"Shut up, just shut up, Chimaru, and let's keep going. I don't want to hear anything else from you." And with that, I finally broke away from the mess of a fight with one of the most terrifying creatures I'd known in the forest. Honestly, managing to kill it was down to pure luck.
If you ran that exact scenario a thousand times over, I would probably end up dying in over eight hundred of those scenarios. Luck just happened to rule in my favor; that was all. Still, I am pretty surprised at how strong I have become with that strange technique I learned from Buster.
I have yet to take control of the energy that lets me become stronger and faster in every way, so for now, I am still constrained to a couple of seconds before all of my stamina drains out, and I can no longer enter that state for a couple of hours of slow recovery since it takes next to everything from me to activate that power.
In all honesty, I still have little to no idea how I even activate the KP engine. It kind of feels forced, like it barely wants to turn on, and that is probably due to the fact I put a lot of thought and energy into a random stream of power, which miraculously manages to turn on the engine.
In other words, I just throw the sink into my internal power control room and somehow turn it on. It's kind of like when you don't know the controls to a game your friend invited you to play, so you just start button smashing all of the available buttons and somehow manage to pull out an incredibly coordinated line of attacks.
My method of activating the KP engine power is clearly not optimal. Still, without Buster's guide, figuring out how to turn it on and keep it going without much wasteful energy spread, I will have to figure it out alone. Father could last for hours with his first grade on, which means constant running is possible, but I still have no idea how.
If the KP engine is really an internal force within my body, then I suppose I could start by meditating to help me find that force that will make me strong. Listen to me talk, meditate? When would I even have time for that? Everywhere I go, I have worries and stress. Could I even do it effectively?
Not that it matters since I at least know I can do it, so at least my improvement efforts will not be for nothing. I just need to give it time to master it. No good skill is fully mastered and honed in a single day or without making mistakes, so it's all part of the process.
After the encounter with the bear, Chimaru and I walked for a little longer until he began bugging me about food right around midday. Apparently, he also has to eat, and unlike me, he needs actual meat and stuff to eat every day at least twice a day, so to my dismay, I had to make a stop to cook him something to eat since he wouldn't stop bitching about being hungry.
Man, I could see how Buster would grow tired of me asking for food at the most inconvenient times. In any case, due to the lack of basic cooking equipment, I had to improvise to cook stuff the way I saw Buster do it multiple times while out in the wild.
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One easy way to cook stuff is to use a simple rotisserie-like stick contraption for cooking the meat right above the fire while slowly turning it around. As far as how I could make fire without magic, I would have to hope Chimaru had some magic power to at least give me a spark. I could make fire with just a small spark, so it should not be that hard.
If I had access to a pot or something like a suitable flat, thick stone, I could also cook eggs and other things like steak and whatnot. Albeit none of my cooking knowledge mattered much to me, it was useful when I was acting sort of like Buster's wife. To me, even my food tastes like nothing.
I don't have any good way to measure the flavor of my food, so I just kind of eyeball it and wait to hear people's opinions of my cooking now that I've become a vampire. As I said before, this body is great, but I miss those fantastic food flavors that are now lost forever! UGH!
"Is the food ready?" Chimaru asks right after I just finished preparing a bear piece of meat into a stick like a brochette. "No, but you could help me get there by lighting up the fire," I respond to Chimaru's annoying question, and he follows up with bad news.
"I don't know fire magic; that's girl magic; besides, I couldn't learn it even if I wanted to. I am not resonant compatible with fire at all." Chimaru says something rather strange, or at least it was news to me. What did he mean by 'I am not resonant to fire?' What the hell did that mean?
"What do you mean you're not resonant with fire?" I ask Chimaru, following new information that could prove helpful in the future even if I am not able to use magic. "Oh? Big sis doesn't know? Many people get an elemental resonance at birth, and what element you get is all down to your parents."
Elements? Did he mean the four elements? Fire, Water, Air and Dirt? Was that how the world's magic worked? "I don't know much about magic Chimaru. I happen to be unable to wield it at all. So, could you explain more about that resonance thing?"
"Oh? It's pretty simple, actually. Your main power comes in the form of whatever magic type you get as a kid. I, for example, hone the power of bubble magic because I come from a family of water wielders; my mom used to wield fog, and my dad wields steam."
What the hell? So, when he meant elemental magic, these weird names are now used for different types of magic. Could it be that every individual wields a different kind of magic? Then why can many people use light magic against vampires and such? "Can't all magical users use low-skill techniques from other magic types?"
"Not really. You can mimic the effect; for example, I can try to make fire with a bubble that will shine more sunlight into the branches, but I can't directly learn fire magic, at least not me, since my elemental resonance is so incompatible with fire. Maybe if I used ground or air magic, I could."
That is interesting. If your magic type is incompatible with the magic you want to use, then it doesn't work. I wonder why that is and why there would even be a separation of magic types by element. What would be the point of that if there were certain types that everyone could use?
"What about light magic? Is that element too hard to use?" "Light magic is the most compatible with everyone's type except for ground magic users, but everyone else can easily learn light magic spells. It is hard to use, and it consumes a lot of stamina, so I would rather walk in the dark than waste energy summoning light."
"Does different elemental magic aside from your kind consume more stamina?" "Yeah, because you're not born with the natural talent for it. It's like learning an instrument for someone without a certain resonance. That's why it is almost impossible for a water wielder to learn or use fire. Why would you? It would take too long. For what?"