Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Since there were still staves from yesterday Ben hadn’t bothered to make any new ones that night so after he gathered the supplies they would need he actually got some sleep in his home before meeting up with Thera the next day.

When they met up at the shop Falk ended up asking them about how yesterday went and Thera instantly got quiet, becoming more apparent it was a tell for when she wasn’t interested in talking about something. Presumably she wanted to keep their little encounter a secret from Falk so Ben stepped in.

“It went okay. The new staff didn’t work as well as I had hoped but we were able to get two shots off at least so we’re going hunting today.”The initial posting of this chapter occurred via N0v3l.B11n.

Falk gave Thera a quick glance but decided not to broach the subject either and instead focus on their hunt. “You sure you’re ready boy? Two shots isn’t a lot. You could always take another week to try and make a better staff. Heck, I’m sure you’ll improve their use when you get a bit more comfortable with how you manufacture them.”

“I’m sure you’re right but that still won’t be enough to get us to three shots. Don’t worry though we’ll be hunting these my way.”

“Well if it’s your way it should be fine, but will Thera get any practice with her magic?”

“Not to worry, I have a simple strategy that's going to rely pretty much entirely on her magic, with just a little help from me.” He told them, grabbing the staves, a small sack, and a shovel.

“Um, what exactly is your way?”

Ben was going to explain but Falk cut him off. “The boy’s just going to play to his strengths, try and learn what you can.”

“You’re really overselling me here Falk but it’s going to be a pretty simple plan. It will be maybe an hour of set up tops when we get there so let's go.”

“This doesn’t really feel like adventuring,” Thera said while on top of a tree branch.

The discovery left him elated. This was it. This was how he could train his connect skill without needing another person to help him. Thinking about it he could always get a pet as well, but a plant would be so much less effort, not to mention the lack of guilt of using the skill in case it has any negative effects on it. He still wasn’t sure it would have any real practical use, but it would be a shame not to level it a bit and see, at the very least it seemed to make a decent bug killer.

He proceeded to spend the next half hour using his skill to get acquainted with the tree. It wasn’t really a conversation, just an exchange of feelings, but it was still interesting to probe at it with his emotions and see how it would respond. He tried to send thoughts to it directly, but at least at the moment that seemed impossible. In that time he got the impression that even though the tree was alive and able to experience some external stimulus, its feelings and range of emotions were significantly more limited than he would expect an animal to be, but there was still so much to figure out.

It was as he was experimenting that Thera whispered at him to grab his attention.

“Hey, they’re here,” A small group of scrells were approaching the cooking meat. They were cautious at first, but once they saw it was unattended they raced towards it, with a few of the more cautious ones that were hiding farther back running to catch up. Soon enough there were around a dozen in the hole, each fighting the others for some of the scraps.

It was time to finish it. “Alright, Thera you got this.”

She gave him a nod and grabbed her staff, carefully activating her magic and directing it at the pile of earth, trying to make it do just one thing, shift back into the hole.

It was a task she normally wouldn’t have bothered with, but it was also significantly easier on her than trying to make a proper earth bullet. The dirt quickly slid across the ground, filling the hole with all of the scrells in it. For good measure she used a bit more mana to press down into the earth, making sure nothing would crawl out and resulting in her staff breaking into fragments.

“That was... easier than I expected,” She said when she was done and had dusted off her hands. “But can my magic actually get better like this?”

“Easy is good, why work your butt off for one kill when you can score a bunch. As for your magic, who knows. But from my perspective this doesn’t seem much different from when you shoot an earth bullet, it's all just moving earth around, the only thing that's changed is the intent. Anyway, let's give it another fifteen or twenty minutes for the smell to disappear, then can you dig out the hole again?”

“Sure, are we hunting more?”

“No I didn’t bring enough meat for that, this was really more of a proof of concept. My goal is all those buried materials we got,” Twenty screll corpses. Even if they were small, with the amount he had he would be able to make plenty of weapons boosted with their fire affinity from the bones and at least some fire resistant pouches from the skins. Plus now that he had a way to quickly make Thera a few adequate staves he would have a lot more time for his own training. Things were looking bright.