Part 5 - New Life Troubles

Arlyen took off ahead of her new disciple, thinking over what she’d been faced with and how best to tackle this unusual youth. A fully grown adult, but a youth compared to her roughly two hundred years.

On one hand, Liz was a paragon of mental and emotional fortitude, but on the other, the child’s reluctance to face her feelings properly might break her someday. Arlyen was no [Mind Healer] but she was certainly no stranger to mental distress or even those who tried to hide their problems and run from them.

She’d been the cause of a lot of pain and loss herself, so she really had no right to impose on the circumstances of others, at least in most cases. In this one, however, she might need the help of Sylvestre, regardless of how the man would refuse to listen to her. She somehow felt he might listen when it came to his young charge.

She shook her head, realizing she’d really been seeing the girl as a child largely because of her tag. [Priestess - 32] was not something a person of Pallos often saw on a child below the age of ten.

And yet, Liz had the stats of someone pushing level two-hundred. She must’ve received a divine class quality for those stat values at such a low level. Most people would need years of prayer and service to receive a custom class from any divine, and for those in service to Seira, that would set them on a path for their entire lives in service to a divine [Tenet] that had been chosen for them.

Most of the divine paths of the goddess were from a handful of categories that had long divided the ruling authorities of the Justiciary.

The first category could be summed up as the [Natural Order] faction, to which Arlyen herself was beholden. They were in favor of allowing the world to follow a natural course, moving with the natural ebb and flow of forces as they belonged in the world. They also specialized in hunting and eliminating oddities that threatened the even flow of those forces. Like a certain renegade Spatial [Mage] that had caused the incident resulting in their ally, a vampire from the dawn of Creation to be lost into a fissure in space. She’d chosen not to kill the [Mage] and had instead saved Sylvestre’s life, which had been a choice to betray their [Tenet] and had forever shattered their relationship.

The second was the more rigid [Structure and Stability] faction, which had a more neutral stance on the governance of the country. They were the former ruling faction, going back to when the country was in its infancy, and had established a powerful mediating presence on the global stage.

The third major faction of the Justiciary was the [Faith and Certainty] faction. They were apathetic fools who felt the world would be well shepherded by the gods and goddesses to continue on indefinitely. In reality, they espoused maintaining their own enjoyable lives of frivolity and often decided matters based on bribes and took no responsibility for the role of their country on the global stage. Their corruption made them powerful forces in the government, and they found the more active [Natural Order] members were thorns in their sides.

Arlyen looked back at her disciple and frowned at the slightly clumsy movements of the girl by using her vitality enhanced senses to see through the sparse woodlands. A level thirty-two [Priestess] with stone body parts moving through the woods with such speed with so little impact on the ground was certainly impressive. The longer the girl ran with her use of [Earth Manipulation], the less Arlyen could feel the thudding of heavy footsteps on the ground.

The youth was certainly aware of how such things could attract predators, it would seem.

~ ~ ~

Liz was having a bit of trouble. She finally didn’t have to worry about her feet crashing through any floors out in the wilderness, but it was bothering her that the ground would quake with every step she took.

And so, she set to the work of getting a feel for her dexterity and magic control to soften her footsteps. It took a lot of her mental focus, but she could pull it off. At a running pace, she certainly couldn’t eliminate the impact of her footsteps completely, but by manipulating the ground as she made contact, she felt she could move without a single sound or even vibration. She would just need a lot of practice. Or a skill specifically tailored to it.

In the end, it was a task she knew would give her mind some trouble to maintain it indefinitely.

She thought about that a bit and decided it was time to test other applications of her skills.

She mentally established the thought process of softening her footsteps in her mind’s eye and then used the new [Mental Partition] she had unlocked when the skill reached level thirty to wall the action away in her head, allowing her to focus on other things more clearly, effectively giving the activity a sort of autopilot.

It worked.

It actually worked.

She could use the partitioning skill to put repetitive tasks in a sort of automatic control. Now she could focus her mind on observing the surrounding woodlands, or testing other skills.

She’d found her more human body sections were at risk of coming apart if she overused her manipulation on herself and it exceeded her vitality. She needed to consider that and also whether she could find another solution besides carefully balancing her stats.

She had a few options. Sure, she could balance her stats to perfectly match her needs, but she likely would not be in control of the leveling rates of her skills or classes for that.

She could either get used to holding herself back, which she’d been doing already, and had been offered a skill for, [Contained Fury].

It wasn’t what she wanted. She had a lot of pent up emotions she wanted to vent, and containing herself was likely to make her into a sort of person she just didn’t want to be.

The other option was to reinforce her body somehow. She hadn’t been trying, so she hadn’t been offered a skill for that route. She took some time as she ran towards the direction Arlyen had vanished towards to mentally spread her body’s unique stone composition across her skin in a sort of outer layer of somewhat rigid armor.

That wouldn’t work. She actually could see the stone in some areas being depleted to spread outwards. Effectively, it was making holes in her body. She was more than slightly grossed out by seeing the palm of her left hand empty out to create an armored layer over her forearm.

That did give her ideas to try later, but she quickly found that doing things in such a method wasn’t workable, and certainly not in combat.

[Earth Conjuration] was a candidate, and she was very familiar with the stone she was now made of, so she’d been using it to make her knuckle duster in her right hand during the beatdown she’d received earlier. She could simply conjure the material for her body armoring. The problem with that idea was that conjured material would vanish over time, though she could just conjure more. It wasn’t very mana efficient, either. The stone of her body was dense and the mana cost to conjure it was a bit prohibitive. She also would have to walk around with it on, or else dump it when she wasn’t using it.

No, instead she needed to reinforce her body without conjuring material. She would have to create a body mesh of the material to spread less of it over a larger area. If she was truly willing to step up the effectiveness, she’d have to suffer the pain of rooting the stone tendrils into her own flesh. She decided if she ever needed to go for broke against a really tough opponent, she’d save that as a last effort at self defense.

She mentally spread the stone across her body in a mesh pattern, creating a loose armor over herself before pushing her magic power and control to lend extra speed. She had a sinking feeling that if she didn’t make it back to town before the church’s curfew, she’d be unable to enter.

That’s when her [Awareness] skill cut through her internal musing with a warning sensation like a red alert blaring in her head.

She dove forward, guiding herself through a forward roll and pivoted to face what had just attacked her.

[Dire Wolf - 148]

She shivered at the sight of the level. She had a high class quality, but she was seriously doubting that her stats would compete with something that had a hundred levels on her.

And, it wasn’t alone.

The oversized grey and black wolves were snarling as they moved to surround her, and she conjured her right hand knuckle duster with a long spike at the end, matching the point she turned her left fingers into, all while backing up and using [Identify] on the others.

[Dire Wolf - 134]

[Dire Wolf - 129]

[Dire Wolf - 113]

[Dire Wolf - 140]

She felt very close to panicking, wondering if her new mentor was even aware of her situation.

She was hardly combat ready. She was still level thirty-two, and that meant she only had her one class, as well.

She didn’t have time for idle thoughts. She fixed her attention on the fight. The first canine leapt at her with a snarl, fangs bared, and she threw herself to the side again.

Only then did she realize how much slower they were than her.

The highest level one, some sort of alpha, could match her speed, but the others didn’t have the stats to catch her.

She raised her makeshift patas, the blades on her fists, and let a smile spread on her face.

Sure, she only had a day’s worth of getting thrown around for combat training, but she could feel it in her blood. She would live for this thrill of excitement.

The next lunge came from her right and she stepped back, using her left hand to block the claws that tried to rake across her shoulder, and driving her right hand into the wolf’s thickly furred neck as it sailed by her, trying to follow her movements in vain.

The spike of her pata didn’t penetrate enough to dig through the fur.

She spread the stone into a longer, thinner blade to compensate as the lead wolf came at her legs while her vision had been briefly obscured.

She actually laughed when it sank sharp teeth into her stone right leg, or at least tried to.

She sharpened the front of her leg into a blade and manipulated her whole body in a backflip that sent her blade-leg into the jaws, slashing into the animal’s mouth.

She frowned as it yelped and retreated in time to not receive more than a shallow cut.

She just didn’t have the reflexes to formulate a plan and execute it before the creatures could pull back. She was being harried from all sides by now, and had almost nothing to show for it.

She needed to react faster. What she needed was a combat sense she didn’t have the time to train.

The next wolf lunged from behind and she rounded on it, twisting her body below the claws and hooking her right weapon into its belly as she spun around in a full rotation, driving her patas into the creature as it hit the ground heavily on its back.

[*ding* You have slain a [Dire Wolf - [Wood] level 113]!]

The rush of blood from the animal as she pulled her left hand free of its body told her she’d struck it in the heart.

She couldn’t take the time to enjoy the small victory. Two of the beasts lunged for her, one catching her left arm when she dodged the first.

Her stone mesh armor didn’t stop the teeth that sunk into her skin, but she could tell the wound wasn’t too deep. The real problem was that her vision went white with pain before her emotions shifted to a crimson anger.

She hefted her left arm, wolf and all, into the air as she repeatedly stabbed it with her right hand.

She was coated in blood before it finally stopped thrashing around while still gripping her arm in bloody jaws.

[*ding* You have slain a [Dire Wolf - [Earth] level 134]!]

She was seething with anger and hatred as she pried the jaws off her arm and threw the corpse at the remaining wolves, which now circled her at a more cautious distance.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Liz scowled at the creatures that had caused her so much nuisance and pain.

She lunged for the leader, patas covered in blood as she roared in anger, only to feel her blood-red rage falter as she realized her mistake.

The leader of the wolves dodged her shoddy attack with the same ease she had dodged the lower level animals, then snapped its jaws on her frail right forearm.

This pain was different. The creature bit deeper, and she could feel her bones fracture within her arm. She vocalized her pain in a cry of desperation as she hopped back. The beast had let her go, rather than clung to her.

It had learned from what she'd done to the other wolf.

The brief trance of rage had been broken and she sobered as she realized she could only use her left hand now.

No, that was wrong. She ate the mana cost to conjure stone around her arm and force her bones into roughly the right position, and spread the material to fill the gaps and solidify the whole area. She’d only just come up with the idea of rooting stone into her flesh and bones to protect her body from damage, and it was already being put to use.

She also now felt the bladed fist weapons were the wrong way to go. She used the material to create heavy gauntlets and assumed the defensive posture she’d been using during the beatdowns earlier.

The wolves seemed to be waiting for an opening now, and she decided not to disappoint.

She lunged forward, then drew up short as one of the lower level wolves tried to mimic the leader’s counterattack from earlier.

Liz’s fist descended on its snout with a sickening crack, followed by a kick with her stone foot that snapped the beast’s neck at an awkward angle.

[*ding* You have slain a [Dire Wolf - [Wood] level 129]!]

She immediately turned on her left foot, shoving her stone coated right fist into the jaws of the wolf that had lunged for her while she dealt with its companion. She pushed forward, even as it raked at her with its claws, and twisted the creature in the air, bringing it slamming down to the ground head first.

She knew it wouldn’t kill the beast, but [Awareness] was alerting her to the alpha approaching from behind. It matched her speed, if only barely, so she had very little time to dodge.

She ducked low and rammed her left fist into the downed animal’s skull, praying the presence behind her was attacking from an aerial lunge.

[*ding* You have slain a [Dire Wolf - [Metal] level 140]!]

Not for the first time, the creature defied her expectations with a low bite at her legs, this time on her left leg.

She cried out in pain as teeth bore into her leg.

She modified her pain with her skill to allow only a dull sensation to get through to her, and then squared off with the wolf that had retreated again.

The beast was now alone, and part of her wondered if the creature really should stay and fight despite having lost its whole pack.

Regardless, the two faced each other now and both seemed to be waiting for the right time. Except for Liz, who was on a clock with how much blood she’d lost. She frowned as she considered her options.

She probably couldn’t run now, and she doubted she’d be back in time for the church to close. The wolf could just wait her out and see if she bled to death first.

Out of options, she had to kill it and figure out her next move afterwards.

She approached the wolf and finally lunged with her right fist, watching as it dodged her with ease, apparently now exceeding her own speed. She glared as she bound her bleeding leg in conjured stone, then began a desperate rush of attacks at the wolf to no avail.

Finally, she began searching for other options and felt a tugging at her senses that she’d been ignoring. She wanted to lay down and die of complete stupidity.

The tugging in her head was her somewhat low level [Martial Arts] trying to vaguely influence her combat senses and urge her to fight in a more efficient manner. She allowed the feeling of the skill to take over, and felt her movements sharpen, now forcing the wolf to dodge with more desperation.

After some time establishing a certain momentum and pace to their fight, Liz was beginning to feel the blood loss making her head a bit fuzzy. It was time to end things.

She led the wolf into the same rhythm that made it duck low from one of her strikes, only this time she drove her fist down on the animal’s skull, stone sharpened to a point again as she struck it like an ice pick from above.

It felt anticlimactic, really. She’d been a fool to ignore her combat skill in her fear and anger earlier in the fight.

[*ding* You have slain a [Dire Wolf - [Wind] level 150]!]

She let out a long sigh as she scowled. The damn thing had leveled off from fighting her. She guessed the system would hand out easy experience to things fighting her, given she was a chosen [Priestess] of one of the five major gods of the world, and a unique one at that. She mentally told herself she would have to become fast and efficient in combat to take out opponents before they gained too many levels from confronting her.

She looked over her body with a cringe. She was covered in blood from the wolf she’d stabbed repeatedly. Things didn’t gush blood like in the movies, but if you stabbed something repeatedly, the stuff got everywhere.

Liz suddenly realized the blood and killing didn’t bother her much. She was good at setting her emotions aside for her acting career, but this was different. She’d been excited to fight and feel her blood rushing at the start. The pain had brought out a different kind of animal in her, but even that reflected a certain terrifying love for the fight.

She shuddered at how much had changed.

She knelt and clasped her hands before the lead wolf.

Seira,

I’m not sure if my actions today were befitting one in your service, but I ask for your understanding. This world is succumbing to chaos and even I can feel it in the tension of the air. I need to be strong in order to survive. I wish to thank you for your guidance and the opportunities you’ve given me. If my fate is in my own hands, then I hope you will continue to watch over me.

With love,

Liz.

She felt a bit of emotion back from her connection to the goddess as some of her mana vanished. The goddess seemed distracted by something, and a sensation of sadness reached her through the feedback. She didn’t know how she could tell, but it just seemed that the goddess was sad to see the world in such a state.

“Dire wolves this far north usually means there’s something driving the ecosystem into a whole mess,” Arlyen’s voice came from nearby.

“I thought you’d be watching. Well, what’s your sage advice, mentor?” Liz opened her eyes and stood after her brief prayer.

“You need to trust your combat skills more. They will help you more and more the higher level they get. You also need to keep your emotions in check. Your bloodlust is something else. Most things, I can help with if given time. The other thing… Your will to survive is strong and will save you in more situations than what I can train you for. You’re a tenacious one with the right foundation to become a good fighter. A worthy student. Your class quality is excellent, which means you’ll be able to punch up above your level with a high certainty, though your second and potential third class won’t be so lucky. Be careful of hubris from that powerful first class. Your skills in your second class will not compete well in a fight compared to the ones in the higher class quality.”

“A lot to work on and keep in mind. I want to cap all my current skills before I class up. Although if I keep fighting like that, I’ll be unlocking my second class the moment I upgrade my current class.” Liz frowned as she realized she wasn’t even limping after her injuries. She studied her injured leg and withdrew the stone slowly. She was still bleeding badly, and her arm was likely worse.

“Let me see your leg. Your arm can wait until we get back to town if you keep it covered.” The gnoll woman approached with a small vial in hand, then poured the contents over Liz’s wounds on her leg.

“Is that a healing potion? Can this world get any more game-like?” Liz scowled at the tropes she was surrounded by.

“No, it’s an alchemical concoction that clots wounds.”

The gnoll shut her down, and Liz almost sighed in relief that at least something in her new life actually made complete sense.

Then the gnoll scooped her up in a bridal carry and took off at a dead sprint towards town.

She was rather incensed. Only the goddess was supposed to be allowed to carry her like that! She stuffed down her thirst for a moment, then slightly wished the goddess might smite the gnoll in a moment of jealousy.

Her wish did not come true.

The run didn’t last very long. After a while, the gnoll set her down and gave her a look.

“You’re running the rest of the way. I only just made up for the lost time. I’m off to grab dinner. Make it back before the town gates close.”

Liz widened her eyes in terror at the statement. It wasn’t just the church that closed at curfew, the damn town gates were sealed by then as well!

She immediately took off running and Arlyen shot right past her, surely at what must’ve been far more than double Liz’s own speed stat.

Her exhaustion had really caught up with her as she was being carried by the gnoll [Paladin] and Liz felt like her feet were made of lead. And yet, Liz would be damned if she had to give up a warm meal and bed that night because she was too slow to make it.

She pushed sleep from her mind and urged herself forward, removing the [Mental Partition] over her careful footsteps in order to put her exhaustion behind a new mental wall.

It hit her then that she could really go for endurance tests with her new skillset, though only when her life wasn’t at risk of bodily harm.

If her math was right, her current goal was to cover roughly ten miles in half an hour. She’d never been that fast at running, but she ran to keep fit on a nearly daily basis before her incident, and she was well aware she could cover, at most, eight miles in an hour. Now she had to manage more than double that?

Sure thing, time for her to find out what a thousand speed meant.

The math was more complex than that for her, but she boiled it all down internally to that much.

Aware that the noise of her crashing through the forest was simply insane, she somehow didn’t have any more encounters as she tore through the distance. When she saw the walls of the town, she groaned at the realization that the roads didn’t run in her direction, and therefore the gates didn’t face the woods she emerged from.

At some point she’d gotten curious, and started throwing around some unusual maneuvers in her boredom. Like using her manipulation to rocket herself forward and slightly upwards at incredible speeds, then soften her landing by slowing the speed of her descent as she effectively leapt across any decently clear stretches of the forest. It was a bit fun, if she was honest, though she needed to increase the pain tolerance associated with the harsh landing of her stone foot, which sent a shock up through the bone of her leg. The air? Amazing. Landing? Predictably awful.

She used her new tactic to cross the fields around the town in a single bound, then skirted around the walls to the gate.

Which was closed.

She cursed as she approached, hoping they could make an exception, except this was the whole country founded around worship of the goddess of order. Laws were not so flagrantly set aside in a place that venerated laws.

The guard seemed sad to refuse her admittance, but it was exactly as she’d expected. Not to mention, he’d informed her of a five coin entry fee. And she’d left town with no money. Or anything besides her extremely bloodsoaked robes.

With one final effort, she revealed her badly injured arm and leg and hoped he could at least fetch her a [Healer] only for him to cock an eyebrow at her.

He then gave her chastisement for thinking she could afford a healer when she couldn’t afford the entry fee. No mentions of the church seemed to be getting her anywhere, despite multiple [Healers] having checked on her in her room while staying there, all of whom wore the church’s robes.

Liz casually decided it was time for plan B. She would commit a crime. On her first day out of her sick room.

She first tested to see if she could create an opening in the stone of the walls. It was an option, if an unwise one. As if the guards would miss her passing through, let alone the warped stone of her having melded it back together afterwards.

The place was called the Town of Heron Lake. It had natural waterways that passed through, as well as man-made waterways for boats to travel through. That meant she could find a place where she could use her skills to sneak inside.

Of course, when she arrived, she found a very obvious smuggling deal going on.

Very fun.

She was not in the mood at the time.

She settled for climbing over the walls, gaining hand-holds by melding her stone fingers into the gaps between the stonework, then pushing herself up with manipulation. Thankfully, taking some of the burden off her skills by hanging from her hand-holds.

She held back her grumbling as the efforts reminded her of why she couldn’t use her manipulation to fly. In theory, a high leveled [Mage] could conjure a slab of stone and stand on it to float around. In her case, the stone she was partially made from was some sort of dense material from the void of time and space, which meant she was heavy. It cost so much mana to fly at the time she’d tried it that her mana pool had bottomed out in less than ten seconds. She swore the stone had tripled her original weight. She was still sour about it.

Once she’d made it to the other side of the wall, after dodging the guards, she nearly jumped out of her skin when Arlyen clapped a hand on her shoulder from the shady alleyway.

“So glad you could make it, disciple. You need some rest. Tomorrow, you’ll have to do better. I’m not giving you a break until you’ve maxed out all your skill levels and classed up.” Her mentor had what looked like the gnoll equivalent of an evil grin on her face.

Liz groaned in dismay all the way back to her bed.

She saw a [Healer] waiting up for her past curfew, apparently requested by Arlyen, then grabbed some dried foods for a lackluster dinner. After which, she made her way to her bed.

She had to wonder just how rigid the curfew rules actually were. It was feeling more like an attempt at leading a regimented lifestyle to show appreciation to the goddess, rather than a strict rule structure.

Thoughts aside, she decided, after shucking her ruined robes and finding new ones, that she needed to check her notifications after the fight earlier, and peruse the new skill options. They wouldn’t last long after being offered, since new skills were only offered for a limited time after unlocking them. Most general skills simply made themselves fairly easy to achieve again, like her appearance skill was by making an effort to look good.

[*ding* [Seira’s Tenet of Equivalent Exchange] has leveled up! 12 -> 13]

She vowed to increase the offering rate to the maximum while she slept to ensure it didn’t take her months to level the skill.

[*ding* [Earth Authority] has leveled up! 21 -> 30]

[*ding* [Earth Conjuration] has leveled up! 9 -> 12]

[*ding* [Mental Partitioning] has leveled up! 30 -> 32]

[*ding* [Martial Arts] hsa leveled up! 19 -> 20]

She wanted to slap herself for ignoring the general combat skill she’d been hoping to integrate into her class. The single level felt like the greatest shame of the experience.

[*ding* [Identify] has leveled up! 16 -> 21]

[*ding* [Awareness] hsa leveled up! 14 -> 26]

This was one to be proud of. She just hoped it would become more precise with a future evolution.

[*ding* [Roll with the Punches] has leveled up! 11 -> 20]

[*ding* [Learning] has leveled up! 21 -> 32]

She guessed the fight, followed by the gates, gate fees, smuggling operation and her fiddling with her skills had really helped with this skill. She was very happy with it.

[*ding* [Imaginative] has leveled up! 18 -> 21]

No levels for her appearance skill. Not a big surprise. She could live without looking [Stunning] for now.

New skills were all about brutality and rage-induced maiming of her enemies. She cursed her mistakes once more.

She was more excited to get her next class up than ever. She was looking forward to training again the next day. She’d gotten into a fight and won! The intensity had helped smooth over her precision a bit for her bodily manipulation.

She decided to reduce the costs of her passives and heavily invest the savings on her [Tenet] for the night. Only to lose all her excitement for the next day’s training as the exhaustion and pain hit her again. She was definitely going to need to get better at all of these new things soon, if only to reduce the soreness of her training sessions.