Waking up, Poe first saw Lucia's face looking at him worriedly, while Ivy was grinning slightly at the sideline.
"W-what happened? How long was I out for?"
Poe asked, while looking worriedly at Lucia.
"You were only out for 5 or so minutes, but are you sure that you can do it? After all, the only monsters here are snakes…"
"Y-yes, I was just a little s-shocked that there were so many monsters here, i-it was not like I was scared of some little snake!"
"Right…"
Having confirmed Poe and that he was fine, even after seeing the paradise filled with all sorts of snakes, Lucia finally stopped worrying about it and decided that it was time to start the monster hunt.
"Ivy, you can just go fight monster alone, me and Poe will hunt together like last time."
"WHY! I want to hunt with Poe too~!"
Ivy screamed at Lucia, but it seemed like Lucia had already expected that response, as she calmly stated her reason.
"Because you would end up hitting Poe with your fire magic."
"Ah…"
"You were always great at casting powerful spells and all, but your control over the spells was never that great!"
"B-but~"
"Ivy!"
"Y-yes…"
Having dealt with Ivy, Lucia and Poe soon started to hunt the snakes.
[Gained 35 EXP: group member killed monster without your help]
[Gained 31 EXP: gro…]
It looked like Ivy had already started to kill the snakes off. Looking towards Ivy, Poe saw Ivy chasing after a group of 20 forest snakes, all while crazily throwing fireball after fireball towards the poor little snakes.
Indeed, snakes were not as scary as Ivy and if he could survive Ivy, he could survive the snakes.
Unconsciously, Poe overcame most of his fear towards snakes, but Ivy was now solidly staying as the greatest fear of Poe…
[Water snake, lvl 14]
The first enemy of Poe and Lucia was a water snake and as it name suggested it could use water magic.
As they neared the snake, Lucia used some earth-binding spell making the earth come up forming into a hand that held down the snake.
While the earth hands held down the water snake, Poe cast his mana balls and quickly killed it off. Luckily, water magic was not that good against the earth hand Lucia formed.
[70 + 50 EXP: for killing higher level enemy]
Seeing the water snake dying and turning into something, Poe made his way quickly to see what it dropped. Seeing some blue meat on the ground, Poe hurriedly used inspect on it.
[Water snake meat]: meat from the water snake. Surprisingly it tastes just like water… Just drink water, it is safer and easier to get…
Looking at the description, Poe's excitement changed into disappointment quickly.
After killing the water snake, Poe got way more used to killing the snakes and the monster hunt went without much trouble for Poe and Lucia, Ivy was still running around burning everything in her path.
It was after they had hunted for 3 or so hours that Poe finally reached level 10.
[*ding* level 10 reached]
[EXP is scaling with level…]
[Monster under level 10 no longer gives EXP]
[Paths unlocked]: choose one of 3 paths
Now that he had finally leveled up to 10, Poe decided to look and see how far his skills progressed over the past 3 hours of nonstop fighting with the snakes.
[Mana manipulation has reached level 7]
[Mana ball has reached level 6]
[Mana ball barrage has reached level 4]
[Stick mastery has reached level 5]: Why is this thing still leveling up?
What he used the most fighting against the snakes was almost only mana balls, he only remembered using his stick against one or two snakes, how did a skill manage to level up with only that.
"Lucia, I reached level 10 can we take a break?"
"Yeah that is fine, I also just reached level 14."
Saying so, Poe and Lucia decided to take a break while they managed their new stat points. Poe also needed to choose a path to follow.
Paths were what made most people unique in their own way and the higher level people became the more unique they would be. Paths were available every 10 levels and they were all depending on the users skills, class, title and stats. There would also always be 3 paths every 10 levels. Not more. Not less. Always 3.
Excited at what kind of paths he could chose, Poe decided to pull up the path list, as Poe did not have a class yet his path would focus more on his skills and titles than normally.
[Paths]:
[Path of the Stick Warrior]: You master the stick and become one with the stick! Walk the ultimate path and become the greatest stick warrior ever.
[Gain Active skill]: [Sword Stick Slash]
[+ 5 levels to stick mastery]
[Gain 1 AGI and 1 STR]
[Path of the Mind]: you excel in form of mental warfare and is great at controlling others to do your bidding. Follow the path of the mind and become the greatest master mind. Control everything from the shadows.
[Gain Passive skill]: [Mental Resistance]
[Gain Active skill]: [Mental encroachment]
[Gain 5 WIS and 1 INT]
[Path of the Mana Ocean]: You have succeeded in forming a stream of mana in your brain. Normally you would form a core to store it, but you decided to form a stream and instead let it flow freely inside your brain. This made it so your mana is not limited to the core anymore. While normally, those who form a core in their brain chose to increase their mana. They will create an inner world in their brain with the core as the center and from there spread their mana out. You on the other hand have no core and therefore the mana can spread freely without going through the core first. This will allow you to increase your mana ocean without first increasing the inner world of the core.
[Gain Passive skill]: [Mana veins]
[Gain 5 INT and 2 WIS]