Random Portals

“Blank, we should really begin recruiting. It would be best to not waste the time we have here.”

“Oh, calm down Kat. It will be months before my mana can recover on this mana barren world,” Blank said, eyes still glued to the scrying device, “besides I’ve found the ones I’m going to recruit, this Goku fellow and his friends are more than what I expected this world to be capable of. I’m just trying to get a lock on their location.”

“I have to agree. If we can find these warrior mages, there is a lot we could learn from them. The way they push their mana into physical beams is quite impressive.”

“Precisely.” Blank said, his eyes not once leaving the scrying device.

“Although, even if you can get a lock on their location, it’s not like you can teleport to them. It maybe more prudent to go and ask around. They have to be quite famous and surely they would be interested in meeting with us.” Kat said.

“Fantastic idea!” Blank said, not turning away from the scrying device. “I’ll stay here and you shape shift into that Steven fellow and go around asking about Goku.”

“That’s not what I had in mind.”

Blank didn’t respond, eyes glued to the scrying device.

“Fine, I’ll do the legwork! But if I come back and you still haven’t locked onto their location, then you can go out, and I’ll stay on the comfy bench.” Kat said, clearly irritated.

“Okay, okay. It’s a deal. It won’t be hard to get information on these incredible warrior mages. I wasn’t expecting any magic from this world, much less fighters like these.”

Katarina shape-shifted from a winged cat into Steven’s form and headed for the door.

“Kat, you may want to put some clothes on. Also, could you bring something back to eat?”

Kat narrowed her eyes at Blank. “Fine, I’ll see what I can scrounge up.”

Steven sat down at the table in the treehouse, greedily drinking from the water-skin. His clothes were soaked with sweat from the muggy swamp air. He had been at it for hours. At first, the mosquitos were easy to kill. They even came after him and he just squished them on his arm, but after he killed so many of them, the little bastards began to fly away. He had to chase down the last several. It seemed like the more he killed, the harder they were to find. But there was no way in hell that there were only eighty-six mosquitoes in this damn swamp. Maybe they could smell the squished and dried mosquitoes on his hands. Now that he thought about it, the dried mosquito blood and guts were disgusting. He had wiped his hands on the grass when he came back, but he should really wash his hands. If he cleaned up a bit, maybe he wouldn’t have such a problem getting the last few he needed. He had already tried squishing other bugs, but he didn’t even receive a notification for those.

Steven washed up using the never ending water skin. After loading up his pipe and relaxing for a bit, he went back at again, though he was reluctant to get too far away from the barrier. He remembered that flying cat saying it was dangerous, and he wanted to be able to run back to safety if need be.

All he wanted to do was get to level one and get access to his stat page. But no! Those damned mosquitoes had to fly away any time he even got close to them now. Once it was apparent the mosquitoes were still going to fly away from him, he decided to try a different area. It seemed he could come and go through any part of the barrier without issue.

After finding the area with the largest section of solid ground, he went to work. Sadly, he was only able to chase down two more mosquitoes before they flew out over the swampy water.

“Damnit! Just stop flying away, you little shits!”

The area he was on may have been the largest section of solid ground, but it was still quite small, not leaving him with many options. Eventually Steven had gotten so frustrated he took his shirt off, thinking it would entice the little bloodsuckers. But no, they still flew out over the swamp water, out of reach. He did, however, get one more of them by using his shirt as a fly swatter. Which seemed preposterous, as there had to be two dozen of the little shits on the log as he swung his shirt at them.

Two pairs of reptilian eyes floated in the swamp water, watching a human attempt to kill mosquitoes.

“Father, what is that creature? And what is it doing?”

“I believe it is a human. We must inform the Elders of this. I think he is trying to kill those mosquitoes.”

“But why? It’s not like he could ever make a dent in the mosquito population. And why did he take his shirt off?”

The older Naga was silent for a long while as he floated just out of sight of the human.

“Father, what is he doing with his shirt now?”

“Be quiet Ralu, you must stay focused on the task at hand if you wish to be a scout one day. You must simply observe. Shirem’s aura vanished in this area and the mission is to observe the area and report back.”

Frustration consumed Steven as he pondered his next move. He had spent all day trying to get to level one. He was unsure what that all entailed, but he knew he wanted it. Access to a stat page was not something he was going to let slip through his fingers. Deciding he had enough mosquito hunting for the day, he headed back to the tree house.

This was just like a video game, and he simply needed to figure out how to surpass this challenge. It’s what he did after all. It was just so damn frustrating that the bugs flew away from him and the muggy swamp wasn’t helping. He had thought he could power level by squishing thousands of mosquitos, but things are never simple. Too bad he didn’t have a bug zapper. Would he even gain the essence if he had a bug zapper? He wasn’t sure, but maybe tomorrow would be better. As for today, he was going to get a plate of food and head to the library. He had been thinking about that steak and potatoes for a while now. At least he thought that’s what it was. As he walked back, he wondered why there was so much food. It seemed a bit excessive for just an old man and a flying cat, but if the food never went bad, then he supposed it made sense to stockpile food.

Why was there no indoor toilet? This was absurd! Who built an awesome magical tree house and didn’t install a simple toilet? Now that he thought about it, there wasn’t even any running water. The only water he even had access to was the water skin labeled Never Ending Water. He hoped that was true, and it didn’t run out of magic or something. If it did, he would be up shit creek. He didn’t think there was a way to clean the swamp water, no matter how many times he boiled it. The stuff looked so thick it was more of a sludge, although that could just be a top layer.

Once he had finished the steak and potatoes, he left his plate and headed upstairs. Though once he was halfway up the stairs, he stopped, curiosity taking hold of him. The plates he left continued to disappear. He assumed the floating rags were taking care of it, but what did they do with them? Slowly making his way back down the stairs, he peeked his head out to see how the rags did it.

There were more than just two rags this time. A couple were cleaning the floor, while a few were hovering around the plate. He watched in disbelief as the rags cleaned off the plate and then one of the bigger rags covered the plate and it vanished. A second later, all the rags stopped. Steven got the sense they were looking at him, but it was difficult to tell what direction a rag was looking.

“Uh, thanks for cleaning up the mess.”

Glancing down at his shoes and back at the floor, he noticed he had tracked in a bit of mud and dirt. He then awkwardly took his shoes off and set them at the bottom of the stairs. “Sorry, I’ll start taking them off at the door.” Steven said sheepishly. Meanwhile, the rags never moved and just floated in place. He then made his way back up the stairs to the library. Steven had a job as a janitor for a few months, and it gave him a new perspective on the cleaning industry. He wasn’t sure if the rags could even understand him, much less care if he said thank you. But he wasn’t going to chance upsetting magical rags. If those things had a mind to, they could easily strangle him in his sleep.

Once in the library, he started going through books, trying to find one that could teach him magic. There were books on Elves, Dwarves, Naga, Centaurs and names of creatures he had no idea what were. And those were just the ones he came across. There were thousands of books.

He was surprised he could read them without any problem. He didn’t know if there was some sort of magic involved or if the books were just all written in English. Eventually he found a book with a title that looked promising, “A Beginners Guide to Shardless Magic.”

He quickly realized he could only read the first sentence.

“Step one, clear one’s mind, then focus on your mana.”

He skimmed through the rest of the book and, sure enough, he couldn’t read anything but the first sentence. The rest of the words looked to be just squiggly lines that he couldn’t make heads or tails of.

Walking over to a chair, he sat the book on the table and did his best to clear his mind.

This turned out to be much more difficult than he first thought it. Also, what was Shardless magic? And what was mana exactly? He knew what it did from games, but what it was exactly eluded him. How was he supposed to focus on something he didn’t even know what was?

He got the sense that if he completed the first step, then the next step would appear in the book, although that could be just wishful thinking. Either way, he sat back and did his best to clear his mind.

Shirem had been tasked with looking into the strange mana fluctuations near the Wizard’s barrier.

At first, he sensed nothing, then his aura picked up on something. But even when he was standing in the very spot he sensed it, there was nothing.

Then, without any warning, his entire body was bathed in purple light and the next thing he knew, he was standing in a forest with tiny trees. It was dry and everything was green. Shirem had never seen anything quite this disgusting. He wasn’t sure what happened. His best guess was some sort of defensive teleportation magic from the barrier. Although that didn’t seem right, as he should have been far from its reach.

Either way, he needed to get home. He wondered how far away he was. Surely it couldn’t have sent him far. Although he had to be a good distance away to not be in his swamp. Whatever the case, he needed to get back to his clan and inform the Elders of this. With this sort of power, the Wizard was more of a threat than they had initially thought. Teleportation magic was of the highest tier.

Shirem looked up. The sun seemed brighter than normal. He retracted his scales to let his skin soak up the sun for a moment.

While basking in the sun, he began searching for the moon. After a few minutes, he located it and took off at a slight jog. He needed to get a sense of where he was. If only he could locate the great river, he could swim till he reached the swamp lands. It wasn’t long before he came to a road. It was similar to the ones the humans used when they came to trade with the Spider-kin. But this one was made of some sort of melted rock. He walked to the center of the road to get a closer look at the two yellow lines. The road was hot and rough. He felt sorry for the animals that had to pull the wagons on it.

“Humans,” Shirem said in disgust, “no compassion for anything, not even their own.”

An odd noise began to echo out. It was like nothing he had ever heard before. It seemed to come from the road, and from the sound, it was traveling at high speeds. Shirem pulled out his enchanted daggers, then activated his shard ability. Black scales appeared all over his body, covering his pale white skin. Suddenly, he saw the creature. It was unlike anything he could have imagined. It was some sort of shelled creature. Its shell was bright red and was extremely shiny. He didn’t get any more time to look at the creature as it was coming straight at him. Despite its bulk, it was moving at an insane speed. Shirem was sure he could take it down. If not, the beast didn’t look like it could make it through the woods with those stubby legs. He would definitely be able to take it down in a forest if it pursued him. For now, he would stand his ground. This would be a great beast to test his agility on.

Shirem waited till the creature was nearly on him before he jumped over the beast. At the same time, he conjured toxic thorns all over the road. The creature was moving so fast that it went right over the thorns just as he summoned them. The shelled creature didn’t make it far past the thorns and slid off the road. Shirem quickly made his way over. His plan was to finish the creature off quickly. He could use all the essence he could get. Shirem slowly approached the creature. It didn’t make any reaction to his presence. Though it was making an odd rumbling sound. Even stranger, the aura he was sensing was of two humans. But that didn’t stop him. He jumped on the back of the creature poised to strike, but when the shelled creature made no reaction, he paused. At the same time a human fell out of the creature.

“What the hell is going on? You could have killed me and my girl. What sort of moron dresses up in a costume and stands in the road! I nearly hit you! And what’s all these thorns stuck in my tires? Your cosplaying ass will be paying for new tires!”

Shirem just looked at the human with curiosity. He had absolutely no idea what the human was saying. The human looked angry and confused, but he assumed the human was thanking him. He had just saved them from that shelled beast after all. He was irritated he didn’t get any essence from the kill, but it was obviously dead if the human was able to get out of it. Most likely the human finished it from the inside and somehow took all the essence. It was just bad luck. Humans were always bad luck, but the Elders told him to always treat them with respect unless they tried to harm him.

“It was no problem human, you are welcome. Could you possibly point me in the direction of the great river?”

“Really! You’re just going to hiss at me. What are you even doing on my car? Are you filming this? Where are they? Where are the cameras? You can come out now, you can expect a lawsuit! The lot of you! My dash cam recorded the whole thing.”

The human was loud. Shirem didn’t understand why he was screaming. Maybe the noise of the beast messed up his ears. Shaking his head, Shirem took off back into the woods at a slight jog. It was a waste of time to stay there. As he ran off, he could still hear the human yelling his thanks. The human even chased after himself to get a couple more thankyou’s in. Shirem regretted not having his communication ring with him. It would have made finding the river much easier, but it couldn’t be helped now. It wouldn’t be a problem once night fell. He could follow the star’s home. But for now he would go in the general direction of the swamp according to the moon, though even that was hard to see with the sun beaming down so brightly.