The satyr woke up about midmorning today. When I showed up he was still looking around confused while sitting in the bed. When he looked at me he just looked sad, on the verge of crying but not willing to cry in front of me.
After a moment he said to me “you look almost just like my daughter.” I let him talk about someone that I was increasingly sure was me for a while, I was certain at this point that this satyr is indeed my father. I didn’t tell him straight away, apparently, my evolutions made me look just different enough to make him think I was someone else, I wanted to hear him talk about me in a selfish twisted way. There was a kind of grief in his voice, mourning almost.
It was nostalgic to listen to him tell stories again. He took the same extravagant energy, well almost the same, that he used to tell stories about fighting great creatures that could level small villages with a single swipe and used it to describe my childhood play sessions with him. He described in great detail how I would play the hero, fending off my father's attempts to abduct my mother, though he brushed past the more crude jokes that I didn’t understand at the time. He spoke with an enrapturing kind of emotion about a pair of adventurers fighting a revolutionary war against a terrible empire.
He spoke about watching this little girl grow bigger and bigger with a kind of joy only a father could muster. He described watching me try again and again to do something as simple as making a seed sprout. He gushed about the look of joy on my round, young face when I finally managed to succeed. He just talked and talked for a full two hours, describing moments of my life I can’t even remember.
I stopped him before he reached the fire, I couldn’t bear to watch him cry.
When I interrupted him he got all apologetic for a moment before asking me about what was going on. I told him and we talked for a little bit longer. It seems he had been drunk pretty much constantly since the fire, which I had more or less worked out yesterday.
When I asked how long it had been since the fire he told me that it couldn’t have been longer than a month in a somber tone before realizing he never mentioned a fire. He asked me in a slightly accusatory tone how I knew about the fire, and was left stunned when I told him I was there a year and a half ago. When he finally figured it out he leapt up to hug me only to trip over his emaciated legs. I made sure he was alright and healed the minor concussion that was forming before pulling him into an embrace.
We reminisced for most of the day after that. I told him about what I’ve accomplished since running away. I told him about my grove, about my dungeon core, about almost everything really. I didn’t tell him about Azrezel, I didn’t think he was ready to hear about how his daughter, who he thought was dead, has a boyfriend now. I’ll have to introduce him tomorrow though.
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We were interrupted at around dinner time due to my arrangements with the troll that had come into town earlier in the day.
When I met with the troll I was really glad I hadn’t mentioned to anyone about how I had never met a troll before, because I have met this one. His name was Trovich. He was the same troll that came to examine me using some magical tools previously, I guess he just wasn’t memorable enough for me to remember him until that moment.
I could describe in painstaking detail about how I examined the Trovich with Solar Energy. Actually no I couldn’t, I have no idea how to put the details of that into words. Anyway, long story short, I was right. Trolls were formed out of Solar Energy, though they are nearly entirely physical with only very small pools of Solar Energy at their disposal for maintenance and improvements. This means two things. The first is that Solar Energy is amazing at creating life, the second is that studying a troll won’t really teach me anything about the process required to make a troll. I need to watch a troll evolve.
This just brings up even more questions, like how in the world did a bunch of balls of floating mana, which causes incredibly violent explosions when exposed to Solar Energy, gather and work with enough Solar Energy to make a troll. And where did they get that much Solar Energy in the first place, there was enough ambient mana to create Origin already, which is more than enough to destroy any Solar Energy they were working with. And how did they even store it? I highly doubt they were skilled enough at using it to create large enough pockets out of the stuff to keep it safe from the ambient mana especially because they wouldn’t get more than one shot at it as the stuff causes explosions, which balls of mana with no anchor tend to be rather weak too.
It would explain why the method of creating the trolls is deemed to be impossible now.
On the bright side, I think I figured out a way to allow a troll to use magic, their bodies seem to be ideal for manipulating it while at the same time being resistant to explosions in case they mess up. Though I should probably make a pure Solar Energy environment that other people can enter, actually no that’s a terrible idea. It only takes one idiot for the entire grove to go up. I should make a battery that people can fill up on and then have a soundproof and explosion resistant room for them to practice in.
Now that I think about it I should probably secure my own Solar Energy room a bit better. Currently, it would take one of the strongest warriors in town about an hour to hack their way inside. I have added some Mithrilwood to the structure to make it better but it probably isn’t enough.
Wow, I wrote a lot today. In terms of pure productivity, today was one of my worst days, which isn’t something I care about at all.
I’m happy that my dad is still alive, but it hurts to see how much he has changed since I last saw him. When I finished up with the Trovich I checked up on him and found that he had cried himself to sleep. He was shivering so I created another blanket to pull over him and when I came close I could hear him mumbling something about my mother, or at least he was repeating my mother’s name in his sleep.
Other than that, nothing particularly interesting happened. I will probably introduce Azrezel to my dad tomorrow.
Anyway, Good Night Diary.