This was my sincere wish and will: No more usage of shitty skills that would result in a miserable case of accidental self-harm.
Those skills of mine weren't meant to be wielded by someone as unlucky as me. Or rather someone by whom probability defied its own laws.
Since my chances to survive seemed rather bleak, I just wanted to drag them down to hell with me. And if I couldn't kill them, I wanted them to hurt. Hurt so bad that their wounds would slowly kill them. It wasn't petty revenge or anger driving me. Just a pure human's heart which drove me to the human's natural behavior of eradicating anything threatening to their wellbeing, no matter the cost and consequences.
If poisoning all gras could save me, I wouldn't blink an eye pouring the poison. Selfish until the very end, deeply thinking of any possibility to keep myself afloat. May all drown and perish. As long as I remained, my world would be fine.
After Coven was gone, what could I lose (except money)?
So it was no wonder one of my measures resulted in using 20 MP of the remaining 70 MP to cast another skill of mine.
[Little trick lvl.1] was activated. One effect is triggered:
[Blinding rage] The two targets around you are affected by a blinding, all-consuming rage. They see you in any shape of light they view and cannot differentiate between imaginary and truth. This effect lasts half a minute. [0:29]
[Remark: Time to take out some red fabric, don't you think?]
The rabbit which I stabbed started to attack the air around it, frantically biting any speck of light around it, its own fangs resembling the vicious maws of piranhas. With amazement on my side, the other rabbit showed a similar behaviour. Not wasting any second, I slashed the closer rabbit with my sword, cleanly cutting its head off, then hurried to the other rabbit, ending its life with the glaive in mere seconds. After this, I walked to the rabbit which was hit by the blade earlier and made sure it was also dead by stabbing the rabbit thoroughly. Nothing was more annoying in movies when someone didn't make sure the attackers were either dead or tightly bound while all their arms and legs were broken so they couldn't even escape or harm the others further. This was at least my humble opinion. I always punched my pillows or crushed them viciously if I saw a scene like this. And I could say, I had no need of a special climax where a rabbit would kill me while I healed myself.
With 88 HP left, I drank a HP potion and watched my wounds close and the status effect [Minor bleeding] disappeared.
Then I collected the corpses, packed them in my inventory and headed to Bronning. I needed to gather myself, and look if either of the skills [Charming smile] or [Little trickery] left any proof on their bodies. If [Charming smile] was either semi- or fully-permanent it was quite the cheat if it would work in my favor and I would need to stock up items regarding the luck stat. Which were rather seldom and hard to acquire. But if it would aid me in hunting, I would even try to get an item like this.
At least I knew [Little trickery] was time limited but still wanted to find out if the aftereffects of the skill were findable in death or if they were simply inflicted on their soul or rather mind and thus untraceable after death.
At least [Little trickery] worked in my favor, but I also needed to recover from the amount of dread that [Charming smile] put me through. And I wasn't ready to test this skill in the future again. And no more experiments with rabbits! They freaked the hell out of me and dying by them was terrifying.
The damn necromancer took two and, - I repeat two! - silver coins to tell me smugly that my skill left no trace on the body. It was solely a mind or soul related phenomenon that caused them to overload their body. He told me that their heart must have been overstimulated which caused their increased speed and damage. After death it was impossible to measure their biting strength so he had no method of confirming the part of added damage. And this tiny bit of information after spending so much silver?! At least I had a bit more clarity about the extent of my skills.
Not much wiser, I tried to sell the rabbits but their corpses were mostly mutilated and with the few copper coins I got, I bought myself a moderate lunch and ate it on the marketplace before heading towards the forest again. This time, I evaded the rabbits mostly, only earning 45 XP due to two stray rabbits.
Back in the territory of the salamanders, my mana had fully recovered and I only had to wipe a few bloodstains from my blade. Apart from rabbits influenced by my skills, it was still easy to slaughter the other bunches of monsters. Since I had no attack-based skills except triple slash, I tried to fight without skills to improve my weapon handling. I felt my expertise in wielding metal instead of magic was slowly but steadily growing on me. Although I dearly missed the magic flowing through me, I preferred missing the feeling than missing a head or a few limbs because I couldn't fight with my magic.
Since I would avoid using [Charming smile] from now on, I thought about using the first skill I got due to this class, [Little trickery] further. If I ignored the rest of the situation, it helped me tremendously. Ignoring the short duration, it distracted both enemies and enabled me to kill them without more wounds on my side and with no more dangerous elements. Any other outcome might have caused my certain death. But the skill turned my short life expectancy into the rabbit's misfortune.
So after finding a single salamander, I decided to use the skill again:
[Little trick lvl.1] was activated. Two effects are triggered for 1 minute:
[Snail's pace] The target feels as if it moves in a swamp. Movement speed is halved.
[A bad day] The target's day is filled with a few unlucky moments.
- 5 luck and -10% accuracy in attacking
[Remark: Poor fellow. After meeting you, their day has turned worse.]
[0:59]
Smiling, I raised my glaive and ran towards the truly poor monster to strike it through the eye. It had no chance and couldn't evade my blade. The creature maybe had even less luck then me after this skill...or rather curse I inflicted it with. But it fitted my purpose in killing it. Shoving the corpse in my inventory, still hoping that the carrying weight would be enough and save me from the automated speed reduction one would face with too much weight in the inventory.
After one's strength increased, the problem would decrease, but at this point I had to be careful.
Walking further into the territory, I replayed my earlier fight and a smirk tugged at the corners of my mouth. A little trick, huh. It seemed like it would be much more than that, maybe a vicious blade or lifesaver. This insignificant little skill could become my strongest one in this class until I could get skills from other magic schools. I should try to raise the skill's level.
After exploring the surface of its possibilities, I was curious to use it more. Maybe this class wasn't as useless as I thought.