Chapter Forty-One: Go Ask Alice
The force of the waterfall massaged Marc’s shoulders and back as he hung his head down, letting the rhythmic pounding push all the thoughts from his head. Inhaling deeply he let the sounds of the forest fill his attention. Each rustle of a leaf, splash of water, chirp of an insect was pictured clearly in his head.
After a few more minutes, Marc finally stepped out from under the cliff and dove into the pond. Rolling over, he floated on his back, lightly treading water to keep just above the surface. Then he gradually let himself slip below the water.
The pressure to take a breath started to grow, but he ignored it. Pain started to build in his chest, his body starved for oxygen and began to protest. He willed his legs and arms to remain limp. he could feel his oxygen run out and pain drove needles into his brain. His health started to decline, but as soon as it did, his increased recovery kicked in and he felt the pain recede, well, slightly recede.
How long had he been under this time?
《Seventeen minutes, 22 seconds.》
He waved his arms, pulling himself back to the surface. As slowly as he could control himself he breathed in the fresh clean air. The oxygen returning to his system burned at first. His body rejected his offering of air after he had deprived it for so long. Soon enough he started to recover. The pain in his head and chest subsided and he felt the rush of pleasure as his body reacquainted itself with the precious air.
He swam to the edge of the pond and walked back up onto solid ground. He pulled the still-warm towel from his storage. Drying his hair he luxuriated in the sensation of the soft, warm fabric as it rubbed against his scalp and body. Finally, he used magic to completely dry himself and the towel, heating it back up before placing it back into his storage.
He sat on top of a large rock and let the sun warm his back.
“You’re quiet today,” he said
“Is that a complaint? You’re always saying I talk too much.” Said the woman on the other side of the pond, lazily dipping her feet into the water.
“It’s not an issue of quantity, but one of the quality of the content.” He spoke, eyes closed.
She scowled at him and kicked her foot to splash him with water. Of course, her foot slid through the water and exited without causing even the smallest wave.
“It’s too bad you can’t feel this. The breeze and the sun on your back. This is truly heaven on… It’s perfect.”
“I know. Remember I know what you know. That said, I don’t really get the whole zen waterfall thing.” Kira stood and leaped over the pond to stand next to Marc. “I do like jumping though. Makes me feel like I’m flying.”
“Says the figment of my imagination.”
“I wish you would stop calling me that.”
“Well, only I can see you. What else could you be?” Marc stood up and pulled on his clothes from his inventory. He had gone back to wearing his old Earth clothes when he was hanging around the Witch’s den. He put in his iPod headphones and started running through the forest.
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In the three months since his first trip to the City, Marc had been back and forth a half dozen times. Each time spending a week or more. He would usually stay at the Guild Dorm with Enpii, but would always spend a lot of time with Grenn and his family.
He took a variety of jobs, farming, cleaning, pushing carts of goods, and even some bookkeeping jobs at the Guild Hub. Due to his activity, he had unlocked more than a dozen new skills and abilities. Some were rather benign, like ORGANIZATION, a skill that helped him in arranging things in an efficient manner but visualizing where to move boxes, others were practical, moving back and forth between the city had given him the SPRINTING skill. That one, coupled with the SUREFOOT skill made moving through the hilly and rocky terrain a breeze. He could now go back and forth in just a few hours.
Other skills only hinted at future usefulness. He received the SHAPING skill while assisting in a fabrication shop. Currently, it only let him make marks and impressions in certain materials. He had seen masters with the skill working however and at their level they could reform nearly any material into any shape they could imagine. It wouldn’t change the basic nature of the material, but he imagined he might be able to change the appearance of his Earth clothing and possessions, making them stand out less, while keeping their bonuses.
He would often join Enpii on whatever work he was doing and truly appreciated having a contemporary to socialize with. He even managed to best the younger man at collecting eggs on that specific request. Though he hadn’t shared that he had Kira remove his sense of smell before entering the livestock floor.
They had even talked about renting a small apartment together. Enpii was tired of the dorms and had managed to save quite a bit of Rel over the years. They were also both pretty invisible to the opposite sex due to their underdeveloped physiques, so more group-oriented social activities were not likely to be common.
Marc also spent a lot of time at Grenn’s family’s apartment. He would often go there and play with Safan and Sateem who would love to have him tell his “stories” about fantasy Kingdoms filled with stone-covered roads, metal golems that could fly and carry people like wyverns, and sports where thousands of people watched groups of men try to catch a small brown ball.
Marc had obtained a couple of small and expensive crystal jars. He would drop one of his headphones into each of the jars and the reverberation amplified the sound loud enough for him to share his music. Keri voiced her strong disapproval of his wasteful purchase, but after seeing Safan’s reaction to Led Zepplin, Fleetwood Mac, and ELO, she softened her opinion. The young boy seemed to have an instinctive love of classic rock.
Marc also finally met Safil, the eldest daughter, who was, it turned out, the very image of her father, both in looks and personality. Serious and practical to a fault, his attempts to pull her into his circle of friends with Enpii had ended disastrously.
Marc never mentioned the eldest son Satru, and he never came up again in conversation. After a time, however, he began to see the signs of a hole in the small apartment. He wondered how much of Keri’s infinite energy pool was an attempt to keep silent moments from appearing where those memories could resurface. Just as Enpii was cheerful and positive despite his missing Mana Core, Grenn and his family moved forward as best they could with their irreplaceable loss.
He spent nearly all of the time he wasn’t taking Guild requests or hanging out with Enpii, with Grenn. They would train in the foothills beyond the plains, or at the cabin in the Den. He would take Marc on tours through the cities and into the vast network of underground caverns below.
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Marc knew that Grenn was taking his new role as his guild liaison seriously. He would often confide his worries or frustrations with the giant man, who always listened without judgment or bias. Marc realized that more than once he had begun to see Grenn as a father proxy. Better than the original. Someone he could respect and who would give him as much time and attention as he wanted.
They would often meet up with Meservi, who was always eager to pull Marc into some scheme or diversion. It was always something ridiculous like helping the Elf impress some visiting merchant’s daughter or getting him out of this Guild duties. Still, Marc enjoyed spending time with the ridiculous man and had grown to trust him as much as he could though he still treated every promise with the same cynical skepticism. He knew he would miss the Elf when he left on his mission.
Marc even spent some time with Ba’eth who had helped him to connect with one of the Earth Mage crafters. Marc was particularly interested in learning various crafting abilities so that he could increase his value as a production specialist. Hunting was of course, still out of the question. Even with his boosted abilities, he would be nothing but a liability with his extremely low base stats. But thanks to Ba’eth he had even learned HEAL, which for now only helped boost his own very high HEALTH REGENERATION, but if he was able to level it up should allow him to heal others, a highly rare and valued skill.
Marc still had dreams of traveling this new world. He started to gather more information about the other countries on the continent and the lands beyond. He even learned Do’kein, the Dwarfish language, and was starting to practice Tashtalik so that he could speak it natively without Kira’s translation. Kira had been right about learning to use metrics and local times and dates. The more he used local systems and languages, the better his communication flowed.
All was going well, Extremely well. As much as he dreamed of a better life when he first came to this world, he never imagined he would find one like this. He was not strong, nor rich. His introverted nature was still strong, but he had begun to see the value in connections with others. In his old life, he hated working and submitting himself to controlling systems, but now he was enjoying learning new things, even menial tasks he would never have considered before. He appreciated the Guild system and found it helpful and fair, unlike every organization he had ever been a part of in his old life.
He was content. He was satisfied.
Except for one thing.
Nothing had changed in his relationship with his Teacher. That was the problem. Nothing had changed at all.
She greeted him warmly when he returned. They soon fell into the old routines. He helped her in the garden and shared cooking and cleaning duties, she would instruct him in the more theoretical aspects of Magic and Mana. Everything continued just as it had before he had left.
But now there was a wall. Perhaps it was there before, but he simply had not noticed it. Now it sat in the middle of the cabin like a boulder, impossible for him to ignore. But ignore it he did. Every day he would walk around the wall. Every conversation he would steer clear of the barricade. He spent so much energy not thinking about it he started to imitate the martial arts masters from his favorite Saturday afternoon TV matinees to find ways to clear his mind and gain some peace.
He knew that she was aware of this as well. But still, neither of them said a word.
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As Marc finished his jog he walked across the clearing to the cabin, using CLEAN to dissolve the sweat and dirt from his body and clothes. He walked into the cabin to find Rynan coming out of her room.
“Oh Marc, I love this.” She was wearing the gift he had brought her from Clearwater.
She was twisting her whole body left to right while looking down at the hoodie that he had made to her measurements. Of course, this one gave no status increases, but it was a pretty good facsimile. He had worked with a seamstress in the city to replicate the design and find the right materials. He now had SEWING and SIZING skills, although strangely no TAILORING skills as he had imagined. Regardless it was enough for him to make the simple article of clothing.
He lacked a zipper of course, but he had just gone and made it a sweatshirt type. He thought that once he leveled up his SHAPING he might be able to make zippers.
Seeing his tall and dignified Teacher slumming in a hoodie in her cabin made her look more like one of his professors for his stint at the University. The thought made him chuckle.
“What? Do I look strange?” She asked holding up her hands to inspect them. She had pulled the stretchy fabric in the arms taut, so only her fingers protruded from the holes at the ends of the sleeves.
He smiled and demonstrated pulling the sleeves back on his own hoodie, allowing the elastic in the wrists to fully expose his hands.
“Oh!” She mimicked his movements and Marc was pleased that his copy was quite close to the real thing.
“It really is so comfortable. And warm!” She hugged herself close.
“Still, I don’t think I can wear this outside. It looks so much like sleepwear.” She said, smiling at Marc who looked down at his own outfit with an embarrassed grin.
He laughed and felt that pull towards the tall, kind, and wise woman in front of him, but even as he wanted to close the distance, he felt the presence of the wall, and once again backed off.
He walked over to the kitchen and started pulling out some plates and cups to set the table for breakfast.
“Marc?” She called to him from a few steps behind him.
Without looking he answered. “Yes?”
“I have something I need to tell you.”
His heart stopped. He gripped the plate in his hand so tightly he worried for a moment that it might snap.
“You know that Meservi is leaving next spring, right?” She asked.
He relaxed a little. So this was something else he realized.
“Yeah. He told me about it. Some Guild Mission. Not sure what that means though.” He replied.
“Good. You know about it then.” She seemed to be hesitating. After a short pause, she continued.
“I was thinking of joining him on his trip.”
Marc could feel the wheels on his universe falling off the bus. He spun around to face her.
“What? What are you talking about? He said that only Elves can go to that place.”
《Krrt Anatra. The Continent of the Elves.》
“Didn’t ask.” He thought back at Kira, perhaps a bit harshly. He could feel her rolling her eyes at him like a teenager.
“I wouldn’t be going all the way. Just to the sea. Then I will be booking passage to a different destination.” She still appeared very unsure. As though she already regretted telling him.
“Where? Why? What’s going on Rynan?” Panic rose in his voice. The stress of the last few months finally unraveling.
“To the Southern Continent. Sobric. I have some business there I need to attend to.”
“You have business there? Why are you being so mysterious? What business? What’s there?” Suspicion was wrapping around his every thought like an octopus.
She looked at him sharply.
“My business is mine. As your teacher, I don’t need to report to you my dealings.”
Her rebuke shocked him enough to regain his composure.
“Right. Sorry. I was just surprised.” He stammered.
Rynan softened at his obvious contrition. “No, it’s my fault. I just sprung this on you.” She returned to her usual calm and relaxed demeanor.
“I don’t plan to be long, but the trip is rather difficult. It might take months before I can return. While I am gone, you can stay here, or if it’s lonely you can stay in the city full-time until I return.” She explained.
“Or,”
“Or?” Marc looked at her, waiting to hear another option.
“Or you could come with me?” She stated it like a question.
Marc was stunned. Travel? To another continent? So soon? Sure had planned to travel the world, but he thought that would be years away. He was a bit excited by the idea, but it felt too soon.
《What is Sobric like?》
“What is Sobric like?” He parroted Kira’s question.
“It’s cold. Very cold. The entire continent is covered in snow and ice.” She answered.
This sounded like a horrible idea, Marc thought, recalling the horrible first winter he had gone through. He was only recently starting to feel warm again.
“Why would you want to go to a place like that? Sounds like a terrible place.”
She laughed. “Yes, yes. It is. In more ways than just the weather.”
“Then why are you going?”
“I need to see someone there. An old student of mine.”
Another student of Rynan’s? Marc’s curiosity peaked.
“Really? Who is it?” He asked, obviously interested in learning more about Rynan’s past as a professor.
“He is the head librarian of the Tower in Sobric T’al Jerid, the Headquarters of the Tower.”
Marc froze. The Headquarters of the Tower. The earlier tendrils of suspicion hardened into steel chains. Rynan was going back to the Tower, and she had just asked him to go with her.
Marc’s blood froze as he connected the dots.