Chapter 80: Change

“Hm, hm. The texture’s nice.” He bit through the leaves and stem easily, and a sweet juice filled his mouth as he munched on the plant. “Delightfully light and sweet.” Roy tasted something else after finishing the whole plant — the sweetness of blood. It lingered in his mouth for a while before disappearing.

Roy frowned and wiped the juice from the corner of his lips, and then he saw striking crimson on his finger. It was warm, just like human blood. His frown deepened. “It felt like I just gobbled something that was alive.”

He closed his eyes to feel the change in his body. A strange warmth coursed through him, but it waned after a moment. Roy certainly felt something within him, but it wasn’t enough to cause a change. Nothing changed in his stats or job, though a line with a vague green hue showed up in his skill sheet. Roy could see the outline of words, but they were blinking, threatening to disappear at any time. A new skill is forming? It can’t settle down because I didn’t ingest enough? Roy confirmed the fact he had to ingest five ounces to see the change. I’ll just eat more of it then. But I can’t take them all. Gotta leave some for Letho. 

He uprooted another Child of the Sun, but Letho didn’t stop him. Instead, he arched an eyebrow and leaned against the wall, planning to see what Roy had in mind.

Roy ate another feainnewedd, and another, and another, and another. Once he was done with the fifth, Roy stopped eating. Then he sat down in the meditation stance and felt the changes in his body. His brows and lips were trembling as the Child of the Sun released an enormous heat wave throughout his body. His blood-caked face, neck, and forearms were turning scarlet, as if Roy were being baked in an oven.

The heat rushed to his brain, turning into thousands and thousands of lines of ancient text. He saw thousands of characters in his head, but he didn’t recognize most of them, for he’d never learned that kind of alphabet. Everything was alien to him, though he could see they were rustic —  ancient, even. Only a few were similar to the common speech he’d learned in the House of Cardell. To be exact, common speech was a derivative of the weird language he was seeing in his head.

He was in a trance for god knew how long, and eventually, his soul memorized all the words he saw in his mind, including their pronunciations, the way to write them, and even their meanings. Roy had mastered a language just like that. Is this an ancient language? Roy snapped out of his trance, and his instincts told him his guess was on the money.

The language he’d just mastered was ancient speech, the one elves used. But how’d I manage to do that? Is it because of the plant I ate? He turned to his character sheet and saw something surprising. 

‘You have ingested a sufficient amount of Child of the Sun. You now possess the talent of the Aen Elle race. You have mastered ancient speech through the legacy of your bloodline.

You have unlocked a skill: 

Elegance of the Wind (Passive): Elves possess extraordinarily elegant looks and great dexterity. Charisma +1, Dexterity +1.

Charisma: 5 → 6

Dexterity: 5.1 → 6.1’

***

I can’t believe a few plants just changed my bloodline. “So I’m not a human anymore. Well, not fully, at least.” Otherworlders like him didn’t mind their bloodlines. He wasn’t scared about becoming a witcher, so being an elf meant nothing to him. Now I’m an elf, so what? At least I’m not a dwarf or a gnome. That would’ve been a shocker. And I got two attribute points for free.

He read through his character sheet again and saw that he wasn’t an Aen Seidhe elf, unlike the ones residing in the witcher world. Instead, he was an Aen Elle elf from another world. The elves shared a complex relationship, but he knew that Ciri, the blessed girl, managed to travel through time and space thanks to her ancient bloodline, and the source of that was the elves of Aen Elle.

Will it be possible to gain a space-time skill with this bloodline then? He shook his head and smiled. That’s too far-fetched for now. I’ll put it aside.

Letho had been watching Roy quietly, and he noticed the slight changes in Roy’s air and face. Roy’s face had turned fairer and glossier. Not even the dried blood could cover it, and his ears seemed to grow longer and pointier, though he’d have missed it if he hadn’t looked closer. When Roy opened his eyes again, Letho could see a galaxy in them.

He’s more conspicuous than before. “How do you feel, boy?”

“Great!” Roy leaped up and stretched his arms before doing a backflip. “I feel more flexible and balanced. And I mastered ancient speech.”

“Ancient speech?” Letho observed him. “Your looks have changed a bit too after eating those plants.”

“Where in particular?” Roy touched his cheeks, nose, eyes, and lips, but he felt nothing different. I’ll have to get a mirror.

“You look more sculpted now, and your ears got a bit pointy. That’s how a typical part-elf looks like.” And then realization struck Letho. “I see. Child of the Sun is one hell of an invention. It can even change a human into a part-elf,” he mocked. “Humans toppled their rule, and they came up with a plant that could turn humans into elves? That was a good plan, I’ll have to admit, but since they couldn’t mass-produce them, it failed. You probably mastered ancient speech through the legacy of your bloodline.” Letho stopped for a moment to look at Roy. “You might just become something big, boy. Most part-elves are.”

Part-elves were born when either one parent was half-elf, or both of them were. Part-elves were more humanlike than half-elves, so they didn’t look very much like elves. Thanks to that, they could blend in with humans easily. Only extreme racists would discriminate against them on the grounds that they weren’t humans.

Yennefer of Vengerberg, Falka who caused bloodbaths in the northern empires, and Vernon Ryan, the revolutionist leader, were all part-elves. 

“I’d rather you not joke that way, Letho.” Roy was worried about something else. “Can part-elves undergo the trial?”

“Don’t worry. That’s not a problem at all. In fact, being part-elf can be a boon,” Letho said. “You’ll have a drastically extended lifespan. I’d say you’ll live until a hundred and twenty or thirty if you don’t get into accidents or have any terminal illnesses.”

Roy thought about it silently. Is that the benefit of being a half-blood? “Since it’s good for you, why don’t you finish the rest? They’re useless now since the recipes for the meds have been lost in time. Not like we would have any use for them even if they could be made.”

Witchers usually looked like they were in their mid-thirties or forties for a century or two. Most didn’t even get that far in life, since battles would claim them earlier than a natural death would. That made Divine Beauty redundant. Witchers had a high resistance to poison, and that made Omnipotent Antidote useless.

Letho hesitated slightly before uprooting the chirping plants, and then he feasted on them. However, much to their surprise, nothing changed even after he ate four of them, whereas Roy had felt a surge of warmth after having a single plant. 

Child of the Sun didn’t do anything to Letho. 

“Hm, I wonder why? The mutation, perhaps?” Roy mumbled. Witchers technically weren’t humans anymore, since their organs and genes mutated after the trial.

“Maybe the change only works on humans.” Letho noticed it and stopped eating. Instead, he asked Roy to keep the last one in his inventory space.

“I wonder if that sorcerer would kill us if he found out what we did to his feainnewedd farm.” Roy put Letho’s arm around his shoulder and moved forward with painstaking effort.

“Highly unlikely. It’d been more than ten years since the barrier had been strengthened, so it’d been weak. The sorcerer is probably dead,” Letho answered. That sorcerer put in a lot of effort to make that room, but we reaped the rewards in the end. Is this also fate?

***

Child of the Sun had another hidden effect that was only made known that night when Roy meditated. It was the first time he meditated after his bloodline change, and compared to the shallow meditation that only healed him, the meditation this time took him deeper into the zone, making him come into contact with the truth of the world.

Roy’s consciousness entered a densely dark zone, the novelty reminding him of his first mediation. The air around him was almost viscous, and he could see ripples that tied his consciousness down, stopping him from moving around. Then, a small flame ignited in the darkness. It was far, far away from Roy, and a single breath would be enough to extinguish it. However, it was resilient, and it approached Roy bit by bit, the astounding heat and destruction within it getting more pronounced with each passing second.

And then a yellow light appeared. It was stable and anchoring, just like the earth. Then a green one moved around nimbly, just like the wind, and finally, a blue one that calmed and soothed him, just like water. Water, earth, fire, and air. The four elements were closing in on him. If Roy’s soul had tentacles, he would have tried to grasp the elements.

The elements were just teasing him though. They swirled around him and took a whiff before disappearing into the dark. “No!” Roy almost stopped his meditating state, but he clung on and held on to the minuscule elements around him. He could feel the elements trying to touch him, to dance and talk to him, but they seemed shy and hesitant.

“Stay!” Roy roared silently, but that shocked them, and the last of the elements slipped away into the darkness, despite Roy’s protests. “Dammit!” Roy ended his meditation, looking frustrated. “Just a little bit more! Just a bit more and I could have grasped them!”

However, he had a feeling he could build a connection with the elements as long as he mediated and kept trying. Maybe I can even unlock my mana pool before going through the trial. But at least this is an improvement. Child of the Sun did change his bloodline for the better. Roy had been absolutely talentless at magic before, but now, he had a bit of a chance to connect with the elements after ingesting the plants.