“Should you have killed him?” Lucia asked, glancing over her shoulder as she and Leif walked between the sandy hills and arid shrublands that lined the western coast. “He might have been lying.”
“He wasn’t. I could tell.” Leif replied, stabbing a driftwood staff into the side of the dune as he scaled it. “Also, I’m concerned you would ask me that. I don’t think killing another person should be one of the first courses of action you consider.”
He reached the top, boots leaving deep trenches in the sand with every step, then turned back and extended a golden arm down to where Lucia stood, not meeting his gaze.
“He was… a bad person.” She muttered, her voice low.
“Zane made a mistake. And he recognised that. He even apologised, which is better than I would expect from most people.”
“But he attacked us! He could have killed- He might have- Ugh, it's not right. What he did was evil!”
“Evil.” Leif repeated, still holding out his hand. “Is that what you really think?”
Lucia clenched her fists and gritted her teeth. She glared up at Leif, her eyes wide, her jaw trembling. “Stop reading my emotions, it's not fair!”
“I don’t need to be an empath to know that you’re upset.”
“Upset? I’m furious! I’m so angry I could explode! Don’t tell me that I’m wrong to feel like this! He cut Roy away from me! Roy’s my responsibility, and I don’t even know where he is! I don’t know if he’s safe, if he’s scared, cold, hungry?! I need to be there for him, and that stupid white haired idiot swordsman took him away, cut him out of my life!”
Leif stood atop the dune, watching Lucia rant, her orange eyes ablaze, the very first hint of dawn just appearing in the early morning sky. He let out a breath of air, then let his golden arm dissipate, at the same time stepping forward and sliding back down the sandy hill. He walked past Lucia, who whirled around, face red and breath shaky as he did so.
“What are you doing?” She asked, her voice breaking.
“We’re taking a break. You need to rest, it’s been a long night.”
“No, we need to keep going! At this rate it will take months to find him!”
Leif sighed as he sat. “I haven't known you for very long, but I’ve noticed something interesting about you. So please, if you’re in such a rush, make it up the dune. If you can, I will follow.”
Lucia wrinkled her nose, glaring defiantly. Then she turned and marched with all the dignity and grace she could muster up the dune. She made it halfway before her legs gave out and she slipped, falling back to the bottom. Lucia angrily dusted herself off, then tried to run up the dune, but again she fell. She was shaking by the time she slid down to the bottom, a mix of impotent rage and exhaustion rendering her immobile. She yelled wordlessly at the dune, and tried again, then again.
After a minute she stopped, her shoulders heaving, fingers digging into the sand, tears streaking down her face and falling off her chin. Leif stood and slowly made his way over to her, kneeling beside her and placing a hand on her back.
“I have to find him.” She sobbed. “I need to. If I don’t… I can’t…”
“You will find him again. But for now you need to focus on yourself. You need to survive, Lucia, you need to help yourself before you can help him. Until you meet again, you’ll need to trust that Roy is capable of taking care of himself, that he’ll be safe without you.”
“But without him-” Lucia choked on her own words, the fight fleeing from her limbs like a breath being exhaled. She slumped, and Leif caught her before her face planted into the sand. “I failed. If I was stronger, smarter, more capable, I would have been able to protect him.”
“You’re too hard on yourself. This is far more my failing than it is yours. You’re just a kid, Lucia, how could you have possibly stood up to someone three times your age and a hundred levels higher?”
“You don’t understand.” She said weakly, leaning on his shoulder as he led her to where the ground was flattest, and the shrubs best protected against the wind. “This was my purpose. My whole life, everything we’ve been through. For it to have been worth it, he needs to be with me, safe and happy.”
“Lucia, you are more than just your duty to your brother.”
“Am I? Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve endured… It was all for him. All for his future.”
“It was for you as well, don’t forget that.”
“It wasn’t. It wasn’t at all. If it had just been me, if Roy wasn’t there, or if he had-” She swallowed thickly, hugging her knees and squeezing shut her eyes. “I would have given up, I wouldn’t have had the strength to continue. It was so hard, so painful. If I didn’t have Roy, I would have found a corner in the city and given up, let it all end.”
Leif didn’t know what to say, so he kept quiet, wrapping her with a gentle, reassuring blanket of his aura. He leaned back and watched as the sky turned from black to grey, and the wispy clouds drifting lazily overhead grew in definition as the sun’s light brushed against them.
“He was dying, getting to the Academy was our last choice.” Lucia said finally, her voice hollow.
“I see.” Leif said softly.
“Please help me again.”
“I already promised I would. You don’t need to ask.”
Lucia sniffed, then nodded, wiping her face with the back of her hand. It left a sandy smear, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“I have a sister, younger, there’s a similar age gap between you and Roy.” Leif said after the silence had stretched on for several minutes.
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“Yeah, I heard. Her name was Flavia, right?”
“Flavia.” Leif nodded. “I think I failed her, badly. By dying and becoming what I am now, she now lives the life that was meant for me. She has my responsibilities, my duties, my burdens. I miss her badly, or maybe the idea of her, but there’s a rift between us now that I’m not sure how to cross.”
“You should find her.” Lucia said, and Leif could tell that her focus had sharpened, more interested in his words than her own fears and worries.
“I should. That’s been the plan now for several months, I guess I’ve been putting it off, or maybe I just don’t know how to do it properly.”
“She’s in Varan, right?”
“Yes. And with the war between the Republic and the Empire it will be in our best interest to stay inland, away from the coast if at all possible.” Leif said, his voice low.
“That makes sense. But why did you say it like that?”
“Because to get to Pherin from where we are now, if we travel northward, stick inland and try to avoid the war… Well, we’ll be passing through Varan. Maybe I’ll get my chance then.” He mentally reached into his spatial ring and withdrew a travellers cloak, he folded it, then handed it to Lucia. “But before either of us can do anything, you need to rest. I’ll keep watch and make sure nothing attacks. Then we’ll take care of system business, and continue on our way. Does that sound like a plan?”
“Mhmm.” Lucia said, resting her head on the cloak. She was asleep within seconds.
===
The morning proved to be more eventful than Leif had hoped. He spotted a pack of monsters that looked like scaled wolves dashing over the distant dunes not thirty minutes after he and Lucia had made camp. That was followed by him noticing sails on the horizon, though he wasn’t sure to which nation they belonged to.
They had travelled north overnight, but looking south, Leif could still make out the distant plumes of smoke from the destroyed fleet. He and Lucia had reached the shore out of a raft he had cobbled together with [Wood Manipulation], and had needed to avoid, or in one case, confront bands of Republic soldiers who had made it to the beach.
Seeing the bodies washing up on the sands throughout the night had been a bleak sight, the wreckage of well over a dozen ships littering the coast. They had even seen a group of four legged constructs skitter out of the surf and dash into the countryside, but had chosen to let them pass. Physically Leif was in perfect condition, but after over an hour of nearly nonstop combat and tension, his soul was strained, several skills nearing the point of breaking.
He glanced to the side as Lucia shifted, but the girl was still sleeping, even if her eyelids were fluttering and she kept muttering slurred words. She was deeply troubled, and in ways she reminded Leif of himself, or perhaps her life story mirrored his own in a twisted way. Both had lost everything during the war with the enslavers, forced into lives they weren't prepared for. In a way, Lucia had succeeded in ways Leif had failed.
The scion tried to cast his mind north, seeking the nebulous connection he had with his domain tree. It felt, in a way, like one of his conjured limbs, only it was too far away for him to control. He sought out the teleportation anchor [The Amber Path] had created, and found that it was faded, unreachable now that he had used the skill, even if he had failed to reach his destination. There was a chance the cooldown would only be a handful of weeks, but the feeling he got from the skill wasn’t looking hopeful. It would be months, potentially closer to the full year. Maybe, if by some miracle he reached level forty and evolved his monster class the skill would upgrade and the cooldown would reset, but it was a distant hope.
But his progress towards the next major milestone in his advancement had been taken. As stressful and grim as the last day had been, it had resulted in one final level being gained. War, it seemed, could bring more than its fair share of experience. Maybe that was why so many people willingly fought and died in them. Was that why the enslavers had invaded the northern kingdoms? Were the ant monsters looking to create more powerhouses like the awakened ant Hera had fought above Far-Reach? If that had been their plan, it had likely failed. As far as Leif had read, heard, and seen, all the enslaver armies had been destroyed.
He shook his head and stood, doing a final sweep of the nearby dunes before turning his attention to his system notification. A new skill selection awaited.
Level up! Class [Scion of Aeons] is now level 25!
For slaying the enemies of the Blight, and spreading the blessings of the Amber during a period of open conflict you have gained a level!
+1 to [Alacrity] +1 to [Intelligence] +1 to [Willpower] +1 to [Charisma] +5 free points!
New class skills available! [Create Gilded Wood] or [Temporal Glare] or [Reconstitute Echo]!
Mana reinforcement progress 45%!
Leif’s eyes flickered across the system messages. This wasn’t the first time he had read them, but it was the first time he had dedicated his full attention. In a few hours the system would give him a warning to pick within twelve hours, and judging by the three skills he had been offered he might be contemplating his choice until the last moment. But what truly caught his attention was the description of his level up.
‘Enemies of the Blight’ implied quite a lot about the half of his monstrous being he understood the least. After-all, he had been killing humans. Unless the system considered the handful of constructs he had destroyed to be the ‘enemies’ in question. Blight monsters had stalked the aftermath of the battle in which he had fought in his past life, and he recalled battling his ‘siblings’ back when he was more tree than man. It was concerning, and combined with the knowledge he had gained from Aei’leshs’ corpse in the temple below Dimid he painted a somewhat stark picture. It was also interesting that the system would mention the Blight at all, after his last evolution, Leif had somewhat suspected that he had moved almost entirely away from that part of his new existence, but clearly there was still some less than savoury power rattling around within him.
Maybe that had been why Vevosis had been so eager to hunt him down. But no, that rang false. The Spire Head had been after him for less than altruistic reasons, Leif had sensed the hunger, sanguine and predatory, it was likely he wouldn’t forget it anytime soon. He blinked back to the present, only to catch Lucia squinting at him.
“Awake are you?” He asked.
“You were really still. It was kind of weird.”
“It’s an easy habit to fall into, though I’ve gotten better at it over time. Sometimes it feels like moving is not what I should be doing. Not many trees have legs and can walk around, so I suppose it makes sense.”
“It’s weird seeing you without a mask.” She said, sitting up and yawning.
“Ah, sorry. It must look unnerving, I’ll make a new one now.” Leif said, mentally peering inside his spatial ring for any remaining wood he could use. Most of it was gone, used up in the battle, he would need to restock and prepare his weapons before fighting any serious enemies. Or maybe [Create Gilded Wood] would solve that problem for him? He hadn’t decided yet.
“I guess it is a little.” Lucia admitted, rubbing the back of her head. “What were you doing?”
“Contemplating life.” Leif said, melting down a fraction of a compressed wooden sword, then reshaping the weapon, albeit slightly smaller than it was before, then starting on the mask. He had given Lucia her wooden daggers back, though it did feel strange giving a child weapons. Well, they lived in a violent world, it couldn’t be helped.
“Do you normally do that? Sit still and contemplate life, I mean?”
“Well, I don’t exactly sleep, so yes, it is how I spent large portions of my time. Perhaps too much, I have a bad habit of getting into my own head. Anyway, are you hungry?”
“No.” Lucia said, then her stomach rumbled. “Yes…” She amended sheepishly.
“Well, bad news, I don’t have any food.”
“Oh.” Lucia said, glancing around as if looking for something to eat. “I see.”
“My healing can nourish you, though not totally, it’s how Roy recovered physically so quickly, if you remember our initial meeting on the ship.”
She nodded, picking up the cloak she had used as a pillow, unfolding it and shaking out the sand. The morning was warm, and Leif stowed the cloak when she handed it to him.
“I prefer actual food, uh, no offence.” Lucia said after he had trickled healing energy into her hand. “This feels kind of weird.”
“We’ll get you something proper to eat. Can’t say I’m a fan of feeding you my blood, no matter how nourishing it may or may not be.”
Lucia gagged. “Why would you say it like that? Now I want to throw up.”
Leif snorted and placed his newly created mask, a plain oval of wood with three slits, two for his eyes and one for his mouth. “I believe it’s good for you. Assuming you're a small forest critter. The side effects are probably harmless, though judging by how some of the initial ‘test subjects’ turned out that might not be true.”
She rolled her eyes and started marching up the nearest dune. “I told you before, but I levelled up.”
“We both did.” Leif said, following. “You’re level four now, correct?”
“Yup.”
“What skills were you offered?” He asked, his longer strides easily allowing him to keep pace.
“Uhhh.” Lucia said, looking away.
“You picked one already, didn’t you?”
“Maybe…”
“I hope this isn’t you wanting to have an advantage the next time we spar.”
“No, no it’s not that. I just kind of knew which one to pick, so I just did it. The choice was between [Fade] and [Patient Ambush]. The second one felt like I had to stay still to use it properly, and standing in one place is a good way to get stabbed, so I picked [Fade]. Look, I can do this now.” She said, then, to demonstrate, she briefly went transparent. The effect ended almost immediately.
“I’m assuming it works better when you’re not standing out in the open?”
“Yeah… the skill description says it works better in darkness. Anyway, do you have skills to pick?”
“I do.” Leif confirmed, guiding them around a thick cluster of shrubs.
“Well?” Lucia asked after several seconds without him elaborating.
“Well what? I don’t want to give you an advantage when we spar.”
She stopped in place, staring at him as he continued to walk forwards. “That’s stupid! It makes even less sense than me hiding my skills!” She shouted.
Leif laughed.