Chapter 13: A Field revisited

Chapter 13: A Field revisited

Their vacation continued, and the Heirs doubled down on their independent training. Nathan followed up on his promise and worked with the Heirs to refine their Insights with knowledge from Earth. Bridgeguard was well-suited for those discussions, since there werent any other Adventurers around who might be interested in those Insights. The villagers were also quite accustomed to giving the Adventurers a lot of privacy, and it was easy to get out of the village for practical tests.

Nathan talked over the basics of Newtonian physics with Aarl, describing the conservation of momentum and especially trying to give him an understanding of angular momentum. Aarl already had a good instinctive understanding of how acceleration and momentum worked, but Nathan worked on filling in the unintuitive edge cases that could potentially lead into new Insights.

For Sarah, Nathan didnt know a ton about long-range shooting, but he knew enough to describe most of the variables and start talking about how to correct for them. He explained bullet drop and windage to Sarah, and they sketched out some math about how to deal with those. Stella was interested in some of that math as well, and they worked through it so Sarah would be able to start figuring out how to correct for long-distance shots.

Nathan knew there was more going on than that, though he had no clue as to the details. Hed heard that altitude, temperature and humidity were all important variables for truly long-range shooting, not to mention coriolis force.

Assuming Davrar spins like Earth does. Man its frustrating to not know, but its not particularly important in comparison to everything else.

The goal here wasnt necessarily to teach Sarah to be able to do all of these things - it was to give her a stock of Insights to Develop her class and skills with, so she could make better use of the novel weapons Nathan had provided.

Stella continued to practice with her new mana types in addition to trying to figure out Nathans light insight, and Nathan tried to guide her towards doing it scientifically, changing one variable at a time and figuring out some objective way to measure the effect. He even got her to get used to doing controls. In this case that meant just flowing electricity mana through her impromptu vacuum without trying to generate light, so that she had a baseline for comparison and knew when things werent working.

Mid-tier Lecturing 4 achieved!

Unfortunately, Nathan didnt have a lot of things to offer Khachi. He answered questions about religion on Earth, but Nathan had never been religious. Hed ended up learning a fair amount about Christianity during his western history minor, since it was impossible to understand the Early modern era and the European enlightenment without that context. But hed only taken one theology class, and that had been focused on the implications of religion for human bioethics.

And I'm like 90% sure that professor was high.

Regardless, Khachi didnt seem particularly interested in the monotheistic religions that dominated Earth. He was much more interested in the stories of pantheistic religions that Nathan knew about, and the philosophical and ethical frameworks that Nathan described. Nathan described the grand overviews of Norse, Egyptian and Hindu mythology, as well as the general beliefs of Buddhism and Shinto. Khachi asked Nathan for his thoughts and was somewhat annoyed when Nathan described those religions as ways people came together as a community to make sense of strange phenomena. They did end up talking for quite some time about various theories of deontological ethics.

High-tier Enhanced Memory 4 achieved!

Khachi told Nathan of the gods of Davrar in return, or at least as much as Khachi knew of them. There were a lot of gaps - gods who were only ever tangentially mentioned in one story. But Nathan was surprised even this much had survived past the two endings - Deicide and Elements. It seemed that Davrars Pantheon had been large. Deiman was a god of righteous war and battle and hed had six siblings who all represented different aspects of fighting and bloodshed.

Nathan asked where all the information had come from. Khachi reluctantly explained that Kia had discovered most of it, and taught Khachi as he was growing. She had a single salvaged book of some kind that contained most of it, but the cleric didnt want to go into details. There were clearly more secrets, more details of religion that Khachi didnt see a need to share.

As for himself, Nathan spent some time each day calling up details on the upgrade to [Regeneration] and storing them with [Enhanced Memory]. He wanted to be able to Develop that Talent the moment it ranked up to 10. He was a little disappointed it hadnt ranked up during the fight with the Agmon Legionaries.

Days passed without much to concern the Heirs - they spent half of the day training and the other half relaxing or exploring the forest near Bridgeguard. It was fun and comfortable, like an ideal summer vacation. But every night before meditating, Nathan remembered Kias words. This was a time of happiness that theyd look back fondly on.

It was strange, having that thought bouncing around in his head. He imagined some future Nathan, bloody on a battlefield and recalling these weeks as the good times before everything went to shit. Did these weeks deserve being put on that pedestal?

Nathan didnt know, but he tried to live the moment to its fullest, and think about what that future jaded Nathan would want him to be doing now.

Eventually, they got a report of a Siegeboar snuffling around a bit to the south. They headed out to intercept it before it came close to the town or the vegetable patches. The goal wasnt necessarily to kill it - Siegeboars were dangerous, and the bodies would attract scavengers if it wasnt completely disposed of.

Nathan had seen drawings of the enormous animals before, and heard descriptions. But none of that really prepared him to see a hairy hog as long as a semi-truck and thicker around. The creature should have looked ponderous and slow, but it was poised atop thickly muscled legs that looked capable of moving the barrel-shaped body at incredible speeds. The Siegeboar was busy eating the roots of a tree it had knocked over.

Nathan gulped as he saw the creature casually rip apart the thick and knotted wood with enormous blunt teeth. It used its six-foot long tusks to dredge the ground and pull up a few roots that had remained buried. A few minutes later the animal gave a satisfied grunt and sauntered away from the tree, leaving behind a fallen trunk attached to a denuded root-ball.

Aarl spoke for all of them, At least its headed away from Bridgeguard.

They followed the Siegeboar for a few more hours, ensuring that it was headed away from town. Stella kept a light breeze blowing in their faces to prevent their scent from drifting to the boar. It wasnt hard to keep track of it from several hundred feet away, even as the forest grew thicker and more wild.

Nathan whispered the obvious question, Probably worth some levels. Sarah can probably kill it with a shot to the head? With these trees as obstacles we can fight it normally even if it survives.

Khachi looked back at Nathan from where hed been studying the creature. Should we risk deadly battle for no other reason than to gain Davrars favor? His voice was low, but not judgmental.

For what we want to do? Low-danger levels seem like something we cant turn down, Nathan replied, keeping his eyes on the Siegeboar.

It has to be worth a few levels. And the risk to Bridgeguard is minimal this far out. And the terrain is passable. This might be greedy, but we need all the levels we can get.

Khachi rumbled uncertainty in the back of his throat before looking to Sarah. Can you kill it?

Dark eyes studied the boar, which was eating a thicket of berry bushes a few hundred feet away. I dont want to use an enchanted round, but I have regular rounds to spare. I want to be closer for a good shot. But this is a good chance to rank up some skills. She cracked her knuckles and looked around at the rest of the party. Lets kill this problem.

They approached the boar slowly, with Sarah leading the way. Khachi was the farthest back, since he was the least stealthy in his armor. Aarl and Nathan were close behind Sarah, since they would be responsible for distracting the boar if it charged. Aarl handed Nathan the spear, and he clutched the rod of dark wood tightly.

He was eager to keep talking about it, and it was easy to explain - Stella already had all the building blocks. She understood that light was electromagnetic waves, and how those waves were formed of oscillating electric and magnetic fields. So when Nathan explained that the color of light was dependent on the frequency at which those waves oscillated, Stella quickly grasped the explanation.

He further explained that the color was separate from the intensity, which was just a measure of how much light there was. There was just as much energy in a light source that shone with twice as much light at half the frequency.

Mid-tier Lecturing 5 achieved!

The rest of the Heirs listened to the explanation with bemused expressions as Stellas experimental flares of light started cohering into individual colors.

By this point they were approaching Bridgeguard, and they were looking forward to a grand barbeque on their return. The town was as sleepy as ever, with most of the activity occurring around the fishing ships out on the river.

Aarl was looking at Nathan with a sense of resignation. Hear me, your explanations sound like nonsense to me. But their results are solid as adamant. Ive never heard of a mage under level 81 with seven mana types. He ticked off on his fingers. Force, Fire, Earth, Air, Lightning, Light and whatever this magnetism thing is. He shook his head with baffled wonder.

Nathan grinned back at Aarl. Regretting your relationship with math?

Sarah punched her brother in the shoulder. You mean lack of one. I doubt it. He wishes Math was a monster so he could kill it.

The Heirs strolled back into town with a lot to be happy about. They quickly set about looking for somebody who could fulfill their barbeque desires.

Status of Nathan Lark:

Permanent Talent 1: Magic Absorption 7

Permanent Talent 2: High-tier Regeneration 9

Talent 3: High-tier Slow Fall 4

Class: Spellbreaker Juggernaut level 67

Stamina: 733/770

Juggernaut's Wrath

Antimagic Momentum

Raging Thrill

Juggernaut's Inertia

Unarmored Resilience

Utility skills:

High-tier Focused Mind 9

High-tier Earnestness 4

Mid-tier Sprinting 6

High-tier Spellsense 4

Mid-tier Notice 9

Mid-tier Identify 7

Mid-tier Dodging Footwork 5

High-tier Enhanced Memory 5

Mid-tier Lecturing 5

Mid-tier Tumbling 2