After that, Sallia and I began roaming the streets, looking for an injured person I could use to prove my healing abilities. I was a little surprised that Sallia managed to slip away from her house so easily, since her parents seemed rather worried about Sallia’s safety. However, Sallia simply shrugged.

“I spent a lot of time testing how the manifestation magic system works since I was waiting to build up my runes until I could talk with you and Felix,” she said. “After all, this is my first time living in a world where guns exist, and I can sometimes hear gunshots at night. I was a little afraid to leave the street I live on, at least until I had a good idea how to defend myself. So my parents don’t really expect me to move too far away from home. And we’re poor, so my parents can’t afford to spend every minute watching over me. Usually, they pay the old lady who lives down the street a bit of money to make sure someone is keeping an eye on me - but she’s not too mobile, so she usually checks in with me and then just lays down to take a nap. As long as I get back before she wakes up, it’ll be fine.” Sallia grinned. “Besides, I’m not going to let you take your first adventure in this world alone.”

I thought about it, and nodded. I wasn’t used to intentionally slipping behind the backs of caretakers, but Sallia was much more capable of defending herself than a normal four year old.

As I thought about self-defense abilities, I realized I hadn’t gotten a full list of Sallia’s stats yet. “What do your stats look like this time? I know you mentioned having Grade 7 Intelligence over the communication bracelet, but what about the rest?”

“Here,” said Sallia, before staring into the air for a moment. Then, through the communication bracelets, I saw Sallia’s status screen appear in front of me.

Physical

Mental

Essence

Strength: (20+123)

Grade 7

Intelligence: (20+125)

Grade 7

Absorption: (40+108)

Grade 7

Agility: (20+122)

Grade 7

Willpower: (30+92)

Grade 6

Manifestation: (40+82)

Grade 6

Fortitude: (20+78)

Grade 4

Perception: (20+83)

Grade 5

Binding: (20+83)

Grade 5

Alteration: (20+117)

Grade 6

Sallia paused for a moment, and then frowned. “By the way, do these friendship bracelets share my full status screen, or just my base stats?”

“I think it’s just base stats,” I said, frowning. “I don’t see the numbers from your runes tacked on anywhere.”

Sallia nodded. “Well, in that case, keep in mind that my first rune is boosting all of my Physical and Mental stats by one grade. And I’ve eaten enough meals from my noodle bowl that I’ve bumped my Fortitude up a grade, since it was only two points away from the next grade to begin with. So I actually have Grade 8 strength and Agility, and so on.”

“That’s good. Grade 4 Fortitude to start with is… not ideal,” I said. “Though it’s better than grade 3, at least.”

Sallia shuddered. “Don’t remind me. On our first world, I had to put up with Grade 3 Fortitude for months until I got my first rune built. With Grade 3 Fortitude you get sick from practically everything, and your body feels so fragile. You bruise so easily, and…” Sallia shook her head. “It’s just miserable.”

I nodded, as I continued scanning Sallia’s stats. “That 10 extra points you put into Willpower really ended up making a difference.”

Sallia nodded. “I’m pretty glad I sank the points into it. I’m a bit disappointed with my binding essence roll, though. Getting to use a new magic system is always exciting, but I only ended up with grade 5 in the stat. 1 Below average,” she said. “On the other hand, it sounds like this world’s magic system is really more of a crafting system than a combat magic system, so I might not even end up using it that much.” Sallia snorted. “I’ve never really been one for sitting down and tinkering with things for months or years on end. I prefer to start doing interesting things the moment I can properly defend myself. But I’ll at least give it a try first.”

“I’m not sure how I feel about this magic system either,” I said. “For now, I intend to try to learn it, and I’ll see if it ends up being useful to me later. In the worst case scenario, I can just fall back on my absorption and alteration essence systems,” I said. “Those should really be sufficient for handling most threats in this world, at least as far as I can tell.”

The two of us continued chatting as we walked through the streets, our barely out of toddler-age bodies moving deceptively quickly over the pavement.

As we continued to talk, we ended up moving out of the territory controlled by Sallia’s original gang.

I started to notice that the people around us were once again giving us slightly more guarded looks than before. It was similar to what had happened when I first crossed into Sallia’s area - if people didn’t immediately recognize me as one of the ‘locals,’ people seemed to be afraid of interacting with me. They mostly kept their shoulders hunched and minded their own business.

Which was a shame. I wanted people to know that I could heal others, so I had been trying to ask around, to see if anyone was hurt or injured and needed a helping hand. I didn’t expect to just randomly find someone injured on the streets, after all. Knowing that an old lady had broken her hip and couldn’t afford a bone-healing potion would have been the perfect way to start establishing my reputation as a healer. I could simply gather some information, and work out if I wanted to adopt some sort of ‘disguise’ later.

Instead of finding someone to heal, after an hour or two of asking around, things got dangerous.

Through a routine use of my water vapor sight, I caught sight of a few people with mechanical feet trailing after us. There were three of them, and they were looking at us with scowls.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I frowned.

Why were these people following us? I didn’t think we had done anything to tread on the toes of the local gangs, at least not yet. I had expected a local gang to try to extort me for money once I started healing people, but I hadn’t even started healing yet. Why were people already after us?

I frowned, and tried to home in on the three men following us a little more carefully. I wanted to know if they had any guns on them.

A moment later, I grinned.

After using my water-vapor sight, I was pretty sure they didn’t have guns on them. Two of them had poorly made knives, and the third had a metal pipe or crowbar. I wasn’t sure which, since it was hard for me to precisely see things with my water vapor sight. But either way, it wouldn’t pose a threat to the two of us. As long as nobody shot a gun at us, I was confident that we wouldn’t be in any major danger against just three people.

“Three people following us,” I said. “Probably teens? Less than 20, more than 15 years old.”

Sallia frowned for a moment, before nodding. “I see them too.”

“Let’s duck into a few darker alleys and see if they follow us. If they do, let’s see if we can beat them up. I want to know why they’re following us.”

Sallia nodded, and the two of us quickly ducked into a side alleyway. Then, we ducked into another side alleyway, moving into progressively darker and shoddier-looking areas until I ducked behind a pile of trash. Sallia, due to her superior agility and excellent strength, simply scampered up the side of a building like a humanoid spider, before easily bracing herself against a wall and sitting there. She even had the leisure to pull out a sword and prepare for a fight, showing exactly how little strain she felt while supporting her own body weight in midair with one arm.

Sure enough, a few moments later, the three stepped into the alleyway after us.

“Where the fuck did the little midgets go?” said the one holding a crowbar. Immediately, I nodded to myself.

“Maybe they’re trying to hide?” said the second person, frowning as he moved his hands closer to his pocket. “Or maybe they ducked into a darkway or somethin’?”

“They screamers?” asked the third.

“They were askin’ too many questions,” said the third. “Maybe they’re from the ironheads, or maybe they’re a hat. Either way, we can’t have any more damn kids nosin’ around. Ironheads keep hiring younger ones every week.”

“Really don’t know where the little screamers went,” muttered the second one as he eyed the area cautiously. “Did we lose ‘em?”

“If so, we’ll have to contact the boss,” said the first one. “I don’t wanna mess up something this basic, but if we screw up again and can’t even rough up a couple kids for snoopin’ around-”

“Kids are agile,” muttered the third person. “Maybe they climbed over a wall or somethin’?”

As he said that, he started to look up - right towards were Sallia was.

I reacted before I could finish processing the words of the gangsters.

A small drop of water appeared above the leader’s head, only a few centimeters away. Then, before the leader could say anything, the drop of water hit him on the head.

The leader collapsed, dead on the spot.

Slaughter: Kill a human with no ability for the first time.

Achievement +60

I blinked. The Achievement gain for killing a human being was barely better than the reward for killing a basic skeleton.

“Mac? What’s wrong with you? Mac?” asked the second thug, leaning over the corpse of his friend.

“Someone’s above us!” yelled the thug who had been looking up.

The other man looked up with surprise and - horror?

Another drop of water materialized on top of him, before extinguish activated. His eyes dimmed moments later, before he dropped to the ground, dead.

Sallia dropped towards the third person. The man tried to use his dagger to defend himself, but his weapon flung itself out of his hands as Sallia activated her rune ability. He died less than a second later.

With a total of 60 Achievement from the fight, my total had gone from 662 to 722 Achievement.

However, I felt… strange after the battle.

I didn’t know how I felt at all, really.

“Miria? Are you all right?” asked Sallia.

I realized I had gotten distracted. After killing the first two people, I had simply blanked out.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just…”

The men had been here for us. But one of the gangsters had mentioned that they were here to rough us up.

They weren’t here to kill us, but we had killed them.

I felt odd about that.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that at all.

Trying to shake off my strange mood, I quickly checked through the skill I had gotten for killing a human for the first time.

Endless Hunger of the Ocean has devoured Ordinary Human for the first time. New Skill created.

Human Innovation and Communication:

Your Communication skills slightly improve, and your mental stats are all increased by +1.

This was probably the worst skill I had gotten from {Endless Hunger of the Ocean}, at least as far as I could remember. +1 to my mental stats gave me a total of… 3 stat points. Hardly impressive.

At least, under normal circumstances it would be quite useless. However, as it happened, my Willpower stat was currently 159, including the +20 to my Willpower stat provided by my first rune. I equipped the new skill, and my Willpower stat increased from 159 to 160, pushing me into a new grade.

I felt my willpower firm up and improve. My ability to focus, my mental resilience, and my ability to resist external magical influence drastically increased in a few moments, before settling into its new grade.

Even though three stat points was quite a pathetic skill, it was certainly better than nothing, especially since it was useful now. Based on my current knowledge of this world, I doubted mental resistance was actually a particularly useful stat here, and grade 7 willpower was enough to help me focus and learn without being particularly distracted… but it was still better to have the stat than not have the stat.

Besides, Willpower still enhanced my brain a little bit. Even if the effects would be pretty minor, it would still help with controlling my first rune ability.

Sallia’s movements pulled me out of my thoughts. I saw her rifling through the pockets of the thugs we had killed. A few moments later, she pulled out a few pieces of paper money. I couldn’t read, so I didn’t know what the numbers on the paper money were, or what they meant.

However, Sallia’s movements, and the fact that she was looting the corpses of the thugs we had killed, brought my mind back to the fact that we had killed a few people who weren’t here to kill us again.

I.. didn’t think it was wrong to defend myself. It wasn’t even the first time I had killed a human being. On the islands, I had killed some of the Megailians that had been invading the islands, and I hadn’t felt a speck of guilt. They had been clearly in our home and trying to kill us, as well as the other villagers in the area. I hadn’t felt bad at all about defending myself.

This should be the same. I had been defending myself.

But the knowledge that the thugs hadn’t been here to kill us somehow made it feel different in my mind. The last time I had killed someone, I had been purely reacting to the situation. They had tried to kill us first, and I had simply responded. This time, Sallia and I had definitely escalated the fight - or at least, potentially escalated it.

Beating up a pair of four year olds might have very well been fatal for normal kids.

Then again, maybe the thugs had intended to keep things as nonlethal as possible?

I found my thoughts spinning around in my head.

“Miria? Are you okay?” asked Sallia, stepping closer to me.

I blinked again, taken by surprise. I hadn’t noticed my friend walking closer to me.

“I’m fine. I’m just thinking,” I said.

Sallia frowned, and opened her mouth, as if she wanted to say something. And then she closed her mouth, and simply stared at me.

“I… I don’t know,” I said. “I just… my mother is a drug addict in this life, and then we killed a few thugs, and even though it was clearly self-defense, we also escalated the situation when it might have initially been nonlethal, and I just…” I sighed. “This life is a mess.”

Sallia took another step closer to me, and then gave me a hug.

“Here. Let’s go get something to eat, and let’s just talk a bit,” she said. “I know you want to get your healing stuff going, but I don’t think that’s what you really need right now. We have enough food to last a few days, and we have magic that shouldn’t exist on this planet. We have the ability to secure food easily enough. I think you need to just… talk. Over a meal or something.”

I thought about it for a moment, and then I found myself nodding.

A moment later, the two of us set off once again. This time, we weren’t looking for somebody injured to heal. We were looking for somewhere to just… talk.