Chapter 13 A Step Forward (3)
"Well, it would be strange to expect otherwise," I grumbled in annoyance when the cleaning and observation were done. I was still lying on the bench. I had a bag as a makeshift pillow, and a small bag of cookies sat on my stomach, from which I periodically took out a yummy or two.
Some good news: despite my concerns, Prapor's passive ability was not complex at all. At least not when it came to observing and understanding it. So the headache and other "lovely" consequences of my fascination with sensory perception barely bothered me.
So, what was this coveted skill? If I were to put what I saw/understood into words, every spirit warrior passively emitted a part of their energy outward, appearing as a little flicker in my perception. Even regular people and animals emitted some small sparks. Prapor was no exception, but his energy was denser and concentrated within his body. It fed into his skin, muscles, bones, and everything else. That's where his resilience came from.
In principle, nothing unique: any sufficiently powerful user of spiritual energy becomes a little stronger, tougher, and healthier due to the outflow of this energy. Probably, this is why we rarely get scratches, scrapes, and blisters, and a host of other pesky issues that trouble those who are not gifted with spiritual abilities. The passive ability of the giant had an incredibly high efficiency, though, and while the concept behind it was simple, it was challenging to reproduce. This was the bad news. Neither ritual head scratching, where, according to one comedian from the previous world, wit was located, nor stimulating sweets could help come up with a solution.
I spat on fruitless contemplations and decided to start with something more straightforward. First, I tested how much cargo my minion could transport to his spatial pocket.
The volume turned out to be roughly equal to the size of the servant's body. So, a chunk of a wall that exceeded the marionette in mass but was equal in volume could be carried away, but a larger pile of twigs or other lightweight debris couldn't. It was no accident that I had chosen the most massive minion to be my quartermaster!
I also tried to summon a marionette without pulling the teigu from their sheaths. I planned to buy new ones along with training gear in case they got damaged. But the calculation turned out to be correct. The black and violet parasitic radiation didn't have any noticeable impact on the sheath. I had previously tested the effect on twigs and fabrics, and it remained harmless up to a certain concentration. But it was still surprising that such menacing radiation didn't damage the materials.
"Well, it means I can summon marionettes without any extra effort."
I was also interested in how Yatsufusa's power would work on living beings, but since I had no "volunteers," I had to postpone the test. I, personally, only felt a slight chill from Yatsu's power, although bugs, rats, and other vermin that I caught were sent to the realms of eternal hunting. Anyway, I would have to clarify the effectiveness against spirit warriors regardless.
And overall, it wouldn't be a bad idea to learn something about energy attacks. For instance, Kurome from a possible future could release sporadically striking black lightning from her tag. In that future, the skill looked more flashy than effective, but it still seemed appealing. Who would I be as a Sith Lord without the ability to shoot lightning at my enemies?
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Besides, I envied Akame a bit, who could release cutting waves from her sword. Developed by monster hunters for their kind, the skill was of little use to assassins. That's why nobody taught us this slow, resource-draining, and excessively powerful attack with an effective range of just a few meters. As previously mentioned, the world was not very favorable toward external magic, quickly diluting it.
/* — In the canon, Akame quite handily disintegrated a crowd of Stylish's marionettes (not even a piece of their bodies remained!), and she cut Esdeath's ice, which sometimes exceeded the length of her sword noticeably. I thought for a moment and decided to bestow such a skill upon the strongest of the monster hunters. How else could they kill supernaturally resilient opponents the size of a small mountain? */
However, my sister, who grew up on the border of the Wild Lands, possessed this ability and boasted about it. She could easily slice through even Royal Crabs, which were quite tasty but heavily armored B-rank monsters the size of a small house.
I wouldn't mind having something similar in my arsenal. After all, hacking away at a twenty-meter-tall monster with a sword is a masochistic endeavor.
The test of the ability to mentally control the undead also yielded positive results. However, anything more complex than a silent command like "freeze" or "go there" required hours of training. The difficulty wasn't in transmitting the command through the connection thread but in properly formulating a complete mental image without cluttering it with extraneous thoughts or emotions. As it turned out, it is quite a difficult task — especially if you are doing something else at the same time. And if the order was clogged with interference, the actions of the puppets began to resemble the twitching of epileptics.
Having dealt with all the planned issues, I decided to take up the ability of the Prapor. Here, my modest self had to face the frustration of a donkey with a carrot dangling right in front of its nose. The situation was akin to attempting to wiggle your ears or activate muscles that had never been used before. I was simply clueless about what to do and how to do it.
At this point, I either had to painstakingly unravel the intricate mechanics of the process by trying to replicate it, or I needed a knowledgeable teacher.
Unfortunately, as it turned out, Prapor was utterly unsuitable for this role, even with an awakened mind. Surprisingly, the fierce behemoth didn't even attempt to break free from my control. Once he regained consciousness, he slumped to his knees and started muttering some religious nonsense about the Night Mistress, begging not to be sent to the Pits of Pain.
"Oh, these cultists! Lucky me with them! And who is this Night Mistress?"
I had heard of the Dark, a local deity that, according to legend, had brought eternal night and winter to the world. Consequences of a nuclear war or its equivalent, perhaps? However, I knew nothing about this mysterious Mistress, and I had no desire to find out, to be honest.
The only somewhat useful thing I managed to glean from the dimwitted cultist was a rather dubious training method. The teacher began by smearing Prapor's skin with some corrosive alchemical concoction and made him wear something akin to shackles. Over time, he gradually transitioned to planting his pupil in an anthill, flogging him with spiked whips, and subjecting him to other sadistic actions that would warm the heart of any torturer.
As for explaining the purpose of these training stages, the thick-headed brute couldn't provide any insight. Perhaps no one in the Empire could at this point. The master who trained this mountain of flesh met his end in a random clash with one of the assassin clans, and the behemoth himself eventually turned to a life of crime, becoming a bandit leader and eventually entering the collection of puppets under Yatsufusa.
What a useless idiot!
But he had another "talent" - the ability to get mad with his stupidity. Something, and tongue-tied verbosity turned out to be in excess of the dullard. With his loud-bass religious babble, instead of the required answers, he managed to annoy me to such an extent that I discovered a new property of the artifact. It turned out that I could make the minion experience considerable suffering by feeding it spiritual energy reinforced by a strong desire to inflict pain.
Well, at least it had some utility. However, even the life-giving pain was futile against this owner of a rotting brain. It seemed he was only further convinced of my "divinity."
Having recalled the undead back to the spatial pocket and vowed without a very, very big need not to wake up what was replacing his mind, I, having treated my nerves with sweet, decided to move on to more active pursuits. I could revisit Prapor's ability later when I had a better understanding of all this.
The method of acquiring a passive skill through encounters with whips and ants didn't inspire me.