Chapter 4: Exploration

After a little while searching the forest, he made a fire using his spell and roasted some wolf meat. With the extra herbs and an edible root he found, it wasn’t great. The meat cooked unevenly and the herbs were far to hard and bitter but at least it filled him up.

‘In the future, I’ll make some gourmet food!’

The next problem was his health, although it had been a little over an hour poko had only gained 5 hp back. This was the same rate as mana and would take forever, poko didn’t want to waste his only potion. Given is own chef skills, it would probably be a while before good potions like these become available, unless monsters dropped it.

‘Still 7 health is not a lot… but 12 isn’t to bad, everyone starts at 10 so that’s higher than some people have, in the meantime I clearly need to practice my magic and figure out how I want to fight.’

And that’s exactly what Poko did, he practiced with lesser fire, then meditation.

After some practice Poko got the hang of it and figured out he just needed his palm empty to cast lesser fire, meaning he could strap the shield around his wrist and let go when he cast it. Of course this means he can’t block while casting unless he dropped his sword and used that hand but it’ll have to do.

Poko packed up and decided to keep following the creek, since it was a water source and likely had multiple types of animals coming to drink out of it. He started walking in the general direction of the distant mountains.

After a couple minutes Poko spotted a small snake by the creek bed, fearing it was poisonous he simply cast a lesser fire at it burning it to a crisp. Surprisingly the snake dropped 50 copper but nothing else.

Poko attempted to meditate while walking with little success, after a couple minutes he accidentally tripped on a rock and fell in the shallow water.

‘I probably shouldn’t try this in unfamiliar territory, I’ll practice it later.’

Almost an hour later

(SHWINK)

All of a sudden Poko felt an impact on his back.

“Fuck!”

As he turned around he swung his blade aimlessly, only hitting air. On the ground about a foot away sat a pitch black cat with two tails and bloody claws. Poko felt something warm going down his back and checked his health.

[2 hp left]

‘Damn this cat is out of my league, luckily I just got my mana back. It’s a small target though so I’m going to have to trick it somehow.’

The cat jumped up the trees and disappeared into the foliage, poko went into the creek where there were less trees.

‘Hmm an assassin cat. I only have 5 mana or I would just burn down the trees, I need more mana.’

Poko slowly kept walking, watching the trees in front of him.

‘If it was smart it would try to circle to the other side of the creek. But I don’t know how long that’ll take or if it’ll think of that.’

“Come at me Bitch!”

Poko suddenly sprints in the opposite direction the cat was. With his back turned he starts casting lesser fire. The cat, not wanting to miss its prey, leaps across the creek from the tree. But Poko stops and turns after only two steps, just barely hitting the cat, burning it to a crisp.

“Hahaha this strategy just keeps working! It’s like my trademark at this point! Although if I missed I definitely would’ve died.”

Poko quickly looks at the body hoping for a nice drop, and he was in luck! a tome, 25 copper, and a dark and sleek dagger.

“This dagger is a lot better than the other one! I don’t know what all this money is useful for though… alright hopefully the tome is good!

[Would you like to learn hide?]

“Uh hell yes! These tomes seem to relate to the monsters, interesting.”

As poko starts packing the copper and dagger he realizes that the dagger has a weird pattern. As he holds it he can feel that it’s different, like it’s flowing with something.

‘Hmm weird let’s try this out a little.’

After cutting some random branches, the burnt body, and even some rocks with all three of his blades, poko learned a lot.

The crude dagger was as expected, horrible at cutting, it was so bad it might just do bludgeoning damage instead. The sword seemed pretty normal. But the black dagger was different, it even did decent damage to the rock, although not cutting it all the way. Still way sharper than the sword.

‘I’m definitely using this with piercing stab and hide.’

About another hour later of picking herbs till his backpack was full, poko discovered a small cave in a hill near the cliff. He went to take a peak as quietly as he could and discovered an empty cave.

Poko dumped his supplies in the cave and decided to spend the night here, but first he wanted to check out the area.

As he climbed the hill he realized that the forest started to thin out and as he crested the top of the hill he saw an amazing sight.

The hill formed a cliff straight down from here, and to the left across the river there were some woods with a lot of white barked trees, similar to the ones where he fought the wolves.

To the right was rocky mountains

Straight ahead was the creek turning into a river and meandering across a great open plain with rolling hills.

On the other side of the plain was hills with sparse blue trees and plenty of vibrant flowers of all colors.

In the plain, near one of the rolling hills was a thin line of smoke coming up.

Because it was slightly behind the hill, Poko couldn’t tell what was there but considering the green little silhouettes in the area, it was pretty obvious what he would find.

‘The question is, how big is this settlement and if they are smart enough for buildings, could they be talked to and bargained with?’

‘Considering the past… probably not. But I’m no murderer, I’ll give it a shot as long as I’m not risking my life.’

Poko walked down from the hill and stopped at the cave, he first dropped off all his stuff out of his bag. He grabbed the black dagger, sword and shield and left the cave, heading toward the settlement.