“Got it? In three days, we’ll proceed with the plan. Until then, try to stick to her as much as possible. She likes you, but she won’t show it. Try to read into the small things she does, a flick of an eye, an extra hearty laugh. You’re smart, you’ll notice all the--” non-existent “--signs.”
Hesitantly, Braj went along, still somewhat taken back by all the information. He pinched himself ever so often, as if to remind himself this was not a dream. L slapped his hands together and began to walk out. “Wait!” Braj called, standing up.
“What’s up? The workday starts soon, and I’ll need to think up some puns to get me through it.”
“I-I...just wanted to thank you for doing all of this,” Braj said, looking down to the floor. “It means quite a lot to me. I’m not that good with...people.”
L stared back at him, his face indiscernible. “I was like you, you know, when I was young. Constantly being surrounded by people that are beyond you, people that you just don’t understand. You’ll learn, though, you’ll learn how to deal with it, trust me,” he said, and then walked into the sun and towards the gates.
Braj stood there for a while, watching L as he left the village. “B-but...we’re the same age?” he said, confused. Then, while still not in tune with how his limbs felt, he trundled his way back to the construction site.
L reached the gates a few minutes after. He glanced at the eight feet tall of crumbling motor, slightly amused. The walls were about twenty meters away from the first house, meaning that the village could probably double in size before they would need to break down and rebuild the walls. At that time, however, the village will become a full-fledged town, and will contain enough workforce and economic development to do that if it so desired.
Seeing the two guards around the gate, L smiled wide, but not wide enough to show his front teeth. Having all one’s teeth was a sign of wealth, and L learned the lesson of flaunting his wealth to grumpy men in full plate armor a long time ago. The heat was vicious, and even though the guards sat under the gate, in the shade, the humidity was still enough to make their iron plates into portable frying pans. Keeping this in mind, he chose to be as polite as possible. “Hello, how goes the day?”
“Fuck off, filthy abomination,” one of them said, spitting at L’s feet.
“And you, good sir?” L said to the other one.
“Your arse on a spike, mutant,” the other replied, somewhat lazily.
“Lovely!” L said, excitingly, but without slowing down his pace. “I have been having a pleasant day, myself, thank you for inquiring. I’ll pray you a blissful day.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Put a sock on it, you blasphemous freak,” the first guard said.
When the other guard did not say anything, both L and the first guard stared at him, his half-opened eyes looking off into the distance. L stopped at his feet, and the first guard looked at his friend expectantly. “Oh...Um,” he said, upon noticing the two looking at him. “What he said,” he mumbled carelessly, and then he returned to look at a particularly interesting object in the very far distance.
L shook his head and kept walking on the road. To provide the most vision for the settlement, the nearest tree was a couple dozen meters off from the start of walls, allowing any men on the slightly higher watchtower to notice any invading force. The lumberjacks job was not only to haul in more wood to the growing village, but to also further push back the treeline, providing more security. About ten men, all reasonably huge, had already started hacking at the trees. They first removed the bark off, to allow the axes to hack into the trunk, and then branches from the opposite side they wanted they wanted the tree to fall. The side in which they hacked the wood off was opposite the side they had cleared the branches. This was a common tree felling technique, as it allowed lumberjacks to use gravity to predict approximately where the tree would fall.
L’s job, surprisingly, was the most labor intensive. Instead of revealing his agility of climbing trees and cutting branches, he had instead requested to hack at the trees, which required the most brute strength. He was met with skepticism and harsh laughter, but upon the men seeing the ax enveloped in a dark aura, their laughter ceased abrupltely. Even though his swing was pliable, somewhat intentionally, and somewhat because he lacked the true strength, the dull ax still took a respectable chunk of the wood out.
Grabbing the ax he usually used, one that is no longer preferred by any of the other men, L walked into the shade of the designated tree. He felt a combination of dark mana within his body seep out, combining with the small portion of innate mana in the shadows. Being an earth mage would have allowed him to tap into more mana from the environment instead of his body, but then again, each different type of mana came with certain restrictions. The dark mana crawled across the wood like thick water, turning the head of the ax dark.
Hidden to all those who starred from the corner of their eyes, L had also enchanted his own body, most particularly his joints. He could not reveal this detail, as it impossible for most living beings to direct their mana into multiple sources at once.
Tightening his hold on the dry wood, L spread his legs, maintained a straight back, twisted his upper body back, and then swung, pushing forward with both his legs and his upper body. The ax head struck the wood, reverberating the force of the strike through L’s body. The dark mana caused a larger pushback, that over time, would have damaged L’s body if he had not protected his most fragile part of the body, the joints. This was the main reason why magicians could not flippantly use destructive spells, as their bodies would not be able to take the burden, unless, of course, they either had expensive equipment or other magicians to protect them.
L, however, was not restricted by this factor, as he could both protect his body while simultaneously casting offensive magic. That, alongside one other reason, was why he was able to become an influential Diver. The Null System picked up on this detail, and had adequately registered it in his character sheet.
Rank X Unique Innate Perk.
Multi-001010
Possessing 00111011010110101, you are able to cast three different, wholly independent magical incantations. You are not able to, however, combine three two individual 010101 consciousness into a singular inclination. The three 11110010 do not affect each other, though they will affect the acting 011010101 by a percentage according to the makeup of the 101100 in correspondence to the whole 10110000.
It had, as promised, blanked out anything that might cause a potential headache to L. It was nothing new, for the large part, as L had usually received a similar skill in other worlds, though some systems were not as convenient or nearly as understanding in that some things were better off unsaid.