Chương 5: Ironfang Squirrel

Zander landed heavily on the ground, back first. His bag fell a few meters to his right, its contents spilling out onto the ground. But he paid no attention to it. His gaze settled instead on the squirrel that had landed a little further in front of him. It was a grey squirrel, like the ones found before the arrival of the System, with one exception: its incisors had become too large, to the point that its mouth could not close completely.

A few moments later, [Identify], the System-assisted skill, gave him a notification: [Ironfang Squirrel – lvl 3]. The squirrel lunged at him, teeth first. It was fast, but not so fast that Zander couldn't follow its movements. He rolled to the side to avoid the animal, but the movement took him much further than he had planned. It's like I'm rediscovering my body. It can finally express its full potential, but I'll have to reclaim ownership of it.

He turned to face the squirrel and activated [Scarlet Gauntlet], but as was to be expected, the skill was taking its sweet time to activate fully. The squirrel, on the other hand, didn't give him time to breathe; it attacked him again, and thus began the game of cat and mouse. The squirrel tried to hit him, but Zander managed to dodge all its attacks; between the two of them, he was the faster one. With each dodge, he grew a little more accustomed to his body's new capabilities.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, [Scarlet Gauntlet] fully activated, but Zander was once again astonished by the result. Instead of the smooth gauntlet he was expecting, both his hands and forearms were covered by what looked like a misshapen boxing glove. Nevertheless, it was better than nothing. Upon the squirrel's next attack, instead of evading, Zander decided to go on the offensive. He drove his gauntlet-clad fist directly into the squirrel's oversized incisors.

He heard the satisfying sound of all four incisors breaking from the squirrel's mouth, followed by a pained chirping as the beast was sent several meters back. Zander didn't let up though; he followed the beast, and before it could come back to its senses, he punched it right in the head. There was the sickening crunch of the beast's skull caving in, and it stopped moving entirely.

'ding' You have killed [Ironfang Squirrel – lvl 3]. For killing an adversary above your level, you receive 20 System Coins.

'ding' BloodForged Lord has reached level 2. 5 Will and 1 free point received. His pre-System colleagues used to say that adversaries dropped some loot once killed, but he got nothing if one did not count the System Coins. Was it that there would be no loot ever, or just not this time? At the very least, his encounter with the squirrel had taught him one thing: he always needed to be on his guard. At least he had gained a level from it all, which was fast. Will he reach level 100 in no time?

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. Zander scanned his surroundings carefully, even checking above, searching for potential enemies. He was relieved to find none, but remained on guard regardless. He then headed toward his scattered belongings on the ground. Fortunately, he hadn't been very high up in the tree at the moment of the fall, so all his things were more or less intact. He gathered them up and put them back in his bag.

Since the squirrel's corpse risked attracting some other beast, Zander decided to move a little distance away from the scene of the fight before sitting directly on the ground, amidst the dead leaves, to take stock of his situation and decide on his next move, all while keeping an eye on his surroundings to avoid any new surprise attacks. He started by evaluating his resources: His level up brought his Will to 20, which meant that his maximum Blood Well capacity was now at a whopping 200.

He wondered where to put his free stat point. He ruled out Will immediately, since even though he could transfer points from Will to another stat later thanks to [Mind's Dominion], there was a limit to the transferable quantity. The choice would therefore be between Might and Resilience. On one hand, Resilience would make him harder to kill, allowing him to live to fight another day, but on the other hand, Might would allow him to overcome tougher adversaries.

After some reflection, he decided to prioritize Might, but without creating a gap of more than 5 points between Might and Resilience. He therefore put his stat point into Might, bringing his total to 15. He then took a look at his Health and Blood Well: Health: 173/200 Blood Well: 199/200 His Blood Well was already full, minus the last point that kept being drained away. His Health, on the other hand, had taken a hit, certainly due to his fall from the tree at the beginning of the fight.

He could feel a slight pain in his back, now that the adrenaline of combat was fading. He was about to use [Blood Infusion], but changed his mind at the last moment: he needed to know what his Health restoration rate was. So, he took out his phone, turned it on, and used it to time the regeneration of a single Health point. The result was that it took 30 seconds to generate one Health point, meaning two points, or 1%, per minute. It would therefore take him 100 minutes to fully regenerate his Health pool.

Luckily, I have [Blood Infusion]. Let's see how much I can speed up the regeneration with that. He then activated the skill, and it was oh so slow, but he was not surprised anymore. If he had to guess, he would say that because of his bloodline, the System couldn't help him with his skills; the only thing it could do was give him visual feedback about his skills, aka status screen, and his one System-assisted skill.

While the infusion was very slow at the beginning, it became a little faster as time went on, and his Health was back to full in 6 minutes instead of the 13-ish it would take without the skill. That's one thing taken care of. I'm not in a hurry, so I'm going to take the rest of the day to continue familiarizing myself with my powers. I can't count on the System to help me master them. Zander settled in, still sitting, ready to continue his tests.