Chapter 19

Chapter 19

Drew grabbed a can of red spray paint from the shelf before heading out the door. Amber and his friends followed behind him after throwing their trash away from dinner. He quickly found himself in front of the horrible, little grove of mesquite trees that had plagued his property. He quickly used the spray paint to make several bullseyes on the grouping of trees at chest height. Even though he went quickly, he soon ran out of paint. Hopefully there would be enough trees for everyone to get some practice in before hunting critters.

"Alright, I don't know how it will work for ya'll but the way my casting works, at least so far, everything seems to be auto-targeted. All I have to do is focus and I'll hit something. I can't promise it'll be the same way for everyone here though, and I have no idea if any of us will end up missing. I guess what I'm saying is, I have no idea how the physics and mechanics of The System works, which is why doing this is so important. You won't get any experience from killing the trees, but it will make me immensely happy."

Everyone nodded their heads and Drew walked over to a grouping of trees he'd picked out for himself. He didn't start using his spells yet though, because he was curious to see how everyone else's spells and abilities functioned. Amber pulled her wooden bow that she'd gotten for starting equipment out of her spatial inventory and turned to look at Freya who stood by her side. After a moment of telepathic communication, Freya took off towards a tree.

Amber sat shaking her head, as apparently something had gone wrong. Even so, Freya pounced towards a tree and started chomping on it. The bark of the tree started to peel off, but the shepherd seemed to be having issues, as she couldn't find a good way to repeatedly attack the tree with her mouth. It looked like the trunk of the tree was too thick for her to wrap her mouth around, and thus it looked like her damage output was suffering a bit.

Drew's wife seemed to also notice the issue, as Freya turned her head back to look at Amber before attempting to paw at the tree in an aggressive manner. She was still a dog, and not a cat, so her paws were meant more for running and holding things rather than swiping attacks, but the nails did dig out a few pieces of bark. Eventually, the shepherd returned to his wife and plopped down on the ground, panting. She'd worn herself out attacking the tree.

Everyone else had the same idea as Drew had, as they'd been watching Amber and Freya instead of attacking their own targets. Amber lifted her bow to eye height with her left hand as her right touched the drawstring. Upon touching the draw string, a subtle golden light manifested in the shape of an arrow. She pulled back the drawstring and aimed. She released the string...

*THUNK!*

The golden arrow flew straight towards the tree, when it arrived it sunk into the wood at knee level. She'd definitely missed the bullseye by a couple feet, but at least she'd hit it. She conjured and released several more shots as she tried to increase her accuracy. All the arrows hit the tree and sunk into them a fair amount, but after ten arrows she'd yet to hit the bullseye. She lowered her bow and turned to Drew, it looked like she wanted to talk. He made his way over to her, and the Kobinah's looked to be doing the same.

"It looks like I'll need to practice a fair amount to hit the red circle, but on the upside, I don't feel tired yet. Downside though, Freya said she can't see the circles at all, so she chose a random tree to attack instead of the one I wanted her to. It also looked like she struggled with it." Amber said.

"Huh, I wonder why she couldn't see the circle. She did struggle with it a bit, but trees are pretty tough, the fact that she managed to peel so much bark off is a pretty good sign." Drew said

"Oh! I know the answer!" Miranda exclaimed, before covering her mouth in embarrassment at the volume she'd said it in.

Everyone chuckled. Everyone except Freya. She laid on the ground still panting.

"Dog's can't see the color red! They see everything in grays, blues, and yellows. But they have a hard time seeing violet, orange, and reds." Miranda recovered.

"Ohhhhhhhhh." A collective response from everyone.

"At least you hit the tree every time." Mark said.

"Yeah, but when Drew hit his trees with magic, they practically exploded. Or, at least portions of them did." Amber said sadly.

"Maybe magic is a bit more powerful? Either way, when mana runs out, I can't cast anymore spells. So maybe it's a trade off, you can keep shooting arrows for free. You'll eventually get tired, but you can keep going for a while." Drew added.

"Yeah, maybe." Amber replied.

"Anyways! Who wants to go next?" Drew asked.

"Me!" Mark yelled, jumping up and down.

This time everyone followed Mark to his grouping of trees and stood behind him to watch the event. Like Amber, he drew his bow from his inventory, however it was immediately clear that his was higher quality, much like the rest of his equipment. His quiver came next which he strapped to his back. He awkwardly drew an arrow from it, and nocked it. He took aim and...

*THUCK!*

Absolutely butchered the shot as it flew wide and to the left. He paused for a second before drawing another projectile.

*THUCK!*

Miss.

*THUCK!*

Miss.

*THUMP!*

"Finally! I got it!" Mark said triumphantly.

"Hey, sweetie, you hit the wrong tree..." Miranda said quietly.

"Fuckkkkkkkkkk."

"That's okay dude, maybe it requires physical practice because you're technically a light warrior and not an archer?" Drew said.

"I guess. I'll try my short swords."

Mark placed the bow back in his inventory and grabbed two blades instead. Each blade was about two feet long, and two-ish inches wide. A short silver colored handguard protected each hand, and the handle was wrapped in embossed leather strips that had script-like writing on them. The pommels were oval in shape and came to a slight point at the ends. Mark ran towards the tree at full speed, which, when compared to Drew's increased stats, was pretty slow. Decently fast for a completely normal and average human, but nothing in the realm of real athleticism.

He swung his right sword in a graceful arc, and it slashed into the bark of the tree easily. Despite not being super-human or having hit level one yet, Mark was able to cut through the wood like butter. Of course, the blade was only two inches wide, so the damage was limited, but he clearly possessed some form of sword technique. The left jabbed forward and sunk into the tree and... it was stuck. The next minute was spent watching Mark struggle to pull his weapon from the wood, as if he was King Arthur trying to free the sword in the stone. Eventually, Drew moved to help him, and with his increased stats pulled the weapon free in one go.

"I HAVE THE POWERRRRR!" Drew roared.

"Why am I so weak?" Mark asked.

"Probably because you don't have any levels yet. You're stuck at level zero until you kill some shit, so you have the same stats you did in your old body."

"Yeah, I guess. Still sucks. At least your wife managed to hit her tree every time." Mark replied to Drew.

The two guys walked over to join the women, before they turned to Miranda.

"Oh, ah... I don't know if I want to go." Miranda said shyly.

"You'll be fine, worst case you miss the tree, but I get the feeling you won't because it's magic." Drew said.

Miranda firmed her resolve and focused on a tree. Her legs widened to shoulder-length as she took a stance. Both her arms stretched forward, her palms pointed towards the tree, the tips of her fingers on each hand met the respecting ones on the other. Her hands formed in the shape of a triangle, a slight glow of golden light radiated out from her wrists and palms. Drew turned to focus on the tree she had her eyes on. Out of thin air, a pair of bright, golden lines sprung forth into existence directly on the sides of the tree. The short, radiant lines angled perpendicular to each other and quickly lengthened into the shape of the letter 'X', with the bullseye and tree itself right in the center.

The moment the bottom of the lines stopped growing, a great burst of blinding light erupted from the tree where the bullseye had been. It was only due to Drew's enhanced perception skill that he was able to see every moment of the spell. The beam of erupting light jetted forward towards the gathered people, and backwards, immediately in the opposite direct of the first beam. No, they were one beam, one line. As the beams burst forth from the tree...

*CRACK!*

The tree shook, and lumber blew out from the middle of the bullseye in every direction. The tree didn't even have time to decide which way it would fall, it just fell straight down towards the stump, as the middle portion had been blown out was easily a foot tall. The log hit the stump, and abruptly fell to the left side and onto the ground. That was an impressive display, far more damaging than Drew's mana bolt ability. Maybe it was more damaging because she'd spent a boon acquiring it, and the starting spells were less powerful? Logically, that felt like it made the most sense.

"Way to go!" Drew said.

"Good job baby!"

That was awesome." Amber said.

"Wow. Did I seriously do that?" Miranda asked with wide eyes.

"Hell yeah you did! Congratulations." Drew said.

The congratulations continued for a while until Mark had brought up the use of his wife's other spells. They couldn't test out the healing unless someone was hurt. Deciding it was a very good idea to see how well the healing spells functioned, Mark volunteered himself.

"It's not a big deal, I'll just cut a small line and a long line on my arm with my sword."

"I really don't like the idea of you hurting yourself." Miranda said.

"It'll be fine. Worst case, Drew has bandages and shit here. Plus, you can consider it revenge for all the times I changed the AC to be cooler when you were sleeping."

"YOU DID WHAT?" Miranda yelled, eyes bulging from their sockets.

Drew was going to stay far away from this conversation. After several minutes of yelling, pleading and begging, Miranda decided to take the sword and cut her husband herself. Apparently, she did not find it amusing that Mark changed the temperature when he was too hot to sleep. Not that Drew ever did that. No, definitely not. He was a good and kind husband. The shallow cuts made, Mark had held up like a trooper, only a single tear plunging down his right cheek. Good man, stiff upper lip.

On the small cut, Miranda had cast her regeneration spell that applied a small healing over time effect. While on the longer, and slightly deeper cut that was bleeding profusely, she'd cast her basic healing spell. The small cut with the heal over time didn't appear to have any visible spell-effects, where as the larger cut was healed very quickly after her hands had begun to glow and radiate that golden light. The gushing of blood ceased and the seam in his arms quickly disappeared. He still had blood all over his arm, but the wound itself was closed.

The smaller cut had taken about twice as long to heal as the larger had, but Miranda had said that her mana points dipped less from it's use, and she could cast it without touching. So, in reality, the same sized cut would likely take three or four times as long to heal, but it was still better than nothing. Hell, it was a lot faster than the body's natural healing before magic came around! Although, listening to Miranda talk about mana costs made Drew realize something. He'd never paid attention to those before. Oops.

Drew decided it was time to modify what he saw in his vision. He had the notification icon in his bottom right, so he went ahead and added two bars, one for health points, and one for mana. He set them to show percentages because he didn't want to think about constantly changing large numbers as he grew in power. He set both bars in the bottom of his vision but more centered. To the left side, he found that he could add a digital clock that would always show him the time when he focused on it. So useful!

The group followed Drew over to his grove of trees so he could practice his spells and get an idea on how his increased stats were shaping up. Mentally, he followed the link in his mind to the undead coyote in the wooded area, and ordered it to come to his side. He really needed to think of a cool name for it, maybe something about bones, or being an undead skeleton? He knew it didn't have a soul, but still, he felt a name would be appropriate. The undead pooch wandered over and Freya growled and barked at it before being quickly silenced by Amber. The calcium critter by his side, his wife and friends watching the pile of bones with widened eyes and gaping mouths, it was finally time.

Time to murder those fucking trees.