Path of Dragons

Before Elijah dropped into unconsciousness, he saw a familiar notification that jarred him back to awareness.

Congratulations! You have reached level three, earning two free attribute points. Would you like to allocate free attribute points?

It was followed closely by another:

Congratulations! You have reached level four, earning two free attribute points (four total). Would you like to allocate free attribute points?

Two levels? That didn’t make any sense. He hadn’t done anything. Sure, he’d jabbed his now-ruined, homemade knife into the monster’s neck, but Elijah felt certain that he had only hastened its demise. The panther had been the real killer. But the evidence was right in front of him; the System had given him credit, and the resulting Ethera had pushed him to level four.

As he continued to bleed out, Elijah’s mind turned sluggish, and his ability to focus slipped further and further away. It was like wading through thick mud just to force his status open and allocate his attribute points. When he finally managed to wrangle his mind into doing what he wanted, he shoved the free attribute points into Ethera, bringing his total up to eight.

Immediately, Elijah felt an influx of magical energy as his core doubled in size. Thankfully, the upgrade didn’t just provide capacity, but rather, it gave him an amount of energy equal to what he’d get from four Ethera, leaving him with a half-full core. The influx was a heady sensation that nearly drove him to distraction, but he once again harnessed his concentration and forced himself to cast Touch of Nature. The healing spell soothed the injury in his stomach, dragging his intestines back into place and sealing the wound. But before it could do much more than patch things up, Elijah’s core ran dry.

He was still gravely injured, and any movement would threaten to tear the wound open, but he’d bought himself some time. His survival was now all but assured, provided he didn’t run afoul of any other monsters.

Elijah glanced at the corpse of the scaled creature that had attacked him and shivered. That, of course, brought with it a significant amount of pain. That monster had come out of nowhere, and even with his newly strengthened body and magical powers, it had been completely out of his league. Without the panther…

The panther!

The enormous cat was lying only a few feet away, its breathing shallow and its eyes filled with agony. And it wasn’t surprising. The panther had killed the monster, but it had also paid the price. Shallow wounds decorated its entire body, but Elijah’s eyes were drawn to the three much more serious injuries it had sustained.

The most troubling was a long gash along its side. At least two feet in length, and gaping open to expose the panther’s ribs, it was a ghastly wound that, even in the best of times, would likely spell a wild animal’s doom. If infection didn’t set in, then perhaps it would have a chance. But given the foul odor coming from the now-dead monster, Elijah considered that unlikely.

Next, one of the panther’s legs was turned the wrong way, and Elijah saw its broken bones bulging beneath its sleek skin. Finally, the semi-aquatic monster had ripped a chunk of the panther’s face off. In short, the huge cat had almost assuredly given its life to save Elijah.

Or perhaps it made more sense that the monster was its mortal enemy. After all, though Elijah had been paying tribute to the panther in the form of a daily fish or two, he’d never gotten the sense that it liked or accepted him. In fact, it had always seemed on the edge of killing him outright. The idea that it would protect him, except as a side effect of its true intention, was almost laughable.

But still, Elijah owed the animal his life.

It was at that moment that he made a choice. If he recovered enough Ethera before the panther succumbed to its wounds, he would try to heal it. If not, then it just wasn’t meant to be. With that in mind, Elijah settled back against the tree and waited on his Regeneration to refill his core. Slowly, his mind began to churn, drawing the ambient energy in before sending it through his soul and down into his core. The process was both soothing and distracting enough that he wasn’t overwhelmed with the pain of his still-serious wound.

To further distract himself, Elijah opened what he’d begun to affectionately refer to as his spell book:

Archetype: Druid The druid is the defender, ally, and cultivator of nature. Features bonuses to natural Regeneration, energy density, and One With Nature. Required Aspects: [Scholar], [Nature]
Spells
Touch of Nature	Harness the power of nature to heal yourself or an ally.
Snaring Roots	Call upon nature to summon a snarl of roots to bind your enemies’ movements.
One With Nature	Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Draw power from nature.
Eyes of the Eagle	Briefly enhance your eyesight with the power of a fearsome raptor.

As had been the case with both level one and two, he’d gotten spells for each of his new levels. One With Nature seemed a bit ambiguous, but the second spell, Eyes of the Eagle, seemed fairly straightforward. And for now, completely useless. Perhaps there would be a situation in the future where having telescopic vision would help, but for now, it would do nothing to help him.

What’s more, he couldn’t spare the Ethera to test either spell out. However, One With Nature was definitely intriguing. Drawing power from nature could mean just about anything. Would it let him rapidly regenerate his Ethera? Or perhaps give him an influx of Strength? The possibilities were endless, and his speculation occupied his mind until he’d recovered a little more than half his Ethera.

Once he’d done that, Elijah pushed himself away from the tree and slowly shifted closer to the panther. By that point, it had been almost an hour since they’d killed the monster, but the cat had yet to succumb to its wounds. Still, its breathing was labored, and Elijah saw pink-tinted foam around its mouth. Clearly, it had internal injuries in addition to the visible wounds.

In short, it was dying.

Elijah aimed to change that.

When Elijah laid his hand on the animal’s paw, its only reaction was a shift of its eyes and a slight tensing of its muscles. Perhaps that was the extent of its capability. Closing his eyes, Elijah pulled Ethera from his core, channeling it through the webwork of his soul, and into his spell, Touch of Nature.

He gasped.

Healing someone else was clearly very different than healing himself. For one, he couldn’t just place his hand on the appropriate spot and hope for the best. Instead, he needed to know what he wanted to fix before he could heal it. Thankfully, as a trained biologist, Elijah was very familiar with animal physiology, and it didn’t take him long to find the issues. Even without the magical awareness that allowed him to sense problems, Elijah would have had a good idea of where to start. With it, he could pinpoint the issues in mere seconds.

That’s when the other difference between healing himself and healing others surfaced. When targeting himself, Touch of Nature had always felt like being wrapped in a wave of soothing energy that both healed and revitalized him. But with the panther, it felt like he’d just poured a glass of water into a vast ocean. Even with his senses and experience as a scientist guiding him, Elijah knew it was going to take more than a few casts to heal even the least of the panther’s wounds.

But Elijah was nothing if not persistent. So, he focused on the cat’s internal injuries first, using his gathered Ethera to mend the wounds. He managed three casts before his core ran dry once again, but he’d managed to staunch most of the internal bleeding. It was less effective than he’d hoped, but it was a start.

Over the next day-and-a-half, Elijah fell into a rhythm. Once his core refilled, he would cast Touch of Nature on himself a single time, then use the remainder of his pool of Ethera to repeatedly heal the panther. As he did, he learned a couple of things. First, so long as he kept his mind clear, he could regenerate his entire core in two hours. Sometimes, it varied by a couple of minutes, but he chalked the variance up to his inability to keep proper time. After all, he didn’t have a clock to consult. If he let his mind wander, his Regeneration took a significant hit, so he did everything he could to keep his thoughts from wandering too far afield.

The second thing he learned was that the panther was vastly more powerful than him. Elijah had no notion of its level, but it was so far above him that it might as well have been a god. But it was mortal, just like him, and he knew that without his help, the cat would have quickly succumbed to its wounds. It seemed to know that as well, and even after Elijah had healed it enough to keep it from dying, it remained in place.

Gradually, Elijah mended both his and the panther’s wounds until, after almost two days, the job was done, and he slumped in exhaustion. Hunger gnawed at his belly – after all, he hadn’t had time or concentration to spare for gathering any food – and fatigue weighed down on him like he carried a mountain on his shoulders. Fortunately, water hadn’t been as much of an issue, given that it had rained intermittently throughout the process.

The panther pushed itself to its feet, testing its mended leg. Elijah had left it for last, as much to keep the panther in place as because it was the least life threatening of the cat’s many injuries.

“Yeah, it’s healed,” he said tiredly. His own wounds had healed much more quickly, allowing him to focus entirely on the panther.

The cat locked its glistening green eyes on him for a long moment. Then, without even a nod of thanks, it padded away, disappearing into the shadows.

Elijah sighed. “You’re welcome, I guess,” he muttered.

Then, he turned his attention inward to address a notification pushing against his mind. When he did, his jaw dropped.

Congratulations! You have reached level five, earning two free attribute points. Would you like to allocate free attribute points?

Another notification soon followed. And then another. Three levels, putting him at seven. That gave him six extra attribute points to allocate, but even more exciting than that, he’d gained three new spells. It was a nearly overwhelming degree of advancement, and he quickly opened his spell book to investigate his gains.

Archetype: Druid The druid is the defender, ally, and cultivator of nature. Features bonuses to natural Regeneration, energy density, and One With Nature. Required Aspects: [Scholar], [Nature]
Spells
Touch of Nature	Harness the power of nature to heal yourself or an ally.
Snaring Roots	Call upon nature to summon a snarl of roots to bind your enemies’ movements.
One with Nature	Draw power from nature.
Eyes of the Eagle	Briefly enhance your eyesight with the power of a fearsome raptor.
Ancestral Circle	Create a place of power.
Nature’s Bounty	Encourage the growth of plants.
Storm’s Fury	Call forth the power of a storm and harness its might.

The first spell felt powerful, but the description didn’t give any hints as to what it was supposed to do. Creating a place of power sounded great, but how did it benefit him? He would have to try it out if he wanted to discover the answer to that question.

The second spell, Nature’s Bounty, at least seemed more straightforward, and he could already see how beneficial it could be. A good portion of his diet depended on foraging, but what if he could create a garden and accelerate its growth? It would change everything about his life in the wilderness.

The last spell was clearly Elijah’s first attack spell, but beyond that, he wasn’t sure what to expect. Storms were deadly, sure, but he wasn’t certain how he was supposed to use such power to fight his enemies.

Elijah shook his head as he pushed himself to his feet. While healing himself and the panther, he’d rarely moved from that position, and he’d grown stiff. In the past, he’d have had quite a bit of difficulty sitting still for that long, but in the throes of his quest to mend his savior’s wounds, moving around had been the last thing on his mind.

Then, Elijah remembered that he still needed to allocate his six free points. He did so, splitting them between Ethera and Regeneration, bringing them to eleven and twelve, respectively. His original plan had been to focus on his physical attributes once he got Ethera and Regeneration to ten, but he’d never expected to gain so many levels so quickly. He still wanted to get the most out of his physical training, so he’d chosen to focus on his magical attributes for now. Once Strength and Dexterity plateaued – if they did at all – he would reevaluate his plans.

For now, though, Elijah had some spells to test. First up was One With Nature, but when he embraced the spell, channeling Ethera from his core and through the pathways of his soul, he got a big shock. His jaw dropped as a cascade of information spread across his mind, telling him how the spell worked.

Grinning, he said, “Oh, that’s good. Really good. This could change everything.”

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