After four full days of uneventful travel through the sea of grass, Symon had developed an even stronger appreciation for his abilities. His vessel was back to full after draining just so, so much grass. It was slow going, but it was essentially free — the only things he'd drained were the grass and various small bugs. That was another underappreciated benefit. The others were continuously harassed by various insects, mostly mosquito and tick-like bugs, but they couldn't bother Symon. They were so small and had so little vitality in them that they died almost immediately after getting in range of his draining.
In the interest of not wasting the excess vitality — technically, it would slowly increase the size of his vessel, but it would take weeks at this rate for an increase of even a single point — he used the extra to finish healing Atabek. He didn't have any type of medical diagnostic magic, just his regular paramedic training, so he couldn't guarantee that the man was back at 100%, but he was at least very close. He had an awareness of his vitality only for as long as it was inside his body. This meant he'd know if he had a hidden injury somewhere, as he'd notice the vitality moving to go fix it. But when healing others, he simply transferred some vitality to them and it did its own thing, without any possible oversight from Symon.
Convenient in most cases, but Symon could already picture scenarios when he'd want more control. If he had a patient with a broken arm, he'd give them just enough vitality to fix it and then pat himself on the back for a job well done. But what if the patient had also hit his head, and simply died of a brain bleed that Symon had no way of knowing existed? He needed either an entirely new diagnostic ability or greater control over the vitality he used on other people. Unfortunately, he didn't have many ideas for either of those options. Keelgrave had already shown an ability to detect strong life forces by tracking the razor stalker, but it wasn't anywhere near precise enough for what Symon would need it for. Plus, he didn't trust Keelgrave to pay enough attention to the lives of others, self-centred bastard that he was.
Speaking of new abilities, Symon's Ledger showed some improvements since they set out on their march, something he took a moment to appreciate while taking in his full status during their lunch break.
[ Status:
Name: Symon
Class: Cursed Healer
Strength: 0.84 {+0.01}
Constitution: 1.14 {+0.01}
Acuity: 0.88
Intelligence: 0.92{+0.05}
Will: 1.16 {+0.02}
Vessel (Vitality): 17/17
Abilities:
Idealise (8)
Seize (10) {+1}
Essence Bond (9) {+2}
Passives:
Languages (5) {+5}
Pain Resistance (5)
Poison Resistance (0)
Running (6) {+1}
Titles:
Blessed by Order
Blessed by Chaos
World Traveller ]
His physical statistics had barely grown, but considering all he'd been doing was walking, he was making good progress. His Running had even improved slightly, which he found odd considering he'd kept a walking pace the rest of the group could maintain without needing any vitality to support them.
Most significant were his gains in Intelligence and Languages, both of them obviously a result of his continual language lessons with Keelgrave, but listening to the adventurers speak in their native language might have contributed slightly too. As much as he hated doing the lessons, they were very effective. He was nowhere near fluent, but he could understand the most commonly used words in the language which generally enabled him to piece together the overall meaning of a sentence. Their lessons had covered a wide range of use cases, but they'd been focused on things useful for combat. He could call out how many enemies there were, what arms and armour they had, and explain simple tactics without needing to consult Keelgrave.
Being able to warn someone of an approaching arrow in a quarter-second instead of a half-second was a small difference, and yet it was potentially lifesaving.
Seize had also slightly improved, as it turned out that sheer quantity was a quality all its own. Following the three pillars of skill growth that Keelgrave had explained — time, effort, understanding — he'd only really used the first aspect. He hadn't put any effort in, and he didn't understand the magic any deeper. The early levels came fairly quickly; there was an initial hump to unlock something in the first place, then it sped up for the first few levels, and then it slowed back down as the level increased. Without focused effort, and better targets to use it on, Seize would grow very slowly. Although, it did have something of a snowball effect to partly counteract this phenomenon; as the level increased, so too did the range and draining speed, allowing him to drain more grass in the same amount of time.
It would still slow down without something new to push it, but not as slow as other abilities would. By now, it could stretch up to one and a half metres from him, or about five feet. He'd hoped that the level 10 milestone would give him an evolution like he'd had for his attributes — when he'd unlocked Pain Resistance — but he'd unfortunately found out that he was only halfway. Still, with some focused effort and dedicated training, he wasn't far off.
Finally, there was his Essence Bond. He'd had more dreams reliving Keelgrave's memories on the first two nights of their journey, but the last two nights had been completely regular dreams, and he had a solid inkling as to why. The first night's memory dream had been a peaceful recollection of the time Keelgrave and his crew had anchored their ship, gone fishing, and then had a barbeque with their catches. It was surprisingly nice, although he wasn't sure why he'd seen that memory in particular. Similarly, the next dream was also pleasant, at least for Keelgrave.
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He'd been celebrating a successful raid, getting drunk in a tavern and loudly boasting about his accomplishments. Wherever they were, they must not have been fans of the Empire either, as the whole tavern would cheer every time he described, in vivid detail, killing the "imperial pigs". Two women in particular had been so enamoured in his tale that they graciously accepted an offer for a "private tour of the Captain's quarters", at which point Symon realised what was about to happen and managed to wake himself up just before seeing something he wouldn't be able to forget.
He'd been worried that the next night would simply pick up where the dream had left off, but his sleep had been blissfully empty of any memory-reliving dreams.
Originally, he'd wanted to repeat the process of learning the Languages passive ability by reliving Keelgrave's experiences with the sword, but obviously, there'd been a misunderstanding between him and his bond ability.
He wasn't going to give up on that ability — getting new passives literally in his sleep wasn't something he could afford to ignore — but both he and Keelgrave were certain that the dreams alone wouldn't be enough to get him a new passive anyway. Once he made more progress on his sword training, he'd try the dream technique again and hope it would be enough to push him over the threshold into unlocking the zeroeth level of a sword skill. The dreams could give Symon a boost to his understanding of sword technique, but the time and effort would have to come from him. It had fallen by the wayside considering he couldn't train it properly while hiking through the sea of grass, but it would be a priority once he made it to the village.
Speaking of, he needed a medium and long-term plan now that his short-term survival prospects were looking good. If he was going to die in this desert, it would have happened already.
Long term, he wanted to go back to Earth, or at least let his parents know that he was okay. Presuming such a thing was even possible, it would likely take years and years to figure out. He'd need to grow his own magical knowledge as well as grow in influence and power — he doubted a powerful wizard who knew anything about the process would want to hear out some random nobody. Considering this wasn't guaranteed to be possible, and would take a long time even if it was, he also wanted to live comfortably in the interim. He'd probably try and do some travelling around the world, then settle down in a nice big city where he could start his own clinic. However, living as part of civilisation necessitated him learning how to control his draining magic, or at least some type of workaround that would stop him sucking the life out of everyone he passed by.
He suspected that this would be the focus of his time spent in the nearby town. Already, his threads stretched out from his body as far as Safiya was tall, and it would only keep growing. It was the whole crux of his class, so he couldn't just ignore it and try to never level it. But already it made the interactions in their small camp awkward and dangerous, and it wouldn't be long before he wouldn't even be able to be in the same room as someone else. Hopefully, the level twenty evolution for the ability would give him some tools to work with, but he doubted it would up and fix the problem in its entirety. He didn't think about it often, but his Ledger said his class was Cursed Healer. He saw no reason why the issue would suddenly fix itself, not when it was seemingly a part of his class. It was similar to someone with a Warrior class suddenly getting a harp-playing skill — it just didn't fit.
Similar to his plan to return home, he doubted that the answer to his problems would be found in the Ledger. His solutions would need to be solved externally, through self-research, the knowledge of experts, and a deeper understanding of his ability. And there was another problem he wanted to remove...
"How does that even... I'm just thinking, don't mind me," Symon said. It was clear to Symon that Keelgrave wanted him to be a pawn in some century-long grudge, and Symon wasn't interested. His training and general knowledge of this world were admittedly helpful, but Symon hadn't forgotten that Keelgrave had tried to take over his own body when they first met. At least the spirit seemed to have mellowed out slightly, but that wasn't saying much.
Thankfully, this wasn't a problem that was getting worse and needed his immediate attention. The memory dreams felt very strange, but they weren't harmful. He wasn't sure how Keelgrave felt about a separation, so he decided to ask, keeping the conversation in his mind to prevent any unneeded questions.
"So, do you have any plans for how we're going to unbind ourselves? I can't imagine you want to stay in my vessel forever."
"They're dangerous?" Symon asked in response, choosing to just ignore the snarky remark as he always did.
"So it's even less likely than finding someone who would know how to get me back home?"
"Oh, shit, that reminds me. I never asked how you died," Symon suddenly asked. It was probably an insensitive question, but Keelgrave wasn't the type to care. He'd found Keelgrave's skeleton in that old collapsed tower, where it had been sitting against a wall. There were other skeletons there, but they were all laid out on beds like they were sleeping. They were most likely some of his crew.
"Really? Are you trying to pull the old amnesiac lie like I did? You can just keep it to yourself if you'd prefer, I get that it's probably a personal question."
"So you remember walking up to the tower, and then nothing until we met each other?"
Well, it looked like they'd still be stuck together for a while yet, and now he had yet another mystery for the future: what had killed Keelgrave and his crew?