Adam sent Martin and Jay away with a list of things he needed them to acquire so that he could make more cookies. Making the list without falling into the Organization sink hole was difficult, but it did give him a little bit of an idea. He just hadn’t decided if it was a good idea, or a very, very bad idea. Combining Multitask with Organization would be over powered, he just didn’t know who it would be overpowering? Him, his skill, or everything else. He added it to the list of things to ask Martin, and then struggled against the pull of the skill again.
As training for resisting Organization’s attempts, he worked on a few things that would normally fall into its circle of influence. He sorted his knives, including the ones Martin had recovered for him, while also notating how well they worked in combat along with their deficiencies. The cook’s knife was mostly fine, just a small ding on the blade that he spent some time filing out, but the carving knife had snapped at the handle. Apparently a full grown orc falling on his blade was too much for it. He also repacked his gear. And Jay’s. And Martin’s. Resisting the skill was a work in progress. It did give him the tingly feeling of another skill opening up, so that was a nice bonus.
After tidying all of their things up, he found himself still waiting, so he started sweeping up the small room they had at the way station. There had been an old dirty broom in the corner, so he got to work.
Martin returned, and decided to see how well his protégé was learning to pay attention. It would be a particularly amusing test of awareness, seeing as how Adam’s new skill stole his attention to anything truly important. Being sneaky about it, he simply tossed a knife through a cracked open door in Adam’s direction. He didn’t want to hurt the boy.
Thoonk.
Staring at the knife quivering in the door next to his face, Martin was reminded of the last time he tried to pull a fast one on Adam when he had been busy working. Once more there was a knife nearly skewering him, but at least this one was a proper weapon. His own weapon. His eyes followed the lines of the still wavering knife to the original target. Adam was staring at his broom just like he had been at the paring knife a week ago. It only took a moment for the man to make the connection. He would later admit that he may have completely given up the pretense of having any idea what to do with Adam’s class at that moment.
Throwing the door wide, he stormed into the room yelling, “A gods’ damned broom!?!?! What kind of weapon is that supposed to be?” His beleaguered mind realized he didn’t actually know what caused his knife to come flying back at him. “How does that even work, anyways?” His last question was actually calm and composed, if a little on the desperate side.
Adam, despite asking himself much the same questions, just responded in the rational way. “Would you quit it with attempting to attack me randomly? Do you know how aggravating it is to have someone trying to sneak up on you like a drunk cow when you are fighting off a skill like Organization? The skill just kept screaming that it needed more input so that it could correctly categorize exactly how awful whatever pathetic excuse for a stealth skill you have is.”
Sheepishly, like a boy recently spanked by his mother, Martin hung his head, grumbling, “It’s not that bad. I like Ground Stalker. It’s a good skill.”
“With a name like that I expect that you need to be in contact with the actual ground, not a boardwalk. You’re the one who taught me things like this! Use your brain!” Adam continued with the scolding, surprised that he could feel a little bits of Organization, Mother Knows Best, and even System Assistance working to help him out. He would have kept going, but yet another tingle in his head clued him into a possible reason System Assistance was helping out.
“Sorry,” Martin muttered. It took him another few seconds to throw off the mental effect of whatever it was that had just happened. Shaking his head to clear his mind, he looked to Adam again. “So what did you do with that broom anyways?”
“Hm? Oh, right.” He twirled the broom casually in his fingers as though he’d been born to do it. A breeze followed the motion, visible only due to the dust caught up in the wind.
It clicked then for Martin. “That’s another one of those tools have extended uses things for you isn’t it?”
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Adam chuckled. “Yes. Yes it is. Haven’t looked at it yet, but you can see at least some of it plain as day. No idea why, but I’m fairly certain this broom is essentially a wind element based magic staff in my hands.” He moved the broom through a few of the basic staff forms he had seen the guards practicing back at the estate. He didn’t have the skill to match them, but that wasn’t why he was doing it. Instead he was feeling the wind move with the broom. He was fairly certain that there was a way to use it to throw wind blades, but he didn’t want to do that in the small room, there was no telling the damage he could do with them.
Martin was entranced, watching the dust swirl and turn around the boy, following the motions of the broom. At the door, Jay was also enjoying the discovery, although he had no idea why they were both so excited about it. He just thought it was interesting. And was slightly jealous.
Abruptly rubbing his hands together, Martin excitedly remarked, “We have so much testing to do! Quick, let’s head outside!”
“Nope,” Adam gleefully crushed the older man’s excitement. “I have cookies to make.” This brightened Jay’s day. “Then, we can test it out for a bit. But we need to leave tomorrow, so not for long.”
The other two groaned at his statement, then smiled at each other. Adam watched their interaction with a bemused half smile. It was good to see them getting along, but he couldn’t figure out when it had happened. He’d investigate it later if it was necessary, right then he needed to make some cookies.
The next day’s dawn saw them readying to return to the estate. There was a mix of emotions in their group. None of them were sorry to see the end of the Blue Sea Forest and its inhabitants, but they had also grown closer during their excursion, and they would miss the seclusion from the rest of civilization that had led them to it. Leaving behind the fear and worry of each days sojourn into the woods was simple, but those very emotions awaited them upon their return as well, each for different reasons, but present all the same.
Adam had made more than a few trades during their final evening at the way station, and once more had more than just a paring knife to fight with. There hadn’t been much to acquire, as travelers and merchants didn’t often carry a spare set of actual kitchen knives with them, a belt knife normally being sufficient for them. However, there had been a tinkerer that could patch up his existing blades somewhat. The carving knife was completely ruined, as was his boning knife, but he did trade the remnants of them to the man to have him quickly work up a cleaver. It wasn’t the best work, but as the System labeled it a cleaver, he could use it.
He also had the old broom strapped to his back. The practice the night before had been a mixed bag. He could use the broom as a staff with a small degree of success, but the elemental effects were another story. Yes, he could definitely create wind blades with the broom, but he was by no means proficient with them as of yet. He’d gone into his practice with the idea that just swinging the broom hard enough would create a blade, but it was significantly more involved than he had anticipated.
Perhaps the biggest misconception he had had was that the wind came from the bristles. In reality, it could come from either end. It was the handle that he had used to redirect Martin’s knife previously, not the brush. The handle created faster, narrower pieces of wind, while the brush was broader and slower. Unless it was edge on. With a little bit of experimentation he had discovered that the wind created with the brush perpendicular to the swing was similar to hitting something with a hammer made of air, while having it parallel was similar to an axe. Using the handle could produce wind effects matching a sword or a spear depending if he was slashing or thrusting.
Not that any of them did much damage at the moment. Those weapons that the motions helped to create facsimiles of were just air at the moment and did similar damage. They were not yet properly condensed and empowered mana based effects that could compare to those of a mage. That was not to say that they couldn’t become such. Martin theorized, and a magically inclined merchant guard had concurred, that with practice Adam would be able to control his mana to better empower the broom as a weapon.
With the lack of useful attack options that the broom presented him right then, Jay had questioned why he was still carrying it. The sneaky smile that Martin and Adam had both worn at his words worried him, until they showed him what else the boy could do with the broom. The easiest was for Adam to use the broom as something useful wasn’t actually attack based. Instead, if he simply spun the broom through his fingers like he had when they first discovered its usefulness and focused on strengthening the effect, he could create a fair sized mana barrier made of wind. While not the best against melee weapons, it was better than nothing, but it truly shone against ranged attacks, magic or physical. Arrows were the easiest to deflect away with the shield, but even magical bolts could be knocked off course. Certain things worked better against Adam’s new shield than others, crossbow bolts being one of them to his annoyance.
More experimentation would be required to fully understand and utilize his new toy, but the most important thing was that he had a new direction to explore in terms of weapons.