Ara sighed. I couldn’t blame her, after all, most of what I watched on anime involved subjugation of monsters, people or terrain. Healing, a non-violent skill, I had already obtained but there was one skill I definitely wanted to get my hands on and would match Ara’s visual interface.
Just like its name, Airscan would be my attempt to pick up people or objects around me using my transmutation, solid, liquid, gas, and appraisal skills simultaneously.
I decided to pick the old man next to me as my first unwilling guinea pig. With my eyes closed I used the gas skill to detect air movement around me. I could easily pick up the frenetic Brownian motion of the air molecules as they bounced off each other. When I expanded my sense, I picked up the state of air molecules about two meters away from me. If I stopped looking at all the air molecules like individual midges in a swarm and more like watching the swarm as a whole, I could sense the airflow around objects, especially on moving ones. I knew that practicing that skill would increase that ability. I decided, I would start focusing on practicing Radar skill. I could feel my senses stretch like exercising specific muscles in a gym, each time I would push sensing range just a little further than before, a centimetre at a time. A quick look at my stats alarmed me, my EE was dropping hundreds of units at a time forcing me stop and rethink my strategy. I sat for a couple of minutes musing over the situation, when I realised a radar system gained efficiencies by rotating a constant beam of energy in a circular motion. I could do something similar, but my air scan system worked on pulses radiating out with me as a centre point. I simply needed to pulse once every few seconds, allowing my EE to recover again before the next pulse. While the object I was monitoring didn’t move too fast, I should be able to get a good idea of movement. Ara could then create a visual interface for me and show movement with tracking lines and raise alarms at any movement in the area. Just how long that would all take, I had no idea.
The next morning sparring sessions turned out to be something of a disappointment. I just completed a session of sparring when a young, troublesome cadet with red hair and freckles made his first appearance in the sparring ring, arriving with all the pomp and ceremony of a coddled noble's son. He stood a head and a half shorter than me and he and his double entourage swaggered towards the sparring ring like bandits in a spaghetti western. The young brat looked down on the other cadets like cockroaches not worth his time. I sensed he was well trained in the art of degrading people. He planted his feet down like he was claiming the world has his own, pointed at me and boldly announced his overly long noble title and his intention.
“My name is Francis Berelli, son of Lord Berelli from the House of Berelli. I'll spar against you.”
At the time of his draconic announcement, I was sitting on a wooden bench near the sparring ring, talking with some of the other cadets. I didn't need to turn around to read Francis Berelli like a cheap novel; the plot was that obvious. I continued my discussion with the cadets while ignoring the brat.
“Hey, you commoner. Didn’t you hear me, I said I'll spar against you.”
He was so dense that he said it twice before he realised that I was blatantly ignoring him. By that time, I curdled his blood so much he couldn't help himself any longer and he strode towards in large hasty steps. It was obvious what he was about to do, so I ionised the surrounding atmosphere using my air skill. Anyone who touched a charged metal door handle after rubbing their feet on a dry carpet would know what was about to happen. By the time the little brat reached out to grab my shoulder, the charged air around me was looking for any excuse to discharge. The ionised air was so dense I could smell it, like the metallic smell just before a lightning bolt strike. When his hand reached out, a crisp snapping sound, like a Christmas cracker, shocked him spitless. He shook his hand in pain, taking bewildered steps back. With my back to him, I said in a cold unfriendly tone.
“Didn't the military teach you manners? Since when do you treat others like dirt and then expected them to be respectful to you?”
I hoped that by role reversing, I could teach him to reflect on his poor behaviour. Unfortunately, I turned out to be far too optimistic because his friends piped up like foul winds fanning a flame.
“Hey master, he can't speak to you like that.”
“Yeah, he's not one of us. Teach him some respect.”
The brat, still rubbing his hand, shouted back at me.
“How did you do that? What did you do to me? Speak, you damn worm!”
Ah, a young fool. I didn't care, which noble son he spawned from, he was playing a life game of chess with me and I wasn’t interested in waiting for his move, I intended opening the round. With a carefully aimed retort, I lifted my nose and sniffed.
“Is that a horse flatulating? It must be nearby; I can smell its steaming droppings from here.”
Those around me battled to stifle their laughs, which made the brat even more brazen.
“Take those words back, or I’ll challenge you to a duel!”
I sniffed the air again.
“Just what did they feed that horse?”
The others couldn’t hold it in anymore and they broke out into hoarse laughter, pun intended. The foolish brat couldn’t contain himself anymore and declared.
“I, Francis Berelli son of Lord Berelli from the House of Berelli challenge you to a duel.”
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
That’s what I had been waiting for. The brat’s inexperience counted against him because if he was that eager to get back at me, he should have chosen a more suitable location, something more in his favour. Instead, drunk on some misguided self-belief, he instead decided to pick on me in front of an audience. There would be witnesses in my favour to what happened next. I continued ignoring him, making him even angrier. He unsheathed his sword and moved to strike me while I was still sitting. At that point he made his most fatal mistake, taking physical action on someone that didn't respond to a duelling invitation was the equivalent of committing murder. It would be the same as attempting to assassinate me. Before his sword reached the arc point above his head, I used to wind skill to create a massive high-pressure behind both his heels to catapult his feet forward and landing him onto his back. He fell so hard it knocked the wind out of him. By the time he started breathing again, the point of my sword’s blade pricked his neck. It may have been a practice sword, but that didn’t stop it from being deadly.
“Listen carefully. If you want to live, repeat every word of this rhyme exactly as I say it.”
“Eh?”
He looked confused.
“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?”
By the time I returned to the marquee tent, I was spent. Perhaps my sprawling form on the ground tipped the old man off.
“I can assume you had a difficult time?”
I just made a moaning sound. The little brat squirmed under my sword like the worm he was, I even drastically improved his recall ability. I eventually let him go but he left crying like the wimp he was. I was certain he'd go running to daddy, but that was a problem for another day.
“Who is Lord Berelli?”
The old man's eyebrows lifted.
“That's an interesting question. He’s one of the four nobles as lords of kingdom estates. If you’ve managed to pick a fight with one of them, you’ve got your work cut out for you I’d say.”
An estate, it turned out, was the equivalent of a region or state within the kingdom and a noble of said estate was a powerful person and not someone trifled with. Not unless you were ignorant or stupid enough to do that, and unfortunately, it seemed I became the former or both. While it was too late to do anything about it, I wondered if there was a way to smooth things out later.
Because things were quieter in the camp, having the place to our ourselves meant I visited the kitchen more often and took advantage of a unique opportunity to get to know the kitchen staff better. Since I sharpened their knives to earthly surgical grade, they were stoked but joked about how they needed to watch out for their fingers going forward. I told them that I could make them a metal prothesis at a cost, to which they laughed. I’m glad they had a sense of humour, thinking about it afterwards my joke could be seen in a totally morbid light. I had a small amount of Orichalcum left from my knife making a while ago and I had used micrometre amounts on the edge of each kitchen knife blade which would keep them sharp for long past that military campaign.
The kitchen staff had more time on their hands as they waited for the thousands of knights to return from their attack. With a protecting knight patrol, some of the staff had a chance to go out into the outskirts to look for wild herbs and fruit that grew into the area. They used the local flora and fauna to add to the meals, making them more interesting. The day before, one of the kitchen staff, an elderly lady called Lucy, offered to get hold of some herbs and plants for me. Even though lucy wasn’t familiar with some of the plants I described, she offered nonetheless keep her eye open for me. It turned out she had a good eye for spotting herbs and plants, perhaps from a lifetime of searching for them. The result was that I was given a wide selection of plants, roots and all. Standing there stunned, I wondered just how many she managed to find. If it weren’t for Ara, it would have been difficult to safely store the collected herbs and plants in a way that kept their potency. A combination of Ara’s records, the book Grenfell gave me and available time, I was able make a few basic potions from the herbs and plants. All I needed was someone to test it on. As life would have it, the opportunity never arrived then because that night monsters attacked the camp.
It was by pure chance that I saw them coming. Most of the camp already slept and I happened to be practising my new Airscan skill while mindlessly exercising transmutation on the metal spheres in my hand. I was having a lot of fun testing the limits of the Airscan skill, and I could already reach out for a radius of fifty meters around me. Each monitoring pulse I sent out reported an image that Ara could translate for me through the visual interface. Even if I closed my eyes, I could see the interface. Only when I willed it, would the display disappear. Lying on my bed with my eyes closed, I found that resting helped improve my ability with the skill, because I could more easily focus on airflow nuances around me. Although I could sense movement of the air and felt the differences between natural airflow and something like breathing, I could only vaguely guess direction and distance. Ara made it possible for me to see exactly what I was looking at by converting my mind’s senses to actual data. For instance, Grenfell on the other side of the tent showed up as a green dot, but there was no other information at that stage, something I could work on later. There were other green dots in the tents around me, no doubt people slept in their tents like we did. That the green dots didn't move showed the tent dwellers were likely sleeping. It was while I was playing around with that skill that I discovered my first red dot.
I knew it was an enemy, I just didn't know what.
The ragged air around the dot felt to me like a sandpaper on wood. Perhaps the creature’s breathing felt raspy. But that was inconsequential to my next question, what the heck to do with that information?
Running out the tent, screaming 'goblin, goblin' would only cause confusion. My best bet lay next to me in the tent, Grenfell would be way more experienced than I, on deciding what to do with the situation. I grabbed my knife and quietly woke the old man.
“Goblin you say?”
His experience already showing in that he automatically kept his voice to a whisper. I nodded.
“What's the goblin doing and where is it?”
“It's East of us, and it seems to be going from tent to tent looking for something.”
“It might be a scout. In which case things could get ugly soon.”
I sensed Grenfell's tension. He seemed to think for a moment, as if deciding a course of action.
“Take my sword and wait here, I've got to warn the guards without alerting the monsters.”
“What about you, don't you need a sword?”
“I've got another next to my bag. Stay low and if anything happens try and stay hidden if possible.”
I nodded again. I had to give it to the old man, he dressed and armed himself like an expert and within a moment he was out the tent.
I didn't know how sensitive elves were to movement, but I judged it best for me to sit tight and watch the situation rather than tempt fate and risk warning the goblin to my presence. I continued monitoring the goblin’s covert activities for a few minutes with my Airscan skill as it continued darting between the tents. Then suddenly it stopped as if sensing something. For a moment, it stayed fixed in position when it suddenly turned around and headed straight out the camp towards the east. I wondered if it had been disturbed by something in the camp, perhaps Grenfell managed to alert the guards. Then I realised it was quiet, the usual forest noises were gone. It was almost as if the forest denizens held their breath. Whatever the case, the horde of red dots that swarmed towards the camp threw any doubt out of the window. The situation Grenfell feared had arrived, we were under monster attack.