Chapter 9: Since when were Internal Organs Unnecessary
“Now that we’re done with the first step in the entire process,” Chelsea began, “I’ll explain a little more.”
They moved to the small lounge area to the side of the ritual floor. Nara was still queasy, and she was handed a selection of snacks, fruits, and juices to refuel from. One was a small nut, caramelized in something like sugar or honey. The scent was distinctively more floral than either and it contained a tantalizing hint of vanilla.
The creamy fruit juice she drank earlier in the morning was from a fruit called the julu. It was a cross between a mango and an orange, with thick, creamy juice. It would make an amazing gelato or ice cream if they had an equivalent in this world.
“Before we begin, is there a name for this world? I can’t keep calling it ‘this world’ in my head.”
“This world is called Erras,” Redell said. “And what is yours called? We can’t keep calling it ‘your world’ either.”
“Earth.”
“Your world is named after the dirt?” Chelsea said. “Is it mostly covered in earth?”
“Uh no, it’s around 70% water.”
“Why’d you call it Earth then?” Chelsea said, exasperated. “If it’s mostly covered in water?”
“We didn’t always know that.” Nara said matter-of-factly. “Hence, Earth.”
It was Redell’s turn to clear his throat, bringing the two back to the topic at hand. “You may have wondered what happened to your body just now.”
“A little advance warning would have been nice,” Nara admitted. “That stuff was vile. I’m going to have nightmares about it.”
“It’s best to get it over with,” Amara said. “It’s going to happen every rank up.”
“That was your body purging the lower quality and rough magic that your body was made of, and remaking it with higher quality magic,” Redell said. “You never had organs, so that wasn’t part of the process for you.”
“…What do you mean by that? I never had organs?”
“If you were still a human, some of the purgation would have involved purging unnecessary organs for your rank.”
“Since when are internal organs unnecessary?”
“You aren’t using any now,” Chelsea said, “So even right this moment, they’re unnecessary.”
Nara decided to turn her brain off and stop thinking too much about it, if there was a brain to turn off in the first place.
“Normally,” Redell stressed, “ordinary iron rankers keep all of their internal organs, and lose them as they rank up to bronze and silver. By silver rank, people are entirely made of magic.”
“So, I don’t have a brain,” Nara muttered.
“You don’t have a brain,” Amara confirmed. “Nor a heart, lungs, stomach, bladder… It’s really a great advantage!”
“An advantage?”
“Harder to die of a lethal blow to the head if you have no brain to bleed or bruise,” Amara said. “Can’t die of a punctured stomach or liver, can’t have your own rips pierce your lungs, a stab to the heart is just a chest wound.”
“Right. Of course. Just a chest wound.”
“You’ll still feel shaken,” Amara said. “But you won’t die from it, unless someone really caves your head in.”
The unease that had temporarily dispersed creeped back into her mind.
“There won’t be… a bunch of people trying to cave my head in, right?”
“Define ‘a bunch’.”
Chelsea gave Amara a quick slap on the shoulder. “You won’t be fighting people anytime soon. You’ll be fighting monsters, and they aren’t too dangerous at your rank.”
“Okay,” Nara said. From her tone it was clear that she wasn’t entirely convinced.
“Enough talk, the lot of you,” Chelsea said, “Let’s take a look at those four new abilities, then work out a plan for the rest of them.”
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Ability: [Phase Shift]
Essence: Dimension
Awakening stone: none
Special Ability (dimension)
Cost: Extreme mana-per-second
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Phase shift into an adjacent dimension. While phase shifted, your abilities and attacks will not affect non-phase shifted targets. In this state, non-phase shifted abilities and attacks will not affect you. You are harder to detect while phase shifted. Mana cost of this ability further increases as duration increases.
Ability: [Astral Blessing]
Essence: Harmonic
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Aura (holy, boon)
Cost: None
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Allies within aura gain an instances of [Integrity] when expending or losing a low threshold of health, mana, or stamina. Instance threshold is determined by the [Recovery] attribute. Greater or continuous expenditures result in gaining additional instances.
* [Integrity] (boon, heal-over-time, mana-over-time, stamina-over-time, holy, stacking): Periodically recover a small amount of health, stamina, and mana. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.
Ability: [Refresh]
Essence: Balance
Awakening Stone: None
Special Ability (recovery)
Cost: None
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): When expending mana, gain an instance of [Invigorating Energy]. When expending stamina, gain an instance of [Invigorating Blood]. When expending or suffering health damage, gain an instance of [Invigorating Spirit]. Instance threshold is determined by the [Recovery] attribute. Ability cannot recover more than expended mana, stamina, and health.
* [Invigorating Energy] (boon, recovery, stacking): Recover a small amount of stamina. Additional instances have an increased effect.
* [Invigorating Blood] (boon, recovery, stacking): Recover a small amount of health. Additional instances have an increased effect.
* [Invigorating Spirit] (boon, recovery, stacking): Recover a small amount of mana. Additional instances have an increased effect.
Ability: [Cosmic Path]
Essence: Mystic
Conjuration (dimension, movement)
Cost: Low mana, low mana-per-second
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Conjures a path of stars beneath the caster’s feet. Prevents abilities from manifesting directly below the caster. Enhances [Speed]. Can reduce the weight of the caster for low mana-per-second cost, allowing for reduced fall speed and water walking. Can further enhance the caster’s [Speed] for additional low mana-per-second cost. The slow-fall effect can be extended to others in proximity.
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“You got your aura first thing?” Redell said. “That’s unusual.”
“Aura?” Nara said. “Sounds like some sort of new age hippie crystal thing.”
They all gave her a look.
“I don’t even want to know what that means,” Chelsea said.
“We can train it,” Laius said, finally speaking.
“Train it?”
“That isn’t helpful, Laius. Not right now,” Chelsea sighed. She seemed to be the focused one in the group, reigning in the conversation to keep it on track.
“So what is this aura, thing?”
“Don’t you have some sense of it? It should have automatically awakened with your rank,” Amara said.
“The aura is the expression of the soul. Your aura ability adds an ability to this expression, while also awakening your ability to manipulate your own aura and increase your ability to sense the aura of others. You should feel some new sense, that you just haven’t paid attention to yet since you’ve been so caught up in everything else. Give it a try, and focus. Basic sense of it should come naturally to you.”
Nara frowned, closing her eyes for a moment to focus.
She did feel something. It was like some sort of sixth sense. It seemed to sense living beings and magic better, but it contained some vague form of physical perception. She did sense something from Amara, Chelsea, Laius, and Redell, but she had the strange, unsubstantiated feeling that they were letting her sense something, for her own benefit.
Specifically, their auras all contained a reflection of their personalities, or perhaps their true nature. Redell’s was refreshing, invigorating, and nurturing. He held a pure joy for life, even as he was outwardly mild and calm. Chelsea’s was inquisitive and piercing, not one to be fooled or tricked, but not as prickly as her words have indicated. Laius’ contained the darkness of deep night, cool and unbounded, mischievous and free. But his willpower lay just beneath the surface—the willingness to go the distance and pay the price.
Amara’s was as she first sensed; strong, passionate and responsible. She was teasing and frivolous towards Chelsea, but had so far taken Nara’s situation seriously, even if she was not at fault.
Nara didn’t really know what to say. “You’re all good people.”
Chelsea rolled her eyes, slight color rising to her cheeks. Amara was clearly enjoying her embarrassment, grinning all the while. “Keep this in mind. Normally, you won’t be able to detect the auras of those stronger than you at all. Greater strength and rank mirrors greater control.”
What she had been able to sense from the others faded. She could feel that they were there, but not the personalities which were now hidden behind a tapestry she could not peer behind.
That had confirmed that they were stronger than she was, there was no doubt. Nara didn’t know specifically what rank, but she didn’t care to ask. She didn’t have any concept of the differences between the higher ranks, except that they were more powerful. How much more powerful? She’d have to find out.
“It can be faked,” Laius added.
“The properties of the aura can be faked?” Nara asked in confirmation. She was slowly getting a sense for what Laius communicated with his few words.
“It requires training,” Laius said, his eyes insistent.
“Right,” Nara said, “Training the magical hippie sixth sense. I understand completely.”
“Well.” Chelsea said, “You’ve ranked up to iron, you’re appearance is up to my standard, and you’ve learnt a bit about auras. It’s time for the next step.”
“There’s more?”
“Of course there’s more, did you forget that you only have 4 of 20 abilities?”
She belatedly realized that each essence granted 1 awakened ability and 4 unawakened abilities. She got those first four abilities immediately, but the other 16 were still unawakened.
“But that’s not our next step,” Amara said, “First, a skill book.”
Nara had played her share of video games, so she wasn’t unfamiliar with the term.
“Do those grant the rest of the abilities?”
“An entirely wrong conclusion,” Chelsea said. “It’s not called an awakening book or an ability book now, is it.”
“Now, now, Chelsea. You can see how that’s an honest mistake,” Redell said, turning to Nara. “Skill books are used to acquire knowledge.”
“Like, about anything?”
“Whatever is in the book.”
“I can just…download information into my mind? That sounds very convenient.”
“You can only…download…the information because of your Racial Ability, Free Spirit,” Chelsea said, rolling the unfamiliar terminology over her tongue. “Another ability that is standard for outworlders, but can be acquired by others as well.”
“Since you’re going to be an adventurer, you’ll need to be able to fight. Are you trained in fighting?”
“I did like, two years of super casual Kung Fu,” Nara said, demonstrating with some weak air punches that made Chelsea raise an unamused eyebrow. “...but I have a sneaking suspicion that isn’t going to cut it.”
“What gave it away?” She said flatly.
Amara pulled a thick book out of thin air, dropping it onto the table, where it landed with a thud. The book was preposterously large, like an unabridged dictionary typed out in size 20 font. It had elaborate decorations of swirling vines in gold leaf, and the depiction of a starry night sky made with gold and dark blue leather. If there was a physical copy of a mystical book like the Akashic Records, she imagined it may look something like this, comically large and intricately decorated.
Nara read out the title, “The Way of the Traveler?”
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Item: [The Way of the Traveler] (bronze rank, legendary)
Classification: Consumable, Skill Book
A comprehensive guide to combat and other techniques for an avid traveler, made by an experienced traveler of the cosmos.
-[Record] of [The Way of the Traveler] has been added to the [Archive].
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“Thematic,” Laius said, strangely self-satisfied.
“It was his idea,” Chelsea said. “I don’t know that I would’ve chosen this one. It’s quite thick for a fresh iron ranker. Are you sure it’s going to be alright?”
“One and done,” Amara said. “She can get it over with so we can get into dedicated training.”
“Why are you talking about this like it’s going to suck?” Nara said.
“Your days of sucking are not done yet,” Amara said, and Chelsea shot her a very disapproving look. She turned to Chelsea, grinning. “My days of sucking are not done yet either.”
“Really, Amara? Now?” Chelsea said through gritted teeth, her face reddened with embarrassment and anger.
“There’s no time like the present,” Amara said.
“Ladies, please,” Redell said, rubbing his brow. “No matter what Amara says there is a time and a place.”
“This isn’t my fault!” Chelsea protested.
Amara grin widened, and she received a playful but unhappy smack in retaliation from Chelsea.