Chapter 3: Breakfast and Base Camp

The world of Des-Ter is a horrifying case to study as it is the only world under Guild control in the 7th Layer. It is high up enough that the aura content should be more than one hundred times what it currently is, and yet the world is so crippled the we cant even begin to imagine what the people who built the cities now lying in ruins did to cause it. A fact which should be noted however is that the aura content is rising, though it is doing so extremely slowly.

- Excerpt from the unpublished paper of a Guild Scholar

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Wander had a problem. It had taken him two hours of walking to realize that there were no small game in the area. He was beginning to get hungrier than he should be due to the reaction from his little test a few hours earlier. He needed to get some meat to replace what had been lost during his transformation, at the rate he was going Wander would drop in only a few hours.

Beginning to become slightly desperate he pushed at [One With The World]. The forest around him pulsed in his vision, the color leaching from his sight as his senses expanded deeper and wider. From the trees Wander heard whispers of possible prey flying low in the sky to his left. The world around him seemed to slide past, the air and sound of the world propelling him to impossible speeds. He could not hurt anything in this state but neither could he be hurt or even be perceived as he was. 

Breakfast soon presented itself in the form of a fat pigeon with a small scroll bound to its leg lazily gliding just above the canopy. Finding his target Wander slowly pulled himself out of his skill and aiming through the sparse canopy fired a simple Bolt of Force at the bird. The flimsy Cantrip struck home and the bird began to drop fast. He sprinted toward the poultry and caught it before it hit the ground. Now he had food.

Wander walked to a fallen tree he had seen while going towards the bird and, pocketing the scroll, began to skin and drain the fat animal. Burying the scraps in a small pit he dug with a cantrip, he used another to quickly cook the bird. While he had almost never gotten the chance to actually cast any spells in the empire he had been able to focus on expanding his pool and make a ridiculous amount of Cantrips. They weren't limited to any sort of slot system the way proper spells were and he didn't even need a class to have them, though they were almost useless in most combat situations. They were still incredibly useful outside of fighting however.

Remaining watchful of his surroundings, he ate his catch. He would need to look at the scroll later once he had some form of a camp set up. Standing up from the log Wander cleaned his hands with a minor flex of his aura. Wander  started to make his way south once more. From what Wander could feel of the area, the ruins he was currently heading towards would do very well as a home if he could clear it out and repair the place. 

After walking for an hour Wander came across the first physical signs of his new home, a clearing filled with scattered rectangular boulders which used to be a building. Seeing that he was near his destination Wander partially triggered [One With The World] as his perception spread through the area he spotted his target. Pushing further on the skill Wander left no mark or trace of his presence as he approached the ruins which would be his new home.

Though it would take only a few days of travel to reach the nearest city Wander had decided to live here for two notable reasons, by staying here he wouldn't have to pay taxes or need any form of permit to craft things. He wasn't planning on being a hermit but would do his best to steer clear of as much paperwork as possible. living in a Guild run empire would mean an abundance of it after all. 

Focusing on the ruins in front of him again, Wander circled the grounds making sure not to be noticed by the veritable horde of weird looking scaly rats sprawled around the courtyard in front of the entrance. The building was is great shape considering how old it was and what was living in it, the place seemed to have been a temple at one point though it could have been an orphanage or school as well. it was to old to really tell. Finishing his scouting he retreated back into the forest and took stock of the situation.

There were 30 of the scaled rats just outside of the building with the bigger ones likely inside the ruin. If Wander still had access to [Shatter The Skies - Pierce The Earth] he could just grab a branch and start swinging, but he did not. So, much to his disappointment he would have to be smart and not solve the problem with overwhelming violence as was his preference. 

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Looking around there area more thoroughly allowed Wander to find the path the rats used most often. The trail led off into the forest. Following it for a short while he started to dig a trench, moving the earth a few handfuls at a time with Cantrips was slow but Wander could keep doing this for hours if he needed to. It took Wander two hours to finish the curved pit, he had dug it to be as deep as he was tall so his plan of filling the bottom with rock spikes covered in his blood would actually work. There were a lot of rats so he would need to Enchant the spikes with some form of decomposition to get rid of corpses fast enough not to fill. 

Returning to the clearing with the boulders, he walked to the biggest one and began to split it apart with several casts of a Minor Stone Shaping Cantrip. Once he had a few hundred forearm sized rods from three of the rocks, Wander started to grab armfuls of them and moving them to his pit. After sharpening the rods and sticking them into the pit Wander felt for how much day light he had left, the result was ten hours. He had enough time to finish the pit and kill the rats today, he had used far to much of his aura today so he actually going to need to sleep tonight. 

Wander grit his teeth at the thought of letting his mind run free with the dissonance as bad as it was, but he wasn't going to force him self pat his body's limits any more than he had to. Getting his mind out of it's distraction, he started laying the needed enchantments onto the spikes and covering them with his blood, the rapidly blackening liquid crawled across the spikes as if it was alive. What he had decided on was to use a modified sewage purification matrix stuck into a circuit that would overcharge the enchantment to actually allow the spikes to dissolve the rat corpses by working with the effects of his blood. The spikes would only last a few hours with his jerry-rigged Enchants but that would be enough. 

Laying a paper thin crust of stone over the pit, Wander grabbed a rock and went back to the rats. After getting to the ruin Wander finally disabled [One With The World] from its partial activation and promptly threw his rock straight into the doorway and started running. Hearing the horde following behind him Wander picked up speed, using his aura to account for his lack of strength. With a mad grin on his face Wander jumped over his put just as the largest of the rats caught up to him. 

A loud crack resounded though the area as the horde fell into the pit as victims of there own momentum. Wander turned around to see the fruits of his labor.

:You have slain 72 [Scale-Rats] lv 2-13 and 1 [Scale-Rat Matriarch] lv 23:

:Incarnate Penalty applied:

:2% progress gained:

Ignoring the notification Wander looked down into the pit. It was not a pretty sight, the rats had all been reduced to bones and boiling black mush. He saw a few eyes floating around in the chunky liquid as well. Seeing what had become of the rats he began to walk to his new home.

There were only two stragglers remaining in the ruin, Wander dropped a pew on them from the upper balcony in the main temple of the building and didn't even get a notification from there deaths. While there was still four hours of daylight left he decided to just sleep, he had shelter now and he was tired from his use of so many cantrips today. Sighing at the thought of the nightmares he would have to face, Wander laid down on a relatively clean pew and slept for the first time in eight days.

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In the capital preparations continue, The Lord Of Light has begun the process of calling for help from a world long dead.

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