Fight. Level. Survive.

Chapter 45 - Pinned

As he regained consciousness, he could feel a great pressure weighing on him. Opening his eye he realised the tree he had accidentally cut through had landed on him. The tree hit him as he had turned, knocking him to the ground. It had landed on his shoulder, pinning him to the ground.

The tree was big enough that even with his enhanced Strength and Resilience, the impact dislocated his shoulder. He didn’t feel any pain, a fact that was actually making him worry more than if he had been in agony.

He attempted to push the tree off of him and then tried to shimmy his arm out, but neither budged an inch. He tried again, but the tree seemed to be rooted to the ground.

Status effect: Pinned - You will slowly lose HP until you free yourself.

Lovely. Just lovely. Ever since he came to this world, a part of him had known these trees would be the death of him.

No problem, he would just use his dagger to…. Why wasn’t his dagger in his inventory? Oh, he had t be the dumbest son of a bitch in the universe. After using his dagger to make the stone disk, he had placed it beside him, intending to pick it up before trying out his flying disk idea. He, being an idiot, had gotten distracted by the thought of Mayry’s reaction to him flying through the air at high speed, so really… this was Mayry’s fault!

Looking around, he saw the suns were setting, and the darkness was starting to creep in. He knew he had to do something fast, or he would be stranded there all night, and he could only defend himself so much with half a body.

One possibility was he could use a Magic Missile to blow the tree up, but that risked blowing up his arm along with it. His HP was ticking down, but at a rate that didn’t worry him much. He decided that if his HP made it below halfway, he would reconsider blowing the asshole tree up, his arm be damned.

He discovered that his Ballistic Touch did indeed have a size limit. Somewhere between the size of a stone disk and the massive dumb tree was where the power stopped working.

Mason closed his eyes and opened his menu, hoping it would inspire a genius idea.

Name: Mason Hughes

Level: 22

Current XP: 8740 /9200

Race: Human

Class: Hunter

Health Points (HP): 360

Mana Points (MP): 335

Stamina: (SP): 230

Stats

Strength: 33 (+15) 48

Agility: 28

Endurance: 26

Vitality: 26

Resilience: 21 (+26) 47

Intelligence: 44 (+10%)

Perception: 33

Willpower: 27

Free points: 6

Skills:

Identify (Basic), Magic Missile - INT (Advanced), Emotional Outburst - PER (Advanced), Camouflage - PER (Advanced), Random Summon - INT (Advanced), Mental Manipulation - WIL (Advanced), Ballistic Touch - STR(Advanced)

Base Skills:

Universal Translator, Inventory (Advanced)

Class skills:

Basic Monster tracking, Evaluate Monster.

Damn, nothing. He slightly regretted not picking the Digestion Mimicry ability. No matter how big this bastard tree was, he was certain Mason the Basilisk could shift it with no problem.

He could have possibly used Summon Random Creature, but he had wasted that on Alan….

He did have six points free to spend. The way Mason saw it, he could put all six points into Strength and hope that it would buff him up enough to free himself. Alternatively, if he put them all into Intelligence, it would bring the stat up to 50, upgrading Magic Missile and Random Summon from Advanced to Expert. That could possibly be his saving grace. Of course, there was the possibility that the upgrade would be shite and completely unhelpful.

He was leaning more towards Intelligence. As he was now, the tree was practically immovable; an extra six points probably wouldn’t change that much.

He mentally allocated the points and read through the subsequent notifications with bated breath.

Notification 1/2

Your Intelligence stat has reached 50.

Your skill Magic Missile (Advanced) has been upgraded to Expert rank. You have 2 abilities to select from.

Magical Barrage (Expert) Call upon your immense, mystical power and unleash it to strike down your foes with a barrage of magical destruction.

Active effect: Focus a large portion of your Mana into an attack in the form of a barrage of Magic missiles of kinetic energy, which explode on contact. Mana cost increases with the number of projectile Damage, dependent on Intelligence. Scales with Intelligence.

Or

Mana Control (Expert) Call upon your immense, mystical power. Let it pour from you and shape it to suit your needs.

Active effect: Focus a large portion of your Mana into a stream of kinetic energy which you can shape and mould as you please. Mana cost increases with complexity and size of creation.

Those two were pretty decent… but he wanted to reserve judgement until after he saw what the next ability upgrade did.

Notification 2/2

Your Intelligence stat has reached 50.

Your skill Random Summon (Advanced) has been upgraded to Random Greater Summon (Expert).

Random Greater Summon (Expert) Call forth a powerful creature from the cosmos and have them join you in battle.

Active Effect: Once a day, summon a random creature from a random time and place to fight for you. Creature has a much higher chance to be useful for your particular need at the time of summoning. Summon time 10 minutes + 45 seconds for each point of intelligence. Scales with intelligence.

Well, that was a bust. It was a good upgrade, but it was still limited to once a day. It hadn’t reset as he had hoped.

The Magic Missile upgrade had potential. That second one… might actually work! The first option was cool and all, but he was definitely going to go with the second. The way he read it, it would be like almost having a Green Lantern ring. He would be able to use it to create a buzz saw in the air and cut himself free! Or maybe a giant axe! Oo, this was going to be awesome!

This was so bloody annoying! He had chosen Magic control, and as usual, a rush of information had entered his head, telling him all about his new ability. Luckily he found he still retained the original Magic Missile ability, he had feared he would lose it in favour of the upgraded version. The new upgraded Mana Control ability was very similar to Magic Missile in the way he felt the Mana move within him, accumulating in his fingers. Unfortunately, that was where the similarities ended. The moment the Mana left him, it became incredibly unwieldy and difficult to do anything with. Each time he tried, he felt like he was growing a brand new limb he had no idea how to move or control. It moved and changed shape at his slightest thought.

Trying to start off with something easy, he let the Mana flow from him and tried to imagine a ball. At first, the blue Mana moved and created a very lumpy volleyball-sized, almost sphere-like shape. For a first attempt, it wasn’t terrible, but then as it does when staring at anything even remotely round, his mind wandered, very briefly, to…boobs.

The change was instant, and his lumpy sphere started to change into a pair of boobs. This made him panic a little, making his mind go from boobs to ass to Mayry to a sort of demon-looking creature to, for some reason, his nan… before he finally cut off the mana supply.

“That was definitely not worthy of a Green Lantern.” He knew he needed to keep the picture in his mind clear, but he was a very easily distracted guy. When choosing this ability, he thought it would be super intuitive like all of his other powers! But no, this was way more effort than he signed up for.

Sighing, he started to try again. He went even more simple this time and attempted to do a Trump and build a wall! Surprisingly he was relatively successful. It wasn’t particularly strong or detailed, but a wall was a wall! He found that if concentrated, he could move the projection and even rotate it. It was like he was in a Sims game. Trying to make anything more complicated than a wall was a lot more effort, but after a few attempts, he managed to create a shovel-like manifestation that he used to dig a small hole under the trunk. He then turned the shovel into a long thick stick he intended to use as a lever. The long thick stick, unfortunately, made his mind wander, and it turned into a giant penis. In the end, he couldn’t get the penis to turn back into a lever, so… he was saved by a giant penis…

He vowed to himself that he would never tell Mayry about any of this.

When he was finally free, he stretched and went to see if he could find his stone disk. He walked passed the stump of the tree that had fallen on him and gave it the finger. He could see the trail of destruction his disk had caused. It had gone straight through the first tree and then deflected off another three before it finally stopped. It seemed to be, somehow, completely unharmed. If he commissioned one of these made out of metal, he was going to be unstoppable.

He picked the disk up and added it to his inventory. He walked back over to where he had left his dagger, picked it up, and whispered to it, “I’m sorry, I’ll never leave you again.” Before he added it to his inventory as well.

By this time, the suns had well and truly set. The darkness wasn’t quite pitch black, but it was getting close. He withdrew his Trunk and decided he would just camp out until dawn and then make his way back to Town before his dreaded training session with Lyvan.

Just as he stepped through the entrance, the skies opened up, and a biblical rainfall began.

====================

Mason was in his bed. He could hear the thunder and torrential downpour of rain outside. Mason was Level 21 and, even by the standards of this world, pretty damn powerful. Mason was the champion of Chaos and would most likely have to kill the ‘Others’ of legend.

Mason was a slight bit scared of the thunder.

To be fair, it wasn’t just the thunder. It was a culmination of things, being somewhere other than his nice cosy inn room and the fact he had just been trapped under a godforsaken tree! But… mostly, it was the Thunder and lightning...

No matter how great and powerful he was, every single time the lightning struck, and he heard thunder, he jumped. He considered going back to the Inn but decided against it. If he was scared in a relatively safe magical Trunk, then he would be terrified out in the open in the pouring rain.

After what seemed like an eternity, he fell asleep.

He dreamt that he was being pinned by a tree while a group of other trees took turns kicking him. Each kick was accompanied by a loud clap of thunder, which shook the ground beneath him. Suddenly, a bolt of lightning struck the tree that was pinning him down, and it burst into flames. The other trees retreated in fear, and he was able to break free and run away.

As he ran, he felt he was being chased. He looked back and saw that he was being chased by a pair of disembodied boobs that were somehow riding a Unicorn.