Teacher: Mind magic is one of the most versatile and situational magics there is. You can use telekinesis, telepathy, mind reading, and, in some rare cases, see the future. Each of these abilities is unique and requires considerable expertise to perform.

  Mind magic trades the power other affinities take for granted for a versatility no other affinity can match. There is also the added benefit that, unlike its elemental counterparts that require external resources, there will always be mind mana accessible because you have a mind.

  Student 542: Um, professor. What happens if you do not have a mind? Teacher: Are you speaking from experience?

  -Transcript from traveler’s guild lecture

  It takes a while, but eventually the hammer knight returns with another man in tow. The newcomer looks middle-aged with short blonde hair in a crew cut and the perpetual sneer only a noble can pull off. He’s wearing a deep red cloak over an engraved leather cuirass with the symbol of an eye in a starburst. In his right hand, instead of a staff, he holds an orb that looks to flicker with light every time it moves. It looks like a snow globe filled with glitter, except that instead of needing to shake it, new glittery material perpetually rains down. On each of his fingers is a metal ring with a rainbow of gems.

  With a haughty tone, the man announces, “So this is the wilder I have heard so much about. He looks like a peasant who raided a local lord’s room and is trying to pass himself off as a noble.”

  ‘Well, he is going to be a bundle of fun.’

  ‘You are having fun now?’ Morgana responds with a sense of relief.

  ‘No, it's your kind of fun, not my kind of fun.’ Morgana had become more bloodthirsty of late, and I can still feel the sense of satisfaction from her hunt of the hawk. I feel Morgana’s confusion as she puzzles out my statement.

  Instead of engaging, I go over and grab the food from the hammer knight before putting one sandwich in my mouth. I walk over to the shield knight and offer him a few. He glances at the noble before snagging two for himself.

  The noble mage snorts, “Really now, a picnic? I thought we were running a dungeon.”

  I shrug, “I will pick back up once I am done with lunch.”

  The mage rolls his eyes before finding a spot to sit down. I don’t realize how hungry I am until I munch on the first sandwich. Now the plate with the two remaining sandwiches doesn’t seem like enough.

  After devouring the two remaining sandwiches, I stand up and do some stretching. Once I feel good and limber, I call the undead cougar to me. It hobbles over to me, fumbling from the damage to its body on the side I slashed. Muscles on the damaged side refuse to respond as fast as the other side. I’m not quite topped off on mana, but I decide to go ahead and invest some of my mana regeneration into the undead cougar. It’s subtle, but the cougar starts walking with an easier gate.

  I command the undead cat to lead the way into the next clearing. When playing video games, I sometimes start to notice patterns. For instance, all the monsters in a dungeon don’t congregate in one room. At the same time, most rooms serve some purpose, even if in tabletop games, that purpose is only to provide lore and context to the quest.

  The way the wall of shrubbery narrows before opening back up, it’s clear to me that I’m in the next room despite it looking synonymous with the area behind me. I’m confident there’s some kind of unseen danger waiting to strike. My eyes scan around the room, trying to find a hawk nestled in the axe blade grass of a tree, like the one Morgana had found, or another cloud cougar waiting on a branch to pounce.

  “Why are we stopping?” The noble behind me snaps.

  “I’m looking for any hidden threats. The cougar was well hidden in the last room. I want to spot any threats here, so they don’t get the drop on me.”

  “So, we are going to stop at every room so you can stare at it for half an hour? Could you not have done that before I arrived?”

  “No, I didn’t want to risk pulling anything,” I say.

  “Pulling?” He asks.

  “Yeah, drawing its attention,” I explain.

  “Peasants come up with such weird, unnecessary ways to use words.”

  “What would you do in my situation?”

  “I would send my knights in and then destroy whatever scurried out of hiding.”

  I look back at the knights, taking in their metal armor. The Cougar’s claws were sharp, but I can see how metal armor will make the fight more of a game of whack-a-mole than a high-stakes game of tag. The claws on the cougar are not enchanted, only its supernatural agility. The metal will make the fight trivial for the knights, whereas the shadow armor is better for blocking blunt hits.

  Misinterpreting my gaze, the knight with the hammer says, “Don’t think about it; our orders are to escort, not act as bait.”

  “Seriously, you’re a mage, and you do not even have one knight? No wonder Lord and Lady Heartbran took you in as a stray. I’m surprised you survived this long, considering how inept you are.”

  It isn’t ineptitude to lack an army of knights at your back. If Olivia, Kurt, and Benjamin were here, I’m sure this entire run would be trivial. Benjamin’s tracking skills could spot the hidden foes, Kurt could defeat most of the enemies here on his own with a good blunt weapon, and Olivia could burn or blast the entire place down. I push aside my frustration that I‘m separated from my friends.

  Not seeing any threats, I have the undead cougar move forward to scout. The cat lost most of its predatory instincts when I raised it, but it still understands commands such as ‘go here’ or ‘go there’. A “find” command is a little bit outside of its ability; it does understand ‘look out for threats’. In the end, the undead feline serves its purpose.

  As the cat walks past the pool, vines shoot out and wrap around its legs, dragging it below the water. That is mildly terrifying. I can see now why the knights wanted to get backup. Even though the pool isn’t that deep, heavy armor would work against them when trying to untangle themselves before they drown. The cat’s sharp claws shred the vine, and without the need to breathe, it should be a good match-up. Unfortunately, the vines overwhelm my minion, crushing something in the cat’s spine, and it goes limp.

  I look at the floating foliage, trying to decipher what it is I am fighting. I see bobbing severed vines, and whatever monster lurks there looks content to stay in the pool. I don’t think water or shadow magic is going to help me against this foe. Water magic might allow me to move the creature, but I need cutting power for the thick woody vines. Similarly, umbrakinesis is good at bludgeoning and detaining, not cutting. That leaves ice magic as the obvious candidate. I will the water in the pool to spin in a circle. The movement will make it easier to form the sharp ice daggers and has the added benefit of giving the ice additional momentum.

  Vines stretch out to keep the creature from spinning. I can see clear agitation as some vines begin rising out of the water like snakes ready to strike.

  Whatever the creature is, it’s not very intelligent. As razor-sharp ice starts to cut at the roots stabilizing it, the creature thrashes, and roots plunge into the water to strike at the ice shards. Of course, bringing more roots down into the swirling water only gives the makeshift ice blender more targets. Feeling like I have enough ice shards to do some damage, I switch focus from creating ice shards to tightening the circle the ice is spinning in.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  The water becomes more turbulent as the panicking plant is being shredded. The mass of corded vines pushes down, elevating the plant creature out of the water. The creature looks like a facsimile of a crab.

  Eight masses of woven wooden vines make up its legs. Like a mouth, the center mass of vines opens with short vines acting as prehensile fangs. The top part of its body is covered in the Lilypad-like plants, giving it the appearance of having a green shell on top of its body. That is where the similarities end. Instead of pincers, numerous vines wave about, ready to grip and squeeze any foe. They look like questing snakes, and I’m not planning to get anywhere near them.

  Soon, the sharp ice cuts into the root crab’s legs. The creature stomps into the water in a blind rage. The thick roots and striking vines cause some of the ice daggers to shatter, but the shattered ice daggers only multiply the number of sharp icy edges, eliminating the need to create more ice daggers.

  I look over at the knights to see an almost horrific visage cross their faces as the crab begins to crash back into the pool, its legs cut to ribbons. I look over to the noble, and even he is silent as he gives a thoughtful look at the dying root monster.

  It’s interesting seeing how much stronger the root crab is than the cloud cougar, especially considering that killing it is trivially easy. I doubt Olivia, with all her explosive power, would have had as easy a time taking on the root crab, but would have been able to take down the cloud cougar in one hit. After taking a few moments to examine parts of the room, I move deeper into the room, only to see another shaded fountain with floating plants that look suspiciously like a root crab. Keeping my distance, I command the water to swirl in preparation for a repeat performance. I conjure ice daggers, and soon I have the blender running at full speed.

  As I’m halfway through killing the monster, I feel something slam into me. As I land on my back, I raise my hands protectively to my face as a cloud cougar pounces on me, trying to go for my throat to finish the fight. Instinctively, I pull on darkness mana to shield myself and wrap shadow tendrils around its frame to pull the predator away from me.

  The shadows tangle its feet, tripping it, so I’m able to jump back to create some distance. The cat must have snuck up on me when my attention was focused on the root crab flailing. I’m lucky I stayed near the entrance, or it might have landed on my back, and then the fight would’ve been over before it ever began.

  My robe grows heavy as it sops up my blood. The shock starts to recede, giving way to pulsing pain. I grimace, not wanting to know how bad the damage is, but ignorance will lead to me bleeding out. I call forth the water in my waterskin and activate my healing spell form. Once that is in process, I reach into my pocket for the training stones and summon my shadow armor.

  Taking a page from the root crab, when the cougar tries to close in on me again, I create a tendril of darkness that wraps around its foot and slams it to the ground. The cat uses its pesky cloud step to mitigate most of the damage, but it allows me to regain the momentum of the fight.

  Despite no longer being on the back foot, the cat is relentless. It doesn’t stop trying to close the distance. I don’t have time to concentrate on summoning water from the pool; the water is too far away. By the time I could summon it to me, the cat would give me a fresh set of claw marks. Still, I do have something else I can use; I’m covered in blood.

  I pull the blood out of my robe to my right hand. When the cat gets in close for the kill, I push forward my right hand. I freeze the blood right as it leaves my hand. A thick ball of blood ice slams into the cat, causing it to flop on the ground. I draw my sword and finish the fight by sliding my sword into its heart. With the cat dealt with, I resume tearing the crab apart. It’s a little more difficult as the crab seems to grasp, I’m outside its watery home.

  It tries to drag itself from the water toward me, but it quickly becomes clear why it stays in the pool. The vines are quite flexible but lack the strength to bear the crab’s monumental weight. It can drag itself along the ground, but even walking, I outpace it. Pulling water from the pool, I resume my blender technique.

  I must have been close to leveling when I killed the last root crab, since I already have another level up. I decide to repeat my attribute distribution from my last level up, putting two points into intelligence, two into wisdom, and one into constitution.

  I raise the defeated cougar and move through the exit to the next garden area. This far into the dungeon, I'm expecting to find the boss of the dungeon. The pattern had been three rooms to a boss in the first dungeon. Even this dungeon had three encounters before a kind of mini-boss, and the entire dungeon changed.

  Instead, I find an area with a fountain in the middle and three large trees surrounding it. I investigate the trees from afar and find four of the root hawks I had seen Morgana with earlier. While I do have ways to fight from afar, my abilities are better suited to mid-range combat.

  Channeling the water spell form will be accurate, but it’s slow while moving a significant amount of water. If the root hawks are anything like real birds, they will outpace my control with ease. Ice daggers are the superior weapon to fight with, but it will be difficult to aim against a flying adversary. Still, it’s my best option.

  With the hawks resting in the trees, I grab the first one and pin it to the tree with an ice dagger. Not all the birds will sit still long enough for me to kill them, and as if in answer to my thoughts, the others take flight.

  The hawks become specks against the sky as they circle overhead. Beside me, I see the knights raise their weapons, the noble starts glowing strangely, and the cougar does its undead approximation of a growl. The birds swoop down, testing us with probing strikes.

  Their claws are not as sharp as the cougar’s, and despite being better suited for blunt attacks, my shadow armor easily absorbs their tiny claws. The knights’ armor deflects hits from the birds without leaving a dent. The mage summons a light-affinity version of my shadow armor that flashes, blinding the birds if they go too close. I’m not sure if it would block physical attacks or if it is just there to disorient, but he easily finishes any bird foolish enough to attack him.

  Unfortunately, the cougar is quickly singled out as the weakest target. It gets a few good swipes in before the diving hawks swarm, debilitating the undead. With no way for the birds to hurt us, it becomes a contest of stamina. Shooting at the birds with ice is good practice, and I have some small ability to change trajectory once I have an ice dagger shoot towards my avian adversaries.

  With the hawks defeated, I make my way past the fountain to see two earth elementals in front of the entrance to the next area. They are the same elementals I saw at the entrance to the dungeon, far weaker than the root elemental. I note that this room has some of the weaker creatures, but they are far more numerous.

  If the creatures appear weak, it could be a trap to spell the end for any other headstrong groups who feel overconfident. With a source of water in the fountain behind me, I summon water forth and have the water cascade down on the two elementals, peeling away dirt and pebbles until they stop moving.

  With the elementals dealt with, I take another look at the entrance to the next area. Up until now, the dungeon used well-manicured walls of hedges; however, the walls to the next area look less well-kempt. Vine roots and branches create an arch with a wild, overgrown look to it. I peek my head in and see a secluded grove with a massive ball of fur at the center. I don’t see any other paths from the secluded grove. It has thick trees surrounding the grassy center with light filtering down through the trees above.

  The fights have gotten progressively tougher, and I think this boss will be far stronger than anything I have fought so far. Deciding to be cautious, I dismiss my shadow armor and retreat towards the fountain. I sit on the stone lip to let my mana recover some.

  “Have either of you ever faced the boss?” I ask as I turn toward the knights. They shake their heads.

  I turn to the noble and ask him, but he is pointedly silent on the subject. I get the feeling he is purposefully holding back information from me, but I can’t tell why. Maybe it is his unfriendly demeanor but through my empathy, I feel a darker emotion driving his actions. I can feel the lines of envy and greed directed at me, and I wonder what schemes he has planned.