Eli opened up his stat screen to try and figure out which stats he should focus on.
"Current Stats"
"Name: Elias Konzak"
"Magic level: 3, Body level: 0, Soul level: 0"
"Stats: Strength 4, Reaction 3, Vitality 5, Intellect 3, Wisdom 3, Resistance 4, Will 25"
"Free stat points: 2"
Trying to plan quickly wasn't going to help him and he needed time for his chest to heal anyways so he decided to take his time figuring this out. He stared at the 'Strength' stat and a help window came up to give a description.
"System Help: Strength stat"
"Strength determines how much damage your physical attacks can do, how much armor they can push past and how much weight you can carry outside of your inventory.
He went to the next one, inspecting each one for a help window.
"System Help: Reaction Stat"
"Reaction determines reflexes, body control, dexterity, reaction speed and casting speed."
"System Help: Vitality Stat"
"Vitality determines your overall amount of "health", how fast you can regenerate health, and aging speed."
"System Help: Intellect stat"
"Intellect determines how powerful your magic spells can be for the same amount of magic power."
"System Help: Wisdom Stat"
"Wisdom determines total amount of Magic Power points or MPP, MPP regeneration speed, Magic control, and magic senses"
"System Help: Resistance Stat"
"Resistance determines magic resistance, physical endurance, poison, toxin and curse severity and duration."
"System Help: Will Stat"
"Will determine effectiveness and resistance to soul attacks. Will also increases how efficient your other stats are at effecting the world outside of your soul. This stat cannot be increased by free stat points, and is more of a measurement of your soul's strength."
"The system CANNOT affect your soul in any way."
Eli was sitting on the ground in a patch of partially destroyed woods, mouth hung open in shock. His highest stat by a lot had so much information compared to the others, but since he couldn't change it he would have to address it later. Maybe when all those people come back from the tutorial he can pay someone for information. Looking at the stats as a whole, there seem to be 2 that just add power, 2 that add utility to that power, and 2 that keep you alive, and with 2 points he thought going to survival and utility was the best choice since he seemed very confident about his new weapon, despite not having tested it at all.
"I just know it's strong, I'm not proud of it or anything, I just know I will be ok in the damage department," Eli said out loud to no one.
He decided that he didn't want something like a poisonous frog or whatever to take him out he would go with resistance, and for utility he wanted another reaction point since he didn't really have any magic yet and he wanted something to help end fights faster so he could make it in time. So Eli's stat now looked like this:
"Stats: Strength 4, Reaction 4, Vitality 5, Intellect 3, Wisdom 3, Resistance 5, Will 25"
Now with that taken care of it was time to…
"Time to reach the dungeon: 46 hours."
As Eli began to move again, Bone Mace in hand, he was fascinated by how fast his wounds were getting healed by his passive regeneration when he wasn't fighting versus when he was. It was almost like there were 2 different speeds for when fighting and when not fighting. His leg from the first fight was almost healed to the point where you couldn't tell anything had happened and his chest stopped bleeding just a minute or so after the boar died. Things were starting to look positive until after about another hour of walking he felt something up ahead of him, Eli had no idea what this thing was, what this feeling was, but it felt like something that was alive giving off an angry and burnt like vibe. It felt like a rabid animal that survived a forest fire and wanted to burn the world in vengeance.
He slowed his pace and started to move as quietly as he could and he noticed a slight heat and reddish glow coming from up ahead as this increasingly difficult to describe feeling kept getting stronger as if whatever the feeling was warning him about was getting closer. As Eli peeked around a tree, he saw what was causing the feeling and this was not what not something he thought he was ready for. He looked long enough to inspect it, then ducked back around the tree as his newly found confidence drained from his posture.
"Ash Elemental Level 5"
"A magical monster made from the ash of a volcano"
"Ash Elemental Minion Level 2"
"A magical monster made from an Ash Elemental"
So this is a magic monster, Eli thought, that must be why he was able to feel it, his magic senses from his wisdom stat can sense magical beings. The monster itself looked like a blob of ash that was shaped like an upside down teardrop with the point on the ground and two arms coming out of its widest part at the top. It seemed to just kind of scoot on its pointed end that was touching the ground, it didn't seem to need it to move, just to hold it up. The monster's arms were comically large compared to its body without a seemingly fixed shape, they would grow long and thin then short and stocky, back and forth.
All the living plants in the area were dead from the heat and toxic air coming off them making the air taste like the ash after a house fire. The ground around the big one was covered in ash and the smaller ones seemed to be moving around in the ash surrounding him making getting a number on how many minions this thing had a difficult task, especially from Eli's further away position he was using to observe. In a nervous attempt to get closer to get a count, he stepped on a smoldering stick and it made a small cracking noise.
The monsters quickly moved into action, 2 minions coming to check out the noise and the big guy swirling ash around himself to obscure his position. Trying to not end a battle with terrible injuries for once he decided to try and pick off the little guys and maybe pick up something about their weaknesses. As soon as the front minion was around the tree Eli was hiding behind he tried to stomp on it with his foot since the little ones were only about 2 feet tall with the big one being just under 4 feet. Aside from a partially melted boot and singed pant leg, it doesn't appear to have done anything to the elemental minion except piss it off. After it reformed from his leg squishing it down the middle, it made a loud noise, a sound like a fireplace popping but with the pace of dolphins when heard underwater. It didn't try to hit him or cast any magic or anything, it just wiggled closer along with the other minion that was sent out to scout.
Eli didn't want to get out from behind the tree that was between him and the big one since he had a gut feeling that that particular monster could attack him from range. However, the little ones just kept getting closer with ash and heat coming off of them in waves. It was getting painful, the roots and sticks under them were bursting into flames. With his pants getting more and more singed, he decided to move quickly to another tree. As soon as he moved from behind the tree, the big one fired a ball of heat, fire, and ash towards him at an alarming speed.
He ducked and rolled towards the tree he was heading for, as the attack flew past him it dropped ash in its wake and enough heat to melt the hair on his arms and back striking a tree in the distance catching it on fire. With his back on the new tree he watched as the new fire that was started quickly went out and the tree was visibly healing. Looks like the tree's magic was enough to fight back against the elemental's fire and heat, which would explain how this thing's existence wasn't causing a massive forest fire.
One of the minions was about to be close enough for its heat to start burning him again and he realized he still had his bone mace in his hand and thought it was worth a try since the mace did have some magic to it. He swung it down onto the minion and smashed it, causing it to make a sound like air rushing out of a balloon and becoming just a small pile of ash. With a smile on his face Eli reached back with his mace and smashed the second one which made another whoopi cushion-ish sound and fell into a pile of ash. He heard the fire popping sound trill out loudly from the larger elemental and knew trying to get a look was probably a bad idea but he needed to see how many small ones were headed his way. He got the idea to climb the tree a bit before getting a good look at what he still had to face, so from about 10 feet up he slowly popped his head out and took a look at the big elemental.
What he saw made him raise his eyebrows in confusion, 6 minions were around the big one casting magic, but not in defense or attack, more like they were getting smaller and weaker while the big one got bigger. He sat back on the branch and started to try and think of a plan, this was bad and the longer he waited the more difficult it would be to defeat the big one. After about 10 seconds when he couldn't come up with anything, just decided to attack and see what happens, how much worse can it get, he thought. He jumped out of the tree in plain view of the monsters and started running towards them, he was only about 20 feet away and seemed to catch the minions by surprise. Eli closed the distance fast and was able to turn 2 more into whoopie cushions before the big one was able to charge up an attack. But this wasn't a normal attack, it was charged with the energy from the minion elementals that they had been funneling into it.
The Elemental fired a beam of heat and fire that Eli was barely able to dodge, but it did melt his skin in a line across his back. This was a deep burn that made it hard to move his left shoulder around, but it didn't come with much pain since most of his nerves were burned away. He pushed himself to keep moving and not pay attention to how damaged he was. Standing from his dodge roll he was able to hit 2 more minions, but had to fall back afterwards because the big ash elemental let out a blast of heat in a wave that pushed out all directions. This heat didn't help with his damaged melting skin and hair but he still felt he could keep pushing, so he ran like he was going to go behind a nearby tree and just ran back out the other side diving for a minion and smashing it and the last one while the big one thought he was going to hide so it wasn't planning an attack. The popping noises got louder and somehow angrier as all the minions were now gone and it was just Eli versus a level five blob of magical heat, fire and ash.
Eli was hesitant to try and hit the elemental with his bone mace since he didn't want it to be burned and destroyed and he didn't think he could even get close enough to hit it without losing more skin. The problem was that his burns from earlier in the fight were healing, bringing back the nerves that had been burnt away, and with those nerves comes the pain from the burns. He was staring at the elemental as they faced off about 10 feet apart. The pain was coming back slowly but intensely but he wasn't healing enough to help him with his range of motion, so he needed to make his move now. As he wound up his bone mace that feeling of tense energy flooded his body again and he was going to push it into the hammer and give this swing everything he had. The mace came down so fast that Eli lost track of it and his hand holding it and when it struck the elemental Eli could feel through his magic senses that its magic was becoming chaotic and then…
"BOOM"
The elemental detonated its magic power and launched Eli into a nearby tree knocking it down and all he could do was think how he hadn't expected that before he passed out.