Just started chapter 30, and someone was kind enough to put a 5 star to offset the 1 star, so here is bonus chapter.

Once he put the barrels on the wagon, he held out his hand to Jarbuk, who only frowned slightly.

"Ah, maybe it's not customary here. A handshake is sometimes used as a greeting, or a farewell among friends. Where I come from, warriors use a hand to forearm grip for a handshake, as it shows a bit more trust and respect to the one they choose to clasp hands with." Jarbuk folded his arms over his chest.

"It's not that we don't know what it means, but how the humans have used it. Or those who have bad intentions." Baris took back his hand and stepped back a bit.

"I see. So it's become a sign of disrespect to initiate a handshake then." Jarbuk nodded. "Well, I meant none towards you, but if my actions don't speak for themselves, I expect we won't be doing business again." Baris walked into the forest quietly, which made Jarbuk scratch his head.

Baris heard his quietly spoken words and smiled.

"Is this guy a dwarf or a human? He acts exactly like a dwarf." Not long after Jarbuk left, Baris went back to the salt mine, picked up the dead bodies and the heads, and moved then far away from the mine, and the Fairy's Grove. He stripped them of anything useful, but there was little. A few silver pieces, two daggers, but their boots and their armor were all too small for him.

"Looks like I'll need to make some boots. I can't enter Noobville, and the people here are a little bit odd. I don't know the customs yet." He went back to his camp with a handful of salt, and sprinkled some on some of the wolf meat, and put the rest on the stone he cleansed earlier.

"I really have a lot to do. Magic and skills to grind. Get my levels up. Make tools, spears, and a proper camp." He sighed a bit. "I can't really keep relying on these trees to house me like this. I will do some damage to the large branches if I do."

He thought for several moments.

"I need a simple shelter. Something that a wolf couldn't just walk into without waking me up." He looked at the blue wolf still strung up. "I'm going to need some more hide, but first things first. I need to get my offensive spells up to beginner levels, and keep working on my spear crafting, foraging, and armor crafting. Ugh, nothing like the games."

Real survival is hard work when you don't have others to rely on.

From that minute onward, the more manna sensitive people within Steepbell and Noobville began to feel the use of manna and magical usage in quantities that made them wonder if they should send out scouts.

* * *

"Hm. Ten points of manna used per novice spell. That is ten spells. Each point of magical source will recharge five points of manna. That is five full recharges of my manna, but can also regenerate my magical source with the water." He thought for several moments.

"I wonder if the use of spells is merely the use of magical source energy, quantified by manna, and when used, it returns to the land from which it was absorbed." He looked at the land around him and began to concentrate on the soil.

"Scan. Dirt. Filled with fertility and life. No other real details. Scan is a low leveled material attribute magic. I'll need to use it several times in order to really find out more information. I hope it is the case as if I use too much magical source energy here, won't it deplete in this area?" Baris thought for several moments.

"The ones in town use spells all the time, and don't seem concerned. I'll work on my regular spells for now, and if I see anything happen, I'll move my camp so that it won't become a dead area." He nodded. That was as good a plan as any.

"Cold Cold Cold." Baris cast ten cold spells in a row, getting a hundred points towards that skill, and the overall level of elementary magic. As far as he was able to tell, the level of elementary magic was only so it could be quantified, and didn't really affect his magical use at this time. It might also limit what he could learn, so he didn't mind if points were assigned there each time he cast a spell.

Baris picked up some birch and began to carve it into a spear while his manna regenerated. Once complete, he cast ten cold spells again. Baris got out some bones he had already cleaned from a previous blue wolf, and used his knife to start cutting and carving.

Once his manna was filled again, he spammed ten cold spells. On his third time, he was close to the beginner level, so he continued to cut a shoulder blade bone to make a rough wrist cover. He didn't want to shape it just yet.

Baris knew that if the carving was unsuccessful, making it a proper shape would be useless. With the pointed tool he got from Jarbuk, he started to carve the image of a wolf head into the thick hardened bone.

He stopped again to cast his fourth set of cold spells. That was when Baris stood up in excitement.

"Really?!" He rolled his eyes. "Magic sure is different. When my elemental magic category reached Beginner, now all novice level magic spells are five manna points! I can now cast novice magic for five points in manna! Does that mean I can now learn Beginner magic, or should I keep spamming it until they reach apprentice level? Or are these introductory spells only useful until they get into the beginner range, and I'll need the beginner level spells?"

Baris thought for several minutes, and decided to do one more series of cold spell spams. He could do twenty now at a time, so why not, right? The results were what he expected.

"Okay, so cold no longer increases my elemental magic category, and the level increases much slower per spell. Also, I don't get skill points from it anymore. The offensive power has not increased from novice level, but what about the others?"

Once again, patient to the extreme, Baris sat down and continued to carve. As the wolf head began to take shape, Baris noticed something else within his elemental magic category.

Cold was no longer listed as a novice spell, now listed only as Cold. It could not longer advance. He would have to raise the values of the others before he could say the same about them, but was it worth it? He could use them for life measures, like heating in winter, cooling in the summer, a breeze like a fan, but was it now necessary to increase their level?

He spammed out twenty heats towards the ground, and noticed that it smoldered a bit. He growled a little, and put out a cold spell to cool the area down. He would have to be careful with that in the future.

"I should sleep and solidify my new level, but I want to continue to work on this wristlet. You never know. It might be valuable some day." He snorted. He was no artist, but if he worked hard, it could look reasonable. He stood up, went to the stream, and drank enough water to refill his magical source.

"Hm, I don't get any more skill points. It really has no use to level them up. Maybe I should sleep on it, and see if the menu changes in the morning. After I finish this wrist cover."

* * *

"Hey, Nuella! Did something happen in your area again?" Ethys asked.

"What do you mean? I don't remember anything happening." Nuella said with a slight frown. If she did remember, she wouldn't tell her sister now that she could see her guilty look more and more often.

"The mortality rate decreased by quite a bit, and the rate of people moving out of the area has decreased to the point that now more people are moving in." She came over to the screen. "They found a salt deposit?"

"Oh, well, yeah, Baris did. He is sharing it with Noobville and Steepbell. He also showed them separation magic that none of them can do, but the salt is so pure, they don't really need it. Compared to what they were able to get before, it's a big upgrade. Also, he killed another grey wolf and a high level blue wolf elite variant." Nuella pursed her lips a bit.

"Well, whatever he's doing, it's working. Two criminal deaths also helped out on the mortality rate. The whole area has a positive flow now, and the negative flow has finally been reversed." She said.

"Yeah, the area is finally coming into balance on my end too. It's still a ways off, but slowly, it is beginning to look 'right' again." Ethys frowned slightly, but returned to her side.

Nuella looked at her screen, and enlarged the picture. A soft image of a large man dilligently carving away a bone in the hopes he could make something pretty greeted her. She smiled a little.

"You're looking better and better now that you're here, Baris. You never belonged to them. Only to Us."