Chapter 88
No Thanks
Of all the reactions I had expected to receive from Mallory upon my exit from the train’s tiny bathroom stall, I can safely say I did not expect the one I got. I did give a warning, informing her that I would make a change. It was also clear that she was at least aware I was able to make a change from our conversations about me being a heartbreaker as one Tobias Spiritlight, so maybe in retrospect this change should not have been so odd. Instead, what I got was something that will forever be imprinted on my soul.
High Piercing Shriek!
“OHHH!” Mallory screamed as she looked at me, and at first I was afraid. I originally thought that I was about to be attacked, that this was some form of Valkyrie disabling shriek, or something. In actuality what happened was something far different.
Paralyzed.
Even with my two hundred levels of Attributes, levels, and skills, I knew that I stood no chance against Mallory should she choose to attack. I tried to think of a place to Teleport away to, but nothing came to mind. In that instance, I was completely shocked by what was happening. Then she charged forward, and like anyone caught up with such a disparity in Attributes, I just sat there. Or at least that is how it felt. In reality I am certain she used some type of instant movement skill or something to get close so quickly. One second, she was a dozen paces away, the next she was right on me. I closed my eyes and braced for impact, but it never came, well not the harsh impalement of a weapon to the sternum, or other violent attack one might expect. Instead, she did something completely different.
“Oh my gosh, you are just too cute. Look at you!” Mallory began, and then I felt it, a sharp stinging pain on my cheeks.
“OWW!” I yelped, as I realized she was pinching my cheeks. “What are you ninety?” I say, trying to bring my hands up to get her hands away from my cheeks.
“Girl, you have some serious Social Attributes, I know you were cute as an elf, but then again what elf isn’t cute. But to make even a human look this good, that is a huge accomplishment.” She states to herself as she proceeds to check me over. Then I can almost see the moment when the gears in her head change. “Oh, and best of all, you are legal in this form, aren’t you?”
“Legal?”
“Yeah, that sounded a lot worse than it was meant, but the idea is still the same. Seeing you like this; I can almost understand why you were challenged by that Duelist to begin with.”
“What?” I asked, feeling that this was going well and truly off the rails.
“You know, first he wanted to conquer you, and then he wanted to conquer you.” Mallory states, adding extra emphasis on the second use of the word ‘conquer’ that makes me tremble with revulsion.
“Bleh.” I add, not able to come up with any words. She is likely correct, but this is still far more disgusting of a topic to think about.
“Don’t worry, Momma Mallory is here for you.”
“Momma?” I ask out of reflex.
“Why of course dear. I already told you that you were in. And after our little journey together I am certain more so than ever that I want you to be family. Not just a member of our guild, but one right near the top, right by my side.” Mallory states.
At that statement I pause and stare at her. “Won’t your other children get jealous?” I pose, realizing that her very granddaughter is coming.
At that she just lets out a huff and then waves her hand.
“My boys don’t really care. They are always off galivanting around, trying to slay this monster, bring that country to its knees. They only really come to me when they want me to break something that they have found to be otherwise impenetrable. Do you know how hard that is? When your kids, your own flesh and blood, the children you gave birth to and brought into this world, only want you for your money, resources, or to kill something they couldn’t.” Mallory states, though it might sound like a question, she was clearly just speaking out loud to herself at this point.
I want to say something, but I am too caught off guard to utter a proper response, which Mallory apparently takes as reason to continue her commentary.
“Yeah, five boys. Enough for a basketball team, but not one daughter.” She states whimsically to herself while she just stares off into the distance and shakes her head at no one in particular.
Finally, some of her comments make sense, though I do feel I have to set one thing straight right now. “So, to be clear, are you recruiting me as a friend or as a daughter?”
At that Mallory pauses and looks at me. Then seems to come back to herself. “Oh, sorry. I could see how that might sound patronizing. Here you are, a person who lived a long life and are now coming here to start over, and here I come saying that I will treat you as my daughter, versus family.”
Sigh.
With that Mallory visibly deflates for a moment, and then seems to recollect herself. Then the next she is back to her stoic self. “Sorry, that was uncalled for. You are right. It’s just that when I saw you in this form, what did you say her name was again?”
“Sabrina, Sabrina Spiritlight.” I answer.
At that Mallory nods, “not that good of a disguise if you keep the same last name all the time, but with your title I assume that would be hard to change. We might need to look into getting you a second last name, that way you could switch between the two.” Mallory states, realizing a critical flaw in my plans.
She is right, if every Spiritlight is a thief, or linked to major crimes, then eventually my own good name might also be tarnished. While that is not really a big loss, it will make my reputation with certain types of people much tougher. But before I can go too far down that train of thought, Mallory has already pivoted and is once again changing the course of this conversation.
“I had a daughter, once.” Mallory began, and then paused as she was clearly calling up a hard memory. “Well, I almost did. Her name would have been Jacqueline, but she never came to full term.” Mallory paused, at that, letting the moment of pain wash over her.
At that, I instinctively reach out and rest a hand on her arm as a form of comfort. She doesn’t need to say any more, I can already guess the rest.
After a silent moment, Mallory continued.
“I had dreams about her, for years. Sometimes I would dream of what she would have looked like had she been given a chance to live.” Mallory says, and I can all but feel her pain as she works her way through this clearly tough time in her life.
Hug.
My arms are wrapped around her and hugging her in only the way someone with a seventy in strength can apply to someone who can slice through a building with the swing of her summoned death scythe. But the moment isn’t missed, and she pauses for a moment, then wraps me up in a hug. Then the longer she hugs, the tighter she gets, like a python slowly tightening their grip, until finally I can’t take any more.
“Too tight…” I say, patting her lightly on her back.
“Oh.” Mallory states, letting loose the death grip, and finally I can breathe.
Gasp.
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Mallory almost tries to go away, but I can sense that she isn’t quite done, so I hang on for a few more seconds, until I can feel the moment her heart goes back to its natural rhythm. Then and only then do I let her go.
We separate, and then she takes a half step back, while reaching up to wipe away something from the corner of her eye. I turn away, not that it means I can’t see her anymore, just that it generally gives people the feeling that you aren’t staring at them. After a second she composes herself and then straightens up.
“Right. So back to my statements earlier. I realize they might seem patronizing, and that is not what I wanted at all. Just when I see you, in this form, I saw her. My Jacqueline, and for a moment I wanted her to be you. Someone who is smart, brave, pioneering, someone who will get lost in their own creative moods. Someone I could…” She trailed off, but that didn’t matter, as I was already back to giving her another hug.
“No, in that case, I am honored that you would think of me that way. Also know, that I would much rather have a friend than anything.” I admit.
At that Mallory nods and states, “I think I can do that.” Then after a pause, she adds, “no wait, I want to do that. Family can of course be friends.”
***
A few minutes later, Mallory and I exited the train car, with a bit more understanding of each other. Honestly, I had been frightened of the train ride, being stuck together for so long with someone like that generally means you will learn a lot more about someone than they generally want you to know. I know personally one of the biggest fears I have is that I will go and not be accepted. It happened with Tobias, as I thought I could at least have an inside track to the Legrand empire with that, but the duke’s daughter turned out to be completely crazy and wanted to bind me on sight. I had almost expected something like that with Mallory, but I was off base. Well, she did want to bind me to her and her guild, but not in an overly possessive way. Also, I think I learned a lot about her from our interactions as well. For instance, she is very kind and loving, far too loving for one of her reputation, but she has to hide it behind an impenetrable face of ruthless determination. But she also has a very vulnerable side that she needs to nurture with kind people that won’t take advantage of her. Realizing that, I make the note to myself that I will try to not take advantage of her generous nature. At that I almost feel bad for tagging her train car, but then realize once I get decent at Enchanting, the works I will be able to make will be exceptional, hopefully.
“So this is the fort you made it to?” Mallory asks, looking around at the one train stop for the entire zone.
“Yes. There is a Duelist here that is named something like Tristan ColdFront, or something.” I admit, trying to recall the name of the person. Now that we are closer to the fort, I can easily see the person in question, they are wearing the most layered patterns of magical clothing and effects I have ever seen.
“There he is now.” I say, pointing off in the direction of the man, though I pause as I realize he is behind a wall and I likely shouldn’t be able to see him.
“Where?” Mallory asks.
I pause then try to cover for my misstatement. “I mean, I think he might be in that building.”
Mallory pauses and looks at me with a uh-huh, look but I keep walking forward, pretending like I can’t see her gestures. I don’t mind her knowing that my eyesight is vastly different, in fact I am fairly certain she might know more about my Angel’s Sight than she is letting on, but I don’t want the other people who are also getting off the train with us to know, at least not yet.
Fortunately, our train’s arrival did not go unnoticed by the locals.
“So how do these tracks work? Were these here last time?” Mallory asks.
I shake my head. “No, I had to hoof it to here, I guess after a city or fast travel point is found, the tracks will be created once occupants leave that zone.” I pose, offering the only thought that seems to make sense.
At that Mallory nods, “I have seen that happen in other places as well. Still, it will make traveling forward a bit slower.”
I nod, having expected something like this.
Ding. Ding.
A bell at the center of the fort rings out, letting everyone know that the train has arrived, and that is also the sign when the Female Commander of the Fort begins to come, along with the brightly colored Duelist mage.
“Hello, welcome to our little outpost…” The Commander begins, but is quickly cut off.
“You!”
Hearing the pompous jerk pipe up, I almost want to facepalm at the thought.
Seeing my obvious discomfort Mallory is about to step forward, but I stop her with a hand gesture asking her to hold for now.
“Look, we just came to close out what you owe me, then we will be gone.” I state.
“You have come here to the great Trigon BiFrost, seeking training in my unique class skills. Skills that I have personally used to best opponents who are hundreds of levels higher than my own?”
I roll my eyes, or at least attempt to.
He pauses, clearly waiting for me to give a verbal reply, “yes, now what skills does your class even have to offer?” I ask, trying to move this along and get this over with. New skills sound great and all, but I really don’t want to be near this guy any more than possible. He is seriously giving me the creepy vibes, also Mallory’s words about this guy trying to conquer me came back, and I am not going to lie that I did vomit a little in my mouth at that thought.
“Whoa-ho, you are in luck. For the Magical Duelist Class is one of the most versatile of classes. We offer the Quick Cast Skill,” he states while casting a spell at a nearby practice dummy. The spell is cast at a high rate of speed, far faster than most casters would be able to. Though looking at it, I can easily see the trick to this skill, knowing what I know now about Magical theory, the whole ordeal seems fairly obvious and is frankly one I feel stupid that this cretonne thought of before me, but ultimately what you do is open up your meridians as wide as they will go, and then force through as much energy as you can, and then seal it off at the last second. Kind of like blowing a soap bubble, but using mana instead of soap. Looking at it, I almost feel dumb for not having thought of it first. But before I can lambast myself too much, he continues his little demonstration.
“If that isn’t enough, then there is always the Pulse Cast!” Trigon states as he begins demonstrating this skill as well, once again targeting the same practice dummy. Seeing it, I see he just took the first skill and expanded upon it. Pulse Casting is similar to the Quick Cast in that it depends on the size of the meridians being used, but rather than keeping the meridian going at full burst, he just changes the diameter of his meridians, thus increasing and decreasing the size of the channeled spell, thus creating a Pulse type effect. Simple, and again something I should have thought of beforehand, but this man has the benefit of being the first, and thus is clearly trying to flaunt his knowledge to do something, and unfortunately Mallory’s warnings keep coming into my mind.
Seeing that I am still not impressed, he continues. “Very well, we also have the Disrupt Casting, a skill that is very needed for any aspiring magical duelist.”
With that Trigon began once again pulsing a stream of mana through a restricted channel of his meridians, all aimed for the same dummy. This was the equivalent of putting your thumb on top of a garden hose and making it so the water comes out that much faster. Same thing here, again simple meridian control exercises taken to an extreme. He pauses after that, but I make sure not to show any signs of being impressed with his antics. And I’m not, if anything I am more disappointed with myself that I didn’t think of these things sooner and thus been able to bypass this whole charade. Seeing my incredulous look, he breathed in deeply for a moment, before nodding to himself as he was clearly psyching himself up for this last one.
“Finally, I have the most challenging of all magical skills, the legendary Trick Shot!” He says, as he fires off a spell that begins with the entire beam rotating in five segments, four outside and one beam that goes straight from the center. The four pulses on the outside spin off, but still rotate in the same clockwise rotation that they began with. Then there is the slight twitch of his hand, that would normally cause a disruption in the spell, but in this case the disruption is used to bring the five components back together into one beam. The spell comes together and lands at one point in a scattered shot effect around the bullseye of the practice dummy. The main beam at the center of his stream of magic hits the exact center of the target, while the four extra beams around the center hit in the first ring around the target.
“Whoa.” The people who had gathered around to witness the display all cried out in shock and awe.
As for me, my mind is quickly running through everything that happened. I saw the twitch of the hand, the way the beam at the center must go in a straight line. Then I realize the trick, the twist, of the hand is the main focus of the spell, but also has to be done at exactly the halfway point. That twist at the halfway point, or just after the halfway point causes the outward trajectory of the streams to contract in on themselves.
Panting.
“Well?” Trigon, the duelist, asks. He is panting and it is just now that I realize he has to spend a lot of extra mana on these spells that would otherwise be able to go into casting a spell correctly. With my Attributes, I don’t see this as being a problem, but for someone like him, I could see how this would be a huge issue for him.
“Well what?”
“Are you thoroughly impressed? If you act now, I’d be willing to take you on as my apprentice.” He states, and beams what he might think is a winning smile, but comes off as creepy more than anything.
Seeing his face, I get a little disgusted.
“Just so I am clear, the Quick Cast,” I say, while mimicking the oversized meridian usage that he showed. Apparently, my observational skills are amazing as I am able to not only replicate the movement but get the system to acknowledge my successful understanding immediately.
New Skill Gained: Quick Casting has reached level 1. Skill Quick Casting is a Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, and Willpower based skill.
Seeing the message, I continue with my observations and how one could perform these skills. “Then there is the Pulse Casting.” Where I once again mimic what I saw, going so far as to create a steady stream of power that is visible to even the mundane casters.
New Skill Gained: Pulse Casting has reached level 1. Skill Pulse Casting is a Dexterity, Endurance, Perception, Intelligence, and Willpower based skill.
Seeing that I was correct in this observation as well, I nod for a moment, then continue. “Next we have your Disrupt Casting.” I say, as I once again force mana through my meridians quickly, but then clamp down on the stream so it fires at a much more rapid rate than would normally be possible. Once again, I am informed by the system that my observations were correct.
New Skill Gained: Disrupt Casting has reached level 1. Skill Disrupt Casting is a Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Perception, Intelligence, and Willpower based skill.
“Oh!” The crowd that had gathered seemed impressed by my display so far, but I continue before I lose my momentum in this.
“Now, I will say that I would not have gotten the trick to your Trick Shot, and this was the only one of the skills I can admit I would not have come up with on my own. At least not for a long time.” I begin.
Trigon who looked equal parts horrified and shocked at my demonstrations thus far, suddenly regained his composure and looked excited. “So you wish for me to teach you?” He asks.
“No, I figured it out, but I would not have been able to do so without your little flashy demonstration.” I admit. Then I too begin channeling mana in a counter-clockwise rotation, just proving that I understood the mechanics behind what was being done, I purposefully cycled my mana backwards from the way it was shown. Then once the five beams began to separate a lot, I twitched my channeling hand and pulled all five beams to cluster closer together, though the beams went wide of the target. All of the beams except for the center beam.
Seeing the fact that I missed, Trigon smiled and was about to talk, but I wasn’t done.
Once the four beams went past the dummy, I jerked my channeling hand back in a come over here, gesture, forcing the four errant beams to circle back, striking the target from the back. One to the front and four combined pulses to the back. Then just like that, I was greeted with a system message.
New Skill Gained: Legendary Trick Shot has increased to level 1. Skill Legendary Trick Shot is a Strength, Dexterity (X2), Endurance (X2), Perception, Intelligence, and Willpower (X2) based skill.
I had to pause as I read that, but then finally I was almost elated by the response. I had created a legendary skill and thus gotten a full nine Attribute Increase from it. By increasing that skill, I would increase Dexterity, Endurance, and Willpower twice, and all the others once.
Trigon looked flummoxed by that; his mouth was open wide as he stared off in disbelief. Then finally after a few moments, he began closing his mouth and stared at me.
“That, that was…” Trigon began, but then just pointed at the targeting dummy.
“My girl!” Mallory screamed, as she charged forward and hugged me excitedly.