Yup, it was very, very unpleasant. On the plus side, however, the worst part was probably my malformed bones, but once I had run recognize through my own bones I felt a thousand times better. It didn’t really bring back the memories I was worried about, since it was a completely different experience, but it was enormously painful, especially re-composing the parts of my skeleton that had decomposed or had long poorly-healed injuries.
I know I asked for food several times, and the extra energy from the higher-tier food actually helped a lot. A couple of times I had to stop manipulating my own skeleton to work with my ligaments and muscles, easing and stretching them, but it looked like my malnutrition actually had very little effect on my brain, which was a blessing.
Someone had to help me to the bathroom a couple of times, as I flushed out impurities and pollutants far in excess of my usual dietary problems. A lifetime of abuse, when you were using magical talents to try and correct it, left behind enormous amounts of pollution.
Finally, I woke up fully out of my trance and realized I was standing naked in a hot shower, one that was far too small for me. Looking stupidly at my bracelet’s conditions readout.
Current conditions:
Respawn Penalty (5:59:45.1) health -1, speed -1
exhaustion
minor essence poisoning (4:52.1) acuity -1
minor diuresis (22:35.0)
Tailored Y-gene decimation retrovirus (permanent remission)
“Are you okay?” I heard Angel asking through the shower door.
I coughed a couple of times and she started to open the wooden stall door before I answered, “Yeah, I am.” I actually coughed blood and other, darker things out of my lungs, but I felt a thousand times better afterward.
Angel sighed loudly, sounding relieved, and stopped moving the door. “That’s wonderful! You have just been groaning and sick until you asked to take a shower. How are you doing? You were caked with that… crap that came out of your skin. We tossed the bedding and put the plastic mattress out to weather a bit, and the captain got a little pissed, but there was no way that shit could get recycled.”
“Thank you,” I said, noticing the layers of darkness going down the drain, to be joined in a moment by, I am ashamed to admit, a good long pee. Diuresis is not a joke, and I realized that the timer had been in minutes, not hours. I wasn’t sure what the ‘respawn penalty’ was, but it was probably something that would penalize the full-body regrowth I’d just gone through. Being weak and slow for six hours was certainly something I could deal with for such a major repair.
“Why did I have essence poisoning?”
“That was Lilah’s idea. She said that your body was starving for essence because your life affinity was providing for your healing, but your advancement and energy handling were both draining essence far in excess of what your affinity could safely provide. So she fed you some uncommon food, which seemed to help more than the basic food that didn’t seem to be feeding you enough. Of course, because your vocation and essence handling is far too low to handle it, it was bound to overload you a little.”
I nodded, leaning against the shower as more blackened water spilled off my body. “Thank you. Whatever you did worked. How many days have I been unconscious?”
“Days?” Angel said in surprise, “Wait, you are done already? It’s only been about four hours since you went unconscious. It was nasty, but you were bleeding and oozing from every pore, and then screaming, and I took over from Renee a few minutes ago. What the hell happened?”
I sighed and started scrubbing my hair and skin with a washrag and bar of soap I found in the shower stall. “Apparently I had a crap ton of toxins from… well, a very desperate life. To be fair, my life affinity is strange, I am wondering if some of those toxins were actually real, or just created from foreign essences inside of my body. I do feel a lot cleaner now, though, and a lot… taller. I am having trouble keeping my balance.”
“Yep yep. Renee said you are over six feet now. Not as tall as Charlie, but she gained height after her vocation, can you look at your vocation and see what’s changed?”
I nodded and checked things out. It’s possible I had gotten announcements while I was thrashing and just never noticed them, but fortunately whatever the band was made out of rejected the nastiness that had come pouring out of my veins.
Thaniel Kushman Grimm
Vocation: Rank 8 Mender(basic) (3%)
Path: Troubleshooter
Health: great (good)
Durability: good
Reflex: great
Speed: good (fair)
Will: great
Acuity: great
____________________
Combat Trait slots: 1
improved endurance
dodge
damage resistance
Utility trait slots: 6
toxin resistance
anatomy
enhanced mend
running
improvised fieldcraft
deep scan
Magical Trait slots: 6
sexual empathy
improved recognize
adapt spellform
preserve patterns
Free points available: 4
____________________
Affinity: Life
Mana: ∞ (Life affinity override)
Essence: ∞ (Life affinity override)
____________________
Current conditions:
Respawn Penalty (5:50:22.4) health -1, speed -1
exhaustion
minor diuresis (13:12.3)
Tailored Y-gene decimation retrovirus (permanent remission)
____________________
Awards:
Knucklehead
Purified
Utility traits available:
activate substance
engage formula
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
Combat traits available:
drain essence (life affinity)
improvised weapons
improvised blocking
inattention
Magic traits available:
mercy (life affinity)
aura violation (life affinity)
ranged trait (1 available)
looting
amplify space
runic library (basic)
rune creation
“Holy shit.”
“What?”
“My attributes. I don’t understand,” I replied.
“What happened?” Angel asked.
“I went up four levels. Hey, do you got any clothes? I don’t think my stuff will fit.”
“Yeah, it’s stacked up out here. Renee said you would be big so we grabbed some extras before we left, and some big-boy coveralls that would fit you even if you were the size of a house. I think maybe you were in a creative fugue. That sometimes happens to a vocation that starts performing at a higher rank, and might have been because of the food and essence poisoning interacting with your mending.”
I shook my head slowly, “I missed a lot apparently.” I finally felt clean, and stretched, pressing my hands against the low ceiling. Cool, I was having some trouble with my balance, but my hands didn’t look so comically oversized anymore, compared to my arms.
Damn. I looked down at myself. “Holy shit times two.”
“What?”
“I look… kind of amazing. I have real muscles because of Renee’s training. My weird belly and bow legs are gone and I can actually see my umm… I can see without bending over.”
“Alright, are you going to be okay?”
“I think so, Thanks, Angel.”
“I am going to leave this stuff here. If you need me, yell, okay?”
“I will.”
Fifteen minutes later, I was standing in the berthing compartment, using mend on a set of too-short coveralls wearing a pair of boxer shorts and a tee-shirt that felt like it was about to cut off my circulation. I’d peed again, and apparently, the diuresis effect had worn off, although I still had a while to go before my regrowth penalty was gone.
“Okay, you did a really good job,” Angel said. She was sitting on one of the hammock-tied racks, fiddling with a strange-looking contraption made of wires and cotter pins. Some kind of specialty trigger, I thought, although it had some kind of essence flowing through it.
I was looking at the coveralls. There was enough fabric, but improvised fieldcraft and mend had definitely been called for, since they were about two inches too short, but refitting it so that it was only a bit baggy and wasn’t high-waters wasn’t too difficult. “Thanks. I haven’t really tried resizing clothes before. My old stuff is a total loss, though I might be able to recover some of the fabric, but I think you’d do a much better job.”
She shook her head, “No, I wouldn’t. We are absolutely going to have to get you some better gear in Saint Mary, especially if you rift with us. I want to make sure you have at least cuir bouilli and a staff, just in case. I was talking about your mending job on yourself. Pretty amazing job, you filled out fairly aesthetically, especially your legs, but Renee’s going to drive you until you look like you spent half your life in a gym.”
“Will that help?”
She nodded, “When delving, definitely. A better shape means more strength, more energy, and more speed. Pure attributes have massively diminishing returns once you hit human maximum unless you get enhanced bonuses like… well, in your case, enhanced endurance, which is great. You also seemed to have gained a combat trait?”
I nodded, “Resist toxins is a utility trait, but probably one that will help in both combat and crafting and resist damage… I have no idea how that works, but it took up one of my combat traits slots.”
Angel nodded, “Charlie has damage resistance too. It probably came from repairing the damage your body had, as did toxin resistance, which I got after poisoning myself for the
“The what time?”
She muttered something.
“Hmm?”
She grumbled, “After about the fiftieth time. I set traps, and a lot of the time I’d poison myself by making them, making the toxins, or setting the trap itself. I wasn’t using heavily poisonous traps at the time, but please don’t bring it up around Charlie. She likes to make jokes about coming home and finding me paralyzed on the floor.”
“Does that happen anymore?”
She shook her head, “Not since I enhanced my fieldcraft. Now I can make more powerful poisons in advance, and my toxic resistance protects me from them, and then my vocation's enhanced traps trait allows me to boost their strength. That’s why you will usually find me with a knife in one hand and a contraption in the other, both of them poisoned.”
“Do you have trouble with that?” I asked, looking over the offers for my new trait points.
She shrugged, “I stopped worrying about it almost two decades ago. If someone wants to disable or kill me, my only goal is to disable or kill them first. Someone screaming about poison being dishonorable is just crying because they want to kill you easily. I’m not an assassin, I am a scout, and I use poison and traps to fight. If you don’t like it, too bad.”
I coughed, “I wasn’t arguing with you. Hell, I saw some herbs that I was hoping might make for good paralytics when we were heading to the boats, I just wasn’t sure about the rules.”
She nodded, “If you get into a fight, you are going to get a large number of comments about fighting like a man, honor, limiting your weapons or attacks, and lots of other things. Once they are dead or unconscious, the comments stop. Your vocation is a combination, not a combat class, so anyone who tries to attack you is already dishonorable. If they whine, they can do it through the hole in their neck where their head used to be. If you ain’t cheatin’, you don’t care enough about winnin’.”
“Is that the law?”
She laughed, “No, the law is whatever the lord of the city decides it is. Some places still pay lip service to the Constitution and Bill of Rights, but most places are basically trumped-up feudal baronies without any king unless one of the warlords has taken control of more than one city, and the government only lasts long enough for that warlord to be taken out by another one. The cities with a non-expansionist lord tend to be very stable, but the ones with would-be emperors tend to change hands pretty frequently.”
“Paul Lafitte is pretty fair, all things considered, but you still don’t want to tempt him.”
“So how powerful do I have to be for people to leave me alone and not want to kidnap me?”
She smiled slightly, “technically, your team is more of a threat to any would-be attackers than you are. Once we are all rare, and you are uncommon at the very least, you will probably be too dangerous of a target for anyone to try and swallow. Of course, there will always be people that want to kidnap you and set you to doing their bidding.”
“Like you?”
Her eyes narrowed, but she still grinned, “Exactly like us. The difference is, we don’t keep slaves. I want to be your friend as much as your teammate, and I think Lilah and Renee are both coming around to that way of thinking as well. Charlie is a very good judge of character, and started off that way, which was kind of surprising.”
“Why was that surprising?”
Angelique snorted, “She married a convicted Felon. He has since… passed, but he was in prison as a sex offender, and we thought she was crazy. Turns out his ex was a nightmare since he treated Charlie like a princess.”
“Did he die in the crash?”
She shook her head, “No, it was… complicated, if she wants to share the story, she will. Let’s just say that Charlie is a brawler for a reason, and leave it at that.”
“Are you a scout for a reason?”
She nodded, “Yep. I used to be on the bomb squad at the same station where Charlie worked. Renee was her college friend, and we were pretty tight, looked out for each other when the crash hit and took Renee’s family.”
“Did you lose anyone?”
She nodded, “Everyone did. I lost both my parents and my fiancee. Renee lost almost everyone, and Charlie lost a lot of good friends and her grandfather. Lilah lost her family too, but she was a lot younger when it happened. I guess you were born after the crash since you just lost your status protection. Did you know your parents?”
I shook my head, “No. Apparently, I was young enough that I don’t even remember their faces. I figured my mom died, and my father? Well, who knows.”
She nodded, “That’s a true shame. I am going to do some reading. Do you need anything?”
I chuckled, “A nap.”
She smiled, “Well, feel free. We have blankets and sheets on that rack for you, now that you are… cleaner. I am on watch.”
I nodded, thanking her, and curled up into the rack. I think I must have fallen asleep faster than I had in my entire life.
***
“This is going to be a problem,” Renee said out loud as she was pushing the boy through more burnout sparring. He’d unzipped and tied the arms of his now well-fitted blue coveralls around his waist and even yanked off his tee shirt to expose exactly the musculature she’d tried to coax into him… except now that he wasn’t badly warped from his ordeals, the sweat glistening along his corded shoulders and well-developed belly was beyond distracting.
She’d been loyal to her husband, at least, at first, and had a very negative experience with a few ‘adventurer’ types in the beginning who had decided that their scarcity had made them God’s gift to women, and Renee had grown up a bit spoiled, well-aware that as a wealthy and attractive young socialite, she was a cut above the rest. Even her ‘roughing it’ hobbies like fencing and wilderness survival were more to support her ViewTube channel and endless praise from thirsty worshipers than anything else.
Of course, the crash had changed all that. Traditional money and powerful families had become nothing more than a relic, and for a while a woman like her had two choices, learn to fight or join some entitled asshole’s harem. It really seemed like the crash had brought out the worst in men, power-hungry jerks were suddenly in big demand and it went to their heads quickly.
That had led to a habit of avoiding or disregarding men until she’d simply forgotten how to interact with them altogether. Even Lilah, who was terrified of men for good reasons, was better at teasing and flirting than Renee was, which led Renee to make what she thought was a flirting bet about something she was sure no one could accomplish, let alone the sweaty boy… or rather the sweaty man in front of her.
Thaniel was tall now. Okay, not gigantic, but definitely over six feet, and the muscle her wildly successful burnouts had put on him, combined with his trait, had turned him into a formidably attractive man. The worst part was his face. It was almost fragile, with a hint of Asian eyes, especially with his long brown hair giving him a feminine appearance, but back pre-crash that look alone would have had him on the cover of GQ or even People magazine, and in the Jane Brain of half the tweenie girls and cat ladies in America, and maybe Japan to boot.
Not that people gaining attractiveness was unusual when they gained a vocation. Silhouette might have been an idiot system, but it was still a system, and it tended to clean up genetic defects and optimize health with every attribute point you gained. Not to mention vocation traits themselves often made dramatic changes in someone’s body, like Charlie shooting up over a foot after her shift to an uncommon pugilist vocation.
Even Angelique, who had been a mousy little daughter of a Japanese businessman who had moved to America to manage an agricultural plant during the great wave, had turned into a stunning jade beauty that, at least in this area, had led to a few aggressive attempts to… procure her. A big mistake considering her skillset.
She snapped back to what she was doing. That boy was attempting to train inattention, and every time he did, she tended to get distracted and reflective. She still couldn’t use her shield, although he HAD said he would attempt to regrow her missing hand before they landed in Saint Mary, but his combat traits absolutely could be trained.
Inattention was not supposed to work well on thinking creatures, but she suspected his odd affinity was boosting it enough that while it didn’t distract her terribly, it DID make her think about things other than pummeling him and helping him learn to avoid hits, like how attractive his broad chest was as he twisted in the air to avoid a sweep.
His durability and health were both still skyrocketing, although he was getting close to the human maximum where diminishing returns would kick in hard, and he’d have to start gaining traits like attribute enhancers to push them past those maximums. She could already tell he had enhanced endurance since even without mending himself he was able to keep going far past the point where most people would be lying flat on the ground panting.
Of course, his traits were still tied to a basic non-combat vocation, which meant his back hit the non-skid-coated metal deck painfully when she swept his feet out from under him, and he asked, as he hopped back to his feet, “What’s going to be a problem?”
She waved her practice weapon towards the well-deck voids, where dozens of young crewmembers were watching him train like vultures eyeing a particularly tasty creature in a desert. “Them.”
He glanced around and his brow furrowed. “Crap. Do you think they are spies for Aster’s hunters?”
Was he really that dense? His sheer naivety was both appealing and off-putting, and Renee had to remind herself that despite his odd insights and occasional far-too-mature humor, he was still barely out of being a teenager with nearly zero social knowledge. At times he was like an ancient monk, full of the wisdom of the world, but he might have never even touched or spoken to a girl before Charlie.
On the plus side, though, he hadn’t really been any sort of threatening. Renee still thought he was socially dangerous for the team, especially since she was damned sure that Angel would make a move on him soon despite being half her age, but as far as being a team asset, she couldn’t wait to drag him into a rift.
She shook her head as he got to his feet and started sponging himself off with that too-small tee-shirt that was almost worse than being bare-chested. “No. I think maybe we will have to keep a tighter watch on the berthing unless you want some of them sneaking in while you are trying to sleep for a cuddle.”
“Umm..” he blushed, his entire face and upper chest turning red as he blushed. “That’s probably a good idea, but is it really going to be that bad?”
Renee smiled slightly, “Guaranteed. This is a ship, which means the crew almost never sees any males except the Captain and no offense, but he is quite old and seems to be rather fanatically attached to his XO. Unless you want us to turn a blind eye for a while?”
To be honest, it probably wasn’t particularly fair to lock him up in a room with four old women, no matter how young they looked. As long as it didn’t affect his training or the team dynamic, he had every right to look for romance or relief elsewhere. This whole situation would have been so much easier if he were gay.
Was she driving him too hard? They still had a few days before they returned to port. Even with his mend and enhanced endurance, she was intentionally sending him to bed each evening utterly mentally and physically exhausted from his training. They were hoping to get him to his gold-circle gift, and maybe open up the next vocation in his ‘fixer’ path before landing, but that might be impossible.
Thaniel shook his head, “No. Not even close. At least, not yet. Call me old-fashioned, but the idea of leaving a string of babies behind because I couldn’t control myself is kind of… repugnant.”
Renee cursed to herself. It would be easier to dismiss him as a dog if he had acted more normal. She was his trainer, sort of a mentor, and currently a bodyguard, and it was stupid as hell imagining him taking her up on that stupid bet. Despite that retarded Costner movie, bodyguards did NOT sleep with their clients, that was insanely dangerous. If he’d been remotely competent, he’d have waited until her contract expired before banging Whitney’s brains out.
So, he was probably at the cap for his combat experience right now. As a non-combat class, only so much of his advancement could be provided by combat experience, and even though he hadn’t participated in actual fighting, combat training definitely constituted a worthwhile chunk. There wasn’t really a place onboard for him to improve his speed, and his durability was going to require enough of his mending trait’s gift that it would probably set back his mender class advancement if she tried to emphasize it right now, especially with damage resistance, which would take much higher levels of abuse to show durability growth.
Not to mention, putting him through durability and damage resistance training was something she absolutely was not ready for because she was not a sadist. Neither was Charlie, but she was far more pragmatic about it and would be a much better choice to give the poor kid the beatdown he would need in order to survive in a rift.
All of them, even Lilah, at one point or another had durability training. Charlie was kind of merciless, but she’d been a cop… she knew damned well that pain now meant living later. Not to mention that with a true healer on their team, it only made sense to start building up durability and resistance training again.
Uncommon-ranked restoration and healing potions not only tended to have too high toxicity to use frequently, but they were also incredibly expensive. She’d have to talk to Charlie about getting started again, and she already knew that Charlie had plans to work on her own resistance training when they weren’t traveling or rushed.
“I think we might be done for right now, you are probably capped for your rank since your dodge doesn’t seem to be hitting improved any time soon. I think, maybe, we might have to switch up with Charlie on that.”
He looked at me curiously, “I know you are a bit faster than her. Doesn’t that mean you are a better trainer for dodging?”
Renee nodded, “Usually, yes. But with your damage resistance, my threat to you has reduced unless I start cutting you with a real weapon. I still want to train with you, to increase your Silhouette-independent skills, but increasing your trait levels still requires that we follow its rules. Charlie is a much bigger threat, and usually trains us all in resistance and durability.”
“That, and you could probably use a little more time training your mend. There’s still lots of broken stuff for you to fix.”
He grinned, “You are aware that bio-mending provides tons more advancement than just fixing and building stuff.”
“You want me to start cutting you?” Renee said in shock. I mean, he was turning into kind of a training junky, but that took the cake.
He laughed, “Yes, but not yet.” he pointed at her hand, “I gained enhanced mend after I fixed my little problem. I think I am confident enough to get you back into fighting trim.”
***
Renee had seemed a little shocked, but she had started to act a little weird. I wasn’t sure, but I think maybe she was feeling the lack of a hand while we were training and was worried about hurting me if she pressed her all.
I wouldn’t say she was taking it easy on me, but she had been promised an attempt at healing, and I hadn’t delivered yet, so I wondered if she was rethinking taking me seriously. I knew she didn’t like me, but I had been serious about holding off until I was more confident.
When she’d mentioned maybe hooking up with one of the crew, I had briefly considered it, if only to remove her worry that I was going to sleep my way through her team. She was clearly extremely protective of them, and here I was, screwing up their whole multi-decade team dynamic.
Then again, maybe the team dynamic could use a bit of a boost considering that for an uncommon team, they seemed to be living a bit hand-to-mouth. Not that I thought there was anything wrong with that, but I had a suspicion that Renee was so eager to delve because they had been focusing on survival instead of advancement for quite some time.
“So… do I need to get naked like Charlie did?” she asked worriedly.
I snorted, “No. Except for maybe your arm, unless you have more damage elsewhere you want me to look at? As far as I know, I still need physical contact to use it inside your aura. But if you have scars like she does, that means I need to get close to them to fix them. But I have been careful not to use deep scan on you because Lilah said that’s horribly rude… but I will need to do that if you want anything more than your arm fixed.”
She shook her head, “No, I mean… After what Charlie went through, I’d rather find out what getting my arm fixed feels like before I start dealing with some of my old injuries. I am not as beat up as she was, but we have been using low-grade healing potions for a long time.”
I looked at her in confusion, “What’s that mean?”
She sighed deeply, “You lowered the toxicity in healing potions, right?”
I nodded.
“Did you figure out how they work?”
“Somewhat. I mean, there was a solid pattern, but it was backed by magic that I haven’t learned yet. Whatever it is, it's not anything like my life affinity or mend.”
She nodded, “Life affinity is pretty rare, from what I understand, and it’s usually held by druidic vocations like farmers or herbalists. It also doesn’t usually add to the mana or essence like yours does, so it’s usually just a minor boost to stuff like crop yields. Healing potions traditionally speed up your natural healing dramatically instead, but at the cost of both the toxicity and the fact that it doesn’t fix it any better than your natural healing, just the speed.”
“That’s why you have to get a potion into play so quickly. If infection sets in, you need a restoration potion or the healing potion will just accelerate the infection.”
I sighed, “Which explains all of Charlie’s damage. It probably helps offset scarring, but not completely, and more serious damage gets healed but not fixed.”
She nodded, “If I hadn’t been wounded the way I was and if I could have recovered my arm, there was a chance I could have re-attached it, although I was already running up against high toxicity after what happened.”
I nodded, “Do you want to head to the berthing, then? This is definitely going to hurt.”
She sniffed oddly and then nodded as I tugged my coveralls back up and collected some of our exercise detritus. “I think we’d best get it over with.”