Elsewhere

He had just cleared his way past a copse of thick trees and was pausing to re-orient himself when one of those trees shot out and slammed into him. Hard. He crashed through several smaller trees before coming to a stop amongst a pile of broken branches against the trunk of a larger tree. He could barely breathe through the pain of broken bones. He could tell that his REGENRATION was trying to repair his body, but there was so much damage that he wasn’t sure it could keep up. His Health had nearly bottomed out.

Worse, still, he could hear the crashing of trees as whatever struck him approached, shaking the ground with each step. He waited for three seconds as his Health ticked back up to 16% before he heard whatever it was get close enough to reach him again. He TELEPORTED another hundred meters away, thankful that his Ability prevented him from arriving within an object. He was greeted by a deafening bellow. “I can still smell you little one. Come back and I will end you quickly.” This was followed by more earthshaking steps in his direction.

“Get out of there!” Baslin’s voice was filled with uncharacteristic panic as Duke failed yet again to get back on his feet.

“Leg’s still broken. Come on Regen. Fix it so I can at least stand.” Duke TELEPORTED again to get some more distance. And that is when the trees started flying in his direction. Not branches, not tree limbs, entire uprooted trees.

Duke TELEPORTED again and again, trying to get some distance between himself and whatever was chasing him. Not knowing where he was, it was purely line-of-sight which did not do a whole lot of good in the forest. He mused as he “ran” that at least he could change directions quickly so that whatever was chucking trees at him couldn’t easily get a bead on him.

Duke had raced away for nearly half a minute in a full panic before he emerged into another clearing, this one much larger than the last. His REGENERATION had caught up enough that he was finally able to stand on his own two feet and quickly TELEPORTED to the far side of the clearing, nearly a kilometer away but was still able to see the monstrosity as it burst out through the trees.

The thing stood somewhere around 40 meters tall and looked like an oversized, misshapen man. It was hunchbacked and appeared to have lumpy growths all over its body. A body that was disturbingly on display. It wore no clothing and Duke could clearly see that it was male. It was not a sight that he ever wanted to repeat.

“That is a forest giant. It must be old for it to have grown this large. You need to keep running. You are lucky it didn’t kill you with its first blow. Go!” Baslin was barely holding his panic down.

“Could you kill it?” Duke answered, his mind trying to come up with something of a strategy.

“I am a grand Archmage. Of course, I could kill it. But that is not the point.”

“That is exactly the point, Baslin. I need to be able to kill things like this if I am to take on a whole fucking kingdom.”

“You are not ready for anything like this. It nearly killed you with a playful kick. You’re not going to kill it with a few little spells and some punches. You NEED TO RUN!” Baslin was shouting at this point. Trying desperately to get Duke to see reason.

“No, I’m not going to run. I’m going to kill this bastard.” Duke set his jaw as the forest giant started running with an earthshaking, lumbering gait across the meadow.

“I see yooouu, little one. I’m gonna eat you whole!” There were times Duke loved his XENOGLOSSIA Ability. Being able to understand everything said was an amazing Ability. This was not one of those times. The fact that he nearly constantly had to keep TONGUES active so that others could understand him also was an annoyance. But, despite all that, he had bigger problems to worry about right now.

“Come and get me!” Duke taunted as the giant threw yet another tree at him causing him to TELEPORT to the side. Thankfully, it was far enough away that Duke could dodge it easily.

The giant obliged, charging across the clearing and eating up the ground quickly. Duke, for his part, stood his ground, waiting for the giant to reach him, taking every second he could to restore his resources. By the time the giant arrived, Duke had REGENERATED back to 80% of his HP and his Mana sat at 73%. It was the best he was going to get for now and he prepared for the giant’s attack. Baslin, for his part, just watched and hoped Duke would survive, his hopes of freedom dying ever so slightly more with every lumbering stomp of the giant.

The giant slid to a stop, surprisingly agile in front of Duke, grinning now that its prey had decided to stop running and fight. It squatted and slammed an enormous hammer fist down onto Duke. The tank-sized fist slammed into the ground, sending earth squirting out the sides, pulverizing anything beneath its strike.

Duke, for his part, was decidedly not there. He used the moment where the giant lost sight of him to TELEPORT onto the thing’s humpback. As the giant raised his fist up to his face to inspect the squished human, his eyes opened wide as seeing nothing there but crushed loam. He quickly looked around himself for the pesky, fleeing human but could find nothing.

Duke finished his stealthy climb to the base of the giant’s neck and prepared his wild scheme. He began to OVERCHANNEL his LIGHTING Ability, dumping almost his entire remaining Mana pool, a full 500 additional Mana into the Ability. With a hope and a prayer, he unleashed the spell into the base of the unsuspecting giant’s neck.

There was an enormous thunderclap as the over 500 Mana exploded in a LIGHTNING bolt the size of Duke’s chest. Duke felt a surge of strange energy as the massive blast struck perfectly, driving deeply into the giant’s brain stem and exploding out its mouth. The flow of Duke’s Mana had changed slightly as he unleashed his LIGHTNING, as if it flowed more smoothly and with greater vigor.

***You have struck a nearly perfect critical blow against your foe. Your damage has been increased by 195%. ***

Duke rode the collapsing giant’s body to the ground as he barely remained conscious from the backlash of the electrical explosion. The giant crashed down to the ground, knocking trees down from an expanding shockwave and Duke was catapulted off its back and into the treeline. He bounced off a thick trunk and collapsed face-first on the ground.

He had planned to wait until he was back to full before continuing but was interrupted by Baslin. “Collect the corpse, boy. Before it attracts anything else.”

“Boy? I’m a fully-grown man.”

“Duke, I’m centuries old. You’re just a child in comparison. And you make terrible decisions. Now quit stalling and get to work. Collect the corpse and get back here. That is enough for one day. Besides, that one corpse alone is enough crafting materials to keep me busy for months!”

“Glad you’re happy.”

“Glad you survived your ill-advised adventure. You really put everything you had into a single shot and hoped it would work?”

“That’s kind of my-“

“What kind of an idiot are you! What were you going to do if that didn’t work? You had nothing left for backup!”

“I had enough for a few TELEPORTS.”

“Really? That was your backup plan? You need to do better. WE need to do better. It seems I have a lot of training to provide you before I send you out again. There are things out there that make that giant look like a child’s toy. You need to be ready for them.”

Duke was amazed when the giant’s corpse was absorbed by the ring. Too amazed to continue the conversation until his Mana and Health topped off some time later.

“Baslin, how far away would you say I am from the tower?”

“At least ten kilometers at this point. It’s going to take you a while to get back here, even with your TELEPORTING.”

“And how far would you say that the Umbral Gate was from the tower?”

“About seven kilometers or so. Why do you ask?”

Duke smiled even though Baslin couldn’t see his facial expression. I’ll be back in a jiffy. See, I TELEPORTED all the way across this clearing fairly effortlessly and that was about a kilometer. By the amount of strain, I figure my limit is considerably further than that. I’m going to test my limits and see just how far I can go in one jump.”

“Do be careful.”

“Don’t worry, I still have the amulet of Emergency Shielding you gave me.”

“Do you now?” Baslin asked with the hint of a smile in his words.

Duke reached up to his neck only to find that the amulet was gone. The realization that it had saved his life at some point suddenly started to sink in.

“And that, my student, is just one of the reasons why I told you to run away. The giant would have killed you with its first blow if not for that amulet. The damage you took afterwards was from bouncing off trees and the like. Despite your fantastic REGENERATION ability, you are still what we mages call a Glass Cannon. You can deal out a tremendous amount of damage, but you can’t really take nearly as much as you can give.”

Duke felt a shudder run down his spine as he realized just how close he came to becoming paste. He shook off the feeling and concentrated on teleporting as far as he could towards the tower. As it turned out, it took three TELEPORTATIONS to get back to the tower. Duke estimated that he could TELEPORT about four kilometers at his current limit but for that kind of distance, he had to know where he was going. Baslin confirmed it as well.

***

When Duke arrived, Baslin whisked him away to one of his workshops. There, he transferred the items from the ring to individual storage spaces scattered throughout the workshop. He handed the ring back to Duke with a smile. “Keep the rest of what’s in here although the only item worth much of anything is the dagger. It’s a relatively standard enchantment but it does a fine job at what it’s designed for so I’m sure you’ll find some use for it.”

“Thanks.” Duke responded absentmindedly as he looked around the workshop. “What I’m more interested in is just what you are going to craft out of the giant?”

Baslin stared at the various workstations around the room as his face lit up with excitement. “That is the best part…I have no idea yet! Isn’t that grand? Ingredients I haven’t seen in ages and maybe, perhaps, even something I haven’t seen before from the Umbra Goblins. Oh, yes, this is going to keep me busy for years! Thank you for bringing them to me.”

“So, I should just…go back to the library?” Duke asked, reluctant to interrupt the man’s excitement.

“Oh yes, yes, yes. Go absorb some more knowledge. I will join you again tomorrow once I have some plans for all this stuff. New materials! Woo hoo!” Baslin was practically dancing around the room setting up equipment and making thousands of adjustments as he changed his mind over and over again.

Duke realized rather quickly that he had lost the man for some time and retreated to the library to find something to read and learn from. Eventually, he did find some books on magic and magic spells that he decided to read before calling it a day and crashing out in his room.