones only have hints of meat and blood left on them and I can’t recognize what the remains belong to, but they’ve clearly had a huge feast on many animals.

The ogre on guard duty is staring at the fire with its side towards me and doesn’t seem to have noticed me by any means. My shadow magic is still doing its job. I certainly can smell them now that I’m this close. Gross. Fortunately the smell of blood overwhelms it pretty well.

Now, what to do? I don’t believe they’d be friendly and tell me what year it is or have a chat about the weather if I just go ahead and greet them. They look too dumb for that anyway. I shouldn’t underestimate them though, because at least they have the intelligence to stick together and keep a guard during the night.

This would be a huge feast for me, a single one of these three could probably feed me better than all the animals I’ve sucked dry combined, ever since I was born. They look pretty thick skinned but that shouldn’t pose a problem. I can’t pass up this kind of opportunity. It will also be my first proper fight.

I lay down my staff and grab one of my daggers.

I don’t have precise enough control over my magic to cover all three of them separately with shadow, but if I can take care of the one that’s awake without alerting the other two, this should be easy. There’s quite some distance between each of them, which should work to my advantage. If I cover the guard with my shadow, it can’t alert the other two.

“I can do this. I’m the strongest at night. They don’t stand a chance,” I try to encourage myself with a whisper, but their size is intimidating no matter how I put it.

I stretch out my shadow as fast as possible towards the ogre, wait until it has almost reached the target and throw the dagger at it, dashing out from my bush.

The ogre probably saw movement from the corner of its eye and starts turning and standing up with a grunt, but is too late as it’s covered by the shadow. I aimed the dagger at its neck hoping I could cut its throat, but thanks to my shitty throwing skills and the ogre’s movement, the dagger buries itself deep into its shoulder instead and it roars in pain.

Clicking my tongue I jump towards the howling ogre’s head. I thrust my left hand forward piercing its skull with the claws and cut its throat using my right hand.

Dying immediately, the ogre’s heavy body falls right next to the trunk it had been using as a seat, hitting it and sending it rolling away with a loud sound.

“Shit!”

There goes the sneaky plan. I didn’t account for that so the shadow didn’t reach far enough.

My eyes dart towards the sleeping ogres, and of course they are stirring awake from the noise and about to sit up. The other one is looking my way in confusion.

They are way too light sleepers!

Pulling in the shadow, I throw my other dagger aiming for the ogre’s head and sprint after it.

It’s surprisingly agile for its size and reflexively blocks the object flying at it with its arm. The dagger pierces through down to the quillon.

“Uhru! Enemy! Kill Arga!” it shouts while standing up and looking around for its weapon. Finding the club, the ogre starts reaching for it.

Too late! Now having come close enough, I jump and thrust my claws deep into its throat as its eyes are focused on the weapon.

The ogre gurgles and reaches for me, trying to throw me off with its free hand in panic, but I slice the hand in half before kicking off from its chest. It drops the club, stumbles back and drops on its bum, trying to desperately hold its throat with the still intact hand in vain while blood pours from its mouth and sliced hand.

"Hurt Moga!" an angry roar comes from behind me and a shadow looms over me.

I barely have time to turn my head to briefly see a massive something, before it hits my side with a nasty cracking sound.

“Kuh..!”

I'm sent flying into the woods and am stopped by a tree after a few seconds and I fall to the ground. I feel a mild throbbing from where I was hit. Looking down, my bloody right arm is twisted in a very unnatural way and there’s a nasty looking dent around where my ribs should be. I spit some of the nearly tasteless blood out of my mouth.

“You kill Arga! Uhru kill you!” a shout and sound of stomping comes from the direction I flew from.

Standing up, I raise my face to look at the third ogre, who is now charging at me with its bloody club raised high. I bite my lip, trying to ignore the brief pain from the regeneration and cover the charging ogre in shadow before it has time to reach me and start running around it.

“What!? What you do!?” the ogre shouts, panic in its voice.

Confused by the sudden darkness and lack of sound, the ogre veers into a tree and starts looking around, swinging its club wildly.

I circle behind it and jump on its back. Before it has any time to react, I stab my claws in the back of its head and sink my fangs in its nape.

The blood is so amazing and rich it almost makes me dizzy.

Ahh, what a taste! This is too good!

Short and weird disconnected memories flash through my mind as I keep digging deeper with my fangs and reveling in the euphoria. After a moment I also feel like I instinctively know just slightly better how to use large blunt weapons more effectively.

These must be the memories and experiences gained from more intelligent beings. I wonder how the feeling will be with something like a human. Ahhh~, can’t wait.

In less than a minute the corpse runs dry and I remove my lips from the neck with a smack. Sighing contentedly and rubbing my belly, I look around and realize I didn’t even make sure the ogre was falling the right way before biting in. It would’ve been an annoying interruption if it didn’t fall on its face. I let my bloodlust get the better of me again, how embarrassing...

The woods are now quiet, except for the cracking of the large fire. Even the birds seem to have quieted down or escaped from the brief sounds of the battle.

‘Brief’ is indeed the proper word, the fight itself was over probably in less than a minute from start to finish.

I messed up though. In the end it was all good, but I still screwed up and got hit. I can blame it on lack of forethought and experience I guess. I should’ve probably attacked from behind the guard so it wouldn’t have had any time to prepare. Instead, I rushed in from the side. And I was too focused on the second ogre who was reaching for a weapon and didn’t keep an eye on the third. I’ll need to be more careful in the future.

Couldn’t I have just covered the entire clearing in my ‘shadow dome’? Well, I’m not really sure how senses work inside my shadow. I didn’t want to risk it, not until I hear it from someone who knows more or is not nearly immune to it like me. From this fight I noticed that when I was covered within the same shadow as the first ogre, I could hear its voice clearly without it getting muffled down like the sounds coming from the outside.

I could’ve turned into mist before getting hit, but that thought didn’t even come close to my mind in the heat of the battle. I wouldn’t have had time to react anyway, I didn’t expect it.

We ended up over 50 meters into the woods with the third ogre. That was a nasty hit. I start walking back into the clearing and realize I’m missing my breastplate. Ahh damn, it must’ve broken from the hit, how useless.

Coming back to the clearing, I notice the second ogre is still barely alive. The weak heaving of its chest and movement of its half closed eyes give away that it’s alive and sees me. It's lying on its back in a pool of blood, weakly holding its wound but clearly almost dead from severe blood loss.

It looks like they don’t have high speed regeneration, so they are ogres after all, huh? Lucky~, if I remember correct, trolls have a pretty good regeneration speed. 

I feel more sated than ever, but I still feel like I could fit in a dessert so I walk over to it and remove the hand holding the deep wound.

“Thanks for the meal~♪” I happily bite in.

It has no strength left to resist or react. It has lost a huge amount of blood, but there’s still plenty left. I think I might’ve had to stop half way if it still had all of its blood. It’s bad manners to waste food, but I think I’ll have to pass up on the last one. I don’t have any means to store and carry their bodies or blood anyway.

It doesn’t take long at all to finish off the dessert. I didn’t seem to get as much experience or memories from this one. Maybe it’s because there was less blood?

Ahh, but damn, I’m so full now. I already ate a decent amount before finding this trio, just how many liters of blood was that? I can’t help but giggle, it just feels so blissful to be this satisfied.

Ah right, the daggers! They are still stuck where I left them. I grab the one stuck on this one’s arm and walk over to the first corpse and draw the second dagger out from the shoulder. I wipe both daggers into the pelts, sheathe them and go grab my staff from behind the bush.

Well, I’m full now and there’s still at least three hours before morning. I can’t do anything to the fire really, so I guess I’ll just leave things here as they are.

With a wide grin on my face I start leisurely walking down the road back to Estmoor.

…

The woods have indeed grown quite a bit and it takes me almost an hour to reach the top of the hill with my slow pace. I still have some time so I head for the crater.

I walk along the edge of the crater for a good while hoping to find some place where the surface of the water would be close, but everywhere seems to be just steep cliffs with at least a 100-meter drop to the sea.

Maybe I’ll look further east or northwest on another night, because I can’t practice Water magic like this. I need to properly experience how the element feels like before I can even hope to practice it.

I guess I’ll have to wait and collect some rain water in some container or find a well later.

I go back inside the city walls and head towards the castle, casually looking around for any wells to check later and put down their locations into the rough map inside my head.

This time I don’t bother with the portcullis and just jump over the 12-meter castle walls, because I felt like I could do it now. No problems!

There’s about an hour before sunrise so I stroll around the courtyard for a while, looking for anything interesting. I see no signs of anything hinting at the existence of the person who has been taking care of the library. There’s nothing but undead and bones.

Before going inside the castle and into the library for the day, I grab two nearby skeleton soldiers by their shoulder bones, or whatever they are called, and drag them with me to play with during the day.

I push the library doors open and push the skeletons ahead of me through the shadow wall. Peering from behind my bone shields, I scan the library but there’s nothing different from when I left. My blood puddle has completely dried up too.

“Haa, I’ve had enough excitement for one night so this is nice. Don’t you think so too, you two? I’ll play with you a bit later. I’ll just relax a bit on my sofa first... Ahh, still feeling so full… I feel like I could even sleep as I’m now.”

I leave the skeletons standing next to the doors and walk over to the sofa and let myself fall on it sloppily and close my eyes for a bit.

Soon I hear the two skeletons walking around, the sound is getting closer.

Hm? Are they coming here? Shouldn’t they just stand around if there’s no sound or weapons to grab?

I open my eyes. They are walking closer and look pretty determined. With their firm grip on the swords, the feeling they give off is almost hostile.

A bit creeped out by their unexpected behavior, I sit up.

“What’s up with you two?”

“Who said that sofa is yours?” a raspy voice comes from next to my ear as something grabs my shoulder.