Chapter 182: A Little Joy

Chapter 182: A Little Joy

“You should pick the eye power. I think someone fighting in the quadriad had something similar, she could look at people and they would lock up briefly. It won her several fights.”

“Uh huh.” Leif said, compressing the now spherical ball of driftwood that had been his walking stick. “I don’t think I noticed that one.”

“I don’t think you were there when she fought. Anyway, it was only for a second, but you only need a second in a fight. It could help you close the gap between you and an opponent, or stall an attack so that you have time to block.” Lucia continued, excitedly chattering by his side.

“I don’t think it’s an immediate effect.” Leif said. “The impression I’m getting from the skill is one of gradual build up. [Temporal Glare] will take time to come into full effect, I suppose it's fitting, considering the name.”

“I still think you should take it. I saw you fight against Hera, and she was too quick for you to keep up. The faster fighter usually wins.”

“That is true. You make a compelling argument.” They continued on, following an old path with sparse signs of travel, though nothing recent. Lucia kept talking about the different skills Leif had been offered, and he was happy enough to see that her mind was, at least for the most part, not fixated on the safety and whereabouts of her little brother.

He couldn’t alleviate her concerns, because in truth he shared many of them, among several others. He didn’t know if the skill had taken Roy all the way to Far-Reach, and he didn’t know if the boy had reached the settlement, or if he had done so safely. It had been an unwelcome surprise to learn that [The Amber Path] could be interrupted, though perhaps he should have expected it. Leif had gone into civilisation in part because he had been confident in his ability to escape if things went wrong. That had ended up almost being a critical mistake, he should have tested the skill before departing, even if it had delayed the beginning of his journey.

Or, maybe he shouldn’t have. If he had waited the weeks needed for the skill to come off cooldown, he may never have arrived at the Academy before the invasion. There were too many what ifs and could haves, and he knew from experience how stifling obsessing over the past could be, how the desperation to latch onto anything and anything was self destructive when taken to an extreme. For him, it had been a coping mechanism, and in a twisted sense it had been what had guided him down the path he now walked. But just because something was foundational, core to a person’s being, it didn’t make it healthy.

“I don’t understand [Reconstitute Echo]. How would that even work, and why did the system even offer it to you?” Lucia asked.

“Truthfully, I’ve been somewhat expecting a skill like this for some time now. The Amber, the monstrous tree’s that I have become related to, their power is connected in ways I don’t fully understand to the past. Blood and time, with sub-aspects of preservation, information and transformation, or maybe transmutation.” Leif said, slowing to stow his condensed sphere of wood and call a nearby group of aged sticks into his hand.

[Reconstitute Echo] likely had the most potential out of the three choices he had been given, but it was also the greatest risk. Though risk likely wasn’t the correct way of putting it. From the impression Leif got from the skill, situational and unreliable were likely more accurate. Would the skill allow him to recreate once living beings and have them, or at least a small part of them, an echo if you will, fight alongside him? Sure. But Leif tended to prefer keeping those around him alive, and somewhere inland off the western coast of the Kartinth province wasn’t exactly spry with ‘echoes’ to choose from.

Though maybe the war will change that. He thought dourly, his mind briefly casting back to the Academy. He hoped everyone was safe, and that the fighting was over. He trusted most of those he had met to take care of themselves, but in war you could never be sure. If some of his friends had gotten seriously injured, or even killed because he had chosen to flee instead of trying to keep helping the Academy, he wasn’t sure he could forgive himself. Though maybe that was a stupid thought, maybe there had been no way for him to help after his identity had been discovered.

“You don’t specialise in wood or plant magic?” She asked, squinting at the deforming sticks, their structures melting and twisting into one another.

Her question pulled him back to the present, and Leif paused. “Not specifically, no. I think this is more something general to the type of being I am now. It’s hard to imagine a decently high levelled tree without at least some control over plants. Although my experience with such things is quite limited, the records the Academy had on magical trees indicated that they were usually passive, only reacting in certain situations. Though in the case of [Create Gilded Wood], the skill seems more specific to the Amber than general tree related magic.”

“Do you actually need that skill? Isn’t wood pretty common?” Lucia pointed out, nodding towards a lone standing pine atop a nearby hill. “Can’t you just gather what you need and store them in that ring of yours?”

“It is... And I’ll admit that creating wood seems like the least interesting of the options. But the impression I’m getting from it is quite appealing. It won’t just be normal wood, there are some properties to the skill that give off impressions of rewinding time, or maybe reversion to a past state. I suspect I’ll be able to have finer control over the summoned wood as well, among a few other benefits.”

“You should still take the eye skill. It covers your biggest weakness.”

“I’m thinking about it, but you should always consider your options carefully.”

“Unless the choice is obvious.” She said, kicking a pebble off the path, then hopping forward and doing the same to another, slightly larger stone.

“If the day comes when you suddenly wish you took [Patient Ambush] over [Fade], maybe you’ll realise the sage wisdom of my teachings, young one.” Leif said, pitching his voice to make it sound more severe and aged. “Hasty decisions without foresight can only harm you.”

Lucia rolled her eyes so hard they almost fell out of her skull. “Don’t talk like that, it sounds dumb. How old are you, anyway?”

“Thirty something. Closer to thirty than forty if I had to guess.” Leif said, returning his voice to normal.

“Why would you need to guess? Doesn’t the system just tell you?”

“It does.” Leif admitted. “But my count got reset when I... you know. I can only guess how old I was before I died.”

“What does it say now?” She asked. Leif didn’t respond, he just kept walking. “Hey, wait! Don’t pretend I didn’t ask! What does it say? How old does the system think you are?”

Warning! Make selection within 12 hours or skill will be randomly chosen!

Leif blinked the message away and marched on, doing his best to ignore the increasingly insistent and inquisitive presence tailing after him. The truth was fairly amusing, but he got the feeling telling his young travelling companion, who was currently latched into the back of his upper robe and pulling as if doing so would reveal the truth, would be a bad idea.

“Tell me! Tell me, tell me, tell meeee.” Lucia begged, though by her tone she had clearly sensed why he wasn’t answering. With every step he dragged her along, her heels digging into the dirt as she tried and failed to stop him.

She probably counted back from the start of the war. Leif thought, shaking his head. The Academy’s records didn’t technically name a definitive starting date for the conflict, but the war was generally accepted to have begun between fourteen and fifteen years prior.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“I know you’re keeping it a secret! Does the system think we’re the same age? Are you younger than me? You can’t pull the wise senior act if you’re not that old!”

“They’re not coming back.” Lucia said after a minute.

“True.” Leif said. “Go get that half, and I’ll get the other. We’ll take singular steps forward until the bits find one another.”

“Okay.” She said, darting off.

It turned out that the range was ten metres, though that became closer to fifteen after Leif infused both parts with vitality. In fact, when infused with life-force, the gilded wood expended vitality to mend itself more quickly, and then, to his surprise, the vitality slowly regenerated. The material created by his newest skill could act as a reservoir of vitality, though it would never generate any excess energy for him to cultivate. Still, if he constantly drained vitality infused gilded wood, he could slowly regenerate his reserves with little effort, and with a lot of time he could gradually expand his reserves.

This revelation finally made Lucia agree that [Create Gilded Wood] had been the correct choice, which was nice because her constant complaining had gradually become less endearing, and more annoying.

===

“It's too boney.” Lucia said, spitting out a mouthful of cooked fish. “It’s so hard to eat, I feel like I’m going to get something stuck in my throat and die.”

“Didn’t you just say how good it tasted?” Leif asked, looking up from his current project. Night had fallen, and the two had made camp on the edge of a shallow river. They had travelled inland for most of the day, avoiding any distant signs of conflict. They weren’t the only people fleeing the coast, as they had encountered several groups having abandoned their homes.

Imperial soldiers roamed the countryside, with several roadways playing host to mustered units. There was a general sense of panic throughout the province, and with how many distant pillars of smoke Leif had spotted before the sun had set, they had only avoided violence due to luck.

“It really is tasty.” She said, scowling down at the fish as if it were a mortal enemy. “I just can’t enjoy it.”

“You are complaining about food to someone who can’t eat, you know that right?” Leif pointed out, running two fingers along the length of the item sitting in his lap.

“Oh. Sorry, I forgot. I didn’t mean to bring that up.”

“I’m not offended, I just can’t relate to your inability to consume fish properly. I’m sure I could find someone to teach you if it's that much of a problem.”

“Ha, ha. Very funny.” She pouted, taking another bite from the river fish as if in defiance. This was promptly followed by a fit of coughs. Her face red, Lucia grabbed an empty bowl and sprinted towards the river.

The crockery had been created out of gilded wood, and before she could take a swig Leif telekinetically pulled it out of her hands. The bowl zipped over to him, and Lucia gave chase with a horse cry of confusion and alarm. Leif stuck a finger into the water, and drained it of vitality. The normal way of making water safe to consume was boiling it, but this was faster. His ability to sense life-force wasn’t keen enough to detect the tiny living beings that supposedly lived in and on everything, but his readings in the Academy had all but proven they existed. It turned out that when he drained life-force from soil, he wasn’t just drawing energy from roots, seeds and worms, but the tiny microbial life living below the surface as well.

“You didn’t need to do that.” Lucia said, having downed the entire bowl in a single swig, the action clearly having saved her life from how she was behaving.

“No point risking illness.” He replied.

“Couldn’t you just heal me if I got sick?”

“I’m not certain how effective my healing would be against parasites, but if you want to be a test subject, the river is right over there.”

“Fine, fine. What are you making, anyway? Ohh, is that a sword? That looks awesome!”

Leif nodded, sharpening the blade with [Wood Manipulation], then tempering the weapon’s structure with vitality. Whenever he did so, the sword tried to sprout new branches, but they were suppressed easily enough. Lucia hovered over his shoulder as he worked, and he could tell that she was more than a little impressed. That feeling shifted to elation when Leif finally stood and presented the shortsword to her hilt first.

“What? Is this for me?”

“I told you I would make you a sword if I found the appropriate materials. Well, here you go.”

Lucia opened her mouth, then closed it without speaking. She took the sword, and her lower lip trembled. “It’s so light.” She whispered. “How did you get it so light?”

“It’s light because it's thin. Sharp too, and the edge should maintain itself without you needing to run back to me constantly for maintenance.” Leif explained, smiling at the look of pure joy on the girl’s face. “And this isn’t a training weapon, so treat it as you would a blade made out of steel.”

“You didn’t have to. You should have made yourself something first.”

“I’ll be working on myself all night, don’t worry about me. Why don’t you give it a test?” He said. Lucia shifted back and forth clearly trying to decide what to say next. He could sense a surprising amount of turmoil in her emotions, which hadn’t been his intention. “You don’t owe me anything, Lucia. I don’t need payment or a favour in return.”

“Ok... Alright. Thank you.” Lucia said hesitantly, then she dashed back towards the river.

Amused, Leif watched as she waded into the water until she needed to hike up her trouser legs to stop them from getting soaked. Then her presence faded, and his ability to make her out against the moonlit water lessened significantly. Then she stabbed down into the river with her new weapon, spearing a much larger fish than the one she had partially eaten for dinner.

“It works!” She shouted, waving her first victim over her head.