Chapter 7: Reject Magic

I stood in the middle of the forest, watching as the heavy fog around me cleared up and the sky shifted back to its normal blue, not fighting to catch my breath or wait for my pounding heart to slow down because… you know. But! I was left a little rattled by the end-phase assault of the Dungeon Crawl. It left me wondering if there was anything I should have done differently besides, well, everything.

I could have been more careful while hunting down the Timberwolfs and maybe saved myself the hassle of being ambushed myself. I could admit that after half a dozen kills under my belt, I had gotten brazenly careless against what I thought were senseless, idiotic beasts. Could anyone blame me, though? All but the Alpha had an effective Perception of 1!

I also probably could have hunted down the five remaining Betas after killing the Alpha without using up any of my Stat Points on Agility. Now that I thought about it, even if they had been called over, I could have just moved from the spot the Alpha had called them to and with their abysmal Perception, likely hidden myself right under their figurative noses. Hell, I hadn’t even used my Sprint Skill during the fight at all!

Oh well, there was nothing I could do about that now.

Instead of dwelling on my mistakes, I decided to focus on the positives. For starters, I’d Leveled up again, getting a Full Recovery and three more Stat Points for my troubles. There was also the new Perk Point to investigate. Not to mention the Common Dungeon Chest, which might as well have been called a Gacha Token since they essentially did the same thing. Also, more Agility meant more speed, which meant faster running and hopefully encountering civilization sooner.

I decided to look at my [Perks] first.

Perks were… odd. They were kind of like Abilities in some respects, kind of like Skills in others, and hard to holistically separate from either. Some Perks did the same things Skills could do, others did the same for with regards to Abilities; all the ones that followed this trend were supremely better in the form of a Perk. It made sense though, as Skills and Abilities could Level Up, while Perks could not. Moreover, if they followed the example of Skill Points only showing up every other Level Up and Abilities Points showing up every third Level Up, it made sense if Perk Points could only be gained every fifth Level Up.

The Perk List was long, with dozens if not hundreds of options, but I only met the qualifications for less than ten, going on potentially two more depending on how I allocated my remaining free Stat Points. Anyone familiar with the Fallout games could see the similarities.

Of the many Perks I could pick from, though, there were really only two that I wanted. Unfortunately, they were a mutually exclusive sort of deal, but that was probably for the best, given either option was bound to make me hilariously overpowered compared to what I currently was.

[Perks]
[Available Perks]
[Name: Impossible Existence (Origin)]
[Description: You are a magicless being in a magical world. Everything is supposed to have magic and yet you don’t. In fact, you refuse it, subverting reality itself to adapt to you instead of it being the other way around.]
[Effect: Permanently prevents you from acquiring an internal source of Magic. Grants you absolute Magic Immunity and total Magic Absorption which allows you to convert absorbed Magic into Free Points.]

[Name: Impossible Existence (Terminal)]
[Description: How long do you plan on existing as a glitch in the Matrix? Fix the errors of your being to align with that of the world and see exactly why it is that Humans are considered myths and legends in this Realm.]
[Effect: Grants the user a Mana Bar and the ability to use any kind of Magic. Grants the user a predetermined Magic Skill based on their character and a new Ability in the Magic category that will be unlocked with this Perk’s purchase.]

I went with the Origin option over Terminal for no other reason than it sounding a lot more powerful long-term. Absolute Magic Immunity and Total Magic Absorption made me invincible against Magic-based attacks, clearing up who knows how many miserable ways I might get killed without even knowing.

It nearly brought a tear to my eye knowing I would never personally wield magic, but if I was being honest with myself, I didn’t really need it. Not if I built myself up to be a physical fighter and especially not after I made myself invincible to magic users. Besides, if I took on the other Perk and gained the ability to use Magic, I’d probably need to worry about balancing out how I would increase my Intelligence and Wisdom with the rest of my Stats. Going forward though, increasing either would only be situationally useful at best.

Without my own Magic, the only Intelligence did was raise my Magic Resistance in the same way Constitution raised my Physical Defence. Wisdom on the other hand increased my Elemental Affinity and that would only manifest a tangible benefit if I used an external Magic Source or any non-Magic-based Elemental Energy.

Speaking of, just because I gave up Magic didn’t mean I couldn’t use other supernatural phenomena to achieve similar feats. Ninjas from Naruto didn’t use Magic. Capes in Worm didn’t use Magic. And there was no shortage of trashy Xianxia or Xuanhuan power systems that were meticulously built without any mention of Magic in their world-building.

Was it sad that I wouldn’t be able to Avada Kedavra my enemies for an easy win? Perhaps, but I’d likely be able to achieve the same effect with a punch backed by a high enough Strength or Agility rating. Besides, the “Physical Specimen” trope in any action-packed media was among my favorite. What better “Fuck You” was there in a world of magic and superpowers than being able to one-up anyone with just your body?

Cough, having a killer body would also be nice, cough. I mean, I was already pretty well-built before dying. Ever since, the increases in my Strength had improved my muscle definition slightly, but it was still nowhere near Hollywood levels of unreasonableness. I wanted it to be obvious that my body fat percentage was in the single-digit range. I wanted my biceps to peak at over twenty inches and my abs to look dangerously cut.

“Maybe I should invest a bit in Charisma,” I muttered to myself before shaking the treacherous thought from my head.

Returning back to more important matters at hand, I confirmed that I wanted to open up the Common Dungeon Chest I’d earned.

[Common Dungeon Chest Opened!]
[You have received: 5 F Grade Magic Crystals & 20 Kilograms of Timberwolf Scrap]

Honestly, it was kind of disappointing, especially as a follow-up to the Perk I’d just taken. Then again, where was I getting grand expectations from when the rewards had come from something with the “Common” classification?

I dismissed the screen and went to the bodies of the Timberwolfs I killed after being ambushed by the Alpha to pick them clean of all their loot. Since they hadn’t been overkilled to the point of total deconstruction, I actually had to somewhat dismantle the wood pieces from a cohesive core of soil at the center mass of each Timberwolf.

I didn’t have any issues ripping the branches out, taking only five minutes or so with each Beta Timberwolf on average before moving on to the Alpha.

[New Skill Unlocked!]
[Name: Dismantle Lvl 1 | +10 Exp]
[Description: Like Harvesting, but for corpses. You know the deal…]
[Active Cost: 5 Stamina per cubic meter]

True to its description, Dismantle achieved functionally the same work I would have done manually at the same level of proficiency as Harvesting; for Level 1 that was getting about 10% of the total loot per cast. For such a cheap cost, I just spammed the Skill until the entire Timberwolf Alpha collapsed in on itself as a pile of loose soil.

With all my spoils from the battle safely stored away in my Inventory, I took a second to update my map and work on my Cartography Skill before carrying on with my expedition. There was still nearly half an hour to go before the Buffs from the Coffee Granola Bar expired, so I activated my Sprint Skill at its lowest setting and settled into a comfortable 60 Mile per Hour run across the flattest path in front of me. I traded some of the Timberwolf Scrap I looted for a speedometer to check and found that I peaked at a little over 76 Miles per Hour when I found a decent stretch that was completely straight.

I traveled over and around a couple mountains before the sun started to set, at which point I stopped to set up camp in the most secure place I could find — another cave, naturally. I ended the first day of the expedition likely traveling over a hundred miles, but if I checked against my hand-drawn map, there were only a couple dozen miles between my current position on my original home cave.

I went to sleep wondering how many more days I’d have to rough it out in the wild before I encountered people, or at least non-hostile sentient life. Then again, I couldn’t be sure it’d be for the best if I did end up encountering the natives of this world. If they were humans, I’d have to constantly watch my back around them, in case they found out about my Perk-given anomalous nature.

In a magical world, I had chosen to reject Magic. I wouldn’t be surprised if an opposite case — a magical being entered the mundane world of Earth — was found out and caused people back home to capture, experiment, and vivisect the odd one out in the name of the greater good, the betterment of humanity, or whatever other nonsense excused such terribly unethical behavior.

“Great, now I’m going to have nightmares if I end up dreaming tonight,” I grumbled to myself before closing my eyes and putting a lid on the thought machine that ran wild in my head.

Author's Note

Oof, the story got temporarily taken down (I'm hoping) because there weren't more direct associations with MLP in the previous chapters. There won't be for a couple more Chapters, but if you're seeing this it'll be because I posted enough to eventually get there and meet the submission requirements.