For years, Anise and I had tried to figure out what her orb was supposed to do. It emitted a small amount of manifestation essence, so the two of us had always assumed it would let Anise cast spells from a manifestation essence system. but so far, neither of us had ever gotten the blasted thing working. After a year of banging my head against it, I had been sorely tempted to just start throwing alteration essence at it and try to force it to do what we wanted it to, but I had a feeling I was more likely to break it than get it working, so we had continued poking at it in hopes that it would do something. Sallia had also tried putting manifestation essence into the orb, to see if it was some sort of spellcasting enhancer, but that had also gotten nowhere. Either Sallia’s manifestation essence system was incompatible with the orb, or we were using it wrong. Ansie had tried tossing magic missiles at it, and I had tried stuffing alteration essence into it, along with a variety of other tests - but nothing had ever worked.
And now, Anise was saying that the bloody orb was finally doing something. I didn’t know whether to laugh in ecstasy or throw the bloody thing off the mountain in sheer frustration.
Anise frowned.
I frowned as well. Anise’s orb heating up could be a good thing - or it could be a bad thing. It was honestly hard to guess right now. It was an unexpected variable.
On one hand, if Anise had some sort of miraculous encounter, it would be nothing but helpful. Anise was currently far behind the rest of our group in terms of power - and after this world, Felix would probably have a lot more useful abilities, assuming he got a keyword ability for binding essence out of this. I wasn’t quite sure what Felix was going to do with a magic system focused around affixing and transmuting items, creating ability potions, and making prosthetic limbs work - but I was sure he would figure out a way to weld this magic system into a coherent whole. Sallia and I weren’t likely to get much out of this world, since neither of us seemed very interested in this world’s magic system, but we already had a synergistic set of magic systems working for us. Which left Anise far behind the three of us. If she found something to help her catch up, it would be much easier for us to work as a group in the future, and it would also be easier to buy lives when the time came to fight for our futures.
On the other hand, if we all died here, Felix would lose this chance to get his binding essence keyword ability online, and we would all lose the potential to farm more Achievement in this life. In our other two lives, we had only taken massive risks once we had farmed out most of the low-hanging fruits that would help us earn more achievement. Any further gains would have been very hard to accomplish, given our circumstances and abilities in those lives.
In this life, we definitely hadn’t tapped out our achievement earning yet. We were nowhere close to that point. I still hadn’t even gotten my first round of achievement for healing people, and Felix had been talking about looking into precise metal prosthetics to improve his combat abilities. If we died at the age of six, without earning all of the easier Achievement rewards, we would suffer a huge loss, which might kill us when we needed to buy more lives.
Interacting with Anise’s orb was a potentially massive risk with a potentially massive reward.
said Sallia.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
I said.
I said.
The four of us nodded, and then stopped mentally conversing with each other. I took the time to examine the parents again. They were watching their surroundings like frightened animals, ready to flee at the first sign of danger. However, I also saw a hint of fascination in everyone’s gazes. The otherworldly feeling of manifestation essence existing where it shouldn’t, as well as the rhythmic pumping of essences from place to place, was a sight that defied the conventional wisdom of this world.
Very noticeably, the constantly fighting scouts from both militaries seemed absent in the mountains. The cold, frigid air in the mountains, as well as the exceptionally rough terrain, seemed to have driven them off, thankfully. I wasn’t finding any other people with my soul sight, just plenty of plants and animals. I also occasionally needed to heal everyone, despite the fact that everyone had bundled themselves up with a few extra layers of clothes, but the trek wasn’t that bad with magical healing readily available.
Anise’s orb continued to heat up as we cautiously moved forward… for about two hours, she would occasionally confirm that the orb was still getting hotter. Until suddenly, she sent another mental message.
Anise did as Felix requested, although her parents gave her some very odd looks.
said Anise.
I hesitated, and then glanced at my mother, with her glazed expression and her slightly blue eyes. Then, I looked at Old Mo, who was still cautiously scanning our surroundings to check for danger.
I mentally sighed.
With our decision made, we prepared to wait until nightfall.