The idea of the duke using him for anything other than the care and protection of his children was abhorrent to Adam. The lie about his class had been designed specifically to keep the duke from finding out exactly how useful of a class he had. Rare classes weren’t unheard of, but they weren’t always useful. Adam’s was anything but useless.
Shaking off the thought, the boy motioned towards Jay with his eyes, and then shrugged slightly. Luckily, he didn’t have to say anything more, Martin understood. He pulled the last clean pair of pants that would fit the smaller boy out of his bag and tossed them over. “Now that he’s out of there, you can change in the back,” the man said. He also tossed over the water skin. “Don’t use it all, we’ve still got a long day of travel ahead of us.”
Once Jay was tucked away in the shelter, the other two moved a bit farther away to talk. Adam started it off with his concerns, his newfound emotions towards the smaller boy making him assign a nickname automatically. It was a bonding ritual from the orphanage that he refused to pat with. If Jay stuck around long enough, he’d get a real handle like the others. “We’ve got a bit of a problem. My class likes to override my mouth at times, so I called myself Mommy with the runt earlier. Admittedly, it was right before I turned into a giant bear and started chasing him through a troll infested forest, but who knows what he remembers.”
Even with the situation as it was, Martin couldn’t stop the snort of laughter at the imagery. He wasn’t too shocked at the revelation, he’d seen Adam with the duke’s kids after all. He was beginning to suspect that the boy’s class would only show itself more and more as time went by. Although he had an idea of how to make it work for them in the future. “I’ll talk to him as we walk. I don’t think it will be as much of a problem as you think though. Much like the rest of your skills and oddities, we can sell it as part of your class. This one gets filed under ‘care and raising of children,’ I think. You’ll have to think up appropriate names for all of these skills we keep making up. Probably aught to figure out a way to keep track of it all as well, but don’t you dare start keeping a diary.”
Adam laughed. “I might have a girl’s Class, but I don’t have their habits yet.” He and the other boys had periodically made a game of trying to steal and read the diaries of the girls in the orphanage. Or at least they had until they realized how upset they got. What little of the tiny books they understood wasn’t worth the aggravation.
Neither had looked away from the forest during their talk, neither leaving the safety of themselves, of the other boy up to luck. As his eyes roved over the surroundings Martin, suddenly serious, ignored the boy’s joke and quietly said, “Think you’re up to another day of protection duty?”
Smile fading from his countenance, Adam sighed. “Yeah, I can do that. Time for the final run?”
“I think so. I can’t tell if the glowing portion of your new aura will be a help or a hindrance, but we are running on borrowed time either way. The duke didn’t give us forever.”
Adam processed that, thinking over the implications. “You expect trouble?”
Another sigh from the man who suddenly looked older than his years. “No, he sent trouble with us. Some of the instructions he gave me were…” He trailed off, leaving an awkward silence. Eventually he said, “Let’s just say that recent events have me reconsidering the man I thought I knew.”
Silence returned as the two considered things. They didn’t have long before the sounds of movement heralded Jay leaving the alcove. Adam and Martin exchanged a glance, both knowing they’d be going forward with the plan to have Adam run solo protection. He knew it was something that should easily be within his abilities, but Martin and the trolls had taught him to not to take the forest so lightly. He’d be as vigilant as he could be.
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Taking a last glance at the nearby underbrush, he was suddenly struck by a thought. The blue tint to the light that had so disoriented him on his first trip wasn’t bothering him at all. There were very few things that had changed about him between the two trips, so it was likely one of his skills, or simple acclimatization. He shook it off, knowing it didn’t matter at the moment. His concern spread to Jay though, as the boy had never mentioned any issues with the strange chaos the light introduced. The boy was likely so terrified he’d either not noticed, or he didn’t trust the two of them enough to mention a vulnerability to them. It was sad, but understandable. He’d keep an eye on the boy.
A few hours later, and they had established a few things. As far as Adam could tell, Mother’s Love was amazing. His new aura skill did everything it advertised and more. They had figured out that the skill’s healing component was just an increase in regeneration, not that that was just something small. It was only a small increase to healing speed at the level the boys were at, but would increase as they grew more powerful. Regen could be boosted by very few things, and was one of the reasons that professional healers were so sought after. Regeneration was how people got rid of scars if they wanted to, so it was a must have for the vain. Adam even benefited from this increase to the same degree as Jay did, but none of the other bonuses did anything for him. Martin suspected that there were a number of other minor things that the aura did, or could do in the future.
One was readily apparent. Jay had finally opened up about the weird light that screwed up people’s perception, but only to point out that it was no longer affecting him as much since the aura had been activated. Even then, he kept it to himself until it became obvious that Adam had no idea how to turn the aura off. Considering that was the first time the boy had opened up about anything unasked, Adam suspected that there was some sort of mental aspect to his aura as well. Perhaps something to promote trust, or push away fear. He wasn’t sure how to find out without pushing Jay, which he didn’t want to do.
And the skill had manifested just like he had thought it would. There was a bright fire burning merrily away in the depths of the bear’s cave, keeping Jay’s Instant Family avatar warm.
The protection detail had gone great. The glow produced by the aura seemed to only be visible to those that were also affected by it, so it didn’t draw any extra attention to them. Instant Family’s connection to Jay along with Mother's Intuition also made Adam significantly more aware of where the boy was during a fight, making it much easier to keep track of the fighting or go all out. Combined with Mother Knows Best and Multitask, he was always aware of where and how Jay was doing. He was excited to see if all of his skills synergized as well in the future.
The staple enemies of the forest had fallen before him easier than ever before, although they had encountered no trolls. He’d even added a couple of plant, and combination creatures to his list of enemies. The plant was an ambulatory bush made mostly of thorns, and the combination had been some sort of snake made of vines. Even after it was dead he had been unable to figure out if it was a snake or a plant.
The only difficult fight had been a clearing that was filled with the thorny, moving bushes. They’d been camouflaged amongst the other bushes lining the edges of the clearing, so they’d not noticed them until it was almost too late. Something had fallen victim to the recently, and the scent of blood still lingered in the area, making Adam more nervous than usual. This led to him spotting the still bloody thorns of one bush just before they all attacked, which let him get Jay out of the way. Knowing he needed the experience fighting as a human, he’d refrained from using Mama Bear which would have trivialized the encounter.
In the end it was a race between the mass of thorns and the combined efforts of Cut to the Heart and Mother’s Love. It only took a moment for him to regret not having thought of the meat cleaver before they had started their adventure, as the only weapon that could actually get through the tough trunk that needed to be severed before they died was his bread knife. The blade was nearly as dull as a rock by the time he was done sawing through the last of them, and his clothes were in tatters where his apron didn’t cover.
It was during the recovery from that fight that everything went wrong.