Frostbitten Wayfarer

Zoe checked her vitals before she carried on. She was surprised to see her mana still full, having spent quite a lot she thought on enchanting her frost projectiles. Though with a doubled maximum mana and regeneration from her Chrono Enchanter class, she guessed it made some sense that she’d have much more wiggle room now.

Her health was a little drained, so she pumped it full with her Restoration. Even with it draining as much mana as it could for a few seconds her mana didn’t dip at all. When she took her new class she just accepted the bonuses it gave. But she decided that when she got back to town, she’d take the time to calculate her new mana regeneration.

Zoe’s stamina was at about two hundred, and continued to tick up every few minutes as she waited around. She had plenty left so decided to continue on. She wanted to try fighting one of the zombies with her daggers just to see if it would really be better, and then maybe make her way back down to town to reflect on what she’d learned.

There was a shambling body a brief walk off the path into the forest that she’d been keeping an eye on while she recovered. Zoe tightened her grip on the daggers and approached it without a care for how stealthy she was being.

There was no reason to take advantage of stealth, that wasn’t the point of what she wanted to do. If her goal was just to kill the zombie as quickly and efficiently as possible then she had a much better option. What she wanted to do was test her limits with her daggers in a head on fight.

The zombie saw her and began hobbling over towards her. Its rotting feet dragged along the forest floor and left a trail of melted flesh behind it.

Zoe raised her daggers and waited for it to get closer to her. It raised its arms and slammed down towards her. She turned her body and stepped forwards so the zombie’s wild swing missed her. The zombie staggered forwards and Zoe took advantage of its movement to drag both her daggers through its flesh, leaving frozen scars along its body.

She leapt towards its back as it regained its balance, and stabbe both her daggers into its neck. The zombie fell to the ground in a limp pile of blackened bones. Zoe stepped back and took a breath as the earth reclaimed the skeleton.

Knowing how to use her weapons made a big difference. She knew that, of course. But it really showed. She thought back on her shield and spear fight and shook her head.

There was a lot of reflection to do on that fight. Things she knew she did wrong, things she thought she could do better. She almost wanted to laugh at her attempts to get dagger-fighting from attacking a motionless straw dummy in a park during her first winter in Flester.

Of course she would never learn anything from a straw dummy. She might make a cut that strikes deeper, but that’s not always the best option. Sometimes you need to not overextend, to hold yourself back to better prepare for a counter attack.

And with a straw dummy that never responds, you’d never get that feedback. But her fight with the zombie did teach her something. Sure, it didn’t tell her what to do right. But it did tell her what she did wrong.

Shields were useful. She knew that. They had to be, or people wouldn’t use them. But when she thought about it, shields came in so many different shapes and sizes, while hers was just a small circle of ice.

Zoe summoned a large tower shield just to check if she could, and it appeared in her hand. So if she learned more about shields and their shapes, and which shapes were good for which circumstances, she might be able to use them better.

Was the round shield just bad for wild blunt attacks like the zombie’s slam? Or did she do something wrong. Maybe her stance was wrong. Where were you supposed to hold a shield, anyway? Zoe found it painful to guard against the zombie’s attack because when it hit, the shield would slam into her forearm.

Maybe there was a better way to keep the shield secured to her arm so there wouldn’t be that snapping feeling whenever she got hit? The shields Zoe had summoned so far just had a simple rod of ice that she held in her hand. But if she could create one that fit her arm better then the force would be spread out better, she thought.

Zoe tried to summon another round shield with a slot she could insert her arm into, and found it fit perfectly. Maybe a cushion would even be nice, but she wasn’t sure if that would be possible to make with her skill. She tried, just to be safe, but while it did make something that looked like a cushion, it still felt like rock hard ice.

Maybe she could carry around a cushion? But at that point, why wouldn’t she just get a real shield to carry around anyway?

She dropped her two icy daggers and summoned a spear to go with her shield. One thing she expected from the spear was that it would stop the zombie from approaching her, but when she stabbed the zombie it just stumbled forward as the spear scraped along its bones.

The extra distance wouldn’t matter if the zombie just rushed in regardless. And for that matter, was there a reason to have a spear and a shield?

If the spear kept the enemy away, then the shield wouldn’t be useful outside of projectiles maybe. And if the enemy got close, then the shield might be useful but the spear was a little difficult to manoeuvre in close range.

She understood the appeal of swords; long enough to be able to keep a respectable distance, but not so long as to impede your abilities at closer distances. A spear was still the most popular weapon in history, at least as far as she knew though.

Zoe supposed she might be missing something. Combat with medieval weapons wasn’t something that she really cared much about when she was growing up. She saw movies and played games of people from medieval times, but how many of those were actual accurate representations of what combat looked like?

For every game she played with swords and shields, she saw a video of some random person complaining about how stupid it is to do this or that or the other thing with whichever weapons they preferred. There were practically more “Expert criticizes movies” videos than there were movies to criticize.

And for that matter, why should Zoe care about fighting with spear and shield anyway? Was it really important enough for her to focus on? She had magic! Powerful magic, too. Even as competent as she was with a dagger, it didn’t even begin to compare to just firing off one of her frost projectiles.

She thought to her Frozen Arsenal. What use did it really have for her at the end of the day? It could create armour, which was convenient. But she could just wear armour, too. And it created weapons which let her have some versatility in a fight, but it seemed much more effective for her to just enchant something with it than to actually use it to create weapons itself.

Would it be better for her to take something like Frost Manipulation and then focus on just using her magic to attack directly? She’d lose her powerful enchantments, but did that matter? Probably, she thought.

The armour was nice, too. Even if she could wear armour, there was no reason she couldn’t wear armour and then also wear a sheet of ice over top of that, she realized. And while she wasn’t an expert with many weapon types yet it wouldn’t hurt to have more options available to her.

Frost Manipulation, ultimately, just wasn’t that powerful. It made her a little more competent at manipulating Frost, which was great. But there just wasn’t a good argument for it.

If her goal was to have fun, then Frozen Arsenal was a lot more fun. She didn’t lose the ability to manipulate frost by taking it instead, she just would be a little worse at it until her other levels caught up. But in exchange she got some amazing enchantments that she was beginning to really appreciate.

Her distracted thoughts were interrupted by a distant, frantic scream. So quiet she almost missed it, were it not timed perfectly with a wave of calm over the forest.

Zoe looked in the direction where she heard it from, and tried to listen to hear something more. She thought she might hear a frantic voice far in the distance but it was so faint she wasn’t sure if it was just something her mind was making up.

Was somebody in trouble? Was it a trap? Did the zombies here do that? She looked around as her mind raced through the possibilities.

If it was a trap, then it would be a really stupid way to go. But if she ignored it and heard about somebody dying in the forest while she was shopping in town later then she’d never be able to forgive herself. Should she approach? Was her indecisiveness going to get somebody killed? Would it be what saved her life?

She shook her head and took off towards the voice she heard. It was coming from a ways off the beaten path, but it was still downhill from her and she wasn’t very high up anyway. If there was one thing her research told her, it was that going uphill was always more dangerous. Which conversely, meant that going downhill would always be less dangerous, she thought.

If it was a trap, she would be prepared and ready for it. And if it was somebody in trouble, she’d never be able to forgive herself for ignoring them. She had never even heard about ambushes this low on the mountain before, there was no practical reason to be scared of them.

The zombies she was running into were still no problem for her, and she replaced her spear and shield with two daggers. Now wasn’t the time to try out new things Zoe thought, and summoned two Frost projectiles that she flashed her enchantment onto. If they lasted until she got to where she was going, great. If not, so be it.

The occasional scream grew louder as she rushed through the forest. Somebody was crying out for help, begging for anybody to rescue them. Zoe kept her eyes and ears peeled for anything that might jump out at her. Most of the zombies she was able to see well in advance and take a path around them, but a few would jump out at her from behind the large trunks. Zoe took a few tumbles as she jumped out of the way, and her icy armour was scratched a few times by the zombie’s sharp claws.

When she saw the source of the screaming, she could feel her face pale. There was a horde of zombies beneath a tree a hundred feet away from her. Maybe twenty or thirty of them at least, she couldn’t even begin to count them. They all clamoured over each other and clawed at the tree, stripping the bark away.

Green, rotted flesh poured from the horde as the zombies’ furious attempts to climb the tree devastated their bodies. Zoe watched as the occasional zombie died and was absorbed back into the ground, only to be replaced by another that was attracted to the man up in the branches.

Zoe couldn’t see him clearly but what she could see didn’t look good. He was missing one of his legs, and blood dripped from the stump onto the horde below, which only served to send them into even more of a frenzy.

She wasn’t sure what to do. If she really tried, she could probably take out the horde with her magic. But how much mana would it take? Could she sustain it all? She’d fought off a few zombies and didn’t notice her mana emptying, but each time she flashed an enchantment onto her frost she felt it drain away a significant chunk.

Seventy-one mana was ripped away from her pool as Zoe created another projectile to check how much it cost. It climbed back up rapidly, but that left her with at most about twenty projectiles she could fire off in quick succession. Twenty three with the ones she already had floating around her.

Was that enough to clear out the horde? It had to be, she thought. If it wasn’t, that man was going to die.

Zoe closed her eyes and took a deep breath as she gathered her composure. A single zombie wasn’t difficult for her. Even two she thought, would be a simple task. Five? She’d be pretty confident. But this was a lot.

They weren’t quick, and she could run away if she needed to. But would she be able to run away and leave the man to die? She wasn’t sure she could.

One projectile fired off into the horde and exploded in a shower of frost. Followed by another, and then another. Each one took out a zombie, and even dealt some collateral damage to the ones nearby. A few of the zombies turned towards her and began hobbling their way over.

Zoe watched as the horde split. Several kept clawing at the man, while others turned towards her. She saw a possible, if maybe a little risky, solution.

If she lured the horde away, she could get up the tree and heal the man. If he stopped screaming for help, zombies would stop swarming the tree. And as long as the tree held up, which it had so far, Zoe would have all the time she needed to clear out the remaining zombies and then escape with the man.

With a plan formed, Zoe rushed towards the horde and screamed to grab the remaining zombies’ attention. They all turned to look at her and follow after her. The man saw Zoe and smiled, before his body went limp on the branch he was resting on.

As soon as Zoe saw the chance, she climbed the tree and flooded the man with Restoration. Her mouth quivered as she watched the horde swarm around the tree she was also trapped in now. It was okay, she told herself. No more would be coming, and she could handle them. The plan was working.