Chapter Twenty-Six: It Happens All the Time
Snow is for chumps.
“Anyone who thinks winter is better than summer is insane.” Marc shared his feelings with Kira.
《What’s wrong? I thought you were going to use your magic heated underwear and make all the cold go away?》 Kira taunted.
“It’s freezing! You know I can’t constantly use my Inner Flame ability.” He checked the skill’s details.
SKILL: INNER FLAME [1]
ACTIVATION: CHANNEL INTERNAL MANA TO INCREASE BODY HEAT, CONSTITUTION +1, HEALTH RECOVERY + 0.05/MIN, STAMINA RECOVERY +0.1/MIN
DURATION: 6 MINUTES
CD: 36 MINUTES
“Isn’t there a passive skill that can just keep me warm?”
《For the sixth time this week, I don’t know, go ask your teacher or the big guy. He’s a Fire Mana user right?》
Marc grumbled. He knew it was pointless. This was just so much worse than he ever anticipated. Sure it got cold in New Mexico. Contrary to the images from TV and movies, places like Silver City were at a high enough elevation that snow during the winter was not that unusual. There were typically a few slight flurries a year, and just up the nearby mountains, there would even be snow for months out of the year.
That said, this was different. He had always thought his drafty, cheaply constructed trailer home had been cold, but this was different. The walls of the cabin offered some insulation, but there were countless gaps in the corners, near the windows, and other weak spots where every gust of wind invited in a knife blade of freezing air.
He had been using his heating ability as much as possible, trying to level it up to a point where he could use it more than just five minutes every half hour. Kira had assured Marc that he would not catch a cold or flu. His new body had more than enough vitality to render such small illnesses moot. In fact, anyone with a Mana Core had little to worry about from a bit of cold weather. Anything short of frostbite was simply discomfort.
When he complained about the weather, Rynan and Grenn tried to be sympathetic, but Marc could tell they thought he was just being dramatic. This level of cold was nothing unusual to them, but to someone used to on-demand heating and high-quality insulation, this was disturbing to the point of distraction. Since winter had set in, he had done little but complain about the cold.
《See, if you had only agreed to move to the city, I am sure they have nice warm houses with central heating and hot showers.》 Kira whined.
This had been the constant conversation for the last week. Marc’s mood continued to decline and Kira continued to push him as her development had also stalled due to his immobility.
There was one discovery that he had made that somewhat mitigated his tortuous existence. His iPod was back in action.
This had come about in a somewhat roundabout way. Unsatisfied with the children’s wardrobe that Grenn had graciously provided him, Marc had looked to other options.
Learning tailoring was one path, though it would likely take quite some time before he could even learn to mend his own clothes, let alone create them from scratch. Considering the long-term nature of his stay here in this universe, Marc put that into the “Possible future options” category. He showed his old clothes to Grenn and asked whether it would be possible to find someone to mend them, or more the point, was it even wise to use them considering their otherworldly origin and design.
Grenn had claimed ignorance of all things fashion related but agreed that it was probably not wise to wear them around considering the impression they had left on him the first time he had seen Marc. The term “pleasure slave’s pajamas” was invoked several times.
While they were discussing, however, Marc was reminded about the note that he had seen earlier when checking the clothes status.
HOODIE* (DUR 5/10) CON +1
A SIMPLE FLEECE HOODIE.
*CLOTHING ITEMS BROUGHT FROM ANOTHER WORLD. GRANTS BONUS WHEN EQUIPPED. INEXTIRPABLE.
Not only did each piece of clothing he had worn from the other world impart a status increase, but there was also that strange word at the end of each piece’s description.
【INEXTIRPABLE】
Luckily, with his new perfect memory, he could recall the definition of that word.
INEXTIRPABLE: NOT CAPABLE OF BEING EXTIRPATED: INERADICABLE.
Marc longed for another shot at the SATs. He was sure getting a perfect score would have been a big boost in his old life.
Ineradicable certainly sounded interesting. Kira confirmed what he suspected. The clothes, like him, could not be easily destroyed. Unlike him, however, they did not repair themselves. After some experimentation with Rynan, they had hit upon an interesting and somewhat useful application.
At first, he had tried simply damaging the clothing more. He poked a hole in the bottom of one of the socks. As expected, the durability dropped and stayed there. Then he went ahead and chopped it up. He had one completely ruined sock in many small pieces.
Worse yet, he found that he could not get the +1 INT bonus unless he wore both socks. So his foolishness had actually increased his stupidity. With nothing left to lose, he contemplated burning it to ashes to see what would happen when he thought of something else. He could heat it up himself. He tried using Inner Flame on the pile of sock clippings.
Technically, a novice ability skill, noted in his interface with a [1], could only affect the body of the caster. Rynan had taught him the classification system in an early lesson and Kira applied the information to how the Interface reflected Mana skills.
[1] Novice: Internalized Magic. Buffs such as strengthening, speed enhancement, eyesight Improvements, cognitive boosts, debuffs such as cures, mental protection, and personal shields.
[2] Journeyman: External influence: Manipulating elements outside of one’s body. Boiling water and freezing ice, Creating gusts of wind, and Pushing Earth and Stone.
[3] Expert: Conjuration. Ability to create an element from Mana. Reliant on the Mana in one’s core. Can summon Fire, Lightning, Water, Ice, Stones, and Walls of Force.
[4] Master: Able to create large-scale magic That can affect a large area or a long distance from the caster.
[5] Legend: Can use Grand Scale Magic by harnessing environmental Mana. Size and range of effect are theoretically unlimited.
Both Rynan and Meservi were Masters, of water and air respectively. Marc assumed that Rynan was also a Legend class Space user, but had not confirmed it with her, feeling she might be uncomfortable with discussing it. Grenn was still at the Novice stage of Fire Magic, a point of some insecurity on the big man’s part.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
While it was possible for users of Mana to increase the level of their Magic, it required constant training to grow the capacity of their Mana core. That said, each person had a different level of affinity. For many, growth was painfully slow. More than half of the human population of the world would never gain more than Novice level, no matter how much they trained. Less than half of those who remained would achieve more than Journeyman. Less than 5% would reach Expert and perhaps only a tenth of one percent could hope to attain Master. In the recorded history of the world, the number of Legend-class Magic users was a mere handful, excluding the confirmed cases of Travelers that is.
The two advantages Marc had as a traveler were his longevity and the lack of a cap on his affinity to any element. That said, he did not seem to gain any benefit when it came to the speed of the growth he could expect. So he was still working away as a novice fire user with no end in sight. But with unlimited time, he should eventually reach Legend status. Whether that took fifty years or five thousand, no one could say.
While the Inner Flame was a novice-level skill, which should only affect the caster, Grenn had used a well-known trick. With physical contact, it was possible with certain skills to allow the effects to “overflow” into the connected body. This fills the other person’s body with the excess Mana released by the Magic.
The technique also allowed Marc to “learn” how to channel Fire Mana. This was apparently a common technique used to teach newly awakened mana users how to activate their skills. He wondered why Rynan did not seem to be familiar with this method but decided against asking her for now.
Marc had attempted to “heat up” the destroyed socks. At first, nothing seemed to happen. The overflow technique only sent over a small percentage of a person’s mana after all. Then Marc noticed a small change to the Status for the sock.
SOCK (1/2)* (DUR 1/10) INT +1
ONE SOCK. PART OF A PAIR.
*CLOTHING ITEMS BROUGHT FROM ANOTHER WORLD. GRANTS BONUS WHEN EQUIPPED. INEXTIRPABLE.
The Durability had indeed gone from zero back to one. He picked up one of the pieces and noticed that several small threads had appeared, connecting the tiny pieces together into a mess of fabric and thin strings.
He kept it up until the skill timed out. He was able to increase the DUR up to 3/10. He kept at it for several hours, finally raising the Durability back to 10/10. The Sock looked basically new. Marc was excited. He did not know how this was going to help him. The clothes were still very inappropriate, but at least he knew he could repair them if needed. Potentially forever.
As for how this ended up with Marc’s iPod working, after the success of Marc’s clothing experiment he pulled the music player from his storage space.
MARC’S IPOD
A MUSIC PLAYING DEVICE FROM ANOTHER WORLD. INEXTIRPABLE.
The charge had long ago died out, so what did he have to lose? It didn’t seem to have a Durability marker, however, so he tried not to get his hopes up too high.
Channeling his skill into the small metal device, he felt it start to warm to his touch, quickly becoming rather hot. Fearing some kind of explosion, he pulled back on the skill. The metal started to immediately cool back down. Marc sighed in disappointment but then the small screen lit up and he was overjoyed to see the small black fruit logo appear in the middle of the window.
Sliding his finger around the disk-shaped controller everything seemed to be in working order. He looked at the battery icon in the top corner of the screen and noted that he only had a small amount of power. At this rate, it would probably just turn off in a few minutes. But he had a way to recharge the iPod.
After charging it up again, he was able to get the battery up to about a quarter bar. Then he ran off to show Rynan and Grenn. To say that their response was disappointing would be putting it lightly. In fact, it reminded him a lot of how his Grandmother had reacted when he told her about getting a job supporting a video game.
They both noticed how excited Marc was, but they were obviously just being polite. At first when he explained the qualities that allowed him to repair his old clothing they seemed impressed. To them, it was quite useful to be able to repair his clothes endlessly, but it was unfortunate that only his old clothing had those properties. There was also magic that could refresh fabrics and repair things, so while somewhat unique in its mechanics, the usefulness was unclear.
Then he showed them the iPod, sure that this would shock them. He explained how it worked and how he had figured out how to recharge it. Then he played some music and let them listen to the headphones, one at a time.
At first, Rynan was surprised by the sound blasting directly into her ears, but then she figured it out. Marc played a few seconds of a few songs and she smiled a bit but quickly passed the headphones to Grenn to try.
Grenn was rather less impressed. He didn’t like feeling the objects in his ears and the loud noise coming from the small objects directly in his ears made it much worse.
He quickly took them out and gave them back to Marc.
“Why… when would you use this… thing?” Grenn tried to ask diplomatically.
“When you exercise or go running. It’s so you can listen to music anywhere, anytime.” Marc said proud of his prized possession.
“Running?” Grenn seemed offended. “You would make yourself deaf before running. That is suicide.”
Marc took that in. It was not the reaction he was expecting. Rynan had gone back to examining the hoodie more closely.
In the end, the evening of culture sharing ended in failure. He had confirmed that music was a thing in this world. But the concept of music anytime you want was very foreign indeed. It was a leisure activity where the wealthy would go to a concert hall, or played by musicians at festivals, not something done commonly, and certainly not played where it could attract beasts, or distract the senses.
While he had been happy that he had brought his prized iPod back from the dead, the inability to share that with his friends put a damper on the experience. He put it back into his storage and left it alone for the most part. That is until the snow started.
Unable to go outside and with nothing to do inside Marc had started to huddle in his room, under blankets to try and keep warm. He eventually found that the cellar that kept their food cool in the summer was actually warmer than his room due to the lack of wind sneaking through gaps in the wall. He ended up building a makeshift tent in a corner of the cellar where he would spend hours listening to his music and using his warming skill every time the cooldown ended to warm him up again.
After a couple of weeks of this, both Rynan and Kira had had enough. Grenn had not been visiting since the snow started as it was too dangerous to do any training. Kira was unhappy that his development had effectively stopped and Rynan was concerned with his darkened mood.
Once the fire had been stoked back to life one morning she came down into the cellar to drag him up into the warming cabin.
“Alright. Enough of this moping. Come on up and let’s get back to training.” She scolded.
“Hmmm? Can’t go outside. Still snowing.” His voice droned.
“Sure we can. Let’s work on your magic. Stop wasting all your mana on that fire skill. Let’s start unlocking your Water Mana.” She tried to be cheerful.
“Too cold.”
“It will be colder if you are soaking wet.” she stared at him with a wild look in her eyes, a blue glow starting to cover one hand.
“Fine. Fine. I’m, coming.” Marc growled. He slowly extricated himself from his nest of blankets that he had built in the corner of the cellar, then followed her up the stairs and shut the door covering the entrance. He walked into the main room and was immediately surprised. It was… warm!
He rushed over the fire. Next to the fireplace, it was quite comfortable now, but even a few steps away there was still more warmth than he had previously experienced.
“What happened? Has the snow stopped?” He asked, letting the warmth penetrate his bones.
“Hardly. If anything it’s worse.” She smiled. She was filling the kettle and placed it over the fire to boil.
“Why does it feel so much better?” He asked, puzzled.
“Do you feel the wind?”
He stood still for a moment. Indeed, there was no more wind. The freezing blasts that would steal any warmth he could manufacture in his body were gone.
“How?”
“Water magic of course!” She smiled at him triumphantly.
“Huh?”
《You really are an idiot.》
“Didn’t Kira tell you yet?”
“No, Nothing. She’s been kind of moody lately.”
“Oh. I see. She has been moody.” Rynan parroted back, not a hint of sarcasm in her voice.
《It’s ice you moron.》
“Ice?”
“Exactly!” Rynan exclaimed. Happy that he had figured it out.
“Huh? I don’t get it.” Marc was lost. Maybe the cold had broken his mind. How could ice help keep him warm?
“Here.” Rynan walked over to the window in the kitchen. They had sealed up the window before the snow started and it had been locked closed ever since. She reached up and pulled off the lock that sealed the window shut.
Marc braced himself for a blast of cold air, but nothing happened. He walked over to the kitchen and looked through the window. But there was nothing there. It was blocked… by a solid wall of ice.
“An igloo.”
《An igloo. Sheesh, you are slow.》
Rynan looked at him quizzically. Then shrugged it off.
《She went outside this morning and did it. Covered up all the walls with ice.》
He stared at his teacher with such gratitude. She was keeping him warm. She was an angel.
“Okay, enough moping in the cellar. Are you ready to start learning Water Magic now?”
“Yes Teacher!” He stood up straight and saluted. Then made a face, he dropped his hand, then made a fist and pushed it into his other hand’s flattened palm in a Chinese martial arts pose he remembered from old TV shows. “Yes, Master!”
Rynan put her hand on his forehead, checking for a fever. Feeling nothing out of the ordinary, she went back to get the kettle from the fire.
“Teacher is fine. You can always call me Teacher.”