The Quantum Wanderer

This past week was really good. I learned a lot with my research. The first thing I researched was the magic bag magic. Now that I knew the runes in it, I could kind of reconstruct it.

The problem with normal leather, generally available and cheap, was that it was not resistant enough. Therefore, the mana drawings that would be encarved on it would give away because of the pressure of the higher level magic. Also, the better the material, the better mana conduction on it.

And then I would need some higher level gem, because the mana needed to keep that thing running was not low. A higher level gem would have a lot more mana stored inside.

Most of this research I did inside my room in the inn. People were starting to think that I was a kind of hermit or something.

The second one, I went inside the forest, I didn’t want anyone to see it. I held a nail, a very big one, those made to cross over the trunk of a tree, close to my forearm. Now I transformed the mana into magnetic force. I managed to thrust the nail forward, but it wasn’t the effect I wanted.

It took me some trial and error until I noticed that I had to magnetize the nails. I made them into steel, heated them, magnetize them, then cool them suddenly. Now that they had their own magnetic north and south, the manipulation was a lot easier.

The first shot I did with this magnetic nail made this huge boom. Even looking at it with my mana eyes and mana brain, I would not really see the shot. But I could see that it was breaking the sound barrier. It was packing a punch. I shot a large rock, around 3 feet, and it exploded. Nice. I prepared some spikes with a neutron crystal underneath the first layer of steel. That way, the spike would look like a normal one, and I would have the unbelievable penetration.

The third experiment was training my soul capture in a distance, while I cast something else. That thing would be the ticket to power. I needed that to be easy as possible to cast. I already have been casting sanctuary a lot, so now it is becoming second nature. I had to get my soul capture at the same level.

The Requiem Warriors took their escort job, and left for another village, then the kingdom’s capital. It was a longer job, but it would pay better.

I went over to the guild. Since I was going hunting, I would need a magic bag if I wanted to bring back some bigger game. I took a quick look at the quests available, nothing in line with what I want.

I go to the counter, to talk to Alice,

“Hi”

“Hi! How can I help you today? Any quest?”

“No, I would like to rent a magic bag.”

“Hummm… Wait a minute…” After holding her chin a little, she gets out of the counter, up the stairs… Five minutes later, gesturing me to go up the stairs.

I follow her, and again I meet with the guild master.

“Hellooo. How is my favourite adventurer going?”

“I am ok.”

“So, dear Alice told me that you want to rent a magic bag?” He gave me a very mischievous smile.

“Yes. I intend to hunt some bigger game, and leaving it in the forest just don’t sit too well…”

“Oh. Humm… High expectations…? Ok, ok. What do you know about magic bags?”

“Well, other than seeing that one that you showed me, not much.”

“So, the main characteristic of a magic bag is space expansion. Meaning that you can put more stuff in it than it’s size should permit. Some of them have additional characteristics, that would make them more or less expensive… Some have a weight nullifying spell attached to it, for obvious reasons, some have an ownership, meaning that only the owner can inspect, put and remove stuff from it, and some can even alter the time that runs inside it.”

“I have one that has some space, and has weight nullifying. The normal rental would be 30 gold a day.”

I must have made a face, because he continued…

“I know, too expensive, too expensive. Poor little adventurers, they have to decide whether to eat or rent a magic bag… “ And he made a crying face.

He continued, “I am going to make a bet with you. If, when you come back, the bag is full, I will give it to you.”

“Why?” Free stuff always bothered me. Free stuff is always more expensive then paid ones.

“This bag is going to expire in 6 months, it is an old lady, she already worked a lot… And if you fill it, that means that my branch is going to have some profit, so I can let that slide.”

“What do you mean by full?”

“You have to not be able to add another wolf sized creature in it.”

Ok, that sounded reasonable.

“We have a deal.”

I placed the bag inside my backpack, and left. Once I got to the forest, I started to jump from branch to branch as opposed to running on the ground. It was a little safer, and now that my stats were a little better, it made things easier.

My mana senses were on. I was getting to a lake, pretty deep in the forest, and I saw a plated rhino. It was bigger than the previous one! This one was the size of bus. I didn’t know they could get this big. Apparently the other one I caught was an infant or something.

I started with removing oxygen from the air around it, and waited. Five minutes, it started to walk as if it were drunk, and to gasp for air. Then it fell down. I put on my soul absorption, got close and killed it with my sword. I haven’t had this feeling of leveling up a lot in some time. I took a look, level 29. Nice. I could feel that my earth magic improved as well, it was easier to manipulate. I thought about using CO, but differently from the bandits, and I didn’t know if the meat would be safe for consumption after that.

Now let’s check if it fits inside the bag… I get the bag close to it, and the entrance to the bag distorts, it looks like the thing is sucked inside it. I put in some mana in the bag, to see how close to full it is… Not one tenth! Filling this is going to take a lot! Damned guild master, he put one on me.

Now, I don’t want anything rotting inside the bag, so I first protect myself, open the bag, and sterilize it with radiation, a mix of gamma rays, X-rays and electron beans. Pretty forward process to someone that knows what he is doing.

At least, now I was already above a soldier in terms of level. I wanted to level up a lot more.

I continued to move towards the mountains, but felt no additional monsters. The sun is setting, time to find a place to rest.

I find a cave, it doesn’t go too deep. There is nothing inside it, good. I close the front of it with earth magic. I force some very sharp obsidian incrusted on the granite wall I created, so that if some monster tries to destroy it, they are going to get hurt. I am tired, and I am not all that hungry. I just take the sleeping stuff out, the tent, sleeping bag, and go to bed.

Next day, I wake up kind of hungry. I leave the cave, and do a sweep around, with my senses. Nothing there. I create a little fire, and do some plated rhino paw barbecue. Then I continue my journey towards the foot of the mountains. I put my mana sense on full blast. I locate a band of monsters together. There is group of orcs, but they individually have lower levels, all of them from 15 to 20. There are females around then, and some newborns. Not really worth the hunt.

I keep on going, until the sun is almost setting. I locate this griffon. This thing is big, as big as a house. I enhance my brain and eyes.

At a distance, I start my CO tactics. It wakes up. It looks around, and finds me. That is a first. I prepare an enhanced spike, put my soul absorption on it, and point my arm to it, and when I shoot, and hear the bang, his beak was wide open, ready to bite my arm clean off.

The recoil sends me back, in the hole thing I put in too much mana, and a spike is a lot heavier than a nail.

It’s head explodes because of the impact.

I hit the bark behind me really hard. I think I broke a couple of ribs, and fall down.

The fall is not all that bad, actually. I mean, it wouldn’t be if I weren’t hurt already.

I sit up, and start healing myself. After that, I look at my arm. I still have an arm! I even kiss my own forearm for happiness.

That was close. Even with brain enhancement, I couldn’t see that thing. I didn’t put a lot of mana on the brain reinforcement, because I didn’t expect something like this, but nevertheless… I have to be more cautious in the future. It is also messed up that my CO tactics did not work. Perhaps it can smell it? Or was it my magic?

My head starts to hurt, and my body burns. I try to turn the pain off, I can’t. I try to look inside my body, but there is nothing wrong with it.

I lay down on the floor, agonizing. I don’t really have a choice.

After a very long while, the pain subsides. I take a look at my status, I think I kind of know what happened…

I didn’t want to try to scry the griffon before the attack, I thought that that might make me loose the surprise attack, but that thing must have been really high level. Eleven levels at once. Sure, I was kind of cheating because of the soul absorption thing, but still.

My body is more tonned, and my control over the air particles increase. This is going to be useful.

I look at the dead body. I repeat the process, in the bag you go.

I decided to do a change on my spikes and nails. Instead of having a complete layer of a single neutron crystal, I split it in crystals, side by side. That will make these pieces spread once I hit the target. Specially from a distance, this is going to pack a bigger punch.

I bag the griffon. Of course, I sterilize the contents of the bag. Hum, the bag is a little less than half full. I start the sanctuary spell. The air here is heavier with mana, this is interesting.

I am thinking whether I should keep hunting or not. Let’s look for a proper place to sleep. Another cave. So I go a little closer towards the mountains, and I sense there is a lake around… And something HUGE. Use the forest to try to get closer to see, not too close though. I am in the top of a tree, actually holding the trunk, on a branch. I am a football field away, and, by the margin of the lake, there is a dragon. A large dragon. I don’t know how big they get, but this was bigger than the griffon. It is eating something, and the something it is eating is the size of bus. I enhance my brain to max. Time is moving a lot slower.

It looks at me, and just don’t acknowledge it. Ok, steady does it. I take my time preparing. The dragon just doesn’t care. I can almost hear it sigh. I prepare all three spells at the same time. One soul absorption, huge sanctuary (I am going to have to create a hole in the sanctuary to pass the soul absorption, but that is doable), and a railgun one.

I trigger them. First the sanctuary, to protect myself of any magic. Then the two others, the soul absorption, and the rail gun. I was aiming at the side of the head, since it was swallowing a piece of meat.

When I hit it, it was already spitting fire in direction. I put up an air wall as quickly as I can, forcing the air up. My spike hits inside the mouth, and explodes the back of the skull.

The fire starts very strong, but as it runs through several feet of sanctuary, it decreases, a lot. Still, I hide behind the trunk, and I still feel some heat. Even with the shield spell up.

Color me impressed.

The beast starts to fall down. It was obviously very quick, but falling due to gravity is going to take a long time with this much mana in my brain.

I do a kind of a mana radar ping around me, to see if there is anything like that around. Nothing.

I go over to the beast, and take a look. The back of the skull is exploded.

I bag it, and I see that the bag is actually almost full. Instead of moving forward, I decide to go back to the cave I used previously, this is.

Then it hits me. The burning, the pain. It is excruciating. I pass out.

I wake up with the shaking and the pressure. A canine beast, very similar to what the dragon was eating, has me in its mouth. It bit in the middle of my body, but the armor held. The pressure is a lot, and I am being shaken violently.

I just shoot a big fireball towards its throat. It stops moving, and we both fall to the ground.

I try to bag it, but it will not fit. I cut the tail off, and then it does, barely.

I put on a very wide sanctuary spell, and take a look at myself.

Wow, this is good. I feel a lot lighter and stronger. Mana is a lot easier to manipulate, fire is now a toy in my hands. Not only fire, but the other energies as well. Light and electromagnetic energies are a lot sharper and easier to use. I cast a sanctuary spell, to be able to replenish it.

I am not yet at Andrews’ level, but given all the additional aces I had, I might be able to win in a fight. Since he is the strongest human, that is probably a lot.

The armor is a little bit tight. I kind of… grew a little? And I am hungry. Really hungry.

I decided to go to the cave I had used previously. I don’t even need to reinforce my legs with mana to move the way I was moving before. Actually, even then I move better than I was moving before!

I get to the cave, I close it, I go to some rocks and heat them up. I use that heat to make another piece of plated rhino, this time on the stone. I eat it. Humm… Still hungry. Another piece. Another. Another. Now I am good.

Time to go home.

I get to the city, it afternoon. I go to the guild, and talk to Alice.

“Hi, adventurer, how can I hel-guh? Marcelo?”

“Yup, in the flesh.”

“What happened? You’re different.”

“I managed to get a level.”

…

“Can I talk to Leopold?”

“Just a sec.”

Some moments later, I am entering the guild master’s office.

“My-y. You are a hunk now. How long was it? Just three days…”

I don’t think I would ever get used to his way of speaking.

“Hummm. You’re stronger than me now. Did a Titan mother adopt you?”

I laughed, he pointed to the sofa. Instead, I told him,

“I got some stuff in the bag, but I want secrecy on it. Of course, I am going to sell you most of it, but I don’t want people to know that I was the one that hunted it.”

“Sure, oh my, let’s see what the gods provided.”

We went downstairs, to a back room, where there was a guy reading a monster enciclopedya. He was a bald, strong guy, with an apron. In the wall, all sorts of knives, big ones, cleavers, and other cutting tools.

“Andrurin, are you busy now? Can we have some fu-un?”

He looked at the guild master, sighs, and sees me behind him.

“What is it, phreak?”

“My frien-end here told me he has some specialist hunting results… Lets go see?”

“Sure.”

“By the waay, this is going to be our little secret, ok? He told us that we cannot brag, imagine that…”

We both follow the guild master, he takes us to a door, with some runes on the side. He puts his guild card close to it, but the door doesn’t move. Instead, the floor opens, with a set of stairs. We go down the set of stairs, and after a while we come to this huge cave. This is the size of a stadium.

I am amazed about the guild having such a space beneath it, Leopold notices it,

“Did you get to fill the bag?”

“Actually, yes.”

I got to the front, and take out the plated rhino. The dwarf grumbles, “Really, that’s it?”

I walk to the side, taking enough space. It takes some time, as I am having fun… After I walk 100 feet, I take the griffon out.

“WHAT THE FUCK! A GRIFFON!” The dwarf runs towards me and the griffon in front of me.

“HOW? WHO WAS IN THE PARTY?”

I smile, and the guild master gives a side blink and puts his index finger on his mouth.

I again walk to the side, and take out the wolf like animal I killed.

“A FENRIR? Did you seriously hunt a griffon and a Fenrir in the same trip?”

He walks around the Fenrir, and asks, “Where is the tail?”

“The tail did not fit the bag, it’s here.” And I take the tail out of my back pack. It is big, but then that backpack was huge, so it allowed it.

“Well, I had to fill the bag… I had a bet with Leopold.”

I keep walking to the side, to place in the last one. I was having a lot of fun with this dwarf’s reactions, and I could see that Leopold was having a lot of fun as well.

“More? Shit, fuck it. Nothing is going to amaze me anymore…”

Then I drop the dragon on the floor.

The dwarf was actually behind the Fenrir. This time, he didn’t say anything. I go there to take a look, and he is sitting on the floor, his mouth open.

“Leopold, I think I broke him…”

Leopold was laughing his head off. After he managed to stop, he started talking.

“I saw that a leg of the plated rhino is gone…? Do you have it?”

“Well, I had to eat, right?”

“You do realize that that was the worse steak among them, right?”

“Oh.”

“Yes. Do you want steaks from the other beasts? Even if you get some, you are still going to have a lot of money because of the other monsters. Well, other than the plated rhino, of course.”

I noticed that he was kind of talking normal, actually. I couldn’t resist,

“Huh… How come you’re talking normally now?”

He placed his little finger in his mouth, and said,

“I don-on’t know what you’re talking abo-out.”

I laughed a little and we left the dwarf there, and came back to his office.

“So, dear, let’s see… We need sometime to evaluate the material. It is going to take a couple of days. I can pay you for the plated rhino now, if you want, and then we evaluate the rest… Poor me, having to deal with all this work because of my hunk!!!”

“Sure, that works.”

“So, let’s see. Oh, dear me, I almost forgot about a letter that came through, about the hero of Frolk. Dear Cecilia apparently can’t forget you…”

“What?”

“They found another 23 goblin children dead by fire in the cave… You forgot to charge for them… That’s another 2 gold and 3 silver. Now let’s see the values for an elder plated rhino, the shooting horn, 4 gold. Two plated rhino horns, 2 gold. A plated rhino pelt… Let’s just assume mint condition, I didn’t see many battle scars in any of them. And if there is any issue, I can just get back value from the griffon and dragon. 6 gold it is. Meat, 2 silver. Bones, 2 gold. Lungs, 6 gold. Kidneys, 8 gold. The rest is not really worth anything. Total of 28 gold and 5 silver.”

I was just doing the math on what I lost on the previous one… If the ratio applied to other stuff as well, I had left 8 gold worth on the field for the crows…

He got the cold coins on the table, I picked them up, added to my pouch and placed it in the magic bag.

“Thank you”

“Oh my, just thank you? No dinner, no nothing… Oh my, people are so ungrateful… Come here the day after tomorrow, we will be able to give you the rest.”

I laughed a little, and went back to the inn.

After a bath and dinner, I laid on the bed thinking about stuff. I was already stronger than most. There might be, other than Andrew, a couple of people stronger in terms of levels, but not many. Without the soul absorption, my levels would have taken a lot, and I mean, a lot, to get to this point. Not only that, but I had some messed tactics for hunting, that most people could not really use. I am good to relax a little bit.

There were a couple of spells that I still wanted to research.