My Servant System

With a flourish of my left hand, I controlled a sizable wave of water and sent it flying through the air, wrapping it around the neck of a leaping wolf and slamming it into the ground with a sickening crunch as its spine was snapped on the jagged, ore filled rocks below us.

Unwinding the water from the monster's now crooked neck, I sharpened it and used the water to eviscerate a second wolf, slicing cleanly through its stomach and causing its organs to splash along the bloodied ground with a wet thud that just made me shiver in joy...

Finally, I balled the water up and flung it swiftly towards the last monster - a reptile of some kind this time - and watched in amusement as the bullet slipped into its skull and blasted out the back of it, doing exactly what I wanted it to do as I killed the little lizard thing in a single hit, just like the others.

"So? How's it feel? Does it work well, or have any issues? At least, on the physical side of things? Discomfort, not solid enough, too heavy, too light?"

Anput rushed forwards to my side and began to appraise the wand in my hands, the Jackalkin lifting my arm and ensuring she could get a closer look at the entire thing as well as my hand as she tried to ensure there was nothing wrong with her craftsmanship whatsoever, something that I found rather amusing.

"There are no issues with it, my love. It's a tad light, but there isn't much you can do about that except waste material; besides, it only feels light because I am accustomed to daggers - and now my Khopesh. But everything else is good enough. Maybe something to ensure it never slips from my hand though? A leather grip, perhaps? But besides that, this is rather good! I can't wait to enchant it properly too..."

Releasing my hand, Anput nodded to herself and gave me a smug grin, that 'worry' of hers fading instantly as soon as I praised her work and her skill, the Jackalkin turning her nose up into the air somewhat as she did everything she could to look haughty and proud.

I wasn't lying either - not that I ever would - but the wand was surprisingly quite nice to wield, even in my off hand; the control it had over magic was nice compared to my hand, whilst the enhancement to my mana was not by a lot, though 'not by a lot' was still a buff that I could get behind.

And honestly, she wasn't the only one proud of it either - I was proud of my work too, with how utterly complicated it had been to bind the water infused gemstone into the water attuned metal used to create the bulk of the wand.

It truly was akin to wiring something together, if those wires were all tangled and jumbled together inside the gemstone and not color coded or sensibly labeled to go into the awaiting wires inside the metal at all...

So being able to get the wand into a workable, 'complete' state was something that I was proud of, though I still had some ways to go with getting the two connected - I had messed up on some of the initial wiring as I learned what I needed to do, not doing it in the most optimal way and losing out on some of the potential of the materials, which lost me some of the ability to retain my mana's potency as best it could, lowering the purity and therefor lowering the damage.

But, it wasn't by a lot - though like I said before, 'not by a lot' was still a buff, or in this case it was still a debuff that I was not particularly wanting to have...

All in all though, it was still a pretty good addition to my arsenal, and this little test run of it was proving that to be truer by the second with each enemy that I killed... not that we had run into anything high level or particularly dangerous just yet to give it a good test yet, but... well, ask and you shall receive, right?

That's usually how these things worked in books or whatever, right?

"It'd be nice to test this wand out against something a bit more difficult though, y'know? Get a better grasp on just how much power I can get from it, and how quickly?"

Saying so, I looked around in hopes of some hidden monster deciding that now would be the perfect time to pop out and begin attacking us because of divine comedic timing, but alas, there was no such luck on my end, leaving Anput to just nod and look around too before sniffing the air.

"Well, there's some more monsters wandering around for some further testing, but I doubt they'll offer much in terms of a challenge. Still good to get a feel for the wand though, right?"

"I guess..."

Looking around once more, I sighed and took a sniff of the air as well, catching the scent of the various monsters that were still lingering around inside this grotto and tracing them to their positions, deciding that if I couldn't do a power test against a resilient enemy, then a power test against a weaker enemy was still valid.

After all, depending on how mangled their corpse was after I launched a spell at them with as much power as I could, that could be a good way to understand just how strong the increase was and allow me to create realistic expectations for what I now had to work with.

So, Anput and I took care of the three monsters I had just killed, dismantling them quickly and harvesting the parts that we truly wanted from them for later use, which we stored inside an ice chest that Anput encased in stone before creeping away towards the monsters we both had caught the scent of, which happened to be a grazing herd of scaled deer of some kind.

All that mattered was that they were numerous, had obvious Earth Mana attunement thanks to the rocky, scaled legs they had, and weren't able to sense us just yet, so I had the opportunity to create a baseline damage to measure the upcoming, wand enhanced damage against.

Handing the wand to Anput to hold temporarily, I traced out the runes for a simple water arrow spell - a tad more power and velocity than a bullet spell, and bigger - before leaving the runes floating as I did the same with the wand, allowing me to launch both spells at the same time.

As soon as the runes were traced out and I was ready, I cast both spells simultaneously at two of the five deer monsters and watched as two separate, and slightly - very slightly, but still sort of noticeable - arrows whistled through the air at high speeds, puncturing the torsos of the deer and creating two separate, very different wounds.

The non buffed spell punctured into hide of the deer before bursting, dealing damage to the internal organs and completely killing the deer from the inside out, before creating an exit wound that was slightly larger than the entry wound that allowed all of that internal damage to splash onto the ground.

The buffed spell simply made the deer's torso explode in a large shower of gore, reminiscent of a watermelon being smashed; it was a crystal clear difference in power that made Anput and I both stop for a moment and just take in what happened, before I swiftly cast three more spells that I made sure wouldn't completely ruin three perfectly fine walking meals...

Instead, swift crescents slashed into the deers necks and separated them from their body, decapitating them before they had much of a chance to react to the deaths of their fellow deer, something that gave Anput and I the time to properly stare at the head, legs, and small portion of body that were left from that initial buffed spell.

"I am... unsure of how to feel about that..? Is it that much of an increase, or is the scaling just too great between the two to be easily judged..? Like... the wand is too powerful for something that is so weak? Or would the quality of the monster not really matter?"

My mate's question made me shake my head as I idly replied "I think it mattered, but I don't know by how much... wow, wasn't that rather pretty though? The way it burst into a cloud of red, the splash of its blood across the grass... oh, it was so~ very pretty..."

"Pretty... is not the first word that came to mind, but sure... you can call it that I guess..."

I just giggled as I nodded, staring lovingly at the four 'whole' corpses and singular heavily damaged one, my gaze landing on the thing responsible for it all - the wand that Anput had made for me, something that would earn the Jackalkin a rather suitable reward...