"Can you let me out now?" the bear asked.
Scratching my chin, I was about to point out the exit when I had an idea. "I think you already know the way out." To be honest, I didn't feel comfortable acting all cryptic, but this was a good opportunity to see whether this astonishing bear had bypassed my illusion through luck or skill.
I heard the low rumble of a growl and read irritation from his mind, but the bear assented and scanned my yard, eventually finding the two dead saplings and studying them. So it hadn't been a fluke after all - this mind-boggling monster could somehow see the holes in the illusion around my cottage. On top of this, it must have broken past the suggester which urged anything that came near enough to leave.
I had suspected as much when it had first staggered through the illusion, wounded from top to bottom, but it was another thing to see it occur in real-time. Realising the bear was just about to leave, I stopped it. "Wait, I'll give you something first - don't want my favourite bear dying on me," I said with a bright smile.
'Uurgh, why is it giving me that face?' the bear thought. 'Oh yeah, you can read my mind. Sorry about that but your face…'
How utterly rude. I scowled at the bear and it seemed to at least have the humility to look away. "I'm going to teach you a spell, okay? It'll protect your mind from being read, after all, it wouldn't be good for other monsters to know what you're up to, eh?"
Sensing fear and gratitude from the bear, I knew I had it right where I wanted it. In truth, there weren't any mind-reading monsters in this forest but there were other druids, and I didn't want them tracking me down by reading this naïve fool's mind.
"Wait, so will it protect me from you as well?" the bear asked carefully.
The cheek - after all I had done! Shaking my head, I tried to compose myself, clenching my fists so hard that splotches of white appeared across my palms; the last thing I wanted was to go into a rage next to this monster. "Just an animal, Tal, just an animal," I repeated this to myself until I could level my gaze at him. I waited until he finally looked at me, simultaneously appearing repentant and innocent, and I harrumphed just to further show my irritation.
"No, it won't protect you from me, because I made the spell, so I know the key to it."
Sensing clear disappointment from him, I harrumphed a second time.
****
What a bothersome troll - it wasn't like I could control my thoughts for her to get offended every other second. Eventually, she had taught me the spell, and although I couldn't feel its effect, I could sense its minuscule drain on mana. Besides, Tal had muttered something like, "Of course he learns it in five minutes," with exasperation before sending me off.
My first mission was just a test run, she had to said, to bring back a bundle of sunthyme. I knew it was only a few minutes away from here as she had let me sniff her dried reserves. Imagining a banquet of food spinning around with me in the centre, laughing gleefully, I passed the idle time peacefully and came upon a small field of sunthyme - similar to normal thyme but far taller and with bright yellow leaves.
Snatching a handful, I noticed an exceptionally fat hare in pouncing range. It had glowing red eyes, orange-shaded fur, and an exceptionally angry expression. I huffed and swept with my foreleg, expecting it to jump back, but to my surprise it stayed put. Peering closer, I noticed several hares alike it hiding in between the sunthyme, although they cautiously stayed back unlike this little angry ball of fire.
Just as the thought crossed my mind, the hare in question launched itself at me, fire enveloping it to make a fat fireball. In response, I casually leaned forward and swept my claws again. I missed but I wasn't concerned as my focus was on the mana I had circulated into my paw. Imagining my claws extending, my mana attached itself to my digits and stretched into sharpened blades.
Bubbling with excitement, I chuckled and ignored the hare until it made itself my focus by crashing into me. Its fire singed my fur and I roared, striking down. The hare must have miscalculated its leap for my shorter claws as the glowing blue extensions split the nuisance in half. My eyes widened at the sight, at the power, and I turned to the other fire hares with a slack jaw. They immediately ran, and so I gulped and made my way back with the sunthyme.
On the way back, I kept testing my mana circulation and eventually discovered my mana could act as weapons or armour depending on what I wanted. If I wanted a shoulder guard, it would create glowing blue padding over my shoulders with strong defensive properties, and if I stretched it into a breastplate, the defensive properties would weaken. It was the same story with weapons where thinner claw extensions meant greater penetration at the cost of the damage potential per strike.
Finding my way back through smell, I reached Tal's home and saw nondescript forest: no smoke, no troll, no cottage. After some time, I recalled the entrance between the dead saplings side-by-side and strode my way in.
Her cottage appeared immediately like last time, although she was nowhere to be seen. Swivelling around, I saw she was standing right next to me and flinched away in shock.
"Well?" she asked, and I threw the handful of sunthyme over.
"Hmm, good. Let me go put these away and I'll give you your actual first mission."
As she did so, I remembered back to the first magical being I had fought - the black bear with glints of blue in its claws. I had really lucked out that the black bear hadn't known how to create these mana weapons. Although, maybe there was never a danger of that anyway, after all, one of my perks was exceptional arcane talent - surely that meant what I had recently learnt how to do was hard to reciprocate.
Despite being lost in my thought tracks, I had noticed Tal pacing back to me. What I hadn't expected was for her to stand in silence, judging me like a glowering statue. Looking up at her, I saw her expression was grave: her purple lips were a straight, stern line, her eyes wide and glaring, and her chin clenched.
"You said perk?" she asked, a chilling seriousness in her voice.
I nodded with a grimace, figuring I had done something truly bad.
"As in a perk listed in the perks section? The perks section of the System?"
I nodded again but more slowly and cautiously, watching her reaction.
She shook her head and deeply inhaled through her nose. "No, no, no. The System is only for humans. Only. For. Humans." Closing her eyes, she grimaced and took another deep breath. "He can't have it, no, no, no, he just can't."
Before I could respond, she drew another breath, her nose puffing out and her head trembling as she inhaled. "But he does, Tal, he does! So either he's half-human, which he's not. Or…" She paused, freezing up on the spot.
I didn't want to rush her as she seemed stricken as it was but the pause was really beginning to stretch out my patience meanwhile my curiosity burned brighter than ever.
"Or it's not that someone placed human memories in him, it's that someone placed a human soul in him."
Oh… Honestly, it was a disappointing conclusion for her theatrical build-up.
It was so easy to forget she could read my thoughts, and forget I had until she roared louder than I had thought possible.
"DISAPPOINTING?!"