Chapter 7

Wanderer

*Remmi*

----------------------------------------

NAME: Kyuuga

RACE: Horned Rabbit

AGE: 14

LEVEL: 18

CLASS: Beast Warrior

STATUS: Preening

----------------------------------------

"Wow," Ayre gushes as I share Identify's blue screen for both of them to see, "Level 18! Good work, Kyuuga! You're amazing! You must be the most powerful rabbit in the world!"

I give a scoff at that as I prop my hands on my hips. "Yeah, imagine what he could have reached if he put in the same kind of effort we did."

The rabbit stops brushing himself as if able to understand me and shoots me a nasty glare. He thumps one foot against the ground threateningly.

But I just shake my head. "You're the one who only trained while your point boost from breakfast was active," I argue back, "even though you knew you'd get a point boost from me, too."

That foot goes thump-thump-thump, followed by Kyuuga giving what I could swear is a huff.

"Yeah, well, for someone that doesn't want anything from me, you're certainly never late for breakfast, are you?"

Tha-thump-thump.

"Tribute?! I'm the one who destroyed the Heart of Corruption!"

Thump. Thump. Glare.

"My job?!" I cross my arms and lean down toward him. "What's yours, then? Resident Mooch?"

Ayre's giggle interrupts our spat, the elf holding the fingers of one hand in front of the lips. "You two argue like siblings!"

Both of us look at the archer like he's crazy for a moment before I find my words. I twist my eyebrows in bewilderment at the idea. "If we're siblings, then whose kids are we?"

"Remmi! Ayre!" A voice calls to us from the edge of my property, coming up the driveway. I recognize it immediately as Yorin's voice, and from the way Kyuuga darts for her, so does he.

The horned rabbit leaps into her arms, and she smiles as she rubs him down, scratching around his ears. She's saying something to him, but it's barely a mumble to my ears at this distance. Probably something about it being good to see him.

I turn back to Ayre, who looks about ready to burst into giggles again, and brandish my pointer finger at her. "That doesn't count as an answer," I insist before we both turn and head over to greet the priestess.

Yorin puts Kyuuga down as we approach, and the rabbit is quick to place himself between her feet. "I was hoping I would find you both here. What are you doing?"

"Just checking our gains," I reply with a joking flex of my bicep. With 100 Strength, I should be able to out arm-wrestle probably all but strongmen back home, but my physical limbs are still slim and soft-looking.

"Kyuuga is up to Level 18," Ayre is quick to provide. The archer's strength is actually higher than mine, all the better to draw bows with weights that would make anything short of a massive war bow look wimpy, but my Agility is higher.

Of course, I'm pretty sure Kyuuga has some sort of massive racial bonus, because even with his slacking, he posts some of the best times out of all three of us in our obstacle course.

"Is that right?" Yorin kneels to reward the bulldog-sized rabbit's "hard" work with some more scratches. "Xuhi is going to be very impressed! Please continue to watch over these lands!"

"Kyuu!"

I elbow Ayre with a sour expression on my face. "When he says that to me, it's a battle cry."

Ayre plants both feet as if about to lunge. "Kyuuuuuu!"

Immediately, Kyuuga jumps forward and poses, too, like he's going to spring forth into one of his big kicks. "Kyuuuuuu!"

That gets Yorin to laughing. "Oh dear! Your fighting style is becoming famous, Kyuuga! Perhaps you should open a school!"

That prompts another flurry of posturing as the suggestion encourages Kyuuga to put his best moves out for display. It's a surprisingly diverse move set for a rabbit. Some almost resemble break dancing as the horned rodent rolls onto his back and kicks out with both feet. Others are more straight-forward, with an abundance of jumping kicks, including an excellent bicycle kick.

While kicks are, as expected, his most prominent attacks, other parts of his body put in a show. No doubt his big teeth could inflict nasty wounds with those bites, and I'm sure the tackles are no joke when propelled by a rabbit's big feet and whatever his Agility is.

He finishes with a headbutt with his spiral horn, his body surrounded by a current of energy as he hammers it into his imaginary target like his whole form is a bullet. He lands to the applause of all three of us.

"Alright, alright," I say as the clapping winds down. "I admit it, Kyuuga, you're pretty cool."

"Yes," Ayre cheers, "Bunny Fist Master Kyuuga!"

That triggers a few more poses, but once he's had his fun, I turn my attention back to Yorin. "Come on inside, Yorin. I'll put on some tea."

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

"Why, yes, please," she agrees with a warm smile. "That sounds lovely."

Once inside, I leave them to take their seats and I head over to the stove. It stays cold, however, as I instead pick up a box just a little bigger around than the kettle that sits on it. I bring them both over to the table and set them in the middle of it before flipping a knob on the box.

Yorin is staring at the contraption quizzically as I go back for the tea. "Still experimenting with your elemental stones?"

"Yeah," I confirm, "I've refined my electric burner."

Those two words clearly don't go together in the priestess's mind. "... Electric ... burner ...?"

I'm too distracted with the tea to be looking her way, however. "Uhuh. Got it down into a nice, little hot plate! Uh, I've been cutting down on restocking since we don't know when we're leaving. Is wild berry okay?"

Yorin's face is still confused about the device, but she manages a, "That would be perfectly fine."

Since Ayre's right there to see the expression, the archer takes the opportunity to give a local's explanation. "Remmi's people can transmute electricity into any other element," the elf gushes. "Heat and light seem to be the easiest, but she's said she can even make an ice box so cold that anything you put inside stays frozen solid, even if it was hot when you put it in!"

That makes one of the priestess's eyes go up, her curiosity piqued. "And Air?"

"We call it an electric fan," I say as I fill the infuser with dried leaves and dehydrated berries. "We can scale it up high enough to make flying vehicles, or down low enough that you can wear it around your neck to stay cool on a hot summer day."

"But you have said that your land does not have elemental stones," Yorin points out. "By what means do you produce the electricity for transmutation without them?"

I bite my lip, conflicted on how to answer. "Well, it's not entirely true that we don't have things that could be considered elemental stones. There are rocks that radiate a type of energy, and we can use that energy to do things, but it's very dangerous. In fact, overexposure is considered a very horrible way to die."

I tap my finger against the table as I follow another thought. "Then there's quartz. It can do a bunch of weird things, including generating small quantities of energy through vibration, but not in useful amounts. It can also be used in devices for sending and receiving messages through open air from a great distance."

"Perhaps it is the lack of ambient arcane energy in your homeland," Yorin ventures. "Perhaps something such as this quartz is a nascent elemental stone simply awaiting the proper spark. I have never heard of such a stone, nor of the other that generates such a dangerous energy. Whatever do you even use such a thing for?"

I grin. "Boiling water."

Both of them stare at me with blank disbelief, either trying to figure out the secret reason for such a mundane thing or waiting for me to explain it.

"Come on, Remmi," Ayre finally protests. "By this point, we've heard enough that we're pretty sure your people aren't that simple."

"It's true," I insist. "It's one of those ways we produce electricity that Yorin asked about."

"... Is there something strange that happens to the water when it is boiled by this energy?" Yorin tries.

But I shake my head. "Not really. In fact, we do the same thing with coal and gas. It's not the boiled water we're really after, either. It's the steam it turns into."

I motion to the kettle. "You know how when the kettle builds up a lot of steam, it comes out in a big gust?" I wait for the two to nod their understanding. "Well, that's what we're producing. That steam then comes up with enough force to move wheels. Those wheels then crank a device that generates electricity through that motion."

"That seems like a lot of work just to spin a wheel," Ayre objects. "Why not spin it, yourself?"

"It's a very big wheel," I counter. "We do have smaller generators that we can spin with our hands for use in emergencies, but they don't generate nearly as much power."

Yorin shifts in her seat. "Let me see if I understand this process, Remmi. You use the energy from these rocks to create heat, as if with fire, then apply it to water to boil, sending the water to the air as steam, and that air spins a wheel I presume is metal to create the electricity your people use for their civilization?"

"That's the gist of it," I nod.

"What a fascinating way of cycling through the elements ..." the priestess muses.

But Ayre is frowning. "Why not just use the water directly like a mill?"

"Oh, we do that, too," I clarify. "In fact, we build whole dams across big rivers to control the rate of water flow through the turbines." I tilt my head to one side at a realization. "Come to think of it, most of our power generation revolves around finding ways to spin things."

"You have no intention of damming the river that passes through your land, do you?" Yorin asks with concern. "That would affect its flow downstream."

I shake my head. "Nah, it's too small for that kind of project, and there's no use for that much electricity, anyway. If I really wanted to, I could just build a water wheel like Ayre said and hook up a couple simple battery banks. That could power everything I could want on this property. But the existence of electric elemental stones renders all of that completely redundant."

Ayre palms his face dramatically. "Oh, Essence, you're absolutely going to do it, aren't you? You're going to build it and it's going to power a little alien magi-lab where you do unspeakable things to the elements."

I scowl at the completely unjustified accusation. "What do you think I am? Do you really see some sort of rabid mad scientist when you look at me?"

Ayre stands from his seat and points back at me. "The System told you not to cook with those purified bones!"

"No," I wave my palm to dissuade the attack, "it asked me not to cook with them."

Yorin's eyes are shut as a groan rises up from her to form a single word. "Remmi ..."

"Oh, come on!" I bounce back. "With a description like that, if you're going to go out of the way to bring it up, how could I not try it once?!"

Ayre crosses arms as if telling me to walk the plank. "Tell her what it did, Remmi."

I jut my bottom lip out before doing so. "Status condition called Undead Pallor. It makes you go unnoticed by undead by making them think you're one of them."

"And everyone else!" Ayre's interjection is nearly a shout. "I thought you'd turned into a zombie!"

"It wore off and I was just fine," I counter.

Yorin just gives a sigh and raises a hand. "Enough. It is over and done with. She made it once, now we know, and she is going to keep the additional doses she has refrained from mentioning she saved buried deep in the bowels of her Storage."

"Yes, ma'am," I immediately agree. I get the distinct feeling that's an order I don't want to disobey. Instead, the tea is starting to steam, and I start filling cups as I change the subject.

"So, Yorin, what brings you out here today?"

The priestess takes a pull from her tea and exhales, recentering herself before answering. "I have received word from the Capital and have already spoken with the guild. You two now officially have a request from the Throne to purify as many dungeons along the western border as you can. You will receive payment for each one individually as you report them to the guild."

Ayre and I look to each other with excitement dancing in our eyes. As few quests as there are for Bronze-rank adventurers, the motes of Silver on the Serazin Province's guild boards have proven fewer still. We've had little to do for two weeks but train. If we had to live off of our quest earnings, we'd have been in for a rough time. Fortunately, we've only been bored stiff, instead.

"When do we leave?" Ayre asks first.

I'm not far behind. "I can't wait to see more dungeons!"

Yorin chuckles at our eagerness. "You shall have the rest of the week to pack whatever you intend to take with you. The caretaker that will be managing your crops for you while you are gone will be arriving tomorrow so that you will have time to train them."

She reaches into her robe and pulls out three stones, each roughly hewn into elongated octahedrons. They are dark gray mottled with black and remind me of flint. "I also brought a gift to celebrate. These are called Wanderer's Stones. Each one allows you to return to the location to which they have been bound. In the case of these, I have already taken the liberty of binding them to your estate, Remmi."

Now, my eyes are sparkling with a different kind of excitement. Warp stones. Traesto gems. Exit. Recall Home. Goho-M. There's no way anyone from my homeworld under fifty wouldn't recognize the concept behind these deceptively plain stones.

Yorin raises a finger, no doubt catching my expression. "Each stone can only be used once, and they are very expensive, so do not waste them. These are to allow you to return in case of an emergency, or for you to escape a dire situation, not for casual travel."

That makes sense. But wait ... "Yorin, aren't these stones reproducing a spell?"

Her smile makes me realize she's two steps ahead of me already. "You think to purchase it? Go ahead, see what it costs. It would certainly make travel easier for you two."

But then why would she bring the stones instead of just telling me about the spell, especially if they're so expensive?

Without the name, it takes me a bit to track it down. Turns out, it's simply named, "Beacon Teleport," and is the lowest level of an entire tree of Teleport spells. And ...

"What the heck is with that price tag?!"

The way Yorin's smile widens into very nearly a grin tells me she had a very good idea of just how prohibitive the point cost was going to be ...