CHAPTER 40 LE PICNIC
Penny and I slept the rest of the night away together and well into the morning. It was far later than I usually woke up by the time we both rolled out of bed. We slowly got dressed for the day before sitting down on the edge of the bed together.
She reached over and grabbed my good hand, “I’m gonna miss you.”
I just smiled slightly.
“I doubt I’ll ever really leave Vinwood beyond things like this where I take a mission that leads me out of the city for a while, but Garrus, George, Karif… We all like it there. So whenever you do follow through on your promise to get strong… If you can truly make it that far… I’ll be there, I’ll wait. I don’t know that I’ll wait for you forever, that’s not something I feel like I can promise. But several years. A decade maybe at the longest? I can do that at least.”
She leaned over and kissed me lightly on the lips, “Goodbye, Alex. I hope I get the chance to see you again. Sooner rather than later.”
With that she stood up and walked through the door, letting it shut softly behind her.
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I probably sat there for several hours after Penny left. I wasn’t entirely sure what exactly I wanted to do. When I had first ended up in this world I’d been conveniently given stuff to do, a path to follow. Talk with the elves, get my first classes, run away from being murdered, try to gain a couple levels, join a party, go on an adventure, try to stop a demon incursion, travel to the capital, etc.
There’d just conveniently been another milestone in front of the one I’d just passed that I could aim for. Now there wasn’t really anything like that. I guess my next goal is just a nebulous ‘gain levels until I can topple nations.’ Not exactly the most straightforward thing in the world honestly.
I sighed, I might as well try to stick with my regularly scheduled training of crafting a usable arm. I dismissed the limb I currently had and began working on crafting another one. I could feel the Heart in my chest beating powerfully as it tried to guide my mana flows to better create a prosthetic I could use more effectively… Except my mind was completely empty. And not in a good way either.
There’s that zone you go into when you hyper-focus on something to the point where no thoughts go through your head and everything is just instinctual. Then there’s the emptiness where you’re completely apathetic and nothing filters because you can’t bring yourself to care.
I was currently experiencing the latter. I stopped and restarted maybe five times in the span of half an hour as one thing or the other got messed up from my lack of attention. On my sixth restart there was a knock at my door. I say ‘knock,’ it was more of a heavy pounding. The person knocking didn’t even wait for a reply, not that I had been planning on giving one.
Fiona pushed into my room, “Coming through! You’ve been piddling about lon- what are you doing?”
My eyes rotated up to her slowly before focusing back down on my arm, or rather the lack of one before letting out a long sigh.
I opened my mouth to say something but decided I couldn’t be bothered and closed it without a sound and shook my head before pulling my shirt over me. I suited up with the rest of my armor, Fiona stepped over without a word and helped me tie straps together. Marcie, and Kaylith were standing by the door, I’m sure Striga was around the corner as well.
“Why’d you dismiss your arm anyways, surely it doesn’t take mana to keep running? Wouldn’t it just be easier to keep it up all day?” Marcie asked from where she was standing.
I glanced in her direction before focusing back on standing correctly for Fiona to assist me.
“Practice.”
Marcie frowned slightly as she tried to decipher my one word answer. Her face lit up as the connection was made, “Ohhh, you’re trying to level the skills involved so you can continually make something better. That makes sense. How long does it take you to form one currently?”
“Hours.”
She cringed slightly, “Yikes, that’s pretty rough.”
Fiona stepped back after tying the final strap, “There we go, all done. Let’s start with getting you out of this room. From there we can decide what to do with you. But I’m going to at least make sure you start doing something productive. Garrus wouldn’t forgive you if you just lazed about the second you left him, not even mentioning how Penny would feel.”
Kaylith nodded approvingly from where she was standing. “We could go get something to eat, I’ve got some good ideas about what he could do going forward.”
“Oh, that sounds nice. It’s been so long since we’ve gotten to eat a proper meal in the capital. There’s this really great breakfast place I wanted to try whenever we came back!” Marcie exclaimed excitedly.
“That’s set then! Onwards!” Fiona said, mimicking her level of energy.
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“Eat.” Fiona spoke with absolute authority, “Or I will make you.”
I looked at her across the table, for a brief moment I entertained the idea that she was just trying to intimidate me. Meeting her eyes took that idea out back and shot it in the head.
Marcie had argued for getting me a soup, something simple to eat that wasn’t overwhelming. None of the other members argued the point, so I had a vegetable soup made with a bone broth sitting in front of me.
I was somewhat grateful that my left arm was the one that was taken, being right hand dominant and all. I grabbed the spoon and gently stirred it around given that it had settled and all the important bits had probably sunk to the bottom.
It wasn’t bad, but it still paled in comparison to cooking on Earth. Although that was more because a lot of seasonings on Earth were cheap and commonplace, this world hadn’t quite reached that point yet. I’m sure on the high end, if you could afford it, the cooking was way better here given that skills existed.
“Very good.” Fiona said with a curt nod, she then resumed eating her meat stew with a healthy serving of bread on the side.
We sat in silence for a moment as people ate, taking a moment to enjoy their food. Fiona was the first to break the silence again.
“So, Kaylith. What was your idea?”
She swallowed and cleared her throat before speaking, “I was thinking he could go somewhere to receive formal training and education. Alixia has one of the greatest facilities in the surrounding areas.”
Marcie frowned slightly, “They have the Imperial Academy, but it’s mainly reserved for nobles and wealthy citizens. While it’s extremely well lauded for anyone without any strings to pull it’s prohibitively expensive to get into.”
“Three-hundred gold.” Striga’s soft voice came from under the table causing me to flinch slightly.
“Yeah, probably doable, but it would take a long time and probably not the best maneuver to place him somewhere where he might not even be welcome given that he’s not human.”
“They give out scholarships don’t they?” Kaylith asked.
“Hmmmmm…” Marcie hummed to herself for a moment, “Yeah they do, I’m not sure how likely he would be to get one though. Normally those are given to higher tier students coming in that already have something under their belt.”
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“You’re telling me that a tier one elf with three classes that was involved with stopping a demon incursion and has seen the inside Elven culture isn’t a valuable find and doesn’t warrant a scholarship to keep him there so they can glean information from him?”
“Well when you put it like that.” Marcie muttered, pouting slightly.
“I think I agree with Kaylith on this case,” Fiona interjected, “Even if he doesn’t make it into the school, there’s plenty of things he’d be able to take advantage of there. The Imperial Academy is roughly on the south western part of the country, a little bit further north is The Tunnel.”
Kaylith and Marcie nodded, “That’s true. Yeah actually that’s probably the best course of action.” Marcie said.
During this entire time I was only halfway listening to the words they were saying, more focused on just forcing myself to eat the soup. I didn’t feel particularly hungry, but I wasn’t in the mood to force Fiona’s hand in force-feeding me the meal.
“So are we decided then?” Fiona asked the group.
Nobody objected.
“Alright then, we’ll pose the plan to him when he feels more like paying attention. We’ll give him a couple days to pull himself together, in the meantime I think we should try and help get him back on track. Maybe we could take him outside the capital, maybe being an elf he’ll recover better in a habitat he feels more at home with.”
Kaylith just shrugged, “Sounds good to me.”
“We’re decided then.” She said with finality.
“Alright, Alex. Hurry up with your meal, we’re going on a field trip!”
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Fiona led the parade as we marched our way out of the capital. The surrounding area was pretty flat and any trees in the surrounding miles had been cut down to make room for renovation. So all in all there wasn’t much to see. There were some buildings outside the walls, but they were mainly for people that were either too poor to live inside the walls or had some business justification for being outside the walls.
It took several miles of walking before we reached anything that could’ve counted as a tree. Fiona led us on for a little while longer before stopping and marching off the road.
“This looks good, we’ll stop here.” She announced.
I walked over to her and sat down in the grass. It was pretty nice here, we were in a clearing surrounded sparsely by tree’s. A clearing might’ve been a bit of a stretch given that we could easily see the road from where we were sitting and the fact that the tree’s didn’t fully surround us. But it’s the closest approximation in my mind.
I had spent most of the walk over here just running through the past day in my mind. My stomach kept rolling over in anxiety making me feel nauseous. Overall it wasn’t a pleasant feeling. I could’ve just not said anything in return. I really could’ve, it wouldn’t have been hard.
But I was really just sick and fucking tired of people being arrogant pieces of shit for no reason. I was tired of dealing with people that had a chip on their shoulder for no reason and took it out on everyone around them.
I have no inherent problem with people being confident in their abilities. Arrogance is a completely different ball game though. And one I refused to let stand any more. I think at the end of it all I was more just frustrated that this was how it turned out. It seemed unnecessarily sudden.
One moment I’m traveling with my friends, the next I’m on my own because of political corruption. Because that’s perfectly fair. I fell backwards onto the ground with a sigh. I idly pulsed my magic around me, it was amazing what you could feel with magic. Especially when you are in an area that resonates with your element.
I could feel the grass and trees around me. The grass was filled with a sparse amount of magic for each blade, but over every single one in a given area it added up to quite a bit. The trees had a bit more at their disposal. It was slightly pleasant to feel. Maybe Fiona was right in a way about being in a habitat that suits you. I had classes with both Lightning and Nature elements so if I were to be in areas heavily saturated with that type of magic it would be more soothing or invigorating to be in.
I don’t know that it particularly had to do with being an Elf though. Especially since I wasn’t a full-blooded one technically.
“How are you feeling Alex?”
I opened my eyes to see Marcie standing over me with a slightly concerned look.
It felt like it took a lot of energy just to open my mouth and speak, but I powered through. Me communicating with them was the least I could do after the effort they’ve gone through for me.
“Alright I think. I just need time to mope.” I replied, my voice sounded completely monotone even to my own ears.
She nodded and sat down next to me without saying anything.
The sun was almost directly overhead at this point shining down directly into my eyes. I grunted in annoyance and pulsed my magic into the ground causing some of the grass to grow and twine together. Eventually I raised it high enough and caused it to spread enough to give my head a bit of shade.
I felt pretty proud of being able to pull that off, I wasn’t sure if I could at first, but it just seemed right. Like it was something I definitely should be able to do with minimal effort involved. Magic was pretty cool. I don’t think I will ever tire of it.
I slowly began to spread my senses out through what I could feel. It felt kind of strange, I wasn’t quite seeing or feeling anything. But I knew things about the surrounding area because of it. It was quite literally a one with nature sort of thing.
‘Ping’ You’ve acquired a new skill [One With Nature] - Whenever you’re in a nature affinity environment you’re able to spread your senses out further and make out more details, navigation is much easier as a result. Distance and level of detail gained increase per level.
Well speak of the devil. This was definitely a skill I could use I actually liked. Hopefully this wouldn’t lock me out of other skills to gain and possibly replace with. I hadn’t acquired anything for my other classes, but I haven’t actually been trying to get anything in those classes really. I’d just been sitting on what I had already.
Hopefully that would pan out for me. I could feel animals skittering around in the tree’s as I spread out over a few hundred feet around us. I slowly let it go out further and further. I could feel Marcie sitting next to me, Fiona and Kaylith were off sparring with each other lightly it looked like. It was kinda hard to make out their movements through the skill right now. I more just saw their vague shapes and recognized the way their mana felt. Striga was nowhere to be found in range, although I didn’t put a lot of stock in that simply because I had no doubt she had some hide in plain sight type skills available.
At the moment I seemed to cap out around 500 feet. Roughly 50 feet a level. Not bad honestly. I wasn’t sure if it was something I could pull off in combat, but if it was it would definitely provide a humongous edge in combat in similar areas to this.
I focused on the tens of thousands of seemingly insignificant tiny details around me. So much information was rushing through my head it started giving me a headache. But I pushed through it.
After a moment I realized I was being shaken on the shoulder, I pulled my mind out of my surroundings and focused back on myself.
“Alex, you awake? We’re planning on heading back now. Don’t make me drag you!”
It was Fiona standing over me blocking my sight. I frowned slightly.
“Leaving, we just got here?”
It was Fiona’s turn to frown, “Alex, we’ve been here for like six hours. You were sleeping so you wouldn’t have noticed the time passing given the fact that you weren’t awake to see it happen.”
“I wasn’t slee-” I looked passed her and could see the sky had an orange glow to it that was easily equated to late afternoon. “-ping…” I finished lamely.
She snorted, “Certainly looked like you were to me.”
I rolled my eyes as I sat up brushing myself off, “Got a new skill, was figuring it out.”
She lifted an eyebrow at me inquisitively, but didn’t press me when I didn’t elaborate.
Coming out of OWN my head still hurt from the rigorous stress I had put it under. Even pulsing [Nature’s Touch] didn’t do much for it. So I guess I was just bound to live with it for the foreseeable future.
The trek back was just as uneventful as the walk back out here. Eventually we made it back to the inn where I was staying.
“Alright,” Fiona said, grabbing my attention, “We’re going to be a bit busy tomorrow so you’ll be on your own. The areas around here are pretty safe. I would recommend going back to where we were tomorrow. It looked like you enjoyed yourself, in whatever way you could at least. The day after we’ll come back and get you and help you plan your next steps. You can’t stay here and mope the rest of your life as much as I’m sure you would like too. All in all your situation really isn’t even as bad as you’re making it out to be.”
I fixed a glare on her. She held my gaze levelly, not in an attempt to provoke me, but to show she wasn’t backing down on what she said at the very least.
I sighed and turned away to walk inside, I wasn’t exactly in the mood to talk to anyone anymore.
“You’ll need to figure out something, Alex. I’ll push you to make that decision if I have too. You owe it to Garrus and Penny. And if not them you owe it to yourself.” She called after me.
She had put it pretty bluntly, but what had really pissed me off about her words was that she wasn’t wrong. I probably was just overreacting to what had happened. I just needed to find a way to deal with it.