I remembered that painful centipede game. Some basic instinct inside of me realised I would die if I lost that game. Healing, just what did that entail? Was it like the web novels where the protagonist, lovingly stabbed in the hand by a beautiful girl, violently learns the finer art of healing? I decided to use less forceful methods. When it came to those things, I confess that I was a little fearful of self-inflicted pain. The moons provided enough light for me to see things in the tent, so I pulled my knife out from under my pillow, using the sharp edge I nicked the side of my finger with it, drawing blood which rolled down my finger. I realised too late that I should probably have disinfected the knife first. Nothing I could do about that though. Only thing was the blood was going to make things messy, so I just let it drop on the earthen floor.
“Heal.”
I didn’t need to say anything but for some reason it helped me focus. I could envision the cut in my imagination, see the connective tissue repairing, miniscule blood vessels reconnecting and blood recirculating through the wound. A slight blue fluorescence glowed around the cut on my finger and I could feel the burning sensation of the cut slowly receding. Within a minute there was no more blood flowing from the wound. When I wiped the old blood away, the cut was gone, and only a small white mark remained. Amazing, was all I could think of, and a practical application came to mind.
“He, he, he.”
No longer in the mornings would red shaving nicks litter my face like bomb craters on the battlefield.
By then the first light of dawn was changing the sky’s colour from darks to lighter shades. Soon the galaxy above me would fade out. In the last few hours, I understood more about skills and about naturally learning them or using them as an attribute on an object. I also learned that skills also took the form of the three natural states of nature, although I thought it still needed to include plasma as a state.
Since I was for all intents and purposes, awake, I stood up to wash up and apply my new healing skill to my face after shaving. The result was amazing, but it took some time to apply. Interestingly enough, it didn’t take much EE to produce half decent results. I needed to remind myself that larger wound’s EE requirements probably escalated exponentially.
“Heh? What happened to your face?”
The very first comment I received from the supervisor, who also woke up early that morning. I decided to play dumb.
“What do you mean?”
“Every morning without fail your face looks like a warzone. I’ve grown so used to it, I thought it would be impolite to ask. But this morning for the first time your face looks like a baby’s bottom. Did you finally learn how to use a razor?”
Shucks, couldn’t people look somewhere else other than my face? I’d just go along with the story he’d already created.
“Yeah, I guess I had to learn somewhere along the line.”
“Well if you decided to change professions, you can become my barber. Bwahahaha.”
And he burst out laughing as he started to walk away.
“Oh, by the way before I forget. I thought you might want to know; we received good news late yesterday that Haruhime arrived home just fine.”
That was good news indeed. Good news didn’t mean things were going to become easier for me. Grenfell started me off early with making more spearheads and at the end of the day we increased production by half making twenty-two spearheads. Orilay got some men permission to leave the camp to find and bring back good hardwood saplings about three meters long. Once they cleaned the saplings and attached the spearpoints the shafts could dry. Unfortunately, the drying process would take too long to produce strong shafts. The nature of the hardwood was that once we removed all the moisture, the wood became harder. Which meant it would take four weeks to properly dry even under sunny conditions. Unfortunately, there was little I could do about that, to speed up the process I would need to practice with my skills but where and when would prove to be difficult in that environment.
Restrictions on leaving the camp meant that the only practical places I could practice my skills were at the smithy and my tent. I realised that there would be situations in my life where I couldn't openly practice my skills in full view of people, but that didn't mean I couldn't practice. One of the methods I already mentioned reformed a small metal object hiding in my hand. The game I created for myself, using transmutation, involved changing the shape of the metal ball to a square to triangle and back to circle as quickly as possible without burning my hands. During that process I discovered I could freeze the gas and liquid in my hand by imagining the molecules slowing down in the air and in the sweat of my hand. As soon as my hand would cool down enough, I transmuted the metal. Eventually I got so good at it, I was able to complete both processes similarly. Of course, I got it wrong sometimes, especially when I was green at the beginning and ended up burning holes in my hand. But then I simply used healing to repair the damage and continued as if nothing happened.
Another game I played more often in my private time was collecting air into a pressurised ball. Air was easy to learn with because air surrounded me and as a bonus, I didn’t need to store it in anything, which in turn created its own unique set of challenges. Since I only utilised the gas and transmutation skills there wasn’t too much of a control problem for me until the ball reached a certain density. The molecule’s Brownian motion created an outward pressure trying to escape my ability to reign the gas in. When I failed to control it, a small bang occurred from the resulting loss of pressure. With continued practice I found I could increase both the size and duration of the gas sphere. Not only that, but I also became proficient at controlling the cascading failure to a point where I could barely discern a soft hiss when the gas released from the ball. I did that by creating a surrounding ball of gas around the first, in effect creating a dampening effect. Later I could use that other gas sphere to support the first. By constantly layering gas spheres, I could create a significantly pressurised ball to the point I’d not want to be near it if it failed. An explosion of air at that pressure would flatten my tent and do me significant harm.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Because the pressured gas sphere was too dangerous to practice with others around, I decided to rather focus on experimenting with separating out gas types. Appraisal allowed me to determine the gas types in the atmosphere around me and generally there was a twenty five percent oxygen and the rest mostly nitrogen. A smattering of other gasses like neon, methane, hydrogen and carbon dioxide were also present. It was great fun for me to separate the gases out and purify them as best I could. My mechanical knowledge was good enough to warn me not to mix certain gasses at high pressures, like hydrogen and oxygen which at a ten percent mix of oxygen to hydrogen at certain pressures would spontaneously explode. The last thing I needed was to practice my healing on the folks around me after healing myself. Why did it seem my experiments would always lead to dangerous situations? Nonetheless I was extremely happy that with my knowledge I could manage them in advance without discovering the issues reactively.
As a result of my constant practice my skill abilities improved dramatically to where I used far less EE and I could complete more complex tasks, but I was still a far way off from calling myself proficient. My Ethereal Energy stood at 2157, but since it still took me more than five minutes to create a pressured gas ball capable of maiming or incapacitating a monster, I would hardly call it a game changer.
Another experiment I tried was creating wind, and not the methane type that we all generated. I read in the web novels how the protagonist would magically whip up a storm which sounded great because the magic took care of the technical details somehow. But in my off-world reality I needed to create wind without using a mechanical device. Why would I go to all the effort then of creating wind? Well for one thing it would create a convenient delivery system for pressurised gas spheres.
“Hey Shane, you seem a bit off your game today. We only managed to make ten spearheads today and I sense you’re off your game a bit.”
The next morning Grenfell gave me a mouthful for running out of ethereal energy so quickly. There was no point in being dishonest with the old man, after all I had been spending a lot of my sleep time playing with my skills and not allowing my Ethereal Energy to replenish, which meant I had less to utilise during the day. So, I openly explained the situation to Grenfell.
“I think it’s good that you’re getting proficient at your other skills but remember that these men may need spears to help them fight monsters soon. If we can’t produce enough weapons, I hope your other skills are at a high enough level to be of practical help in battle?”
I nodded; it wasn’t like me to let people down. But the old man didn’t stomp on me while I was on the ground instead, he offered me a compromise.
“I’ll tell you what. If we can produce enough spears to properly equip these men, I’ll let you take half day’s off to practice in the future. After all, we only have about fifteen days here and then we’re on our way again.”
Thinking to myself, I sighed. I really needed a way to increase my EE without requiring hours of rest. It was only later just as I started my evening wash before heading to bed, that I realised I never considered Ara’s previous information.
Ara started to speak about the many ways of harvesting ethereal energy. My total ignorance on the subject was clear. As Ara spoke, I could sense centuries, no, millennia of elvish studies behind the words. Because I lacked a means of reference, I needed Ara often to explain things to me in layman’s terms.
I wondered about that. Ara continued,
So, what Ara was telling me in layman's terms, was that Rock Snail behaved like an EE battery. Even the rings I had could be charged and if I understood Ara correctly, I could withdraw that energy back again when I needed it.
What I needed to do now was to find a material I could store my excess EE when not needing it. That way I could draw from it like savings money from a bank.
It would be fun for me to first play around with different materials, trying to see which stored EE better. Of course, I could ask Ara for a list of materials but that would also make life a bit uninteresting. I would ask her, if it took me too long to figure out on my own. Besides, there was no reason why I shouldn't have some fun in the process, kind of like having a muscular pro wrestler backing you up when school bullies are trying their luck.
Luckily, I didn't have to explain all of that Ara as she was quite capable of reading my thoughts. We did come to an arrangement where she would let me know if I was missing a good opportunity on something, no benefits in me throwing away good opportunities.
As I lay in bed, once again, I succumbed to experimenting with the rings. I promised Grenfell that I would make sure I could fully operate in the morning again. What better way than to store some EE during the evening before bed and fully recover that energy expenditure by morning. It was a win-win in my mind.
I started by imagining the EE flowing from me like a rivulet flowing from my finger into the ring for a split second.
When I checked the ring’s EE it had increased by twenty. I then added enough EE until the ring equalled about one hundred and twenty, the exact value wasn’t important.
To do a reverse EE flow from the ring to me, I just imagined that that tiny rivulet flowed from the ring to me. Once again, I checked and discovered I had received my EE back. It wasn’t my imagination but whether I sent or received EE
I then put two rings on my finger, and I was able to transfer EE between the two rings by using myself as a conduit. That realisation was a fundamental game changer for me because it meant I could do a lot more work in a day. Grenfell would be stoked to find out I could complete at least one more spear point.