"Please! I d-"
"Family! I hav-"
"I was for-"
One by one, the remaining bandits were executed by magic bullet.
'The more things change, the more things stay the same, I suppose.'
A cold glimmer eminated from Furio's eyes.
He felt nothing towards the bandits.
'Still, they're bad guys, right?'
With that small rationalisation, Furio looked around at the corpses.
Fifteen in total.
"Hm?"
Furio quickly looked at his palm, feeling Blue travel through his body.
"What do you want, little guy?"
Blue looked at Furio, and then at the corpses, as if saying 'can I?'
"Well, go ahead, not like I'll be doing anything with them."
Blue jumped off Furios hand, landing elegantly, well, however elegantly a worm could land.
"Whoa, what the fuck."
Furio watched as Blue created some sort of... portal, perhaps? Which immediately sucked the bandits in.
Eight bandits were consumed in an instant.
Quicker than before, Blue went around, repeating the same act to the scattered corpses of the other bandits who had been killed earlier.
Whilst this happened, Furio looked on with curiosity.
"...Just what the hell are you?"
After Blue was done with the final bandit, he crawled back to Furio, jumping a few feet into the air and landing cleanly on Furios arm.
A small burp sound resonated from the worm, satisfied at the meal it had just received.
Furio was still in shock at the situation, but Blue quietly reentered his heart, offering no explanation.
Before Furio could call the worm out again, a status screen appeared.
[Calculating...]
[Bandit x15 has been recognised]
[Experience has been added to skill: Magic Bullet]
[Experience for skill: Magic Bullet has increased from 58% to 103%]
[Magic Bullet has reached level 2!]
[Overflow experience has been added]
[Magic Bullet - Skill
Fire a bullet of pure mana at high speeds. Two magic bullets may now be fired from one circle.
Level 2 - 1%]
"Huh."
'Blue eating those guys... gave me experience?'
Furio had no idea how such a thing worked.
He already understood that Blue had some sort of connection to the system, but this was different.
Even killing weaklings like those had allowed him to level up the skill he had been training for over a week with slow progress.
"You're something, aren't you?"
Furio wondered if this ability was only effective against humans.
If he could defeat monsters, wouldn't he be able to raise his strength far faster?
It was not as if Blue could speak and answer all his questions, so Furio kept it in mind, intending to test it later.
...
Time passed without much further event.
Unfortunately, Furio did not receive the chance to feed Blue further meals using bandits.
He had hunted some small animals and a wolf, but none of them were magic beasts, and the meals seemed unfulfilling for Blue.
At least he was able to confirm that Blue would eat anything.
Those meals had given Furio small amounts of experience, although it was minimal compared to the fifteen bandits from earlier.
He had just reached the White Desert, and the terrain had a remarkable shift.
Previously, he was going down a forest path, but almost instantly, grass and trees shifted to white sand dunes.
"Ridiculous."
Furio was no expert in geography, but he believed something like this shouldn't happen.
Furio quickly changed his clothes into an attire more suited for the desert, and checked the ring on his finger.
[Worn Out Ruby Ring]
[A ring crafted by a young mage around ten years ago. Since then, the Ruby has lost its luster, reducing the efficacy of the ring.
Rank: E
Effect: Very Minor increase in body strength]
Unfortunately, it wasn't some legendary ring crafted by an archmage that for some reason looked like junk.
The effect was still decent though so Furio had no room to complain.
When he wore it, he felt a very slight yet noticable increase in stamina.
More importantly, when analysing it after handing the bandits, he had found out that he had an 'analysis' sort of skill built into the system.
This was a huge gain.
He knew it had limitless applications, even if it did not have much use to him at the current moment.
He had tried testing it on all the items in his posession, and it seemed it was only able to recognise items of a certain quality.
Both his beginner magic book and his spacial pouch were rated as D rank.
Furio felt sure that the system had more to offer than what he currently knew.
He tried asking for a shop, or an achievement page, a title page, and some other nonsense, but unfortunately nothing appeared.
Despite this, he did not appear downcast, assuming that perhaps one day they would appear.
Finally, before entering the desert, he checked on his status.
In the few weeks he had been able to use magic, he had been able to increase his Magic stat from 'lowest' to 'mid' fitting with his body and reflex stats.
He wasn't sure if it was an amazing rate of improvement or not, simply accepting it for what it was.
Although he was still a beginner mage, he felt that he had become significantly stronger than when he had first awakened magic.
"Will that be enough, though?"
The White Desert was certainly not a place for beginner mages to wander, a fact that he was well aware of.
The merchant caravan he had met earlier had twenty guards, and even then they were mostly annihalated.
"It's either this or go home and get my throat slit again."
Furio walked forwards.
---
LOG 6 - MONSTERS
Monster exists as the all encompassing term for beasts and savage beings with the ability to wield some form of magic, directly or indirectly. Low ranking monsters like black direwolves are able to absorb magic from the air around them, allowing them to grow larger and stronger, but high ranking monsters such as dragons and unicorns are able to cast their own spells outright.