Water Buffalhigh!
A torrent of water sliced the air. The air squealed in pain. Elijah narrowly twisted aside. It wasn’t enough. The edge of the attack ripped along his naked arm. He wasn’t losing any more clothes! The motion was too much, and his foot slipped off the giant lily pad. With a herculean effort, Elijah backflipped onto the next floating flower… or tried to.
As it turned out, he couldn’t do a backflip! He flopped onto the massive leaf, sending ripples across the endless world of water, barely evading a liquid blade aimed at his head.
His Unkillable Trait activated, but it didn’t matter; this creature was basically unkillable itself. Elijah was forced to scramble on all fours to yet another lily pad to try and escape the monster's flying charge. He failed, miserably, and ended up liquefied in a jet of water.
You have DIED
Potential rewards will suffer as a result of dying whilst undergoing the Trial.
Elijah spawned back in. He slipped over immediately, thanks to his other Trait. Across the line of lily pads, flanked with the lily’s flowers, the Water Buffalhigh lowered its head to charge. This strip of bobbing leaves was the only ‘solid’ land in this Trial, so there was nowhere for the teen to dodge.
When Elijah first appeared in this world, he had laughed at the System message. What kind of monster was a Water Buffalhigh? As it turned out, an extremely deadly one. He really should have expected as much.
In the few seconds it took the creature, made entirely of water, to build up enough speed to fly, Elijah desperately tried to call upon his own magics. He was slow and couldn’t do much more than summon water, which was useless here; the monster was healed by water. Every time Elijah was able to do the tiniest bit of retaliatory damage, a thin stream of fresh water would float up to the creature and repair it.
By the time the Buffalhigh was soaring through the sky, preparing its first flyby, Elijah had managed to summon a fistful of water mana motes to him and was desperately feeding them his mana.
His hope was to somehow disrupt the monster’s attack. It didn’t work. As the two water magics clashed, the Buffalhigh’s water hammer vibrated Elijah’s forming water bubble until it was nothing but raindrops. He didn’t even succeed in slowing the attack.
The young man was forced to leap aside to avoid the strike. Droplets of water peppered his back as he jumped away from the lily pad-destroying blow. That wasn’t good. Elijah needed to stay above the surface. The Water Buffalhigh may have been powerful in the air, but it was twice as strong underwater.
The monster scoffed loudly as it ripped through the skies overhead. Clearly, it didn’t think much of Elijah’s attack, but it was the best he could come up with. The teen had tried striking with his fists, but punching water didn’t really do much.
He had even attempted to use the King’s sword, gained during Nimueh’s Revenge, but as soon as the young man unsheathed the weapon, a flashing notification jumped to his attention, and the sword plummeted, like a lead train, out of his hands.
Elijah was barely able to catch the weapon through his foot and store it back in his inventory before it was lost to the endless freshwater depths. Apparently the King’s sword had a hard stat requirement, 24 in Agility.
Hoping for a miracle, he dumped all his Xp into his newest Class, Arctic Hunter Rabbit.
You have reached Level 1 in A???r???c???t???i???c??? ???H???u???n???t???e???r??? ???R???a???b???b???i???t???!???
+2 to Perception
+2 to Agility
You have reached Level 1 in A???r?????c????t????i????c??? ???H???u????n???t????e????r???? ???R?????a?????b?????b???i????t???!????
+2 to Perception
New Threshold Met!
You have reached 10 in Agility! This would be the cap for Race: Elijah, but the System allows you to push beyond your limits! Having reached the first Threshold, you are now more flexible; movements that would have seemed impossible are now easy. Agility can no longer drop below 10.
New Threshold Met!
You have reached 10 in Perception! This would be the cap for Race: Elijah, but the System allows you to push beyond your limits! Having reached the first Threshold, your eyes now see further; details that would have passed you by are now obvious. Perception can no longer drop below 10.
Now those were some stats! When Elijah’s Agility hit ten, he felt like a rubber acrobat. He could bend over and touch his toes, backwards! It was no wonder he thought he would be capable of doing a backflip; apparently that feat required more technique than he thought.
Perception reaching its Threshold was another big jump. He could see the pores on the end of his own nose! Elijah was sure that if there had been anything but clear water on the horizon, he would be able to look upon it as if it were right next to him.
Even with these powerful buffs, it wasn’t enough. The teen was surprised at the difference in stats between his Classes, but he didn’t have the time to sit and figure it out. He didn’t have the Agility to use what he suspected was a very powerful sword, and, even with his newfound flexibility, he wasn’t able to dodge the monster's attacks forever.
Hence, he had resorted to magic. Or tried to. What he was currently doing wasn’t working; his ‘attacks’ were just too slow and too weak to have an effect. His water magic was useless. That was when he thought, What if I learn from the Water Buffalhigh?
As far as Elijah could tell, with his very limited understanding of magic, the Water Buffalhigh was a master of manipulating water mana, not too surprising since it was entirely made of the stuff. The teen, not knowing anything about mana outside of fantasy novels, might describe the violent animal as a water spirit or some such.
Combining Mana Manipulation with his newly enhanced Perception, he was able to observe the monster as it constructed the water spells it used to attack him, even hundreds of feet away.
By the time three of the dozen lily pads were annihilated, Elijah had learnt to differentiate the subtle hues of the mana the creature used to attack and the mana that it used to maintain its existence.
When half of the dry platforms were sunk, the teen could correctly tell when his foe would release its attack, giving him ample time to dodge.
Nine of twelve lily pads were down before Elijah began to comprehend exactly what the Water Buffalhigh was doing.
By the time the final bed-sized refuge was destroyed, forcing the young man to jump into the clear waters, he had a splitting headache and his eyes began to sting, but he thought he had figured out the monster’s trick. Despite the refreshing taste of freshwater, water which Elijah had tried to store in his inventory without success, the young man knew that he was dead.
The Water Buffalhigh trotted down proudly from the sky. The second it hit the crystal-clear, bottomless liquid, it shot off like a rocket. Elijah barely caught sight of the trail of bubbles, moving faster than a speedboat, before it was over.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
You have DIED
Potential rewards will suffer as a result of dying whilst undergoing the Trial.
You have DIED
Potential rewards will suffer as a result of dying whilst undergoing the Trial.
You have DIED
Potential rewards will suffer as a result of dying whilst undergoing the Trial.
It took two more deaths before Elijah was sure of his observations. The Buffalhigh wasn’t using the mana around it in the same way the teen was. Instead of letting water mana feast on its own power, as Elijah did, the Water Buffalhigh was able to absorb the mana into itself without becoming the same shade of water mana that comprised it.
Then, it was able to impress its will upon the mana, creating a spell, be that a paper-thin, six-foot blade, a hammer that used water tension as its striking surface, or any number of other attacks Elijah had seen the Buffalhigh use.
In the short respite the young man was granted between bouts, the time in which the monster gained enough speed to take off, he tried to imitate what he had seen. Even the first step was surprisingly difficult for him. His Mana Heart was constantly sucking in mana, but it immediately ripped it apart into the pure power that coursed through his veins.
After three failed attempts, he was able to subvert a few motes of water mana before they were destroyed inside his second heart. Unfortunately, the attempt had taken too long, and he had lost focus. A pressurised jet of water, moving like a whip because of the speed at which the Buffalhigh flew overhead, sliced him in two. He was forced to start over.
Next time, Elijah got it right on the first try. He stored the water mana in his arm, making the appendage feel strangely wet. Now that the motes were actually inside the teen’s body, much to his discomfort, Water Manipulation worked as described, and he was able to change it so that, the moment it left his body, it would be able to take any shape he wished. Now, the problem was getting it to leave.
He hadn’t actually figured out how his mana heart had been able to get mana into him without forcing its way through his veins and killing him; after all, that was exactly what had happened when he had tried to expel his own mana.
Perhaps that was the problem; he was trying to force it. When oxygen enters the blood through the lungs, it doesn't barge its way into the body, pushing muscle and bone aside; it uses diffusion.
His musing took too long, and he was crushed under a metric tonne of water.
He started over. This time not using the mana that was being sucked in by his Mana Heart but trying to do it himself. He stopped mana from flowing into his finger, making it feel like it was going to drop off, then shoved it directly into the water, where the most mana motes were located. It was surprisingly painful, but it worked!
Slowly but surely, water mana filled the veins and capillaries of his finger, bringing a strange, liquidy sense of life back to the digit. It almost felt like his finger was about to turn into water, but that was something he could explore later. His time this go-round was already running short; the Water Buffalhigh had taken flight once more.
He shaped the mana into an edge and imparted the intent to cut upon it, then moved his finger to an area devoid of water mana. As if pushing drugs out of a syringe, Elijah slowly let his own mana refill the base of his finger, speeding up the process. It was still slow. After ten seconds, all the mana left him, at which point several things happened at once.
His spell completed when all the mana used to make it was present, and a tiny water blade, about the size of a razor blade and just as sharp, zipped through the air and into a lily pad, slicing a small laceration. Simultaneously, Elijah was severed in twain by a much larger and better-controlled, water blade.
The young man was giddy with excitement. That was his first real spell. But it wasn’t enough; he knew he could do better. He returned to observing the monster, determined to learn more. To his disappointment, there was little more to see. With every attack, the monster just repeated these three simple steps.
Absorb. Shape. Expel.
However, after nearly an hour of careful observation and too many painful deaths to count, Eljah was startled by some good news in the shape of a System window.
New General Skill Unlocked!
New general Skill unlocked:
After more than an hour of observing a monster at close range, you have unlocked the general Skill, Identify.
Identify: D
By focusing on a living creature, and expending 10 points of Mana, you can learn information about that creature. This Skill is a must have for Adventurers.
Now, that was something worth writing home about. Elijah had been craving this essential fantasy world Skill since he landed in the first Trial. Immediately, he used it on the Water Buffalhigh, the mana disappearing from his blood, as if by magic.
Identify:
Level: 26
Monster: Buffalhigh-Flyer
Description: The Buffalhigh-Flyer is an evolution of the Water Buffalhigh, focused on aerial combat. Unlike their unevolved brethren, they can, for short periods, leave their freshwater homes, but, like their junior kin, they require a constant supply of pure water to survive.
This was awesome! It was exactly what Elijah wanted. It gave him a way to beat this beast. When he reset, he started to run. Before the monster could charge, he began his own. With his increase in Agility, he could move like never before. His strides ate up the lily pads, and wind whistled past his ears as he flew.
The Buffalhigh saw that it wouldn’t have the room it needed to take off before Elijah got to it, so the monster decided to stand its ground for once. That didn’t matter to the teen; if he was right in his assumptions, it wouldn’t take much to take down this creature.
Elijah liked fishing. Growing up by the sea, he had learnt a thing or two. When he was young, his dad took him a few times before… Suffice to say, he liked fishing. An interesting thing about the fish of the sea is that they can’t survive in freshwater; the same is true of the reverse.
Elijah knew that, at the speed he was running, he couldn’t fully dodge the water blade aiming to cut him down the middle. It didn’t matter. He was able to pivot just enough to live, sacrificing an arm in the process. He willed the pain away as he did what he had to do.
The manoeuvre had given him the time he needed to reach the monster. Startlement filled the Buffalhigh-Flyer’s sparkling eyes as it looked up in confusion at the human who had run it down just to… lay a hand upon its side?
The water spirit chortled. What did this stupid, fleshy creature think it could do to a mighty Water Buffalhigh? Then something appeared in its watery body, and it immediately felt dizzy.
The creature stumbled to its knees; it turned a sickly brown as the barrel of salt Elijah had dumped inside it began to dissolve. With a wet splat, the Buffalhigh was defeated, transforming into normal, if murky, water that ran across the top of the lily pads.
Then, and only then, did Elijah scream, the pain overwhelming. Thankfully, it did not last long. Soon the world fell into darkness, and he was made whole by the void once more.
You have defeated a Lv 26 Buffalhigh-Flyer:
Extra Xp is awarded for defeating an opponent of a greater level. 1072 Xp awarded. Xp automatically placed in escrow, US 2.7.1.
Congratulations!
You have completed the Trial of Evolution 1: Water Buffalhigh.
Grade: F
Objectives:
- Defeat the Evolved Water Buffalhigh without dying: ?
- Defeat the Evolved Water Buffalhigh within 10 minutes: ?
- Defeat the Evolved Water Buffalhigh in honourable combat: ?
Rewards:
You have earned the right, if barely, to Evolve from an immature Water Buffalhigh into 1 of 1 mature Buffalhigh Evolutions:
- Earth Buffalow
Choose Now!
ERROR:
You are not a Monster and, as such, cannot Evolve.
ERROR:
You have completed a Trial of Evolution and must Evolve.
Elijah expected the usual error loop to continue as normal, but it didn’t. Instead, a new window appeared.
ERROR Loop Isolated:
Error loop detected in Trial program. No more Errors may be reported by this user's System interface until the issue has been investigated. Parameters set by manager Faun.
That was… interesting. Elijah was mildly concerned, but at the present moment something else caught his attention. In the second before the next notification, informing him of his new Class, the teen caught sight of another error message, normally covered by the glitchy errors, normally covered up.
ERROR:
Cannot find the coordinates on Terra Torus from which the Trial participation was teleported.
Temporary Solution Found: A game of heads or tails shall be played to decide whether to return the Trial participant to coordinates (0,0,0) or hold them in the next Trial until a permanent solution is found.
Tails: Trial participant shall be sent to the next trial until such time as a permanent solution is found.
“Curse my Luck!” Elijah exclaimed, tantalised by the hope of an end to this nightmare.
New Evolution Class E?v?o?l?u?t?i?o?n? C???l???a???s???s??? E???v????o?????l????u????t????i????o?????n??? C??????l???????a???????s????s??????? … Unlocked!
New Class Trait Unlocked!
New Class Trait unlocked:
Dishonourable: F
As a dishonourable Earth Buffalow, you gain 10% damage when attacking another before they are ready or with a method against which they have no defence. You are looked upon with disdain.