Wallowing In Superiority
I was awesome.
I stalked the forest, a grin on my face. A twitch of my telekinesis sent a Speedfowl spinning to the ground, bludgeoning its head on the forest floor. Boulders orbited around my head, as I played with them like bouncy balls.
I was powerful. In control. The strongest. The greatest.
I struck down another Speedfowl as tried to flee, amused at the crunching sound it made as the heavy rock impacted it.
Heh.
I teleported back to my home. Through the trees, I could see the charred area of the forest. It probably wouldn't regrow for a year or two, but I could deal.
It was just a forest.
Things continued this way for weeks. Just me, enjoying my superiority.
I was strong. I was powerful. I was in control.
And there was no one to stop me from doing whatever I wanted.
There hadn't been before. But now, without Green Bean weighing on my mind, I felt lighter than air.
Or maybe I was just going crazy.
Either way, it felt good to be me.
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POV: Lord Of The Forest
Wings flapped, sending a whirlwind through the trees and stirring up the soil. Ash and smoke turned into clouds of dust, becoming moving fumes of toxicity.
The avian monster observed the earth below it, unimpressed. It had felt the tremors, seen the light, and felt the heat. It heard the bear's last roars, even if it hadn't been directly present for the bear's death.
It was pleased. But also displeased.
It was not truly intelligent, but it was smart enough to know that whatever had killed the bear was still roaming around inside the forest somewhere. Likely nearby to where the flames had been that night.
It was also smart enough to know that whatever killed the bear could likely harm the bird as well. And that garnered a degree of caution.
The bear was weak, by its standards. But that was nothing new. The bear ruled part of the forest, but the bird ruled all. The bird was undisputably the strongest. It was superior in intelligence, physical strength, and magic strength.
For these reasons, it had tolerated the bear's presence. But to tolerate was not necessarily to enjoy.
It didn't want to risk itself, and for good reason. It had eggs to hatch.
But now, an interloper had appeared.
Would the interloper deserve death? Perhaps.
The order of his forest had been tampered with enough, and its benevolence only went so far.
The old monster would observe.
And pray for the fool who crossed it.
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Oh boy. I was teleporting around the forest one day, when I came across a very funny group of trolls. A group of three, to be exact. A bit of a large number, for trolls, but that was just fine. Great, even.
Time to test my new skill.
Rather than spilling from my body, fire simply appeared wherever I looked. Well... not fire exactly. More like suns. Small balls of yellow flame, releasing waves of heat into the air from wherever they were.
The troll shrieked as the fireball appeared on top of it. Its head began melting.
First the skin, which sloughed off like mush. Then the bone, which slowly but surely began deforming and flattening under the heat. And lastly, the brain beneath, vaporizing like water in a pot.
The troll's corpse fell to the ground, missing the top half of its mangled head.
It took less than three seconds.
The other two trolls began running.
I bounded after them laughing, wreathed in fire. Everywhere I touched melted and disintegrated.
I caught up to one troll, and thrust my palm into its abdomen. The smell of searing flesh reached my nose, as my hand touched the troll's skin and then pushed through, melting and cauterizing muscles and organs.
It screamed, bellowing a deep, guttural sound of fear and agony.
I laughed harder.
Then, without withdrawing my hand from the first troll's innards, I sent a telekinetic blast towards where the other troll was running.
The blast impacted its legs with a meaty crunch, bending bone backwards. The beast fell, no longer able to use its legs.
I watched as it began scrabbling at the forest floor with its arms, still attempting to flee. I was impressed that it could ignore the pain from broken legs so well.
I finished off the first troll, and then teleported to the troll whose legs I'd broken. I swiped my hand at its neck in a karate-chop-esque movement, causing my hand to flow through its flesh, beheading it.
I picked up the head and studied it.
It had ugly warts on its face, and tusks protruded from its jaw. Its mouth hung open, giving me a good look at its razor-sharp teeth and lolling tongue. Its eyes bulged out comically.
I nodded. This would make a nice decoration for my tree-branch home.
I teleported away.
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A few days later, I was bounding around the forest, playing with my teleportation which still, somehow, had yet to level up.
I was looking for something interesting to eat.
My Culinary Arts skill had leveled up not long ago when I was baking some Speedfowl eggs with parts of the trolls I'd killed. I had a hypothesis that the more diverse range of ingredients I used, the more my skill would level. As such, I was looking for weird, interesting critters to put on the grill.
So far, I'd used lizards, not-badgers, a few more trolls, and some weird plants.
After eating them, I'd received a new level in Poison Mitigation, which was enough to push the resistance skill over the edge.
<Poison Mitigation Lv.9 -> Poison Integration Lv.1>
Interesting. Another skill to add to my awesomeness.
I wondered what it did.
To integrate was to mix, or combine two or more things together. Poison integration meant... what, adding poison to me?
Hmm. I guess I'd just have to find out.
But that wasn't important. It was nice to level up a skill, but it wasn't the skill I'd wanted.
I wanted Culinary Arts.
So I continued on my search for ingredients.
I nabbed some weird fungi, a weird squirrel-looking thing, some large beetle-like bugs, and a seemingly normal scorpion.
I'd come out to a new area of the forest in my search, leaving my territory behind.
In the distance, I saw a tree, taller and larger than the rest. It towered over the landscape like a monolith of nature. Branches reached out over entire sections of the forest, and great clumps of moss hung from those branches.
I appeared at its top in a single teleport.
It was pretty windy up there. The air was constantly screaming in my ears, and trying to blow me away. It was kind of weird how windy it was.
Then again, it was a magical forest. The windiness was probably a magical thing.
A magical tree with a magically windy top.
Regardless, the wind wasn't enough to blow me away, so I continued my exploration.
Not even five minutes in, and I found something interesting.
It was a nest. A gigantic bird's nest that was more than twice my height. Instead of sticks, it used whole logs. And it towered over me like a fortress.
I wondered what kind of bird had built it, but then decided I didn't care. Whatever it was, it couldn't possibly bother me; I was too strong now.
I teleported into the nest.
My eyes became stars.
Eggs. Lots of eggs.
Giant eggs, each the size of me, and more than twice my width. Given their sheer size, they coould have been boulders, if not for their location and coloring.
My mouth watered as I beheld them. Their shape, their sheen... simply beautiful.
I began plucking them from the nest with telekinesis, the boulder-sized eggs took little effort to move, and teleported home with them.
I couldn't wait to bake some giant omelets.
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POV Lord Of The Forest
When the lord returned it was furious.
Stolen. Its children were stolen.
The wind moved faster and faster around it, growing alongside the lord's rage. Soon, a veritable cyclone was swirling, buffetting trees nearly completely sideways. Animals died, plants were uprooted, and the earth was violently tilled by the furious air.
As the storm grew, the lord noticed a scent. The scent of something foreign.
The scent of the thief.
With a snap of its wings, it began moving. Alongside it moved the storm.
There would be hell to pay.
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System Status (For Now):
Name: Harry Potter
Titles: Hardened Rock, Unhinged, Fugitive, Survivalist, Hunter Hunter, Territorial, Ecosystem Engineer, Natural Disaster
Race: Wizard
Level: 29
HP: 2900/2900
MP: 3600/3650
SP: 2000/2450
San: 25%
Vit: 77
Str: 50
Dex: 73
Int: 99
Cha: 52
Skills:
-Mana Manipulation Lv.5
-Surya Fire Lv.1
-Telekinesis II Lv.9
-Teleport II Lv.9
-Culinary Arts Lv.9
-Garden Arts Lv.7
-Cleaning II Lv.2
-Widevision Lv.6
-Stealth II Lv.2
Resist:
-Heat Mitigation Lv.5
-Cold Mitigation Lv.2
-Cutting Resistance Lv.6
-Impulse-Force Mitigation Lv.3
-Pain Mitigation Lv.5
-Fear Resistance Lv.9
-Poison Integration Lv.1
-Hunger Mitigation Lv.4
-Suffocation Resistance Lv.9
-Faint Resistance Lv.9
-Paralysis Resistance Lv.1
Buffs:
Debuffs:
-Instability (-15% to Int)
-Claustrophobia (-50% to San when in enclosed spaces)
-Cursed (Horcrux)