“Ow, that stings,” Lily cried, pawing at her nose where the water had splashed onto her.

  “Oh no! Sorry Lily! I didn’t mean to hit you!” Anika knelt to brush the water off Lily. She glanced at the party tracker and noted that, while Lily commented that the water stung, her health bar hadn’t really dipped. That probably meant she did no damage to the slime, as barely any of the water had landed on her intended target.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Leka laughed. “Splash doesn’t do much more than tickle at level 5. It only stings a little because your companion is lower level than you. As you level, all spells grow in power, but you need to reach level 10 before they start to do real damage. “

  Anika stood and looked at the undamaged slime. “Is the water supposed to just… go all over like that?”

  “Of course not! You thought about the spell, but you didn’t tell it what to do. If you don’t give your magic guidance, it will just go wildly in any direction. Magic requires intention.”

  “Right, that makes sense, I suppose.” Anika had just randomly thought about the spell, she hadn’t actually been thinking about hitting the slime. But then again, when she didn’t really know what was going to happen, it was hard to be intentional about something. The description wasn’t very specific as far as describing what happened when the spell was used and she needed to have all the details in order to come up with appropriate plans for how to do anything, much less use her magic. Now, she wondered how much control she had over the spell as far as its form and function, and whether it would be more effective if more of the water hit the target as opposed to a broad spray. It made sense to her that a more concentrated burst of water should do more damage. But how much would the spell allow the water to be concentrated as opposed to wildly splashing all over.

  “Let me try again,” Anika put up her hand with more intention this time, holding her arm straight and leaving her hand up like she was doing a palm strike. She positioned her hand about two inches from the slime and imagined water going from her palm to the slime in a single, short burst as she thought ‘splash’.

  This time, water only sprayed from her palm, as she had intended. It wasn’t the dense gush of water she had imagined, though. The loosely concentrated droplets leapt from her palm in a fan shape. A decent amount landed on the slime, which, Anika was pleased to note, actually looked a little bit damaged this time. Little pockmarks formed on the surface of the slime where the water droplets touched, leaving a pitted appearance on the surface.

  “Yay! You got it!” Lily cheered this time, safe from the water droplets that had splashed onto her with Anika’s first attempt.

  “Yeah, Anika, that looked like good magic!” Philip clapped enthusiastically behind Lily.

  Leka nodded with approval. “Your innate magic ability is quite strong, which is to be expected, as we summoned the most powerful mages. Normally, even at level 5 a Splash spell would not be able to do much harm to a level 2 Slime. I’d say you did about 10% of its health in damage with that one.”

  “Only 10%?” Anika was a bit disappointed, even knowing that her first attempt had done no damage at all. She was hoping for something a little better.

  “That is quite strong for that attack at level 5. Your damage will increase with skill, as well. The more you practice, the greater your damage will be. Now, practice a few more times against the slime, then you and Philip can go explore the area. This area has very little that can harm you, and you’ll learn better by doing. I’ll be here, following at a distance and harvesting some magical resources.” Leka put the slime down in front of Anika and Lily, then wandered off towards a stand of trees.

  “Yeah! Let’s go explore!” Philip turned and started walking in another direction immediately.

  “Philip, wait! I need to kill this slime first!” Anika looked down at the slime that had started slowly oozing away from her, clearly not interested in being part of Splash practice.

  “Oh, right!” Philip stopped and turned around to watch Anika and Lily take care of the level 2 slime.

  “Actually, you should join the party before we move.” Anika looked at him and thought ‘party’. A dialog box popped up

  Would you like to invite Philip to your party

  Yes/No

  Interesting, Anika thought, as she mentally selected ‘Yes’. I wonder if there are other things that give interactive prompts.

  A few moments later, Philip and Epona’s names appeared in the party menu.

  “Huh,” Anika said, “I guess when you join, your companion automatically joins with you.” Curious, Anika looked up at her buffs again and a dialog box popped up.

  Capy Cultivation: Increase experience for you and your Anima-bonded companion by 5% per party member. This bonus stacks. Non-bonded party members gain a flat 10% bonus experience regardless of the number of party members. Current bonus: 20%

  Anika raised her eyebrows. Other companions also counted in calculating the experience buff. That was potentially very beneficial.

  “Okay, now we can kill it!”

  Lily stalked forward to the slime, creeping adorably through the grass until she was next to it. Anika moved closely behind her and got down on her knees near the slime. When she did, she felt calm fall over her and could tell Lily had activated her Calming Presence ability.

  “What does your Calming Presence do to monsters?” Anika asked.

  “It makes them less aggressive and less likely to attack! It also makes their Anima go down and does a little damage if I’m close to them! It makes your anima go up too!”

  “Why don’t I feel calm?” Philip asked from where he stood several feet away.

  “It has a small range because I’m only level 2, but it will get bigger!”

  Anika stared at Lily, “When did you get to Level 2? I thought all the companions were level 1!”

  “Remember Leka said you get experience by practicing abilities! And I was using my Aether abilities on you last night!”

  “Oh… right. You were. And you got a whole level that way?”

  “Well, it only takes 32 experience to get to level 2, so it wasn’t that hard!”

  “Experience requirements must increase a lot… I need 7,776 to level”

  Philip interjected, “Yeah, experience goes up a lot each level. I need a lot of experience to level to 16. Like, over 700,000!”

  “How am I ever going to catch up if you need that much experience to level?!” Anika cried.

  “Don’t worry Anika! You get more experience from higher level things, so it isn’t too bad!” Lily continued to stalk the slowly moving slime, which was starting to look significantly more damaged than it had before.

  “I sure hope so,” Anika said glumly. “Guess I better get started with this little guy.” She held out her hand again, this time trying to point with just her finger to see if the spray would concentrate any more than it did from her palm. She didn’t want to hit Lily, who was about 8 inches to the right of the ooze. Moving in close so her finger was almost touching the slime, she cast Splash.

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  The water sprayed from her finger in a slightly more consolidated cone as opposed to the wide fan it had the previous time. It also started from a slightly more condensed point than it had before. Whether that was just her control improving as she cast or the result of using her finger and giving it a smaller starting point, she wasn’t sure. She would have to keep experimenting.

  The Scouring Slime had a large hole in its top now, but still seemed to be moving, so Anika cast again, causing a similar spray of water to gush onto the slowly oozing slime. This time, it shuddered and collapsed into a pool of translucent goo. Anika was waiting for some kind of experience notification, but nothing came.

  “Uh… is it actually dead?” Anika asked. “Did we get experience?”

  “It says I got five experience!” Lily said happily.

  “Where do you see that?” Anika looked around for any notifications but didn’t see anything.

  “You have to look at your character sheet!” Lily answered, as she moved forward to sniff the dead slime and poke it with her adorably webbed feet.

  “Oh… that’s a little inconvenient. But I guess it did show me I had zero experience last time I opened it up.” Anika quickly brought up her character sheet to see how much experience she had earned.

  “What?! Why did I only get four experience for that?!” Anika cried.

  “I got two,” Philip said. “You get less when you are better than the monster.” He paused for a moment, “Epona says she got five too!”

  “Well that just isn’t fair,” grumbled Anika. Four experience was nothing compared to 7,776. She was going to need to kill a LOT of monsters.

  “Monsters have more experience if they are higher level! And we get a bonus if we kill higher level monsters. But this one is low level, so it is worth less because you are higher level than it is!” Lily perked up, clearly using her god-granted knowledge.

  “I guess that makes sense,” Anika looked around, suddenly realizing there was no sparkling corpse with a convenient loot button. “Don’t we get loot for killing monsters?” Corpses in games were always lootable. How was she supposed to earn money in this new world if the monsters didn’t drop loot like they did in games?

  “What’s loot?” Philip asked, confused.

  “Like… money or items we magically get from the monster when it dies.” Anika replied.

  “Some monsters can be harvested,” Lily jumped in. “But I think you need special supplies for that! But I don’t think they magically give items.”

  “Well, that’s just disappointing,” Anika replied sullenly. She’d have to kill a million monsters to get experience and level up, and they didn’t even drop loot! What kind of lame magical dungeon had she ended up in.

  Grabbing her knife from her belt with her right hand, Anika turned towards the direction Philip had started walking in earlier. She was determined to not be a weakling compared to the others who were summoned, and even without loot, she would have to make the best of it. Time to start grinding.

  --------

  After haphazardly walking around for a while, randomly killing small Scouring Slimes and looking for something more interesting, the group paused for some of the food brought in Epona’s saddle bags. They pulled out a selection of bread, cheese, and fruit as well as canisters of, to Anika’s dismay, unsweet tea and sat down in the grass near a medium-sized, standalone tree. The tree reminded Anika of a weeping willow but was covered in purple and blue flowers.

  The two dozen or so Scouring Slimes they had encountered so far had mostly been below Anika’s level and had netted her just over 200 experience so far. The two slimes they had killed that were level five had given 30 experience each. Experience dropped quickly when mobs were lower level, but the on-level monsters were slightly better. Anika knew they would have to seek out higher level monsters if they wanted to earn faster experience. Lily was level three now, at least, and she was happy about that. She hadn’t gained any new abilities, though her Calming Presence had grown slightly in radius and strength.

  While they were eating, Leka appeared from a region of tall grass and joined them. Anika hadn’t been aware she was nearby, but Leka clearly was an experienced trainer, adept at keeping out of the way until needed.

  “Are you more comfortable with your spell?” Leka asked Anika.

  “I’ve used Splash on a lot of slimes at this point. I think I have pretty good control of it, and it seems like it is doing a little more damage than it was when I first tried, but it still doesn’t kill a slime with a single cast.”

  “Splash is the weakest ability. When you get Water Spray at level 10, you will be able to take these weak monsters of equal level quite easily.”

  “I hope that’s true… I feel pretty useless compared to Philip who can just smack things once with his trident and make them go away. He hasn’t even needed to use spells.”

  “I’m level 15, I don’t need to use spells for these.” Philip spoke up. “You can kill them with your dagger.”

  “True,” Anika replied, “But I feel like magic should be better than a knife.”

  “Eventually it will be,” Leka reassured Anika. “But magic should never be your only solution. You do not want to be defenseless should you encounter a situation where you run out of mana or are unable to use spells.”

  “Are there frequently places you can’t use spells?” Anika asked.

  “Your own world does not have magic, correct?”

  “Well, yeah…”

  “Then you should not be surprised to find that there are places in the cosmos where magic may not work.” Leka gave Anika a look like this should have been obvious. “Those places are not common in this world, but there have been monsters encountered in high level dungeons that are able to create a suppressive field that prevents an area from using magic.”

  Anika realized that this should have been far more obvious to her as well. Almost every game had some kind of silence mechanic. She felt a little stupid for asking the question now, and thus just nodded before eating the pikat in her hand. It tasted just like the juice and wasn’t as fibrous as a normal citrus, with a texture more like an apple. It was refreshing after an hour in the warm sun.

  “After you eat, you will continue to explore and kill monsters. I will remain nearby, but leave you to your practice. When it is time to return to the temple, I will find you. We will stay for the rest of the afternoon, which should allow you to gain a good amount of experience, with Philip’s help.”

  ------

  Lunch finished, the group left Leka and wandered into a small stand of trees that reminded Anika of Christmas trees, but much taller with thicker branches and soft, skinny leaves rather than hard pine needles. They could hear noises echoing through the branches as they walked, like animals scurrying from tree to tree. From the tops of the trees, probably 40 feet tall, they could hear the chirping of birds.

  “It sounds like a lot of critters are around here – maybe we will find something more interesting than oozes,” Anika commented, as she looked around for monsters.

  Lily stopped walking for a moment before saying, “I see lots of little dots up ahead!”

  “What do you mean dots?” Anika turned and looked down at Lily.

  “Oh, on my map! From my Sense Monster ability!”

  “Well, that would be useful to see,” Anika muttered. It was great that Lily had an ability that let her see monsters on her map, but she wanted that ability as well. Even better, it would be nice to have the ability to do so without opening the huge map that took up 50% of her vision. She needed a minimap.

  “Let’s get them!” Philip brandished his trident, looking around for the monsters he clearly could not actually see.

  “Where are they,” Anika asked Lily.

  “Follow me!”

  Lily ran deeper into the trees, the group following, until they came to a small clearing. Once inside, Anika looked around and saw a mix of green and yellow auras surrounding what looked like cat sized squirrels. The monsters hadn’t seemed to notice them yet, but there were probably 20 or 30 in the clearing.

  “That… is a lot of squirrels,” Anika whispered to the group. “And they are all my level or higher.“

  Anika was a little concerned about rushing into a field with new monsters she didn’t know anything about. She wished there was some kind of information available, like a dungeon almanac or a monster manual. Then she could form a plan on the best way to handle a large group of monsters at once. She didn’t know if they had any magic or ranged attacks… it wasn’t likely with low level squirrels based on her gaming experience, but this world didn’t function under any game system she had previously experienced. Maybe if they created a distraction, some of the oversized squirrels would go to investigate, and they could pick the squirrels off a few at a time. That seemed to be the most likely solution to face such a large group.

  Satisfied with her plan, she turned to explain it to the group.

  Philip, it turned out, had not been waiting for her to calmly calculate a plan. Philip had grabbed his trident and was in the process of implementing a perfect Leroy Jenkins charge towards the squirrels.