Return to Jorgaldur Volume I: the battle mage

Beginner's village

After recovering his breath he considered confronting the bear as he had done with the wolves, using the barrier as a wild card. However, the bear had lowered his life a lot with just one attack that had not hit him fully, which made it very risky. Besides, Eldi didn't think he could inflict enough damage, and he didn't have the water from the spring to recover. So he discarded the idea.

He got up for a walk around the village, where only dust-covered workshops could be seen, with some rusty tools, and with many materials still on the shelves. It was as if people had simply vanished.

It was the first time he had seen the fire in the forge or the kitchen extinguished, and some raw materials had been ruined, like leathers or cooking ingredients. But, even so, it seemed that all the workshops were in perfect condition.

He approached a structure designed to stretch the skin and treat it, and put his hand on it. He felt that, in some way, was able to control it, to use it, that he knew how to do it. So, he took out one of the abyssal wolf skins and poured mana over the structure. It was 10 mana and a minute of concentration to turn the skin into tanned leather. Somehow it was like in the game, where it cost 10 mana per level of skin to tan, and the wolf skin was level 1 out of a total of 10.

Perhaps it had been a little reckless to spend his last reserves of mana, but he felt safe in there, especially after the bear lost interest and turned around.

He then went to the kitchen, but couldn't find a way to learn the profession, even after managing to light the fire and try to cook some rabbit meat that he had stored from the game. The result was scorched meat, as he was not skilled in cooking in real life, the previous real life, not without microwaves or kitchen robots. But no trace of the cooking profession, of the feeling he had in the workshops of the professions he had learned in the game.

And while reviewing some designs to make weapons and armor of his level, he discovered an anvil next to the gates that led to different leveling areas. That village had been designed to be the center of operations between levels 5 and 35, providing transit to the right areas. They would teleport to a cave protected by a barrier and from which you could return in the same way. He was tempted to try it, but was afraid of not being able to return or of arriving at a too dangerous place.

But the anvil was another story. It allowed repairing, for free, any object of level less than 50, so he put his hand on it to try, appearing in his mind the tunic that he wore. One mana was enough to eliminate all the rips, although in the game it was not even needed. The best news was to recover the spear for the same low price, in addition to repairing the rest of the weapons. The worst, that each of the arrows also needed one mana, so he decided to leave it for later, since he needed mana for other tests.

He approached the armory, interested in creating some spears. Luckily he had enough materials in his inventory plus the workshop's stock, and the cost of creating a weapon turned out to be one of mana and stamina per level, in addition to the materials. And while it is true that different professions were needed according to the type of weapon, Eldi had them all. At the end, he created two more spears by now. He didn't consider it necessary to create arrows, it was more efficient to use those that adapted to level 10, fixing them with 1 mana, than to create new ones for 5 and their materials.

The armor needed the same mana and stamina as the weapons, plus materials, for each piece, while potions cost twice as much, but only mana. Eldi would have liked to have the spring there to be able to recover and create what needed without worrying about the mana, for whose full recharge an hour was needed.

At the end of the day he had all repaired and his level 5 equipment completed, 5 extra spears, 10 potions to regenerate mana, 10 to regenerate stamina, 10 to eliminate poisons and 10 for healing. There were no potions to directly recover mana or stamina, but to help recover it faster, by doubling the speed, but only until recovering 50 (10 x level).

Healing potions returned 50 health points directly, while those of poison allowed to eliminate them up to level 5, and lowering the effectiveness of higher, to 90% from poisons of level 6, to only 10% of those of 14.

As in the game, you had to wait 5 minutes between drinking potions of the same class, although that didn't happen with their offensive counterparts, which used to be called simply mixtures. He had only made ten level 5 resins, flammable and sticky, as he thought that they would have been useful in the past events. In addition, he didn't have many ingredients to spare for low-level potions, so he preferred to reserve them for when necessary.

In fact, if he had had a lot of ingredients, he could have used the regeneration potions to speed up the crafting, but, unfortunately, most of the existing plants in the shop had been ruined over the years. He couldn't help but wondering from how long that place had been abandoned.

Eldi planted the tent while wondering if there was someone in that world, or if only the areas he had visited were deserted. He fell asleep easily, mentally exhausted and without checking that Rabbit Spirit had significantly advanced its way to level 9.

Confident in the security of the barrier that protected the place and whose nature was unknown, he slept peacefully. And the next morning, he stretched calmly as he left the tent, ready for breakfast. He wanted to create some jewelry and check its limits, but the sound of something hitting the wood made him turn around.

Sitting on the chair that was being hit, two eyes were staring at him.