This morning Askos asked to be my official apprentice, quickly followed by Junior asking the same. I was more than a little surprised, not so much that they would ask but more that I had never even considered having an apprentice.
And I mean, why not? I plan on teaching them everything I know about healing anyway, so might as well make it official. At least this way I also have an excuse to put them to work when I feel like it, and it doesn’t look like Junior is going to stop staying by my side constantly any time soon. So I accepted, and had them start training again.
Junior has reached a plateau of sorts in her training, she simply doesn’t have enough mana. Yeah, her actual skills with healing are still improving pretty quickly, but without the mana to back it up she is going to have to improve a lot to see even small practical improvements. I’ll ask the scholars if there is anything I can have her do to alleviate the problem, I would rather not integrate any of my plants into them until they are fully grown as that might cause some issues.
Askos, on the other hand, isn’t quite as talented as Junior. He’s talented, don’t get me wrong, but he’s missing something that Junior has. As a result, I doubt that he will ever improve so fast that his access to mana will be his limiting factor. Though I could be wrong, the two of them are very young and as such have tiny mana pools and as far as I can tell mana pools increase in size very slowly.
If they are going to by my apprentices then how far should I go? What all should I teach them? Yeah, I will teach them all about healing, but what about flesh manipulation? Should I teach them how to use Solar Energy? That has many applications for healing, some of which are incredibly difficult to do with mana. It’s hard to make a bone harder to break with mana, at least if you don’t want to alter the structure entirely, but it is easy with Solar Energy. Should I teach them plant manipulation so they can make use of Whitefoot? Or should I just integrate it into their bodies to help them out? Or should I even do that much? Should I teach them Necromancy?
In general, the more specialized a person is the better, my own specialization is manipulating life. But without the benefits that I enjoy it isn’t something easy to make a lot of progress in, at least compared to narrower scopes of practice. They definitely aren’t going to get their own grove any time soon, much less gain a dungeon core. Junior will probably stick to healing, but I don’t see Askos being satisfied with that. I expect him to do what his mother did and pursue both a martial path and healing. So for him learning how to use Solar Energy is an obvious choice, it would assist in both of those pursuits. But I’m not sure if I should teach junior how to use Solar Energy, the benefit for her isn’t quite as stark.
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On the other hand, Flesh manipulation would work great for Junior, she’s already touched on some of the basics on accident and it plays off of her already prodigal talents with healing. On top of that her slow methodical nature works really well with flesh manipulation. While at the same time I don’t see it being as useful for Askos, getting frustrated and trying to burn through things quickly, as he is want to do, will only cause the subject a slow and painful death. Flesh manipulation is slow and deliberate.
As for integrating Whitefoot into their bodies, I’m not sure that it is a good idea. Yeah, if they were skilled plant manipulators as well as healers it could work wonders, but they have neither the talent nor the desire to manipulate plants. If I were to integrate it into their bodies then it would serve as a tool that they would be forced to use, and for this type of thing that can cause some problems. At first, it would look like a boon for them, but it would make it harder for them to improve as they wouldn’t be challenged nearly as much. Once they finally did manage to improve beyond it being useful then it would act as dead weight, forcing them to use it anyway. For someone like me figuring out how to use Whitefoot properly is part of the challenge, not so for them.
Now, something I might be able to do is integrate Pipeweed into their bodies. The pathways that your body uses when it uses magic generally don’t change or improve much unless you evolve, and evolving would absolutely improve any plants integrated into their bodies. That isn’t to say they don’t change or improve at all, but the way they improve is closer to the way a muscle improves than it is to improving your own skill, and that is something I can replicate with plants. They are alive and as such do improve as they are used, maybe not nearly as fast as a plant manipulator could improve them, but you could say the same about a flesh manipulator and actual muscles.
As for Necromancy, I probably won’t teach them that. Necromancy doesn’t really help with healing or flesh manipulation so much as healing and flesh manipulation help with Necromancy.
In other news, it seems Willow is alive and well. She was spotted in a small dungeon town pretty far into the borders of the angelic council overlooking shortly after Par caught up to and exterminated the last of the army sent to suppress him. She’s gained quite a name for herself over there as a diver, she and her team have explored and reached the bottom of dungeons that even the best teams have never completed. It seems leaving the nest has allowed her to flourish well and truly beyond what I thought was possible for her, I hope she continues to grow. Maybe one day she will return home and bring tales of her adventures, I would like to listen to them.
Other than that I spent some time with my dad, though Junior was also present. Based on her wide eyes she was enraptured by the stories my dad could tell. Afterword he asked me when I was going to give him cute grandkids like Junior, when I told them that I already have numerous children in the Ents he just rolled his eyes. He was probably just saying that to make Junior laugh, and it worked, but I get what he meant.
Unless I go out of my way to make it happen, which both Azrezel and I have said we don’t want to do, then I am pretty sure it is impossible. For one I am a monster and he isn’t, which already makes breeding difficult. For another, my own species, or at least what I was before my last evolution, only has an average fertility rate. And I highly doubt that got any better with my recent evolution. While at the same time Azrezel is an undead, which have never been reported to have successfully had children without the direct assistance of a healer. So yeah, no surprise pregnancies in store for me.
Besides, I would be a terrible mother.
Anyway, Good Night Diary.