Luckily, Luna had an answer to the overwhelming odds.
Summon Points: 1/1
Augment rabbit?
“Yes.”
Select augment category:
- Natural weapons
- Natural defenses
- Magics
Uhhh, magics of course.
Rolling…
Rabbit Lv. 1
Health: 1/1
Abilities: Bite — 1 piercing damage. Hop — jump 5 ft in any direction.
Magic — A trail of magical growth follows you. Wherever you step, plants will experience a minor increase in natural growth.
Mana: 0/20
“Well that one’s a dud.” If Luna was anything, she was determined.
Luna kept note of the variant in the event that she would need a gardening rabbit in the future, but unsummoned it, refunding the full mana and summon point cost.
This went on for a bit of time, Luna double, tripling, and quintuple-downing until…
Rabbit Lv. 1
Health: 1/1
Abilities: Bite — 1 piercing damage. Hop — jump 5 ft in any direction.
Magic — Vines: cast grasping vines to restrain a single target vs target’s Strength. Cost: 10 mana.
Mana: 0/20
“I can work with that,” magic vine rabbit Luna thought as she took the world in around her. She had been doing her summoning practice away from any weasels, so she would just have to build up some mana then track her target down.
Luna waited forevverrrrrrr for her mana pool to regenerate—at least her regen was now at 0.2/s.
Being full on another 20 mana, she once again activated her rabbit summon.
“Go, Rabbit 2!!”
She felt a pull on her mana pool, but instead of another rabbit appearing she just got an error message.
Cost of summons may not exceed maximum mana pool.
“Bullshit balancing logic,” Luna-bunny pouted. A thousand-strong army of level 1 rabbits could greatly increase her leveling potential if she let them loose on a low-level town.
Not that she would do that?
Seeing as she was still full on mana, Luna hopped off to get some more experience and hopefully the next step toward her ever-growing mana pool.
“Interesting use of the metaphysical thought space to substitute for any perceiving organs,” the lawyer-who-wasn’t-really-a-lawyer commented.
“Yeah, that doesn’t happen all that often. Especially that quickly,” the not-judge also commented.
The pair of cosmic beings were kicking it in their editing studio, putting together the pilot episode of the newest season of Those Crazy Mortals.
After a few minutes of clicking away at their workstations, the lawyer figure suddenly stopped and stared into space.
“Dale, are you seeing this?”
Not-Judge Dale stopped his work to pull up the live feed of Luna as a vine bunny standing over a mass of fur and vines.
“Good thing the wives don’t expect us home for a few decades, Jim. This one looks like she will be a handful.”
Not-lawyer Jim could only nod, taking in the sight of their rising star.
“You’ve made me a very disappointed bunny,” Luna vine-rabbit grumbled, pace-hopping back and forth in front of the restrained weasel.
She had blown both charges of her grasping vine spell immediately upon seeing the weasel start its run to bite her. She didn’t have the HP or mana to waste on tanking a bite.
“Struggling does you no good, Mr. W, it only makes it ha— Stop, geez, you’re insane!”
Luna was rudely broken out of her villain monologue by the weasel going absolutely feral. Unable to break through the vines, the weasel contorted its body, attempting to bite through the vines as well as its own restrained limbs, seemingly with no regard for the pain.
“Okay, okay!” Luna cautiously circled around behind the thrashing figure to deploy her attacks to hopefully dispatch the crazed animal.
Bite — 1 piercing damage.
The deployed skill was definitely nothing flashy as she just manually brought her jaws down on the weasel to inflict the damage. The skill didn’t cost anything other than a sore jaw as she had to bite pretty hard to get through the thick fur and skin.
You have slain Weasel Lv. 2.
“What, no level up? Bullshittttttt…” Luna-bunny huffed. “Let’s run it back then.”
Having not taken any damage, all Luna had to do was wait for her mana pool to replenish before hunting down another weasel to hopefully push her over the edge for a level up.
Luna turned and hopped down the trail in thataway direction, optimistic about her situation…
A whistle and a sharp pain took Luna the vine-bunny out before she had time to even think that she wasn’t the only hunter in the woods.
“Damn, I could’ve sworn it was a solid hit,” the young male hunter holding a bow whispered to his companion.
“It was either a very fast rabbit, or it was an illusion, because it looked like it just vanished,” the wand-wielding young woman guessed.
“One way to find out,” the hunter whispered, smiling as he activated his tracking skill.
Track Animal
The highlighted rabbit footprints showed exactly where the rabbit had come from, even a freshly killed weasel with what looked like ligature, pierce, and bite marks all over its body.
“What the hell?” the hunter asked as he lost the trail where his arrow was now sticking out of the ground. “Bee, can you do your—” he waved his hands around in the air wildly—“see invisible thing, please?”
“Of course, my afflicted love,” the woman joked at the sporadically moving man that she continued to choose to date.
Faerie Fire
The world lit up for the level 4 mage known as Beme. The particles of light spread out, hitting and sticking to everything in her surroundings, including herself, her boyfriend Sidd, trees, rocks… and an otherwise invisible floating orb that hung above the rabbit’s body.
Identify
Beme activated the skill that registered the ball as:
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
Summoner Lv. 2
ART PLACEHOLDER :)
(ASCII art of a fencing sword.)
“Why is it a picture of a sword?” Beme questioned.
“What are you talking about?” Sidd asked his girlfriend, who was clearly the afflicted one.
“When I identify that orb it comes back with the identifier, but there is also a picture of a child’s drawing of a rapier or something?”
“Yeah, it comes up as…”
Summoner Lv. 2 — Ouch, my not eyeballlsss!!!
“It changed,” Beme said, concerned about the message. “It says ‘Ouch, my not eyeballlsss!!!’”
“Well, you are magically lighting up a magical creature that looks to have a class,” Sidd observed.
Beme promptly dropped concentration on her faerie fire spell, then wrote out sorry in dimmer light in the air in front of her.
Summoner Lv. 2 — No worries friend.
“It’s obviously intelligent,” Beme concluded. “Some kind of ghost or echo or something?”
“I’m going with some kind of fae,” Sidd countered. “I don’t want to be sent to another dimension, so we should get out of here.”
“I guess,” Beme half-agreed.
“See you around,” Beme wrote out to the peculiar entity.
Summoner Lv. 2 — Ta ta for now.
Satisfied with the notion that she had avoided fairy kidnap for now, Beme strode after her fleeing…tactically retreating boyfriend.
The woman seemed nice enough from their short conversation. Luna followed her for a bit while her mana regenerated, swinging her mind sword to keep her in view. She was eventually torn away from the task by the pull for blood. She couldn’t just follow this woman around when she had hunting to do! Besides, there were some weasel tracks to follow.
Back to business.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Mr. W Junior,” vine-bunny Luna said, looking down her whiskered nose at the tied-up weasel. “Your father was also no match for me, nothing more than a stepping stone to greater heights, much like yourself. Whahahahahaha!!”
Bite attack. Bite attack. Bite attack.
You have slain Weasel Lv. 2.
Level up.
Luna looked past her rabbit stat sheet and focused on her summoner sheet.
Luna Caine
Summoner Lv. 3
Health: n/a
Mana: 10/30
Mana Regen: 0.3/s
Summon Points: 1/2
Summon menu:
Lv. 1 Sword — 10 mana
Lv. 1 Rabbits — choose variant — 20 mana
Lv. 2 Weasel — 30 mana
Along with the added summon of the level two weasel, she got the standard increase to mana and another summon point. She now had access to 30 mana. You know what that means?!
Rabbit with a sword!
Yeah, maybe someday, but it didn’t seem practical for the rabbit to hold a sword quite yet.
Speaking of swords, she got an idea.
She unsummoned her rabbit, getting a full refund, maxing her mana out to 30.
Augment sword?
“Yes.”
Select augment category:
- Physical attack
- Physical defense
- Magics
Again, not a question: “Magics.”
Fencing Sword Lv. 1
Health: n/a
Damage: 1d4 Piercing
Mana: 20/30
Magics: Blinding Light — cause a single bright flash to occur that impacts the vision of other creatures. Cost: 5 mana.
That might be cool if you were a welding mask wearing sword warrior who wanted to take a foe by surprise, but for Luna’s needs, that wouldn’t do.
She did all this not to go actively hunting, but to set a trap.
In her weasel hunting escapades, Luna had also come across larger prey: deer. They left her bunny form alone, as they seemed like normal Earth herbivores, but they were still wary of her if she approached them trying to get a bite in. Her summoned vines were also waaaaayyy too weak to restrain them, the deer basically just walking right through the restraint from the Lv. 1 creature.
Luna also briefly tried to use her weasel summon to take down the deer, but its 3 HP pool got quickly stomp one shotted.
This left her to her next option: set up three swords pointed at one spot on a trail, load up some sword magic ability with some solid damage, then throw all the magic at the deer as fast as she could to kill it and gain more sweeeet XP.
She just needed to roll up a good sword…
Many, many attempts later and she finalllyyyyy had a serviceable trap weapon.
Fencing Sword Lv. 1
Health: n/a
Damage: 1d4 Piercing
Mana: 20/30
Magics: Water Jet — fire a sustained, highly pressurized jet of water a short distance (10 ft effective range), dealing 1 piercing/slashing damage per second. Activation cost: 5 mana. Upkeep: 1 mana per second after initial activation.
To be safe, Luna immediately upgraded the water jet with her second summon point to
Magics: Water Jet 2— fire a sustained, highly pressurized jet of water a short distance (15 ft effective range), dealing 2 piercing/slashing damage per second. Activation cost: 5 mana. Upkeep: 1 mana per second after initial activation.
So 6 total seconds of water jet from 3 swords would cost her total 30 mana pool, dealing a maximum of 36 damage.
Sure, she could go with one sword for 26 seconds, but she doubted a deer would stand still for almost half a minute with a water jet drilling into its flesh.
She was banking on catching the deer off guard, being able to inflict the initial 3 damage, then a follow-up 3 damage from a second of 3 water jets to hopefully take the animal out. If that didn’t work, she would just have to try something else—maybe create a venom weasel that pounced from the shadows to deliver an insidious wound that ate away at the deer for days or wee—
Nope. The jets worked fantastically.
Luna did find it a pain to try to summon the swords in spots that could
- securely hold against the force of the water jet,
- be within shooting distance of the deer trail, and
- be close enough to the other swords so the attack could happen all at once.
After so much time setting up, then so much time waiting on a deer, the actual action was pretty quick.
The unaware deer strolled through the path leading to a stream as she was sure it had done hundreds of times. It pathed directly through a tight spot between two young trees that pinched the dirt-worn deer trail. With a mental command, Luna set into effect the full force of her full mana pool.
The deer was quickly pierced by all three streams. It let out a shriek as it kicked and thrashed out in surprise. The deer bolted forward through the water gauntlet resulting in deep gashes along the full length of its body. One or two of the streams had obviously hit something vital, or maybe it was just the cumulative damage, because well before the streams ran out of juice Luna got a message.
You have slain Deer Lv. 3.
Like the first weasel she had killed, she didn’t have enough mana to summon a deer, so she would have to wait for the next level up.
After taking in the unsavory sight of the successful hunt, she would have to relocate her deer wash station if she wanted to have any more luck.
Luna waited until she had enough mana to summon her rabbit form to more easily scope out where she wanted to set up.
She did then remember to use her second summon point, obviously skipping over any offensive or defensive nature in favor of going straight into her existing magic. She of course could instead start over with a completely different magic, but she wanted to see where the vines would lead her.
Rabbit Lv. 1
Health: 1/1
Abilities: Bite — 1 piercing damage. Hop — jump 5 ft in any direction.
Magic — Vines 2: cast thorny grasping vines to restrain a single target vs target’s Strength. The target takes 1d2 damage each attempt to physically free itself. Cost: 20 mana.
Mana: 0/30
Hey, nice upgradeee. The cost was pretty high though, and something like the deer could probably still get out of it decently quickly. Though worth testing for sure.
Luna-rabbit had to travel a good half mile to find another suitable spot to set up. By now she was also at full mana. The sun had started to go down. It was the first sunset she would get to see in this new world.
Well, with all the trees around she couldn’t quite see the full sunset, but the warm, soft colors of the forest were nice.
Luna had to again dismiss her rabbit to free up the mana needed to summon the swords. She could do a little mechanic cheese though: she summoned one sword, bringing her to 20/30 mana, dismissed her rabbit to bring her back up to full, then summoned the remaining two swords, bringing her down to 10/30 mana.
A mana management tactic to remember.
Before too long, while waiting in her new spot, a shape materialized in her mind sword.
…It was not a deer.
“Who would leave a sword just sitting here?” Sidd questioned, approaching the implement that was pointed toward the path back to town.
“Sidd, that has to be a trap,” Beme said, gesturing at the other two swords that were also pointing directly at the man.
Once made aware of the abundance of loot, Sidd plucked all three swords from their resting places and bundled them up for easier transport.
“Not a trap anymore, free swords!” Sidd exclaimed, face beaming at their luck. They had a decently successful hunting day consisting of a few kills, a level up for Beme from lvl 4 to 5, and now free swords! He would have to get them appraised to see if they would be worth using or selling.