Chapter 11: Level Up

Night had already settled over the mountain when Rael stepped out of the cave. The last thin light had drained from the sky, leaving only the hard blue-black of true dark. He carried Nathan’s wand in his right hand and a short goblin blade in his left. Lila followed at a distance, bow already strung, melting into the trees and undergrowth the way only an archer could.

They had talked it through earlier. No more low-level scraps if they could help it. They needed real growth, real pressure. Rael remember he never checked the discription of Nathan’s Wand.

Rael paused long enough to examine the wand properly.

Name: Emberwood Wand

Tier: Common

Description: A simple wooden wand made from enchanted emberwood. It slightly increases the user’s Mana Control and makes fire-based spells easier to cast. A reliable weapon for beginner mages.

Effect: Mana Control +5% | Fire Spell Power +5%

Lowest tier possible. Yet the bonuses mattered. Fireball and Ignite were already his main tools. Five percent more power was five percent less chance of dying.

They moved in silence for a long time before the smell hit them—raw meat and wet fur. Ahead, in a shallow depression between two rocks, a horned rabbit tore into the carcass of another of its kind. Three feet long from nose to haunch, thick-muscled, a single black horn jutting from its forehead like a spear tip. Level 4.

Rael raised a hand. Lila stopped and waited in the dark. He wanted this one himself.

He stepped into the open and pointed the wand.

"Fireball."

A sphere of orange fire roared out. The rabbit’s head snapped up an instant before impact. It threw itself sideways, but the edge of the blast still caught the right side of its face. Fur blackened. Skin split and blistered. The animal screamed—a high, wet sound that did not belong to anything that should have been called a rabbit.

Lila’s arrow arrived a heartbeat later. It punched into the burned side of the head, burying itself almost to the fletching. The rabbit staggered, thrashing, horn swinging wildly. Rael closed the distance in three hard strides. The goblin blade went in under the jaw and up through the soft palate into the brain. He felt the tip grind against bone. He twisted. The thrashing stopped. Hot blood poured over his wrist.

[+3 Souls]

He pulled the blade free with a wet sound. The body slumped. He had liked cute things once. This was not cute. This was a three-foot predator that ate its own kind and would have driven that horn through his gut without hesitation.

He gestured. Lila came forward. They stored the corpse in the storage ring—his for now, so he could carry the dead without slowing them. Then they moved on.

The next clearing was worse.

More than fifty slimes rested in a loose colony across damp stone and moss. Level 3 each. Soft, translucent, faintly glowing. They looked almost peaceful until you remembered what they did to anything that stepped into their territory—dissolve flesh, absorb bone, leave nothing but wet stains.

Rael stood at the edge and felt the old reluctance rise. He crushed it. This world did not care about reluctance. Kill or be killed. Half-measures got you eaten.

He raised the wand and called Ignite.

Mana circles bloomed under the nearest cluster of slimes like sudden brands. The creatures stirred, sensing the change a second too late. He flicked the wand. Fire erupted from the ground in a continuous sheet. The first slime ballooned, skin blackening, then burst with a wet pop. Thick, burning fluid sprayed across its neighbors. They tried to crawl away. The fire followed, clinging, eating.

Rael did not stop. He walked forward, wand hand steady, calling the skill again and again. New circles. New bursts. The air filled with the stench of cooked slime—sweet and chemical and wrong. Lila’s arrows hissed past him, each one finding a core with clean precision. One shot, one kill. The rest she left to the fire.

A slime the size of a man’s torso rolled toward Rael’s boots, surface already smoking. He stepped back and drove a Fireball straight into its center. The explosion painted the rocks with glowing fragments. Another came from the side. He met it with the goblin blade, cutting deep. The blade sank into jelly that clung and tried to climb his arm. He ignited the blade itself with a short pulse of Ignite and watched the slime cook from the inside out, bubbling and collapsing in a heap of blackened sludge.

The colony tried to scatter. Some of the smaller ones rolled into the undergrowth. Rael chased them with Fireball after Fireball, the wand growing warm in his grip. Each impact lit the night for a moment—orange flash, wet detonation, the wet slap of dissolving flesh against stone. Lila never wasted an arrow. When a slime tried to climb a tree she put a shaft through its core and watched it drip down the bark in smoking ropes.

Rael’s lungs burned from the smoke and the constant casting. Sweat ran into his eyes. He wiped it away with the back of a blood-slick hand and kept moving. The last large slime tried to flee toward deeper shadow. He caught it with a final Ignite circle and watched it thrash as the fire climbed through its body from the bottom up. It made a high, keening sound that faded only when nothing remained but a greasy scorch mark.

Notifications flickered at the edge of his vision in a steady stream.

[+2 Souls]

[+2 Souls]

[+2 Souls]

He did not like what he was doing. The dislike sat in his chest like a stone. He ignored it. This was the rule of the place. Commit fully or die halfway.

When the last slime burst he felt the familiar pressure behind his eyes.

[+ Level Up]

He checked the status.

STATUS

Name: Rael

Race: Human

Class: Copy (F-Rank)

Copied Classes: Flamecaller (C-Rank), Archer (B-Rank)

Level: 4 → 5

Souls: 40 → 97

Bloodline: Abyssal Sovereign (+100% Multiplier) (Dormant)

Attributes:

Strength: 28

Agility: 32

Mana: 32

Vitality: 28

Additional Stats: 0

Skills: Fireball (Apprentice), Ignite (Expert), Eagle Eyes (Expert), Piercing Arrow (Expert)

He poured the free points into Mana and Agility—the two stats he was burning through every fight. The change settled into him like a deeper breath.

Lila stepped out of the trees, bow still half-drawn. She looked at him once and said, "You leveled up."

"Yeah." His voice came out rough. "I think I killed more of them than I meant to."

She glanced at the scorched clearing—black patches, wet remains, the sharp chemical smell still hanging in the air. She said nothing else.

Rael opened the soul menu. He could upgrade skills or the Copy class itself. The skills would vanish when the copied classes expired in a month. No point wasting souls there. He focused on Copy.

[Class: Copy (F-Rank) — Upgrade]

[Copy (F-Rank) → Analyze (E-Rank)]

[Souls Required: 97 / 1000]

Almost a thousand. Far beyond what they had. He closed the window.

The night pressed in around them again. Somewhere farther down the mountain something large moved through the trees, branches cracking under its weight. Rael wiped the goblin blade on a patch of moss, sheathed it, and looked at Lila.

They still had a long way to go before the summons stopped coming.

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