After I woke up this morning, I checked my status. An action that was now becoming a habit. Several prompts I had dismissed while torturing and killing the slavers leader greeted me.
New grand magic skill learned [Life-force vampire]
You have begun mastery of manipulating life-force. +10% efficiency of using life force. Life force can be consumed to increase lifespan. Life force can be given to other life forms to increase their lifespan.
New Grand sorcery learned [Life-force healing]
Most learn to use light and water magic to heal. You learned to use life itself to heal all wounds and regenerate limbs. +10% efficiency with life-force when healing.
Well, dang I'll have to keep this magic a secret. Let's pretend it doesn't exist and go about life normally, ok? I couldn't Imagine what people would do if they knew I could drastically increase their lifespan and regenerate limbs. The last part would be fine I guess but making people immortal could have drastic consequences. So far I've been borrowing life force from the local plant life because they recover well and new plants are born every day but doing too much could kill everything in the forest.
As I left my tent, I looked over at the dwelling across from mine. I no longer lived in the same tent as my parents. My neighbors were a nice lesbian couple that adopted the traumatized green elf that had been rescued from the slavers. The girl now named Izy was scared of men, and I couldn't blame her for that after what she had been through. The couple next door already had another little green elf girl named Una and the two children played happily together. Hopefully, the happy family would help heal the hole in her heart.
Every time the neighbors kissed or got romantic Emma would catch me staring and slap me on the back of the head. "What? It's like every guy's fantasy", I told Emma.
She replied with, "Hey my boobs are over here" while pointing at her chest. I gave her a shocked eyebrow raise. "You're a guy: I can't expect you too always be looking me in the eye," she continued. I laughed out loud thinking she knew everything about men so well.
Recently, I started questioning about how our personalities changed noticeably in our new lives. Even as a ghost Lucille had been a bit shy but now she was very "BOLD." Having heard the story of how she got here, I figured that the trials of risking everything to be with me had changed her. She got a second chance to get what she wanted, and now she spoke her mind. I guessed that dying and having a mother in my new life had changed me. I was now far more outgoing and social. Hopefully, the change was for the better.
The increase in the population increased the needs of the village as well. Since there were so many people now, we couldn't just go into the woods and do our business in a hole. So Pops and I built an outhouse, it wasn't a typical outhouse though because we built it to be completely fireproof. The reason we created it like a forge was for cleaning and disposal purposes. On a daily basis, I would use fire magic to burn up the "waste" and then use wind magic to remove the ash, smoke, and the smell. When did I become a janitor?
Recently Pop's and I started building walls around the village. A castle was still out of the question and resources were also limited. I was using earth magic to make an earth wall and Pop's built around that. Stone and steel brackets were being added to armor and reinforce the walls. Once the walls were finished, the guards would be drastically more efficient.
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Today Pop's was extremely excited because a ceremony he had been waiting a decade for was finally happening. I was dreading it, but I didn't let it show as I wanted Pop's to be happy. Grillo had approached my parents a long time ago about becoming my godfather. The old dwarf was about six hundred years old and had no children of his own. Grillo had taken a serious liking to me as a child and wanted to officially make me a part of his family.
The Dwarves had a special ritual for when a dwarf adopted a member of another race. A special character would be tattooed on the left side my chest on my peck. This would make any dwarf immediately recognize me as one of their own. My parents agreed as there were no downsides to this and it was a great honor. No elf had ever received this honor before, and I would be the first.
The ceremony required I reach fifteen the age of adulthood in this world. As I walked down an idle between spectators, I wielded my ax's now nicknamed "Slavers Bane" even though I didn't use them when fighting the slavers at all in each hand. Pop's stood next to my father at the end of the aisle in front of a table with a knife and bowl of special ink on it. In front of them, there was a stone block on either side of the Isle.
When I reached the stone blocks, I cleaved slavers bane one ax into each block. Then I knelt onto my knee before Grillo exposing my chest Grillo asked some questions like if I accepted the gift offered and such. Either my father or I answered the questions, and when done Grillo put inks on his knife and started carving.
It was the most painful thing I ever experienced other than emotional or when I lost my arm in my last life. Medieval tattoos required scraping under the skin with a knife. It took all my will to keep from screaming. Emma had to look away to keep herself from running up and removing the knife from Grillo's hand.
When the knife finally finished its work I had a silver runic symbol shaped like "}{" on my chest. I could sense the symbol was magical even though Grill had said it wasn't. Pop's had simply thought it symbolic, but it was more than just that. Nothing popped up about the symbol in the system because no one knew it's meaning. The symbol's meaning had long been forgotten, but if any effects existed, they would all be positive. A trait showed up in my status called [Dwarf Kin] simply saying I was kin to the dwarves.
The ceremony ended with an "Arise now Juren Agnar Knollen." Agnar was a dwarves name and as part of the ritual was added as my middle name. It even showed up on my status screen. So it was official I'm now a dual citizen of the elves and dwarves!
After the wall around the village was complete, we would need to look into building more permanent dwellings. The tents offered little protection from the elements, and it gets cold on top of mountains during the winter m'kay! So I planned to build a basic earth shelter house as it would be simple but effective. Essentially we would all be living inside part of Zotherg, but it wouldn't hurt him to do that.
The buildings would just be made out of just dirt and stone. Normally wood is used for floors and windows, but elves hate hurting trees. So I was giving myself a migraine to find plentiful resources that were as malleable as wood and able to insulate floors. Yeah, more like driving myself crazy trying to do the impossible!
Eventually, we decided upon using weaved willow as flooring. It grew uncontrollably by the riverside. If you've ever tried to destroy a patch of willow you'd know the stuff is unkillable and is used to make wicker baskets. Since It's a weed the Elves were fine with using it, but I hated how long it would take to weave and the required manpower to make it in that quantity was crazy.
The windows were going to be molded resin with sand. It would not be see through but would provide insulation. Two panels of this would be used as a double door style vertical plank swing open window. It would open at the center and would allow fresh air in.
All of this would take time, but I was also concerned about other matters. We needed to grind levels and soon. We needed strength not just for ourselves but also to help the Rest of our race. All around the world green elves were being enslaved, and that didn't sit well with me. After killing the slavers had been the only time in all my lives I remembered myself crying. I didn't want Emma to see me like that, but the responsibility and guilt had overcome me. My response to most things that upset people was to get angry and do something about it but this time I was at fault. Had breaking a curse that caused tens of thousands of woman to be abducted and raped such a bad thing? Was it worse to accidentally create a new race of children that would be enslaved? Regardless, I planned to rescue every slave someday and the sooner, the better! Then there would be "NO MORE SLAVES!!!"