38. Lesson

Early in the morning, or at least what she thought was morning, Chief came to visit her. This time she wasn’t in bed like last time; she was curled up near the huts edge. She had finally managed to get to the door! Sure, she basically shook herself to seizure and couldn’t even touch it, but progress was progress no matter what.

What a joke. Leaving a single room is so difficult that getting halfway makes me this happy.

She of course realized the world outside her room wasn’t any more dangerous than it was before, nor was staying inside a solution to anything, but despite her knowledge of that she could never get herself to do what she needed to.

That was when she realised chief had been standing there in the light while she’d been lost in her thoughts.

“Oh! Sorry for making you wait; I just got a bit distracted.”

“Bah. You could hardly ‘make’ me do anything. I am here because I want to be”

“But still! You already do so much for me- “

“Because I want to— You do not have to thank me, nor do I expect payment.” His smile shifted from its sudden storm back to normal. “Now before any more time is wasted: What do you think of my offer?”

“Oh.” Nadi hadn’t actually come up with an answer yet. “Sorry, I still don’t have an answer, it just feels so unreal still.”

Nadi still couldn’t believe she qualified as an elder of all things. At two months old no less. No matter how doubtful she was of the fact, Eidri’s Will never lied. As plain as day it titled her an elder, the fact that the Will had even been revealed to her was enough qualification.

“I take the answer is a yes then. You’re to leave immediately and form your own village. After the naming of course.”

Immediately Nadi cried out. “No! Definitely not! The answer is no!”

It was only when Nadi noticed the smile creeping up chief’s face that she realised he was joking.

“Ah. Well, if you feel that strongly about it then I guess there’s nothing to be done. The Will has acknowledged you for a reason. Even if you are not ready that will not change the fact that you are needed for something.

“As such, I will prepare you for your future.”

Nadi could only be stunned by chief’s smile as she waited for him to continue. When time passed and he continued looking at her with the exact same smile she began to falter. When she gave up and stood to see what was happening chief finally spoke.

“I guess we’re done here then.” He turned around and began walking to the door.

Not wanting to entertain him further Nadi pouted at the back of his head quietly.

He got all the way to the door before turning back, with the exact same smile glued to his face.

“Congratulations! One of the most important things to know is when you are being made a fool of. If you fail that you may as well give up now. But please do stop pouting. If an enemy ever realizes that you felt their words so deeply you will never recover.”

That made… almost no sense to her.

“If they’re making a fool of you why not just fight them?”

“Ah. There are many fights you cannot win in life, so the best you can do is give the impression you will not suffer silently.”

She still didn’t really get it but it couldn’t have been that important, could it?

Seeing her expression Karandi sighed deeply.

“One day you will come to understand. But until then you will be joining Kani’s lessons after I teach you of the Will.” Chief said this while straightening his expression.

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“Eidri is both kind and respectful, and as such her will does nothing but show your abilities. If you look at it you will see your Strength, Speed, Vitality, Endurance and Wisdom ranked by a number. An eight is normal for a new elder, and I assume you are just below that mark at around a five for your highest?” He paused to allow Nadi enough time to check. “That is all it can do unless you wish it to do more.

“There are three different ways the Will can present: The first is the one you have already seen as well as the default. The second allows you to more easily strengthen yourself with… condensed essence you collect as well as rewards for your feats. The last incorporates the Will into your very being, this allows you the fastest growth, at the cost of being entirely beholden to Eidri’s demands. I cannot suggest the last one.”

Nadi opened her mouth to interrupt but Karandi held up a hand to stop her.

“If you are willing to accept Eidri’s intervention all you need to do is say: I wish the Will were more than it is. However, you must make it a point to refuse the offer given after waiting at least a day.”

Nadi immediately said as she was instructed and was startled by the green box in front of her face. Even though she was sure she didn’t know how to read she could perfectly understand what was in front of her.

Eidri offers her blessing.

Accept

TAC

Deny

Alice wasn’t sure if the uncomfortable sinking feeling she had was because this might be a bad idea, or because she knew it was a bad idea.

The plan was simple. Transfer all her stats into speed and see how fast she went. Then try the same with strength and wisdom. She would have done vitality and endurance if she knew how to actually test their effects. The best she could think of was letting some animal chew on her and see how it felt; something she was very opposed to for obvious reasons.

To pick which stat to start with she picked up a fairly triangular rock and spent some time polishing it into one of those 4-sided dice thingies she didn’t know the name of. After throwing the dice and hoping for it to land on speed, she realised she had forgotten to mark the sides.

After fixing that minor issue, the dice landed… On one of its corners. Somehow it had landed just right to stab into the dirt and stay there. She then had to spend even more time to round the corners, and it now landed on the only blank side it had. Even rethrowing it had the same result.

Finally, Alice marked the blank with one of the other three chosen randomly through “Angel’s spark”

She started the rhyme on speed and landed on strength. Once that was marked, she threw the dice once more and it actually behaved for once. Looks like speed was the first she would try.

She fiddled around with more earth and essence while waiting for her speed to fill up, noticing that at some point her wisdom had gone up. If she had to guess, it was probably yesterday afternoon when she first discovered essence. There was also a new skill there for her.

Name:

Alice

Level:

13

Race:

Human(age:10)

Vitality:

244

Endurance:

244

Speed:

244

Strength:

244

Wisdom:

272

total stat points:

4096

Passive Skills:

[Navigation: Lvl 4], [Survival Skills (Forest): Lvl 6, [General Magic Proficiency: Lvl 5], [Language Proficiency (Common): Lvl 5,

[Basic Essence Detection: Lvl 1]

Active Skills:

[Basic Identification: Lvl 2], [Eye of Fate: Lvl 1], [Language Proficiency(Goblin): Lvl 5], [Fire Magic Proficiency: Lvl 5]

Divine Skills:

[Protection of Fate], [Fate Vision (Minor)], [Deus Ex Machina], [Flames of Vengeance], [Protection of The System], [Artificial Active Skills], [Timeless Skills]

Achievements:

[Born Sceptic], [Accident Prone], [Unlucky], [Survivalist], [Lucky], [Melting Pot], [Divine Love], [Ambitious Spell Caster], [Masterful Healer]

Despite having the option to elevate yet another skill that might help her with her goal of gaining earth magic, Alice really didn’t want to rely any more on the system for help. The main reason for that was her elevated [Fire Magic Proficiency]. Even though it was oddly cheap and scary strong, she couldn’t improve it on her own. She had to buy the upgrades. That sounded a lot like the setup to some strange scam.

By the time Alice had put her stats into speed, she was so incredibly bored that she just could not stomach the thought of having to do that two more times. However, when she thought of what having potentially thousands of stats would feel like…

She just had to.

Speed felt like it did nothing for her. She didn’t suddenly start flying around everywhere, nor did the world stop. Until she started moving that is. A single step forward brought the world to an almost standstill. It felt like instead of making her faster, speed just made everything else slower.

In fact, she still felt slow when she ran. Her steps took her the same distance, and she still felt the strange jiggle of her belly when she ran. She was able to run for longer though. She didn’t manage to run until she got tired -running was too boring for that- but she had done enough laps that she was confident the final count would be in the hundreds.

Now, without a method of measuring time while time was slowed, she had no clue how much faster she was. And speed hadn’t actually felt all that good to have.

As Alice got back to fiddling with how essence and matter affected each other, she started moving all her stats to strength. This time they somehow moved faster though, and soon enough she had everything in strength.

Alice started off by trying to lift heavy rocks and found that while she could do it, she still felt her bones straining under the weight. It seemed like being strong enough to lift a tonne was not the same as being durable enough to hold up a tonne. This experiment made her hesitant to try something like punching or jumping. Maybe she’d jump so high her she’d just turn into a red mist upon landing? Maybe she’d punch so hard her bones would be atomized under her flesh while her arms exploded!

She was about to call it there and move to wisdom before curiosity forced her to try not punching, but just flicking a tree with her full strength.

It couldn’t be that bad could it?

After giving the tree a moderately light flick, Alice quickly learned that everything could go wrong. The tree had a crater in it where the finger had landed and assorted shrapnel had gone flying. The biggest issues Alice had at the current moment were:

1. The splintered wood did not just vanish. It had to go somewhere.

And 2. She had no finger anymore.

She’d probably be crying if it weren’t for the fact she was still shocked at just how quickly things had turned around. The most she could do in the moment was stop the bleeding and sit there. A shower of splinters imbedded in her skin.