Having finished her shower, Amelie gave Nick a kiss as she went back to her room, careful not to get spotted by any maids that might see her coming out of his room so early in the morning. Now alone, refreshed, and drained, he knew it was time to head back to the slime forest and train as much as he possibly could. Tomorrow was the day he would leave his home for the Academy.

Part of him was interested in the idea of a school for teaching magic and swordplay among a dozen different things he couldn't think of. Another part of him was sad to be leaving Amelie here for the time being. She was still at a higher level than him, so it would be no problem for her to be admitted there the next year.

It was only a short walk to the forest as he remembered that he never spent his points from his last level up. Taking a quick look at this stat sheet, he was a bit hurt to see that his libido was now higher than his intelligence. It was an easy fix at least, as he put his 5 points all into intelligence, increasing his total to 23. 

Aqua Arrow forming behind him, he made his way into the forest, clearing out the slimes with extreme ease. As easy as the slimes were to beat, it would be better to fight something harder and more rewarding. But then again, maybe it was best he stuck to slimes. Harder enemies likely meant enemies that were smarter than slimes and could actually fight back.

Of course, he knew that he couldn't spend his entire life only fighting helpless enemies, he had to move up to something more worthwhile. With each step Nick made it deeper and deeper into the forest, finding less slimes around than when he was in its outskirts.

His comfort and confidence in his ability all but vanished as he saw the cause for the lack of slimes here. A deer-looking animal was eating the slimes. It terrifyingly opened its mouth. It opened wide, much wider than any jaw should allow it to open, and easily chomped on the helpless slime. Rows and rows of teeth made the job completely effortless.

Slime-mutated Deer (Level 7)
Can drop: Hide

As interesting as it was for Nick to see that the monster could drop something, he felt better not taking his chances with the weird deer. Slowly taking a step back, he was suddenly knocked over on the ground.

-3 hp

He quickly got up the ground but it was too late. He had tripped over a slime that was slowly making its way over to him and caused far too much noise. The deer's ears twisted towards him individually as it quickly started running toward him, causing Nick to panic. He shot an Aqua Arrow at the slime as revenge as he began running away. He was deep in the forest, and he didn't have a plan to deal with the deer. 

The roots, twigs, and branches on the ground all made it harder for him to run through. The deer, on the other hand, was having an easy time. This was its home turf, and it finally found something more interesting than the slimes to play with. Something that could be much more delicious.

Nick ran as he kept sneaking glances behind him, noticing that the monster was catching up quickly. He had to fight it, he couldn't run away fast enough, and even then there was no guarantee that the monster wouldn't chase him past the forest. Still, a good distance away, he started shooting Aqua Arrows behind him into the deer's path. The first few hit without a problem but the deer started intelligently dodging what it could.

Its thick hide held up against the arrows, taking damage but not letting them through. The deer let out a loud scream as it was only a few feet away from its prey. Nick mustered up all his strength and jumped as high as he could, grabbing a thick tree branch as he narrowly dodged the deer's massive bite. He shot more and more arrows at it, all of them connecting due to how close the deer was.

The deer let out a shout of anger and started repeatedly hitting the tree Nick was hiding on, shaking the entire tree. It was a scary scene, but he kept attacking the deer and noticed that it was finally starting to bleed. It looked like most of the arrows were hitting a part of its neck where the hide wasn't so thick. Nick concentrated on hitting the same spot and was terrified that despite bleeding, the deer did not let up its attack on the tree.

Knowing he couldn't hang on for much longer, Nick jumped off and started running again, being careful to only shoot arrows that would land without a doubt since he was starting to run low on mana. The monster deer quickly switched its focus back to him and started chasing, except this time, the deer wasn't catching up with him so quickly. It looked like all the bleeding was finally starting to affect it as Nick turned around and began to hold his ground. Arrows flew fly by as the deer pounced on him. Unable to completely dodge as he did his best to get out of the way, still getting grazed by its sharp teeth on his shoulder.

-40 hp

It was a lot of damage to take, but not lethal. Nick spent the rest of his mana shooting arrows a the deer as it lay on the ground, passed out from the blood loss after its final attack.

+1500 xp
+1 hide

Potential Level up! Rank 3 unlocked!
New skill unlocked!
First aid: Envelop a target with healing waters, promoting rapid health regeneration! Heal: 80 hp Cost: 25 mp

A healing spell was definitely appreciated, though he would have to test it out on his wound once his mana had regenerated. He spent everything he had in that fight. Maybe it was time to raise his wisdom for regeneration. It wouldn't be smart to rely on just having a high mana pool to sustain him. Longer drawn-out fights against tougher enemies would be far too hard.

After ensuring he was back in the outskirts of the forest, Nick sat down for a rest. His shoulder still hurt but at least it didn't look bad. He was getting close to his next level thanks to the large amount of xp the deer had given him. Noticing that he also got its hide, he opened his stat sheet to find it already in his inventory. He didn't have a use for this right now anyway.

Potential Unlocked!
Once you master your current Potential, more options will be available for you!

More options to worry about later, though he did have his mind made up on taking the ice potential he saw. Water was usually the healing element in games and ice was its more aggressive counterpart. Hopefully, the bonuses from Hydrokinesis would still apply to ice spells. Would his academy teach him stuff like this? Nick paused for a second, having almost surprised himself by how much he was looking forwards to these classes.