“AAAAAAHHHHHHH!” I scream, slamming my hammer down in frustration, causing a large plume of dirt to erupt around me.
Through the dust, I watch a beetle trip over its legs as it rushes to get away from me. I couldn’t hold back my emotions and was constantly leaking killing intent.
The first beetle was a learning experience; the fourth was annoying to watch scuttle away. The tenth… was soul-crushing at that point.
Now I was past all those emotions, and watching the twenty-sixth flee, all I could feel was rage. No matter what I did, I couldn’t control my soul and keep it from projecting my anger. I had thought I would get the hang of it, considering how much experience I had regarding my soul, but every attempt I made at controlling my will, up until this point, had blown up in my face.
I’ve spent countless hours inside my soul, and yet, it seemed impossible to keep my soul from doing whatever it is that it's doing. I had spent the better part of the last hour trying to figure out what was causing my soul to shift and had come up with absolutely nothing!
It didn’t help that I had surprisingly little experience manipulating my soul outside of my dream realm. I hadn't realized it until now, but I only use Soul Manipulation in the real world to shift my status page into a much neater format. Other than that, I’d never tried using Soul Manipulation for anything else.
I could find out what was happening if I entered my soul, but I couldn't exactly do that now in front of Tabitha. Speaking of which, I turn and glare at the woman standing nearby with a smug look on her face.
For a brief second, I direct my killing intent at her, but she easily shrugs it off and retaliates with her own. Tabitha's killing intent is leagues ahead of mine, and like a tsunami against a sandcastle, easily overpowers my measly will. I momentarily froze under the brunt of her will, but after a second, I could overcome it as she did mine, only slower, and now my back was covered in sweat, and my knees were trembling underneath me.
The one good thing about having Tabitha smothering my killing intent with her own is that it briefly lets me get a hold of my emotions. And when I do, I realize what I just did.
“I’m so sorry,” I apologize to Tabitha. For however brief it was, I genuinely wanted to kill her for a second, and it made me feel awful.
Tabitha laughs at me in a good-natured way. "It's fine; I understand what you're going through. I did the same thing dozens of times to Master Pacore. I know you didn’t mean it, just like I didn’t mean it when I used my killing intent to smother yours.”
I'm relieved to hear she wasn't mad at me, but now that I know that, it was hard not to feel annoyed. Of course, the emotion was primarily directed at myself; still, a small part of me couldn't help but blame my glorious teacher for throwing me in the deep end without knowing how to swim and expecting me to become an expert instantly.
"Can I please, stop now?" I grit my teeth in frustration.
Tabitha keeps smiling as she walks over to me. Thanks to losing control of my emotions, only a handful of animals were left, despite the abundance of food still around. So as Tabitha walked toward me, she didn’t need to worry about a single magic beast in her way.
“Well, at least your normal for once,” Tabitha remarks as she walks up next to me.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I eye Tabitha suspiciously.
“I wanted to see if your ridiculous comprehension speed would affect your ability to control will.”
“You said it takes years,” I remind her.
"I did, and so do most of the things I try to teach you that seem to pick up instantly. But, honestly, I'm a little happy to see you fail for a change. I was starting to think you weren’t human,” she quips.
“Ha-ha,” I sarcastically laugh.
“No, seriously,” Tabitha continues with a straight face. “I was considering writing Master about my doubts.”
“Really?” I flinch back, with a concerned look plastered across my face.
Slowly Tabitha begins to grin at me.
“That’s not funny,” I pout.
“It’s a little funny,” Tabitha insists.
“So, does that mean I can finally kill one of these blasted beetles, and we can leave?" I ask, hoping Tabitha will permit me.
“What, you don’t want to continue practicing?” Tabitha continues to poke fun at me lightly.
“Tabitha,” I whine.
She sinkers and glances around. “You can, but there aren’t many left,” she observes.
The two of us were standing at the edge of the crater left behind by the elemental. Up here, there were almost no magic beasts left, but down in the crater, there were still quite a few foraging for goblin flesh.
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“Alright, give me a moment,” I tell her, having already picked the beetle I was going to whack upside the head with my hammer.
The beetle senses my killing intent and starts to make a break for it, but this time, I wasn’t just going to let it crawl away. Hopping over the edge, I use my weight to slide down the loose soil of the crater’s walls.
While sliding down, my prey tried to climb up the opposite side. Its lower center of gravity meant it could scale the steep edge, but not before I could reach it. After trying to kill over two dozen of the shiny bastards, I was familiar with how fast they could move. They only had two speeds, slow and slower. And this particular one was slower.
I had all the time in the world, so when I pick up something odd underneath my feet with Sense Mana, I don’t think twice to stop and see what it is.
While using one hand to balance my hammer on my right shoulder, I use my left to dig into the soft dirt.
“What are you doing?” I hear Tabitha shout above me.
"Give me a second, and I'll tell you," I holler back.
The object I was sensing was only eight inches under the ground, so it wasn't hard to dig it out. In fact, it was suspended in the soft dirt, which meant it was kicked up in the explosion that was the elemental’s fist and wasn’t there previously.
“What in the?” In my left hand, I hold up a brownish-black rock the size of a marble, only jagged and not spherical. It looked like an ordinary rock you'd find anywhere; only this rock wasn't your everyday stone.
The rock in my hands gave off no mana, which was incredibly odd. Even if it was small, everything gave off mana. People, plants, and even the ground beneath me radiate small amounts of mana. Mana was always moving and shifting, so finding a rock with no mana bleed should be impossible, but here it is.
Because it wasn’t radiating any mana, I hadn’t sensed it until I was right over it, and even then, I could only spot it because Sense Mana was so strong. Using my skill to look inside the stone, I marvel at the tight mana network contained within.
Out of curiosity, I try to inject a bit of my mana into the stone. But unfortunately, the mana membrane separating the outside mana from the stone’s mana is incredibly dense and hard to bypass. Still, eventually, I burrow my way through, and when I do, I’m almost knocked on my ass.
The small stone explodes in my hand, releasing a small wave of concentrated mana. Mana that I was very familiar with. I had felt mana exactly like that not long ago when the elemental walked through our battle with the goblins.
No way, that pebble was a fragment of the elemental, and it must have fallen off when it attacked!
And I made it blow up!
I swear I could feel myself tearing up at the thought that I had wasted such a precious material. I'm about to break down when a thought pops into my head. If there was one, then couldn’t there be more?
“Are you ok?” Tabitha calls down to me, having seen the small explosion.
"I'm fine," I quickly shouted back to her in response to hearing her voice, but my mind was elsewhere. When the pebble exploded, it mainly released mana which did almost nothing to my defenses. The randomness of it caught me off guard, but that was it. But my safety was the last thing I cared about at this moment.
Dropping everything else, I immediately start walking in a grid pattern, praying there were more elemental fragments nearby. I had no idea what I could use them for, but that never stopped me in the past.
“What are you doing?” Hearing the dirt shift, I look up from my frantic search to see Tabitha coming down into the crater with me. “I thought you wanted to grab another beetle and leave. Instead, you rush into the pit, start digging, cause an explosion, and scare off everything that was left. Are you messing with me again?" Tabitha's eyes narrow menacingly.
“I found something even better than food,” I excitedly inform her as she slides down next to me.
“The small explosion of mana?” Tabitha quirked an eyebrow at me, seemingly interested in what I had to say.
“I think there are fragments of the elemental left behind. Imagine what I can craft with them!” I’m practically shaking with excitement at this point.
Tabitha's interest in the subject evaporates as soon as I mention crafting. "So, rocks are more important than food?" She deadpans.
“In this case, yes,” I smile back at her, knowing she wouldn’t fault me for my priorities. Tabitha may periodically joke about the significance I put on crafting when I was such a talented fighter. Still, she's never once belittled my work or tried to convince me to give it up outright.
“Then they’re important?” Tabitha kicks at the loose ground.
“I don’t know,” I admit with a chuckle, earning me a flat stare from her. "They're like mana gems but aren’t,” I try to explain their significance to her.
“Oh!?” Once again, I manage to draw Tabitha in by mentioning mana gems. Even if she didn't care about crafting, Tabitha was aware of how essential mana gems were, and finding one of significant size was every person's dream. Mana gems grew exponentially valuable the bigger they were, so to say, I found something similar warranted at least a slight reaction from Tabitha. “And you think there are more?”
I smile at how Tabitha scans the ground around us like there is gold just beneath the surface. That was a bad comparison; gold was still expensive in this world but nowhere near as important when placed next to various magic metals.
I was happy to see Tabitha willing to help me look, but I had to burst her bubble before she started tearing everything up for no reason. I had a lot of ground to cover without needing to backtrack because she shifted something to someplace I had already checked. “I don’t think you’ll be able to sense them. The one I found gave off almost no mana, and I had to be directly over it to sense it.”
“Oh,” at that, Tabitha loses what interest she had. "So much for finding a mana gem," she pouts.
"Are you that hard up for money?" As I slowly scan the ground below me, I keep the conversation going to kill time.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why else would you be interested in finding a mana gem?” I ask. “Don’t you get everything you need from Scholl?”
I have to pause my search and turn around because Tabitha breaks out into laughter. She’s even holding her sides which is rare for her. “Did I say something funny?”
Shaking her head in disbelief, Tabitha eventually calms down. “You think Scholl provided me my gear?”
“Uh, yeah?” I hesitantly answer.
Tabitha snorts in amusement, but at least this time, she doesn't laugh herself to death before answering me. “I picked out and bought all my gear,” she clarifies. “With some help from Master Pacore, of course.”
"But you're a part of Scholl's military; how can they not supply you with gear?" I question while reaching down and fishing out a pebble from the earth. It felt amazing to be proven right that more elemental fragments were strewn about, but Tabitha was dropping some important information, so I had to wait to jump for joy until later. "I thought the country supplied your armor as they did for Pacore?"
"Yes and no," Tabitha cryptically tells me. "I could use my and Master’s position to commission my armor, which was done through the military, but I still needed to pay for it.”
Seeing that I wasn't comprehending the reasoning behind it, Tabitha continued. “Scholl only distributes armor and weapons to the rank-and-file troops and people like Master Pacore, who are the best of the best. For the rest of us, it's up to us to decide what gear we carry."
“That sounds incredibly unproductive,” I counter, to which Tabitha gives me a knowing smirk.
“Then how would you do it?” She sends me a challenging look. "For soldiers below level 60, standard arms and armor are fine, but how would you distribute gear for people above that level? You should know a warrior’s gear is very personal, and as they level, it only becomes more so. How would you expect the military to manage every person's gear when everyone needs something different? It’s impossible, so to make things easier, we're paid according to our level and must equip ourselves as we see fit. That’s why I’m interested in mana gems.”
“I don’t follow,” I admit I couldn't see what she was getting at.
Tabitha shrugs like it's no big deal. “If I can get ahold of a large enough mana gem, it will be easier for me to commission better gear. Unfortunately, large mana gems are the hardest to find and are, more often than not, auctioned off or given to soldiers who merit them.”
“But what about Pacore's armor?" I ask as I reach down to grab another sliver of the elemental. This third one was only the size of a grain of rice, but I would take whatever I could find.
“Master Pacore the Deathless is the highest-leveled individual in all of Scholl and the king's most loyal retainer. So, of course, the country will do its best to outfit him with the best gear possible. They do the same for the other two pillars, though to a lesser degree. Master Pacore is the best after all,” she stresses that last part.
Where does that put me? I'm above level 60, but am I considered a part of Scholl's military? I was technically under Pacore, but did that automatically make me a soldier, or was I merely a citizen of Scholl?
As I consider my current place in Scholl’s hierarchy, I loop the crater multiple times while maintaining small talk with Tabitha. I found sixteen elemental shards while doing so, and I was delighted with my luck. Altogether, it was only a few pounds of stone, but that was more than I expected.
Placing all the shards in a small pouch on my belt, I move next to Tabitha to show off my haul when I feel a ping 650 feet out and closing fast. Make that multiple pings. Six, to be exact, and they weren't magic beasts.
“What is it?” Having traveled with me for so long, Tabitha quickly recognized that I picked up something with my skill.
“Six people are rapidly approaching our location," I point out the direction they were coming from as we climb out of the crater.
We were about to have company.
Were they friends or foes?