Author’s Note: So another chapter has appeared. In other happy news, I received fanart from a reader! The fanart is so good that I decided I’m going to be using it as my story cover. If you’re interested feel free to check the main page for my story to see it. If you’re interested in the full size image then here have a link. http://imgur.com/a/ZIyCm Isn't it amazing? It is, right?
Please enjoy the chapter.
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Chapter 15
I woke up in a foul mood. My dreams had been very clear and it was as if they were mocking me. Making me experience Seri’s memories of her never giving up on a task just because at first it seemed impossible. Damn dreams, this isn’t the same type of situation at all! I don’t see how just trying harder would change my lack of inner magic!
I calmed myself down. Possibly, I was being too hasty giving up after only one night. I might just have to give it more tries, and if it doesn’t work out maybe there are other methods to use that might give me a mana pool. If all else fails maybe I can find a magic user willing to try stuff for me. That would come with pretty gigantic risks though, which makes it an all around unattractive option.
I felt a hot breath on my ear and was finally completely pulled out of my thoughts.and truly awake. I turned my head and found myself face to face with Seran. I realized that when I went to sleep last night I had made the mistake of not turning my shield back on first. This explains, at least partly, why I now have a supermodel level beauty clinging to me very closely. How the heck did I wake up and not immediately notice I was being used as a cuddle pillow? I peeked under the blanket and saw that she definitely wasn’t wearing all that much. She must have taken her armor off to sleep. Well, I couldn’t fault her for that at least. I had stripped down to just my dress to sleep in, too. The temperature on this side of the mountain range seems a bit warmer than on the kingdom side.
Coa wasn’t around my neck or on top of me though, so I glanced around. I saw her curled up sleeping a small distance away from me. She must have escaped when Seran took me as a pillow. At least she didn’t wake me up this morning with hunger cries, which is a bit surprising now that I think about it. Up until now she’s eaten almost every six hours, and judging by how light it is, it’s definitely past dawn already. Maybe Seran or Gormon fed her for me while I was asleep?
I’ll ask about that later if I remember. First things first, I need to figure out how I want to deal with Seran. I don’t have much problem with being held by a beautiful woman. Seran doesn’t even smell bad surprisingly! If anything this is a very happy situation to find myself in, but the way she’s pressing against me is causing some feelings in my body that are making me a bit uncomfortable. I believe that I might be starting to feel aroused in the female sense. I thought I was getting used to being a girl, and the memories of Seri’s life have definitely helped, but these particular feelings are a bit too much for me to process right now. I think I need to get out of here and cool down. If I don’t, I might make a move on Seran and that would really make things awkward.
I slowly eased Seran’s arms off of me and slipped out of her hold. I was being extra careful not to wake her up. I slid out of the blanket and then put the extra blanket that had been serving as my pillow in her arms instead. She clutched on to it as tightly as she had been holding me, but showed no signs of awakening and I sighed in relief. I slipped on my boots and rest of my clothes, then picked up Coa and wrapped her around my neck. After she was back in place, I clicked the button on my shield to reactivate it.
I pushed the flap of the tent up and stepped out. Judging by the sun’s position, it’s probably an hour or two after dawn. Gormon was sitting by the remains of the fire and to my surprise it looked like he was making wood carvings. He had a small number of completed works sitting next to him. The horse was tied up and grazing not too far from him. I walked over toward him.
He stopped his carving and then nodded at me before speaking. “Asleep.”
What? What is this guy talking about? I think this is the first time I’ve heard him say anything. “No, I’m awake obviously. I don’t need to sleep anymore.” I replied.
Gormon shook his head and then pointed at the tent before repeating. “Asleep.”
I looked at the tent again. The only one in there was Seran and oh, I understand what he is saying now. I answered, “Yes, Seran is still asleep. I didn’t want to wake her, but should I?”
He shook his head slightly before going back to his carving. I guess I shouldn’t expect any further conversation from him. I reached toward one of his carvings and he made no move to stop me so I picked one up at random. It looked like one of those bear creatures I saw back in the mountain. It was surprisingly detailed too for the size. The others were of a variety of beasts, but all were very well done. One of them in particular caught my eye. It was a feathered serpent dragon like Coa, though the carving was an adult judging by the spread wing span. I wonder if Coa inspired this piece. I sat it back down with the others after examining it for a while. To my surprise, I noticed that Gormon had been watching me. He picked up the small dragon carving I had just put down and handed it to me.
I took it from him and asked, “Does this mean you’re giving this to me?” He nodded. “Thanks, I appreciate it.” I wasn’t sure if I was being too brief in the thanks or not but he looked somewhat satisfied, his facial expression hardly changes, and he went back to his work. I examined the carving again, but I was pretty happy with the small item. I’d have to put it on one of the shelves back in my room. I definitely had some empty space since not everything on my shelves had been able to be reconstructed. I grimaced a bit at that thought. I had lost some neat trophies and memorabilia.
I passed the time until Seran woke up just relaxing by watching the sky and thinking about the magic training from last night. I wanted to discuss with Lynn but I can’t speak aloud without looking crazy. If I had some pen and paper I could write and she could read and respond but at most right now I could only write in the dirt a few words at a time. That would be really too slow for any kind of conversation. It’s not too bad if it’s just to give Lynn an order though.
I turned away from Gormon, I doubted he’d be able to read what I wrote but no reason to take any chances. I don’t want to trigger some ‘You can use the ancient language!’ flag. I picked up a small twig from the ground and wrote. [Lynn, can you find some way to test for this supposed magic energy that is in the air? If it really exists like Seran said, then there should be some evidence of it you can find.] <((If you have paid money and bought this story on Amazon or some other store, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.This story is only hosted for free on royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any website other than royalroad.com, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual.))>
Lynn replied, “I’m not sure Mistress. It might take a while to develop and it might require using some of the materials we don’t want to waste.”
I wrote some more. [Just let me know if that should be the case. Don’t use any of them without giving me heads up. Otherwise, I’m aware it could take some time but I think it is important. I have a hypothesis that this ambient magic might be why our drone got destroyed when it went too high. Maybe it’s denser in the upper atmosphere. If this is the case then we’ll need to find a way to shield the ship from it before we can leave. Another thing on the priority list.] I sighed after finishing.
Lynn giggled in my ear. “It’s fine Mistress, we’ll absolutely get there eventually. I’ll go get started on this now.”
[Good luck, Lynn] I wrote. Afterwards I made sure to erase all leftover evidence of the conversation. Writing only a few words at a time and then erasing made that take a long time. I was surprised that Seran still wasn’t awake though. Her and Gormon are quite a huge contrast to each other. Somehow, I feel like the both of them cause lots of issues for the commander back in the fort. Maybe he intentionally chose them to get rid of of them for a week and my presence just made an excuse for it?
Well regardless, I kind of wish she’d get her butt up already. I’m getting hungry and she’s the cook of the party since I can’t use my stuff. Thinking of us as a party makes me wonder if there are actual parties as in how it would work in a game. Another damn thing to test or learn about later. Anyway, I’m going to wake her up. I stood up, walked over to the tent and lifted the flap to look inside.
Seran was now sprawled across the blankets and I stepped around her closer to her head. I bent down and whispered into one of her long ears. “Seran, wake up.” Then I blew into it.
She shot up so fast that I almost couldn’t believe it. Her hand was covering the ear I had just blown into too. Maybe elves have really sensitive ears? I’ll file that away for potentially useful information, especially since it could be used in a number of ways. She was looking at me like she was still half asleep and not really aware of what was going on. I decided to clue her in. “Seran, it’s time to wake up. Gormon and I have been waiting on you for over an hour now.”
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She was blinking rapidly before she shook herself. She spoke but her voice still had a drowsy tinge to it. “Right, I’ll get dressed and make breakfast.” I had to help her with the getting dressed part, and Gormon had a shocked expression on his face when he saw her follow me out of the tent. Did he expect her to sleep for that long?
It took Seran a while but eventually we had breakfast, which Coa just happened to wake up for, not surprisingly. Unlike the night before, I helped with packing up the tent and we were once again traveling along what passed for a road. I had some ideas so I decided to consult with Seran to pass the time.
“Hey Seran, about the magic lesson from last night-” I started but Seran quickly interrupted me.
“There’s no reason to worry! Everyone has magic so we’ll just continue more later. I’m sure you’ll get it if we keep trying!” Seran assured me.
“That wasn’t what I was going to say.” I laughed and continued. “I wanted to know how a magic pulse was supposed to feel? You said I should feel it react with my own inner mana but I’m curious exactly what that sensation should feel like.”
“Oh, I’m happy you’re not giving up already. It should feel like a vibration in your body at a certain point. Your mana pool can actually reside in different places, though the common area to find it is in your torso. Mine is right by my heart, Gormon is quite rare in that his is in his left arm. He doesn’t have much mana though. Actually, you should probably keep where your mana pool is located to yourself as much as possible. It can be a pretty easily exploited weakness if it’s known. Well the vast majority of the time it’s in the torso like I said, so most magic users get targeted there.”
“Does the location matter?” I asked. I was curious why she hadn’t brought this up last night in her explanation.
“Not a bit. It may create a very small difference in moving mana from say an arm to the hand but the difference has actually been studied by various Sorcerers and found to be completely negligible. Size of the pool isn’t affected by where it is either.” Seran answered.
“All I felt when we did the pulse was a tingly feeling that went through my body and then eventually stopped at my head.” I said.
“Maybe your mana pool is located in your head then? The mana pulse should have spread throughout your body equally before fading, not stopped at any point.” She added.
My head? I suppose it might be possible that my psi interfered with it or possibly she’s right and my mana pool is there in my head? Maybe I can use my psi to study the pulse as it flows through me. It might give me some more insight about this. “I guess I’ll focus more on that tonight when we try again. I had another topic that I wanted to discuss with you. I know I am receiving a big favor with the magic tutoring since I’m already being escorted for free, but you said that you and Gormon were high level Scouts. I’m in need of training in a Class that I can use right now, since with no beasts I’m not much of a Beastmaster. Could I receive some training along those lines too?”
Seran was silent for a while before responding. “I could teach you, but Scout requires you having reached level 30 as a Hunter and I’m guessing you don’t have that? Teaching you the basics to be a Hunter wouldn’t be that difficult if you’re interested in that.”
That’s really valuable information she just gave me. Classes unlock further Classes on this world? Does Beastmaster have a higher level Class? That also explains the soldiers in the fort having the Classes they did. Thinking about the commander I decided to ask. “What about being a Knight?”
“That Class requires being a level 40 Warrior. Neither Gormon or I could help you get that though.” She answered. Wow, that means the commander had leveled at least four Classes. Pretty impressive.
“Nah, I was just curious. My knowledge about Classes is a bit bare I suppose since I was always just satisfied with only being a Beastmaster.” I said.
Seran confidently replied. “Hunter should suit a Beastmaster like yourself since you’ll learn how to trap animals and attack from afar with a bow. Alright, I’ll teach you some of the basics at lunch!”
The rest of the time spent until lunch was just mainly idle conversation. I tried to direct questions to gather information about places in the empire and Seran in turn tried to ask questions about my family and my adventuring. Of course, I had to make up lots of details and be vague about others. I was pretty honest in describing my childhood, Aaron’s childhood anyway after I edited sufficiently it to fit this world. Seran was quite happy to hear all this kind of stuff, the only problem was that the talk made her interested in meeting my family and insisting that I visit the town where the Ashleaf Clan primarily lives while I’m in the empire. I told her I’d think about it.
We ended up having a late lunch. Seran started coaching me on how to make some simple animal traps. We started with a snare and she even helped me catch a small rabbit with it. I was praised for the accomplishment but I’m pretty sure Seran had more to do with why the rabbit went into the trap. After that she showed me a few more variations of snares that are possible to use before displaying a simple weight trap. She told me that she’d continue the lecture later with details of how to construct pitfall traps.
In the afternoon, the road entered a forest and I learned that the rest of the way we’d be traveling through it. I was assured that no monster above level 20 lived in it. Seran asked me if I wanted to take the time to tame some, but I told her that I’d rather spend the time with the Hunter and magic tutoring.
Which is what we did when we finally stopped for the night. Seran wanted to teach me how to use a bow, but her longbow was a bit too awkward to use due to my small size. Gormon refused to let me try his shortbow too. After being taught about traps for a while, we moved on to the magic training.
Or well, that was what I expected to happen immediately afterwards. Seran took me into the tent and conjured up some water to use and we cleaned ourselves. That was a bit of a problematic experience for me since Seran’s body was fully on display. She didn’t seem to have the slightest problem being pretty much naked with me. I ignored her as well as I could and at least this explained her general cleanliness. I had been a bit surprised by it earlier after all. I guess when you can freely conjure up fresh clean water, it’s not too hard to do though. After we were done, Seran dried out the ground a bit before spreading out the thick blankets.
After that we went back out of the tent to do my anticipated magic training. To take advantage of my idea from earlier in the day, I swapped my Ranger class to Empath. Empath was best when it came to using psi for things like messing with the body. It was possible to use it to speed up the body’s natural healing among other options like buffing it. Well Empath had been the support class in game so it was understandable that it had these abilities available. I rarely used it for them though, opting to instead use it for other reasons such as my mental links.
Seran and I were now once again holding hands. “Alright, are you ready? I’m going to send the mana now.”
I nodded and then sent my psi sense into my body. This time, I watched the odd energy as it went around every inch of my body and then dissipated upon reaching my head. There wasn’t a vibration or anything but there was still some kind of reaction there. It might just be the mana being interfered with by my psi overloaded brain though.
The next attempt I decided to take a more active response to the magic pulse. I reached and tried, instead of letting it run around my body, to gather it all together in one place. It worked for a brief moment before rebounding and energy went wild inside of me for a moment. I felt really dizzy all of a sudden and fell forward into Seran. A glance upwards with my eyes told me she was really concerned about the reaction.
“Are you alright? What happened?” She asked.
“Nothing, just a weird reaction happened. Can we try again?” I pleaded.
“Just one or two more times. I don’t want to push you too much. I’ve never seen someone have a reaction like that to a little mana.” She said.
I didn’t bother explaining what was really going on of course. The next two times went about the same way though I managed to hide the rebound reaction better so Seran was willing to let me have a fifth attempt tonight before bed. This time I decided rather than trying to hold all of the magic pulse, I was going to hold onto only a small portion of it.
It was a success. The rest of the pulse went through me and then disappeared but this small fraction of it was still sitting there intact inside my body. I excused myself to go to bed in the tent and left Seran on her watch. After getting under the blankets, I started playing with the mana inside me. I started moving it by my own control through my body. I surprisingly even managed to move it into my head without issue this time. Maybe because the mana was directly under my psi’s control?
Doing that caused something amazing to happen. I felt a small, almost impossible to notice vibration. If I hadn’t been looking closely for something like it, there would have been no way I’d have caught it. I let the mana get closer to that reaction and then the mana broke apart and disappeared but as it did I felt whatever it was grow in size ever so slightly. I had no way to be sure, but I believed this was the start of my very own mana pool.
I went to sleep in a much better mood than the previous night.