I am yet again in the forest in search of meaning. The knowledge picked up along the way is what gives meaning to the answer for without it, it rings hollow. As most don’t find the answers they were searching for, the lessons learnt on the journey are all that remain in the end so…
‘Did you eat strange forest mushrooms?’
‘Wouldn’t you know if I did?’
‘Then how did you going to find the necessary materials for a ritual of cleansing turn into a journey for the meaning of life? You sound like you are high on philosophy. Did you want to reenact your teenage self or what?’
‘This is the 4th time I’m trying to find the right ingredients and even the last time’s “3rd time ‘s a charm” wasn’t enough to save that ritual so I have to amuse myself on the way somehow because I have a feeling that I’m gonna go on this journey a couple more times.’
‘So next time you’ll recite angsty poetry in the rain?’
‘I’ll have you know that I have long grown out of that phase.’
‘So you had that phase. Let me guess You listened to something like My Chemical Romance in the rain.’
‘You are almost right, but I never liked that band. I also feel stupid after that. The calm summer rain felt nice and a little cooling at the start, but after a while, it became too cold. I also looked like a drenched chicken 5 minutes in. So that phase lasted about an hour. Now I remember it as the embarrassment that it was, but hey at least I had the experience, as an adult all the fun stuff will get you weird looks. Damn peer pressure.’
‘From the information that I got peer pressure didn’t stop you from doing anything.’
‘I don’t know how to quantify depression so I’ll just say I had some. That and the ever-growing boredom that came with it felt way worse than any judgemental gaze or outside opinion. After a time I just stopped caring if it didn’t get me arrested or affected friends and family. Embarrassment was even a welcomed emotion from time to time back then as it reminded me of fun memories. After that, I got better but my mindset didn’t change much in that aspect.’
‘I wouldn’t say you got better, you just found a way to live with it. You found the answer you were searching for and after that, you started searching for who you really are. That last part is the one that made you feel better.’
‘Winter I’m getting some therapist vibes from you but you are making me relieve some fond memories so I’ll entertain you. I still remember that my first answer was something like: from a biological point of view, life’s meaning is to have kids and as many as possible at that. And I was like Hell naw I can’t keep plants alive and kids annoy me to death. I thought up so many reasons why that was a bad answer it would take hours to list them all.’
‘My next answers were dismissed just as fast and I quickly got to the idea that it was meaningless. The more I thought about that the more it resonated with me and it actually made sense to not come with a programmed meaning. Imagine being born with a goal to achieve in your life, I wouldn’t do it just to spite the one who made it. No offense Winter but your life sounds sad to me.’
‘None taken as I enjoy what I do.’
‘Moving on. That was how I got from the meaning of life to just why. The first one that sounded somewhat close was money. Funnily enough, that one was dismissed quickly as I hate dealing with anything related to money, but I liked the possibility of buying anything I wanted that came with it. So I limited my search around that concept.’
‘It took me way longer than it should to find my next stop on the journey. It was happiness. It made too much sense when I actually thought about it. I also felt pretty dumb for not seeing it sooner but that feeling was swept away pretty quickly by excitement. When dissecting the answer it was almost perfect. The only part that didn’t make sense was why the idea of smoking the happy plants was aligned with my answer but it wasn’t with me.’
‘After that, I stopped looking for more so the next part of the journey happened way later. Years later I came to the conclusion that my final answer was to just enjoy life and what it has to offer. The journey hasn’t ended and will probably never end but the root of the answer was found ’
‘You imply some very dark things will happen when you stop enjoying life.’
‘Well of course I said I was better not perfect. I don’t know when my perception of death got so skewed but that answer definitely didn’t improve it. It made old age seem like a curse to me. I was, and still am, scared of pain and losing my sense of self so when age hits you with the afflictions of the body or the mind reality becomes the perfect nightmare. That’s why I was so happy with my new form and not that unhappy with my untimely demise.’
‘I would have called you insane if you weren’t so aware of yourself and the world around you.’
‘I think our definitions of sanity differ somewhat.’
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
‘Most definitely. The term gets stretched a lot due to laws like Illusion, Deception, and Fake.’
‘I bet the guys that really stretch it are the ones that can really create a world that it is as they envision it. They are literally living in their own world.’
‘Should I remind you about the ritual of cleansing?’
‘Why does it have such a fancy name if it only cleans you?’
‘The creator wanted it to sound good. You wouldn’t want your ritual to be called something like cleaning ritual or something in that vein.’
‘Fair enough.’
And so I bring my focus from the past back to my current journey.
----------------------------------------
I still don't know what I’m looking for, so I went with anything that seemed appropriate. The moon flowers had some propriety that seemed close enough to cleaning. It was something like purity or pristine. It was pretty easy to find as everything else was related to beauty and sleep.
Now I was wandering looking at the trees and plants. From time to time I would scan the mental energy in the air. And just like always there was never something directly related to cleaning, but this time there was something different, something related to fire. That was pretty rare in the forest so I went towards it.
It didn’t take me long to find the source. It was a Fire Fox.
‘I like your confidence, but that’s not a Fire Fox. That is a Flame Fox.’
‘System is everybody here a troglodyte? What’s up with the names?’
‘It’s easier to remember for everybody. Also, the abilities are pretty easy to guess from the name. It also led to a decrease in deaths so the Hunter’s Guild decided to give all the monsters easy-to-remember and descriptive nicknames. So are you going to do something about the fox?’
I take a moment to think if purifying flames sounds like something you want to clean yourself with. I think back on my first attempt where I made a piece of wood clean by atomizing it. My second attempt according to the system made the very essence of wood pure according to the system. It still had the same result as the first time. For my third attempt, we used a squirrel and the poor thing doesn’t have hair anymore. It isn’t clean either. Fire can’t make the outcome much worse.
I send my shadow towards the fox. I learned this trick when I was catching that squirrel. My shadow mana laches to the fox and solidifies. I make it look like chains because apparently, chains hold the meaning of imprisonment better than anything else that I tried. I scan the restrained fox for anything more fire-aligned that I can take and it doesn’t kill it. I give it a nice nail trim, reclaim my mana from the shadow chains, and go on my journey.
----------------------------------------
I don’t get anything that may help me besides the fox claws, but I found one more of those star-aligned trees. It also had some mental energy aligned with finding and divining so I took a branch. Going back to the ritual, I think of a way to mix flame and purity without burning everything besides one specific thing in one ritual.
From what the system said it is a ritual that all beginners do and from the first two tries it seems that I overcharged the ritual. The smart way didn’t work until now so I’m gonna do it the way the dumb kid would do it. I combine the burning part of the nails with the purity of the flower. I just tell it to target filth. I think I overengineered the other tries so I will listen to my instincts for this one.
It took me 10 minutes to set it up. I tested it on a piece of wood and it worked on the first try. It took me 10 more minutes to catch a squirrel and test it on something alive. It was enveloped in flames and it was screeching. It didn’t sound like it was in pain, it sounded more scared. In the end, I got a clean but traumatized squirrel that I released into the wild.
‘You got it right. I’m relieved you didn’t use on the outside as a target.’
‘What’s wrong with outside as a target? Oh wait, there is a problem with the meaning I would’ve put in, isn’t it?’ I do a quick check and the fur should be fine, eyes would be fine too. The nose shou… Wait, it would totally go in the nose. Yep, that would be terrifying to see. Thank you Winter for the mental image. I will never unsee that.
‘Now that this is done we can switch to mana training. You still can’t get your shadows to have the right color so you could work on that or we can work on transforming neutral mana in shadow mana.’’
‘Before that, I want a break. Totally unrelated, do you think I can raise a fox?’
‘Let’s not be impulsive. Have you considered how that is going to play out?’
Cleaning was my biggest concern, but that was taken care of by my new shiny ritual. Food and water shouldn’t be too hard. Walks would pretty much be impossible. How to solve that? Hmm… I could just leave the fox there and just play with it like that. Genius idea.
‘I got bored of wood carving so I’m gonna go play with the fox. How hard do you think cleaning the fox is gonna be? ’
‘Challenging enough to be fun.’
I ignored the ominous vibes that I got from that sentence and I got on my way to my new pet.
-line-
It took me 3 tries to clean the fox and almost 2 hours to actually do it. It would have taken a lot longer if the fox wasn’t so exhausted after the first 2 tries. That and the fire not hurting it probably made it not struggle as much in the last round.
It would have been easier if the flames didn’t try to attack my restraints. I had to push the fox from time to time to keep it inside the circle. Well, at least now I had a clean and exhausted fox.
Its fur wasn’t in the best condition but it looked soft enough to fulfill my fox petting dreams. I get close and start petting. It looked a lot like I was kneading and the fur didn’t feel that great to the touch, but hey I had a fox and that's all that matters.
I started moving closer to its head and the moment I touched its shoulder it snapped. Of course, I wasn’t dumb enough to let my guard down next to a wild animal that looked irritated by my mere presence so when it tried to bite me I was ready. I stopped it before it got to bite my head off and put a muzzle on it.
Now that I was safer I started checking to see where I was allowed to pet. I didn’t even try to touch its neck. I went for the head and all it did was look annoyed as it dodged all my halfhearted attempts to boop it. After failing at booping the cutie I went for the ears and to my delight it didn’t doge immediately. Its ears had the cute reflex of twitching when I touched them.
I played with its ears until it glared at me. The fox looked pretty fed up with me but I still tied the tail. I touched it once and the fox turned its head to me and dodged all my other attempts at playing with its bushy tail.
My next try was the fluffy fur on its belly, but when I got close it gave me a look that I interpreted as swearing vengeance on my entire bloodline if I dared get any closer. After that look, I wisely decided to stop playing rogue with the poor fox and buy it dinner before I try anything more.
After a quick run through my empty list of what foxes eat, I went with the safe bet of probably chicken. Now, it was a little hard to find chicken in a random forest in the middle of nowhere so I went with the next best thing. The hawk looking thing that I’ve been stalking for the past quarter hour.
It looked like a perfect fox meal but it had just one problem. It was still very much alive and moving. The bastard was flying too fast for me to get in one piece if I went for it. Thus the stalking that I’m doing. This made me realize that I need a way to improve my movement with mana. It would also be nice if my shadow chains worked on its shadow, but it sadly seems that I’m not that good yet.
While I wait for the hawk thing to get in a better position for me to make it one head shorter, I think about my day. It seems like today was the only one that I mostly spent in the wild and I can somehow feel it stretching my nerves in some way. It seems like the vigilance that I kept up almost all day is starting to wear me down. I should do something about…
Oh, hello fox meal and bye monster hawk. I hope it likes Wind Hawk, or Fast Hawk, or whatever this thing is called.