He took in a deep breath and closed his eyes again, that was enough gawking, for now, He had choices to make and a lot of stuff to do.

Taking a more detailed look around he saw the trunk to one of the huge trees not too far from him, he got up and slowly walked over to it. Looking around with mana sight both on and off to make sure there were no immediate threats in his vicinity.

He didn’t see anything so he sat down against the tree, taking the pack off his shoulder as he did so and setting it down beside him. Once sitting he said out loud, “Next.” and the next notification window showed up.

 

---

2/2

Magic aspect Level up!

You have gained 2 distributable Magic stats

 

Congratulations!

You have Leveled Up!

 

Name	Mike Sven
Age	22
Sex	Male
Height	180cm
Weight	67kg
Average Level	2
Physical Statistics	0
Level	2
Exp	5%
Strength (STR)	8	(+/-)
Endurance (END)	8	(+/-)
Agility (AGI)	9	(+/-)
Dexterity (DEX)	9	(+/-)
Mental Statistics	0
Level	1
Exp	5%
Intelligence (INT)	15	(+/-)
Wisdom (WIS)	11	(+/-)
Perception (PER)	9	(+/-)
Willpower (WIL)	9	(+/-)
Magic Statistics	2
Level	3
Exp	10%
Affinity (AFI)	16	(+/-)
Attunement (ATU)	6	(+/-)
Control (CON)	9	(+/-)
Resistance (RES)	6	(+/-)
General Points (GP)	4

---

 

So that was the level up notification he had felt after disabling the ward on the door. Seeing the stats that he could spend he wondered whether he should save them for later after he picked a class. He decided to keep the GP for that. He would put the two Magic stats into control though, needing to speak or wave his arms around to cast sucked and he had yet to hit a wall for attunement.

That done, he decided to find out what Ishare had left him in the pack, he wanted to check the classes but he was curious about the pack. He felt like the classes would require his full attention, so he would get this out of the way first.

 

He managed to open the top flap of the leather pack by undoing a buckled strap, he flipped it open and reached inside, pulling out the first object he touched. His hand came out gripping a dagger by its sheathed blade, his hand paused in surprise for a second but he then brought it closer to inspect.

Gripping the hilt in a reverse grip and the sheathe in his other hand, he pulled the blade free. It shone like the steel it likely was as he inspected it, it was likely not Ishare’s primary weapon, but it certainly was a weapon, not just a belt knife for cutting meat or handy use.

Mike flipped the weapon around into a standard grip and experimentally gave it a swing, but was interrupted by the ding of a notification.

 

---

You have attempted to learn the skill Physical Skill: Knife Fighting.

 

This Skill has the requirements:

10 AGI

10 DEX

 

You can still use the weapon, but It is highly discouraged. You should avoid physical conflict until you qualify for a Physical combat skill.

Their requirements are:

Unarmed Combat: 8 STR, 10 END

Knife Fighting: 10 AGI, 10 DEX

Swordsmanship: 10 STR, 10 DEX

Macemanship: 10 STR, 10 END

Axemanship: 10 STR, 8 DEX

 

These requirements exist to stop you from harming yourself while practising with deadly implements, please take them into account.

---

 

He stopped his swing and lowered the dagger as he read the notification. Narrowing his eye he thought, would it be worth it to spend two GP to be able to gain the Knife Fighting Skill? It was the ability to use the only weapon he had on hand. He had no idea how to fight with Magic. Yes, it was he decided, opening his stat screen to spend the two points.

After he did that he dismissed the screens then swung the knife again, but it felt wrong. He felt the sensation of a notification as he swung it for the third time and he realised what was wrong. He was sitting down, who on Earth used a knife as a weapon while sitting down?

So he put the pack to the side and stood up, then took a fighting stance, he stood with the Dagger tip extended out in front of him in his right hand, his left hand open palm facing down as if ready to slap or ball up into a punch, his knees were bent and he was standing on the balls of his feet.

He blinked, how had he known to stand like this? He looked down at himself examining the posture, he had no idea how to fight with a dagger, but seeing this stance gave him some ideas. He experimentally jabbed with the dagger. His whole body moved forward the motion starting with a twist in his waist to a step forward with his right foot in time with his jab, which extended out with his arm.

That didn’t feel as right as just standing had, he was going to need to practice this. What the Skill description said was a good start for now. “Knife fighting, Skill description,” he said out loud.

 

---

You have unlocked the Physical Skill: Knife fighting

 

Congratulations!

 

You have unlocked your first Physical skill!

 

All Physical Skills work by altering your muscle memory, so when you attempt with your body that relates to a Skill, that Skill will make it as if you have done that action before. This muscle memory is not permanent though and will vanish if you unequip the skill.

To level up the Skill, learn how it wants you to make actions and repeat them until they are truly muscle memory, you will then be able to perform these actions with the skill unequipped.

The Skill levelling indicates you have properly learned what it is trying to teach at that level and will move on to teach you the next action, no longer providing the muscle memory for that action, expecting you to be able to perform it on your own.

 

Skill	Governing Stats		Requirements	Mastery	Max Mastery	Description
Knife Fighting	AGI	DEX	10 AGI, 10 DEX	Amateur	Novice	Knife Fighting is a Skill that teaches you how to handle knives and daggers. It teaches you how to stand and dodge and where to stab and cut for the greatest effect. At the amateur levels, it will train you how to stand and dodge, only attacking once certain of landing a hit.

---

So the Skill would aid him with one action at a time until he had that action down, then it would move on to the next action, expecting him to remember what he had learned. That sounded fair, if the Skill slots were an indicator the Skills had limited space to work with, and in this case, he was the limiting factor.

As he trained and levelled he could use more Skills. Meaning it could teach him more at once. It seemed that the Knife Fighting Skill was currently trying to teach him how to stand, he would need to practise, but for now back to the pack.

He sat back down and slid the dagger back into its sheath, placing it to the side for now. He once again plunged his hand in the bag and pulled something out. A shirt, he reached in again, another shirt. He pulled out clothing until it appeared that he had two full sets, hanging each item over his shoulders to keep them separate as he examined them.

One was a nice set of clothing, a dark blue silk shirt and dark brown linen pants, there were even two clean pairs of underwear. The other set was more worn and obviously intended for travel, a pair of thick trousers with leather padded knees and a thin shirt that he didn’t know the fabric of that was obviously meant to be worn under a much thicker fabric jacket that had leather padding on the chest shoulders and elbows, not a gambeson, but not too far off. The jacket dyed a very dark green with the leather still brown and the rest all dark brown.

Mike didn’t fancy wearing a t-shirt and coarse prisoner pants as he continued this adventure. So he quickly changed into the clothes that were meant for travelling, then he reached into the pack and hoped, “Yes!”

He pulled out a pair of sturdy boot-like shoes made of leather, stuffed into each of them was a rolled-up pair of thick socks or were they stockings? They came up almost to his knees as he pulled them on, he shoved his foot in one and found it a snug fit, well, probably better than nothing.

Once he was changed he sat back down, he had chucked the prison pants as far as he could, he may go get them later to use for kindling, but they could stay there for now. He folded the nice clothes and settled them in his lap as he sat down to check the last of the pack's contents, it was almost empty, only a few items moving around in the bottom.

He pulled out a thick oiled leather pouch tied with a leather cord next, he loosened it to find food rations inside, enough for a few days, he thought, if he was super frugal. He didn’t eat any now, finding the oddly wasn’t hungry, had the High Elves fed him while he was unconscious? Or was it the healing that had done it? More questions that he likely couldn’t answer immediately. He would try asking the AI later.

He reached in and grabbed what felt like a velvet pouch he pulled it out and found it to be a velvet pouch. It was made of dark black velvet and fastened shut with a thin black cord when Mike brought his mana sight into focus to check the bag as he had for all of the previous items to find nothing, he saw that the bag was coated in thick layers of Dark magic.

Smiling he opened his Skills window and swapped his current magic skill from Light magic to Dark magic, he felt the freezing sensation that he had each time. When it was done he wondered why he hadn’t felt that while unlocking the Knife Fighting Skill, or at all when he had unlocked Skills in the past. Another question for later.

He brought his focus back to the pouch, now able to sense the Dark mana he could feel a lot of it coming from the palm-sized pouch, he loosened the tie around its mouth to see inside. It was pitch black inside, which he should have expected. He raised his palm and poured the contents of the pouch out onto it, a bunch of tiny black beads poured onto his spread palm as he tipped the pouch ends up he found 10 in total, he moved his hands apart and looked at the contents of each to see which was the source of the Dark mana.

They both were, the pouch less so though, it contained less than a fifth the dark mana as the rice ten rice-sized beads did. He placed the pouch on top of the clothing on his lap to come back to later.

He then picked up one of the beads between thumb and forefinger and brought it closer to get a better look. After a few seconds, he was pretty certain, it was a gem, he had no idea what kind as it was packed full of so much Dark mana that it looked like a hole in reality, but it was a cut gemstone of the kind that was fitted into a ring. He looked down at his palm, ten of them. This was likely worth more than a new car back home, depending on what kind of gemstone they were and how they were cut.

Judging by their current use though they were likely much more useful to him as some kind of Dark mana batteries though. He placed the one in his fingers with the others and closed his hand around them. As he lowered it though he saw that the Dark mana gemstones had left sand grain-sized spots of dark mana behind, which he could sense just like in the gemstones.

It was in the between. No, the Aether, yes that word fit. The unreachable mystical layer that overlapped with the terrestrial realm, filled with mystical energy, Aether fit perfectly.

He moved his hand again and there was a clump of Dark mana this time overlapping the spot where the Gems had been resting in his hand, like drew to like if he understood what the AI had said about the Aether, there was so much Dark mana in the gems that it attracted more dark mana from the Spiritual realm and into the Aether. He felt like this was important, that this could be exploited somehow by someone as skilled as Ishare if they had his abilities. Well, he would work it out eventually.

He picked up the pouch in his free hand and examined it, he probed towards it with his attunement sense. The mana he was feeling was the mana inside the pouch, the mana that coated it was imperceptible with his senses alone, a spell then. If he had to guess it made the pouch fill up with dark mana over time, which the gemstones then absorbed.

Was this how Ishare had replenished his mana, this world’s equivalent to a mana potion? He wasn’t sure, but he could use it. As he looked around he had seen a distinct lack of Dark mana, so these would come very handy. Though he wondered why the High Elves hadn’t found them.

He tipped the handful of gems back into the pouch and pulled it shut, slipping it into a pocket on the inside of his coat.

He found his curiosity for the contents of the pack satiated, for now, as he placed the now catalogued contents back inside and fastened the buckle again he said, “Class Window.”