After five full days of travel, the grass field had transformed into a jungle. They were only a couple days travel away from the coast and the village that was placed on it, which gave the plantlife easier access to water. This in turn meant that what had begun as a waist-high field of wheat-coloured, half-dead grass was now an almost impassible solid wall of vegetation. The Dumosi adventurers didn't have a special technique to circumvent this issue. During their previous travels through it in the opposite direction, Atabek had needed to laboriously cut through the overgrown grass with his axe.
Getting a look at a healthy specimen, Symon wasn't sure that grass was even the correct term for it. Each individual strand of the plant was as thick around as his pinkie finger, and was much less flexible than grass should be. Visually, it just looked like giant grass, but he was beginning to picture it more like bamboo. It would explain why it didn't collapse under its own weight, considering it towered over Atabek, who was himself at least two metres tall.
While Symon was interested in travelling this new world and learning about its completely foreign cultures, he wasn't typically one for spending so much time thinking about a plant, strange as it may be. The reason for his attention was that his magic was beginning to lose its effectiveness as a path clearer. He'd been the one up front, draining a path for the others to follow, but the process was getting slower and slower. His draining magic essentially had two modes. The first was when he did nothing, allowing the threads to automatically seek out a target and begin siphoning the vitality out. This process wasn't particularly fast but had still been good enough against the unhealthy grass, being able to kill and flatten it out before he reached it with a fast walk.
He could also choose to exercise a degree of control over the threads — while he couldn't directly prevent them from draining something, he could force them to drain something else first, presuming there was a valid target. This was how he healed the others without draining them, by latching the threads onto plant life and quickly healing them before moving out of range. If he took too long, his magic would finish with the vegetation and start attacking his travelling companions. As well as steering the threads to a new target, he could also encourage them to drain faster. It felt similar to breathing; the process was usually automatic but one could also choose to take deep breaths.
Not only was the passive draining slower than the active draining, but both aspects became sluggish when his vessel was full. They still attempted to steal vitality, but it was much slower than when his vessel still had space. His full vessel, coupled with the fact he'd been focused on his mental lessons with Keelgrave and wasn't able to consciously empower his draining at the same time, meant that the denser and healthier grass blocking their path was taking a lot more time to collapse.
Having a full vessel wasn't such a bad thing, of course. He'd had a lot of excess vitality, which had all gone to Atabek. By now he had no further signs of his previous injuries, barring one notable exception. There were four new scars on his body; the entry and exit wounds from both the razor stalker's eponymous blades. They remained completely unchanged even after Symon transferred vitality directly into the scar tissue.
The scars were quite noticeable, so he'd expected them to shrink or fade even just slightly after the vitality infusion, but nothing happened. None of Symon's own wounds left any sign on his body at all, so why was it different for someone else? The description of his healing ability made no distinction between who it was used on. For that matter, he found it strange that none of the many scars on the other two adventurers had been affected, considering he'd also previously healed them both.
Keelgrave wasn't sure either — healing wasn't his area of expertise in the first place, and scar removal was also typically a complex and expensive technique, similar to regrowing lost parts. Or at least it would have been, for a more standard Healer.
Symon's best guess was that there was some type of time limit, but that didn't feel right either. Something that important would have been mentioned by the Ledger, or at least he hoped so. Perhaps the fact that the healing had been split between Symon's magical healing and the natural recovery process of someone with a strong Constitution meant it just healed like that. Even then, he saw no reason why his magic wouldn't be able to fix the scar after. It was purely visual, with no physical loss of strength or range of motion, so it wasn't a big issue right now. Still, Symon wasn't sure why the healing wasn't working, and was a little worried this meant he wouldn't be able to fix old injuries for others in the future. He was more focused on being able to help those in need, but he had to admit that the prospect of getting rich off it sounded pretty nice too.
Luckily, he had a convenient way to test it.
----------------------------------------
They had fresh meat for dinner that night, a welcome divergence from the palatable travel rations. He must have marched right past the snake, but Symon barely even saw it before Aslan ran it through with his sword. It had writhed around for a bit more, but quickly died. Symon hadn't even been able to get any vitality from it, as the transition from thrashing around violently to being dead happened in just a few seconds.
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
Atabek seared some thin strips of it over the fire, but not even his talent was enough to make up of their lack of any real seasonings. The taste of it was fine, though — somewhere between fish and chicken — but the real problem was the toughness. He was pretty sure he could train his Strength just by chewing it, so the final portion of the meat was put into yet another stew to soften up.
As they waited around the bubbling pot over their fire — the grass burned well, but needed to be refreshed often — Symon spoke up, directing his question to the only adventurer who could properly understand him. "Aslan, can you tell me more about Safiya's eye? Like, is it missing or just damaged?"
The woman in question perked up in response to hearing her name, but the focused expression on her face made it clear she didn't know what his words meant.
"Oh, why do you ask?" he replied, but he continued on before receiving an answer. "It was taken out entirely, yes, by a monstrous wolf. She was worried that it would severely affect her combat potential, but she has adapted well," he added with a shrug.
Symon wiggled the fingers on his hand, the ones that had been divorced from his hand by the razor stalker and subsequently regrown with his magic. "I'd like to try regrowing it. Would you ask her if that's okay? Um, but make sure she knows I can't guarantee it'll work," he said.
Ironically, Aslan's eyes almost bulged out of his head in response. Surely they'd already recognised this as a possibility after his fingers came back? In fact, he felt a little bad about waiting so long to even try, although he'd never had a consistently full vessel like this.
"You... you would be willing to, honoured friend Symon?" Aslan asked, leaning forward excitedly. Safiya picked up on the energy despite not understanding the words, her one eye quickly darting between the two. Atabek was casually stirring the stew pot.
"Of course! Your team was so brave in that fight against the razor stalker, and you've given me so much stuff," he said, motioning towards the short sword at his side, as well as the bedroll and small tent behind him. It was even more meaningful, considering all these items used to belong to Serik. It still felt a little odd just how quickly they had seemed to move on from his death, but that was just the Earth mindset speaking. Judging by the violence of Keelgrave's life and the quantity of monsters Symon had encountered, this was a dangerous world. The adventurers were only as old as Symon, and yet they'd lived their whole surrounded by magic and monsters; it made sense that they would have a more casual relationship with death.
While he was staring at his sword and contemplating the dangerous world he'd found himself in, Aslan had been talking to Safiya. He listened in, hoping that his new Languages passive might be able to help him out, but the words were just as foreign as they always were. The only parts he recognised were their names. Perhaps if they only spoke Dumosan around him he would begin to pick it up through immersion, but that hadn't happened yet. True to its name, Common was so widely spread that it would be enough in the vast majority of places, so ideally he wouldn't have to attempt to learn too many new ones.
The two adventurers rapidly shot back and forth for a few moments longer before Aslan turned to him. "Honoured friend Symon, we wish to know if there is any preparation needed, as well as how long it will take," he asked.
Symon took a minute to think the process over before replying. "No, I don't think so. Just have her stand close to a thick patch of grass so I have something to drain instead of her, and we can start now. I'm not sure how long it will take, but maybe..." he trailed off as he tried to estimate a timeframe. To replace four of his fingers, he'd used four points of vitality over just a couple minutes. An eye was fairly complex, but his missing fingers had a lot more mass to replace than a missing eye, especially compared to the much smaller Safiya. To be on the safe side, he'd try and give her six points of the healing energy — although his transfer wasn't very precise. Whatever arbitrary unit of measurement the Ledger used to quantify his vitality was just that: arbitrary. He had no easy way to measure how fast the inflow and outflow of vitality was, other than looking at his Ledger or chalice tattoo and manually figuring it out.
He wished he had a better understanding of just how much vitality was needed for a certain injury, but he had enough of a surplus that he could afford to overshoot. With a final nod to himself, he focused back on Aslan. "It'll only take a moment for me to give her the vitality, then a few minutes after that for the magic to work."
Aslan relayed his words to Safiya, after which all three of them stood up from their positions around the fire and moved over to the nearby wall of bamboo-like grass. They were both obviously excited, so he really hoped this worked. Safiya was practically bouncing as she walked off, an eager smile on her face.
She quickly hopped over to the edge of their small clearing, pressing her back to the grass before looking at Symon expectantly. Aslan stood off to the side, arms crossed as he chewed on his lower lip nervously. They hadn't given any indication that her missing eye was a major concern for them — it certainly hadn't seemed to slow her down in the battle against the razor stalker — but he supposed she'd had a while to come to terms with the loss.
First, he inspected things from a distance. He had her pull open her eyelid, revealing what he expected; an old wound with no lingering damage, not including the missing eye. The need to keep her out of range of his draining made it a little awkward, but he was checking for anything lodged in the socket, or any remnants of the eye. He didn't want to bring back her eye just to find that it had grown around a shard of claw from the wolf that had originally done this. The vitality might be able to push foreign objects out, especially in his own body where he could make wounds heal from the inside out if he desired, but there was no reason for him to risk it.
Thankfully, the socket was completely empty, allowing him to start. "This shouldn't hurt, but it's going to feel very weird, okay?" he warned. She gave a quick nod in response after Aslan translated for him.
With a few breaths to steady himself, he stepped forwards and, as quickly as he could while still being gentle, placed the tips of his fingers around the outside of her eye — three of them resting just below her dark eyebrows, with his pinkie and thumb under the socket. Focusing inwards on his vessel, he pulled out a steady stream of vitality, tracing it down his arm, into his fingertips, and with a final sharp push, into Safiya.