I slowly opened eyes and sat straight, while stretching up. Wildlife is nice and all, but a good bed from time to time can be indeed nice. As usual, I cast cleaning spells on myself and started getting up. At around this time, Buckbeak came back from his hunt and brought 2 fatty hares, a hare in each a claw.
"Good morning, Bucky. That is quite a good catch! Fried, boiled, steamed or raw?"
He looked at me and words raw he started nodding and making happy sounds.
"Well, then raw it is, for you. I will go for steamed today."
I started skinning both rabbits. It was quite a nuisance when I just started traveling, but when we were close to the borders of Italy, we stopped by the village, where some hunters lived. I decided to learn how to properly skin animals and how to process meat.
The experience was quite useful but didn't give me any new skills. Apparently, it is part of the cooking skills. As the system explained to me, preparing ingredients is part of a skill, which you are going to use these ingredients for. I stayed there for 3 days to learn the trade. Thanks to my studying skill, which was over 40, I can learn anything with insane speed. Only skills that overstepped boundaries of 50 are problematic to me, but that will go away with time. Hopefully...
Currently, we are halfway through Italy and it's the end of the third week of our travel. I took my time with traveling and tried to learn something new while having fun during this travel. Otherwise, I could have made it in Greece by the end of the first week, if we only traveled and slept.
Italy was quite a nice country, especially in Summer. Thanks to the fact I was a master wizard, good craftsmen, and great enchanter, the temperature is not a problem for me. Therefore, as long as air quality is okay and the sun doesn't burn like hell, I am happy. Thankfully, climate change effects are small enough to be ignored by the majority of people, and countries have a more or less stable climate.
Mostly my time was spent in research, practice, new spell creation and foraging. It didn't matter to me if it was a forest or a mountain, I foraged them all. All ripe to pick, alchemical ingredients were taken away by me. As for magical creatures, they are quite rare on its own. In places, inhabited solely by wizards, it's easier to meet them. But in the wilderness not so much. You need to know special places. And I knew a few of them, but all really good places are a trade secret of master-level potion makers and alchemists. No one in the right mind will divulge good places to others, because these places will be scavenged in no time and nothing will be left. So they keep secrets, not only out of greed but also to safe-keep these sacred or not so places.
'Mostly greed, though...'
As a result, I found only 3 magical creatures, all of which I killed, drained of blood, skinned, dismembered organ by organ and cleaned. After all, these are potential money/ingredients. Can't let them go to waste. One of the reasons, I went to learn from a hunter like a proper student.
Of course, some may say something stupid like how did that hunter happily agreed to teach some random unknown teen his craft.
'Threats, duh!'
When you are a wizard capable of blowing up stuff with a move of a hand, then point of asking politely and going in circles to get what you need disappears. Moreover, my mask plus terrifying voice, thanks to a charm, and even the manliest man will quietly do your bidding without asking anything.
Of course, asking nicely was an option and I tried, but the hunter started his 'grumpy' mode, so I blew up a tree behind his house with a good old "Exploding charm", a.k.a. "Bombarda".
That being said, by now I already reached level 25 and was quickly progressing towards 26. Thanks to all the leveling I did in my three years, I got a hunch on how far am I in progress.
While about that, I heard a roar. Few second after the roar I got a notification.
[New quest is created.]
[Kill or subdue a creature that roared.]
[Reward depends on the result.]
'Huh? Now that's interesting.'
Although the previous reward was one hell of a surprise, it was nonetheless incredibly useful.
Obviously, I saved my progress, before putting on my gear and artifacts I made. Such as leather armor made of Graphorn skin.
It's a pretty big creature that looks like a rhino but with 2 horns, four-thumbed feet and tentacles for a mouth. I bought some of their skin from a store at Diagon Alley. I spent an unimaginable amount of money on that skin, especially because these creatures are incredibly rare and scarce. But it is worth the money, because their skin is tougher than a dragon's, so their skin is perfect for an armor.
Of course, thickness and toughness of the skin are a great asset in a normal science world, because even a sniper bullet won't pierce the skin and maybe half of the impact will be consumed by the skin. Unfortunately, their skin has a very little amount of resistance to charms. "Avada Kedavra" from some random bad guy will still one-shot me.
As for crafting the armor itself, although my crafting skill wasn't my greatest asset, I still practiced and learned how to craft for nearly 3 years. That's not something to scoff at.
Plus making leather armor with transfiguration and my high-level magical skills is a piece of cake. As long as, I don't need to make it beautiful or whatnot. Technical changes here and there. Perfect cut here. Perfect sewing there and done.
After enchanting it on lightness, flexibility, and comfort, armor is done. After the mask, the armor is my second best artifact. Mask enchantments, were simply on another level compared to armor after all.
After putting my fighting set on, I transformed into my Animagi form and went towards the direction, I heard the roar from. While on my way there, I decreased my size until I was the size of a normal bald eagle. Although these birds are still quite large, they are not abnormal-level size. I don't want the creature to know that some strong opponent is around. Small bird won't alert him.
'Probably...'
After a minute or two of flying, I arrived above the place where the sound came from.
'Huh? Dragons? That can be messy. Or…'
Apparently, two dragons, were mating because they were huffing and puffing around each other, doing some 18+ content. Jackpot. I got 2 treasure troves, whose guardians were busy with each other.
'Hehe... That's perfect!'
I took a good position on a tree nearby to spectate process, for purely scientific reasons. At the same time, I was considering how can I kill them. Charms are mostly useless, but I am not a charm specialist anyway. Physical spells are also less effective due to the properties of a dragon's skin.
I have some kinetic spells (or projectiles to be precise) that can one-shot even dragon. But then not much will be left from the corpse to recognize it as a dragon. And I need their corpses intact to later sell them or use for alchemy.
So, the problem is that on such a distance I must find a golden mean to cleanly neutralize a dragon. If I overcharge the spell, the projectile will evaporate faster than it will reach the dragon. If undercharge, a projectile will simply scratch their skin and these 2 will notice me, which is "no bueno" as BunnyFuFu likes to say.
Also, 2 dragons mean 2 targets to shoot.
My "Kinetic Strike" spell is on a very good level. But I won't say it's perfect. I still need to create projectiles manually, have a pipe through which projectile will travel and a ton of focus during the creation of magnetic fields.
Greatest improvement from the past is the fact that I don't need actual coils anymore, which removes limits from how powerful my strike can get. I honestly didn't test maximum capacity yet.
'I didn't test a new version of "Kinetic Strike" at all actually...'
Also, I still have no idea how to replace the pipe with something magical, so it is a problem. I mean projectiles are small but a need for a 1-meter long pipe is a limitation similar to a need of a wand to cast spells. And that goes against my dream of being a magician who needs only his own body to reach the apex.
Without a pipe, accuracy drops sharply. I can't just control a projectile accelerating with a Mach one or two while controlling 4 or 5 magnetic fields with insane power output. I also need to shield these fields, because I put a lot of power into them and they create very strong electromagnetic fields that can fry me up. I tried to go with a weaker version, but for some reason fields are somewhat... "unfocused"? I don't know the correct terminology.
Maybe I should learn some physics and look for a solution there. I am not a physicist after all.
Anyway, I digress. I need to think about my plan. After immersing in thinking for a good 15 minutes, I didn't come up with anything plausibly good. I know that I am overthinking and with saves, I can just try my "Kinetic Strike" until it works, but I feel that it's wrong. Even the system advises me against using it too much, once in a while.
I was out of good ideas...
*Sigh*
'It seems I have no other choice, other than use that... "spell". Should I be excited or afraid?'
『 Alchemy 37 ➔ 38 | Sneak 27 』
『 Speech 36 | Studying 45 ➔ 46 』
『 Wand Making 32 | Herbology 37 ➔ 38 』
『 Magic Channeling 61 | Magic Chanting 40 』
『 Magic Gesturing 40 | Magic Theory 58 』
『 Astronomy 35 | Riding Expertise 15 ➔ 18 』
『 Crafting 31 | Playing Games 15 』
『 Enchanting 38 | Cooking 23 ➔ 25 』
『 Training 24 ➔ 25 | Physical Activities 17 ➔ 18 』
『 Programming 25 | Dancing 0 』
『 Legilimency 26 | Occlumency 31 ➔ 32 』