Symon lay on the bed in the spare room Mayor Temuri had loaned to him. It was stuffed with hay or something similar, and was comfortable enough. It was nothing compared to a memory foam mattress, but it was leagues better than his thin bedroll. His healing could do many wonderous things, but did nothing to make stones and bumps in the ground digging into his back less annoying.

The room had a single foggy window, meaning it was filled with muted shadows. It matched Symon's mood — dark yet unfocused. It could have just been the general stress associated with being attacked by monsters for the past week, but he thought it was the human element. That crazy builder guy had already tried to beat him up and he'd barely been in Brackstead a few hours. He'd won the brawl, and fairly easily at that, but he didn't think the other man had been taking things completely seriously, not until Symons draining had already weakened him considerably.

"Hey Keelgrave, what do you think that other guy's stats were? The crazy dude with the hammer, I mean," Symon asked aloud. The burly worker had definitely been stronger than Symon, and he wanted to know by just how much.

Keelgrave said. There was no easy way — or really even any way, as far as they both knew — to know someone's exact Ledger details without being shown them, but Keelgrave's lifetime of fighting a variety of people and monsters meant Symon trusted that his guess was close enough.

That meant he'd been about three times stronger than Symon, which matched with what he'd experienced. Once he'd grabbed onto Symon, he hadn't been able to escape until his draining had stolen enough vitality that he could push the weakened man off him. He wasn't sure if the disparity in strength was more or less than he'd been expecting. It was certainly significant, but he'd been growing quickly. Hopefully, village life would allow him to focus on his training without needing to constantly worry about monster attacks and basic survival needs, so it wasn't that ridiculous to think he could catch up within a month by making use of every advantage he had.

"Let's see how close I am to matching him," he said aloud before summoning his Ledger. He wasn't sure how it could manifest in a dark room like this, but it had never struggled before. He noticed the lighting in the room shift slightly as the imperfections in the cloudy glass subtly aligned themselves into letters. When the sunlight hit them, he could see the words of his status projected on to the far wall. Don't show me any passives that haven't changed, he quickly amended.

[ Status:

Name: Symon

Class: Cursed Healer

Strength: 0.93 {+0.03}

Constitution: 1.23 {+0.02}

Acuity: 0.96 {+0.01}

Intelligence: 1.02 {+0.02}

Will: 1.24 {+0.01}

Vessel (Vitality): 8/18 {+1}

Abilities:

Idealise (15) {+2}

Seize (12) {+1}

Essence Bond (12)

Passives:

Anatomy (4) {+2}

Pain Resistance (8) {+1} ]

Since the last time he'd checked his Ledger was at lunch — not even a full hour ago — this was all from the brawl with Boyan, as well as healing the ex-mayor. "You know," Symon started, "I'm really not that far behind, time-wise. I've had the Ledger for a week or two, and that guy must have had it for at least 30 years, but my stats are already around a third of his."

Symon nodded. His magic had really shown its value in that fight, allowing him to heal the damage from hammer hits faster than they could build up, while draining vitality faster than it could be consumed. In fact, his vessel capacity had grown slightly from having more vitality crammed into it than it was meant to hold, so he must have really turned a profit. It highlighted the difference in vitality between plants and animals, and not just in quantity. There was some qualitative difference between the two — despite the vitality feeling the same as it flowed into his vessel, it took a lot more from a plant to increase his reserves by a single point than from an animal, including people.

Given his near-constant experience of draining the living things around him — only stopping when there was nothing left, like when he slept or sat still — he'd come up with a more in-depth model of how his magic worked. A lot of it was guesswork and intuition, but as far as Keelgrave knew there was no one else with the ability to directly affect vitality like Symon could, so he had to rely purely on himself. Every living creature had vitality inside them, but that wasn't the whole story. As a ghost, spirit, or whatever the term was, Keelgrave was an orb of vitality covered in a layer of mana. As best as he could tell, the vitality was Keelgrave, and the mana formed a shell around him, keeping his essence from dissipating into the air and presumably resulting in a final death.

This shell wasn't a perfect seal, however, as a spirit would slowly leak out their essence and eventually die. They didn't regenerate mana or vitality in the way living people did, so their only way to replenish this was to take it from others. That was what he'd tried to do to Symon, back when they'd first met.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

So, both the living and undead had vitality, but only the former could naturally regenerate it, and not all living things were equal in this regard. The feeling and process of taking vitality from a plant compared to a human or monster was much the same — his thread would latch onto a target, then siphon the vitality out of them and into his core. That seemed to be a necessary step, as he wasn't able to circumvent his vessel and redirect the vitality flowing through his thread directly to a wound. He wasn't entirely sure why this was the case, but a neat theory was that it was similar to blood types, or like a transplanted organ rejecting its new recipient. Taking vitality directly from someone and putting it into someone else wasn't possible for Symon, as he simply had no control over the vitality until it reached his vessel for the first time.

It was impossible for him to prove one way or the other, but it seemed to be the best explanation he'd have for now

But once the vitality did reach his vessel, something changed. Not in how it looked — for it wasn't something he could truly see — but in how it behaved. His vessel did something to the vitality to... stamp his signature onto it, was his best explanation. After the unknown process occurred, the vitality was ready to be used, either on him or someone else, without any problems. There might have been some hidden, lingering issues that it was causing, but he would have noticed something in the Dumosans by now, especially with his Anatomy passive. Plus, his abilities had saved his life many times over, and he trusted them. The problem was his weak body...

"You were in the military, right? How did they train you when you first joined? My magic is already strong and only getting better, but I really need to be more capable in combat in order to leverage it properly," Symon said.

Keelgrave replied wistfully.

"You mean sparring?"

"Makes sense, but the problem with life or death combat is the part where you can die. I've already had enough of that, thank you very much."

"Hmm, point," Symon said. He'd already been attacked on his first day in the village, although he still wasn't sure if the other guy had been trying to kill him or just beat him up. "Anyway, enough laying around. I wanted to go check out that manor, but I think it can wait for tomorrow. Maybe I'll go get some drinks with the Dumosans. That's what friends do, right?"

Keelgrave was silent, so Symon just shrugged and straightened out the bed where he'd ruffled the blanket with his body. With a thought, he dismissed his Ledger and made his way out of his new room and out into the backyard of the house. It wasn't fenced in, but there was plenty of space between his temporary home and his neighbours.

There was also a woman sitting in the middle of it.

"Umm, hello," Symon offered as he stepped out onto the compacted dirt.

She looked over her shoulder, noticed Symon, and then shot to her feet. "Who are you?" she asked, her tone suspicious.

"I'm Symon, I'm a healer. I just finished working on Temuri. And you... oh, you must be his granddaughter?"

Instantly, her mood lightened. "Really? How is he?" she asked.

"He's well, I believe his sickness is cured but I'll be crashing in the guest room, so I'll give him another checkup in a bit."

Once more, her face shifted, though this time it was displaying confusion. It was almost comical how quickly she was bouncing between the different moods. "You... intend to damage the guest room? Why?"

"What? No!" Symon said, now joining her in being confused. "Why do you — oh, I get it." He no longer needed Keelgrave to act as a translator for him, as he was mostly fluent in Common by now. However, even with the Languages passive working overtime, it was impossible to get to a native level in just a week. He still thought in English, and sometimes when speaking in Common he used a direct translation of English words. Usually, this was fine — the others would still be able to piece together what he meant, and Keelgrave would let him know the word didn't work like that so he didn't make the same mistake in the future — but evidently, the word he'd picked to represent crashing was too specific for how he'd used it.

"I meant that I'll be staying in the guest room, for about a month. I doubt I'll be here much except to sleep, so I shouldn't be too much of a bother."

"That makes more sense," she said. She had dark skin, hair, and eyes like all the other villagers, although her hair drew his attention in the way it cascaded down her back like a curly waterfall. "It is good to meet you then, Symon. I am Mariyka."

"The pleasure's all mine," Symon replied. The two stared at each other in awkward silence for a few moments. "Oh, you probably want to go check on your—"

"I should visit Grandfa—" she said, speaking at the same time as Symon.

"Right, sorry, don't let me keep you," he said, stepping out of the doorway. "I'll see you again? Uh, I mean, I'll probably see you later because I'm sleeping here," he stammered out. Damnit Symon, focus! He took a few extra steps to ensure she was well out of range of his draining.

There was a soft, amused smile on her face as she stepped past him. "Naturally."

Symon blew out a heavy breath of air as she shut the door behind her.

Keelgrave mocked.

"Keelgrave!" he complained, keeping his shout contained within his mind as Mariyka would have heard him talking. "It's not like that, I was just surprised someone was out here in the backyard is all." Well, maybe that wasn't entirely true. Symon could admit that she was pretty, but he had more important things to focus on. Besides, he'd only be here for a month and wasn't that type of guy. Not that such a thing would even be possible with my magic...

Symon was sure Keelgrave would have been waggling his eyebrows right now if he had any.

"Ugh, of course I can see the very clear meaning! And what the hell even is a merry weather?"

Keelgrave projected the sound of a disappointed sigh into Symon's mind.