As much as Symon wanted to rush off and find some vitality, he was ostensibly guarding the sleeping bodies of his friends from nighttime monster attacks. The feeling of growing stronger might have been addictive, but Symon didn't want to put his friends in danger just because he got greedy.
With that in mind, he held his recently neglected pipe in one hand as he approached Atabek. The sleeping giant had been snoring all night, a low rumble that Symon could feel vibrating the ground when he got close.
Carefully, he gently prodded Atabek's side with the tip of his club. The range of his draining magic was just barely under the distance he could poke with his club, ensuring he didn't accidentally steal any vitality. It took a couple of tries, but he eventually succeeded in waking him up.
Symon's Languages passive had helped him to pick up a few words of Dumosi, but it really wasn't much. He was beginning to regret focusing solely on learning Common, but hand signs and context clues would have to be enough.
Softly clearing his throat, Symon pointed to the other man, then pointed outwards. "Atabek go... uh, Atabek go eyes?"
The eyes in question squinted at Symon, before slowly looking around. Even without understanding his words, there was only one reason why Symon would be waking him up in the middle of the night. Well, two reasons, but Symon didn't think either of them had the right orientation for the latter. Luckily, Atabek's freshly awoken mind realised this too.
After rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he stood up and stretched. When he was done, he hefted his axe onto his shoulder before giving Symon one of his now signature thumbs-up.
With Atabek now on guard duty, Symon wasn't putting his friends in danger by going off at night. Speaking of which, he had a plan. He wouldn't be going far — there was a solid chance of nocturnal predators being a threat to a lone Symon, but his targets were a known quantity and near enough that he could call for help if need be.
They had put their camp along the small stream they had been using to guide their way to the shore, so Symon quickly made his way to it. His idea was that he could follow the water for some time, draining the fish for vitality as he did so, then follow the stream back up to the camp. It would be easy to get lost in the maze of grass, but as long as he stuck near the water he'd be fine.
He doubted he would be able to fill his vessel to full unless he travelled dangerously far from his allies, but that was fine — it didn't need to be full, just as much of a reserve as he could get before they reached the village.
With that in mind, he began a slow walk toward the creek. It was dark, his only light source a softly flickering torch — a stick with cloth and some type of sticky substance around the end. There wasn't even any moonlight to guide him. There were multiple different moons, but he'd never seen more than one at once in the night sky, and there were none out tonight.
Keelgrave complained out of nowhere.
"You know I don't know how much a gold piece is worth."
That example didn't help Symon much, as he wasn't sure what a sword was even worth. 500 bucks? Probably a bit more, he thought.
"How much does a meal cost, then?" he asked aloud, as they were far enough from the others to not bother them. It would be a good way of understanding the currency's worth here.
"A gold for a real fancy inner city meal, half a silver or less for a cheap one," Keelgrave replied. Symon opened his mouth to clarify something, but Keelgrave continued. "And before you ask, it's ten silvers for a gold. Ten coppers for a silver, too."
Symon was good with numbers, but he felt that having all these different valued coins was needlessly confusing. Still, he had a rough understanding of their value, at least enough to ensure he wouldn't get completely scammed. A gold was somewhere around a hundred dollars, which put a silver at ten dollars and a copper coin at a single dollar in value — or at least close enough.
By now, Symon had made it to the creek. His magic had cut a path straight back to the camp, so he could still see the flickering light of the campfire. There was still some danger in being separated from the others, but he was still near enough they could come to each other's aid in an emergency.
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He had planned to simply sit on the banks and allow his magic to drain the fish as they passed by, but what he saw gave him a new idea.
Tiny, multicoloured lights floated gently along the surface of the water. Most of them were red and orange, but a few were a greenish colour. They would blink out, and then light back up in a slightly different position. At first, he thought they were fireflies, but when he held his torch closer he soon realised the lights were coming from the fish.
They all had tiny bony protrusions on their heads, which he had noticed during dinner but thought nothing of. Some fish just looked weird. But now, he saw they gave off the gently pulsing lights as the fish swam up and down the stream. It was a pretty sight, almost hypnotic to watch the little lights travel up and down the stream, but he hadn't come here to sightsee.
Part of him felt bad about what was about to happen to the fish, but he had already eaten some of them for dinner, so it wasn't the time to get squeamish. He placed his foot just on the edge of the creek, being careful to not get his boots wet considering they were the only pair he had. There were plenty of fish in the creek, much more than he'd initially noticed — unsurprisingly, the flashing lights made them easy to spot in the pitch-black night. Without the light pollution he'd grown accustomed to in his last life lighting up the night, he'd discovered a newfound appreciation for fire.
He planted his torch into the soft, sandy dirt and waited for a fish to pass by, sending the grey thread of Seize out into the water like a fishing line as he sat down and waited.
When he'd first tried to show his adventurer friends the range of his magic — so they knew how to stay out of it — he'd been surprised to find that the others couldn't see it. In fact, they weren't able to even feel it draining them unless he empowered the effect. Even Keelgrave wasn't able to see the threads, although he could sense the vitality contained within them once they started draining something. He'd just assumed that everyone could see it but was so used to magic that they didn't pay it any attention. He hadn't explained to the others that he could actually see the threads, and so they never thought to mention that they couldn't see it.
Despite its small size, the stream was filled with fish, so it didn't take long for one to lazily pass by Symon. Immediately, the thread quickly snaked its way through the water and latched onto the fish. It wasn't moving fast, but his range wasn't very long and he didn't want to have to chase it up the stream, so he focused on the thread and encouraged it to pull the vitality out faster.
The fish slowly spun around, looking behind itself. His friends said it felt cold and wrong when he empowered the draining, so the fish was probably confused but not smart enough to recognise the threat.
That's strange, Symon thought to himself. I would expect a fish to be more skittish...
The reason for the fish's odd behaviour quickly became apparent, as it turned belly up and began floating down the stream in the opposite direction to where it started.
"That was fast," he said to Keelgrave.
Symon just rolled his eyes in response. He was here for vitality, and he'd been successful. It wasn't enough for a full unit, but he'd felt a solid amount stream into his vessel and join the swirling vitality contained within.
It was certainly much faster than draining grass, and all he had to do was sit and wait for the fish to come to him.
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Symon spent nearly an hour out there, but his torch had burned down to almost nothing and he was beginning to get creeped out by the darkness. Atabek had come to check on him, but he'd waved him off — their sleeping friends were the ones who needed someone watching over them, not him. Keelgrave kept him company, for what little that was worth, but Symon elected to return with his vessel two thirds full. It was good enough, and he still had a full days worth of grass draining ahead of him tomorrow.
That meant he'd arrive at the village with a mostly full vessel, but that still didn't sit right with him. He didn't like how paranoid he'd become — being in the village would be the safest he's ever been since arriving on this island, but he was still nervous about it. Keelgrave had constantly warned him about how dangerous those who spent their whole life benefitting from the Ledger could be, and he had to admit that the adventurers, whom he trusted, could be scary even without meaning to be.
At least out here in the desert, things were simple. You'd find a monster, it would either run away or fight you, and then you would either kill it or it would kill you. Symon wouldn't say he enjoyed it, but there was something reassuring about the simplicity of life. It was like a return to his caveman roots. But people? People were complicated.
With a soft sigh, he stood up to begin trudging back to the camp. He'd thought of himself as a trusting person, but Keelgrave's constant warnings had managed to taint his thinking. He wanted to be cautious, not paranoid. Just like home, he imagined the people in this world could be both good and bad — with most just being normal people trying to get by.
After stretching out the kinks in his back from sitting for so long, Symon looked up and down the stream before hopping over it. Downstream, he saw a collection of the glowing lights all clustered unmoving around one another. Approaching it, he found a group of the fish he'd drained the vitality from, all of their bodies caught against a bend in the stream.
"Hmm, their lights are still glowing," Symon said, half to himself and half to Keelgrave. They were no longer gently pulsing on and off, instead they were all stuck lit up.
"Well, it's magical, right? These guys must have died at least ten minutes ago, but their lights are still glowing. Where's the mana coming from?"
Keelgrave admitted.
Symon barely knew how his own vitality worked, let alone mana, but if the fish weren't big enough to store enough energy normally...
"Does that mean they've got a core in them?" Symon asked.