Dyani debated her options while watching the light of dawn crawl across her ceiling. Despite falling asleep so late, she’d woken with the dawn, like she always did.
Putting aside the concerns of finding a job and leveling up, she focused on the more immediate problem, the skill shard.
She’d picked it up off the floor and returned it to its box, but still felt guilty for treating it so cavalierly.
It was a skill shard, a broken off piece of a more complete and powerful skill core, so it wouldn’t have been as expensive. But even a common, useless skill should’ve cost far more than her mother could’ve saved. That was unless her mother had been saving for it for years, tucking away every spare coin she had.
And this wasn’t a useless skill. A mobility skill, even a straightforward one like Jump, could become a cornerstone of a slayer’s fighting style.
If Dyani’s talent hadn’t restricted her, she would’ve absorbed the shard in an instant and would probably still be bouncing around the house. She would’ve begged, borrowed, or stolen enough notes to give her mom a proper hug, no matter what it took.
Instead, Dyani yelled at her, threw her food on the floor, and locked herself in her room. That was something a villain did, not an aspiring hero.
She would make it right.
Dyani pulled herself out of bed, ignoring the soreness from sleeping in a curled up ball and rummaged through the crate she used as a nightstand until she found a bit of cord and some wire.
While she couldn’t absorb the skill shard, she could still show her appreciation, at least until she found out how much it had cost, sold it for a profit, and returned the money to her mother.
Dyani wound the wire around the crystal shard and strung it on the cord before tying it around her neck. She would be sure to tuck the skill shard under her shirt before going out, since it would draw more attention than wearing money.
She didn’t expect her mother to be awake yet, but she was sitting on the couch, which faced Dyani’s room.
“Good morning, acorn.”
“Good morning, mom,” Dyani said, sorting through her scattered thoughts. When she finally found words, her mother spoke at the same time.
“I’m sorry for yesterday-”
“I shouldn’t have pressured you-”
They both stopped and smiled. Her mother gestured for Dyani to sit down beside her, which she did. As she sat, Dyani clutched at the skill shard hanging around her neck. From her mom’s expression, she wanted to ask about it and why Dyani hadn’t absorbed it, but she held back.
“I’m sorry,” her mother said.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for. I shouldn’t have freaked out.” They both knew Dyani was passionate, but she’d never had much of a temper. The last time she’d shouted at her mother was during the difficult time after her father had died, which had been more reasonable, though still inappropriate.
“No, no, no,” Her mother waved her hands to banish the apology like smoke, “It’s only been a couple days. You should’ve seen me right after my awakening. I spent half the time screaming and throwing things and the other half unconscious from mana exhaustion.” Dyani raised her eyebrows and looked at her mom with new eyes.
The woman was far from passionless, but Dyani could count on her fingers the number of times she’d seen her mom truly angry.
“That’s alright,” Dyani comforted her, “I can’t imagine suddenly having that…happen to you. I probably would’ve tried flying up to the moon to scream at the goddess until she fixed it.” Her mom let out a genuine laugh that loosened the knot in Dyani’s gut.
“You have to remember, I didn’t get the power to fly until level two, and by then I’d had years to come to terms with being a living ghost.” Dyani winced at the description. She’d had to endure more than one joke about having one and a half dead parents before, and didn’t want to think about that sort of thing now.
Even worse, Dyani tried not to think about the possibility of waiting years before reaching level two, even if that was closer to the average rate than the growth of slayers.
Most people never reached level ten, instead ending up in the level five to seven range. The biggest issue was that the average person didn’t have the time, resources, or willingness to push themselves to obtain the ever-increasing amounts of experience required at the higher levels.
Experience was, in the simplest terms, it was unused spiritual mass. As someone grew in level, they had more and more spirit, or more accurately, as someone increased their spiritual mass, they grew in level.
Dyani had never heard the perfect metaphor to explain it. One of her teacher’s had likened it to the muscles in the body. Different muscle groups performed different functions, and increasing the size and strength of specific muscle groups made those functions work better.
In terms of the spirit, the muscle groups were someone’s attributes; Mana Capacity, Mana Regeneration, Magic Power, Strength, Speed, Endurance, Vitality, Mind, Toughness, Perception. Increasing the mass of the parts of the spirit associated with each attribute made you stronger in one of those areas. Increasing your Mind attribute made you smarter, increasing Endurance gave you more stamina, increasing Speed made you faster, and so on.
This was where the metaphor broke down. If someone’s muscle groups were their attributes, then experience was like having a bucket of loose muscle that you could add to one of those groups whenever you advanced.
The metaphor painted an accurate, if grisly image, which could be applied to each of the three methods of gaining experience.
The fastest method was killing monsters and absorbing experience from them. When anything with a spirit died, their spirits broke down, transforming from a cohesive whole into loose experience that could be absorbed. In terms of the metaphor, their muscle groups broke down into loose muscle, which someone else could take and add to their own body.
Essentially it was taking advancement from an external source, instead of doing the work yourself, which was always going to be faster than doing it the hard way.
Since slayers were the ones who went out and killed monsters, they advanced quickly. But even if you removed a slayer’s greatest advantage when it came to advancement, the spiritual effort involved in the difficult work of monster hunting would push them well ahead of the curve.
That was the most common method for gaining experience, spiritual exercise. Exercising a muscle would make it grow, and exercising the spirit would do the same, though the growth was added to the experience pool, rather than the specific area it had come from.
This exercise could take the form of specific spirit manipulation techniques, but performing complex and difficult tasks was the most reliable route.
The last method was absorbing ambient mana. In terms of the metaphor, that was like eating and drinking to feed the body, so it could grow naturally. It was painstakingly slow, even if you had access to oceans of high level mana, but it could be a good supplement to the other two methods, especially since absorbing ambient mana was also useful for refilling your mana pool.
Unfortunately for Dyani, the city of Root Perch only had ambient mana at level 2. At level 1, absorbing the ambient level 2 mana would work fine, but level 2’s would gain little from absorbing mana only as dense as their own. Anyone higher could backslide from absorbing it without techniques to condense the mana, which weren’t widely known or taught.
That wasn’t even mentioning that the Mountain Oak, the enormous oak tree that stood in the middle of the city, converted most of the otherwise pure mana into plant or nature mana.
Anyone with a plant affinity or talent that let them absorb plant mana would be fine, but the vast majority would have to go through the painstaking process of purifying any mana they absorbed so they didn’t damage their core and future advancement, which was another technique that the average person didn’t have access to.
It was only because of the rise of a new city lord just before Dyani was born that she was any different.
The current city lord was a level 11 with the title of The Tree Beast Lord. He was usually called the Squirrel Lord by Root Perch’s citizens, because the largest local beast for him to command with his beast taming talent were the enlarged squirrels that made homes in the mountain oak.
The Squirrel Lord’s policies instituted universal education and subsidized housing for anyone 16 and below that was unawakened, which was why Dyani knew basic versions of mana absorption, condensation, and purification techniques. Guilds, families, and even corporations had more complex and efficient techniques, but those were kept secret through magically binding oaths and, if popular opinion was to be believed, assassinations.
The sun would fall from the sky before any organization could be convinced to give up that kind of power.
Besides regular spiritual exercise, cycling ambient mana, and absorbing experience from slain monsters, the one way to advance that Dyani knew about was practicing a trade. If the trade involved mana, it would give many of the benefits of spiritual exercise, but there was the additional experience gained from improving one’s level of proficiency in something and the greatest experience gains came from actually creating things.
Dyani had heard many theories about where this experience came from. The most straightforward was that the goddess simply liked for people to learn and make things, so she rewarded it, but Dyani had never been satisfied with that answer. That might be because of her general lack of piety, but even if she accepted that the goddess was real, she doubted the deity would waste her time doling out appropriate levels of experience.
The muscle metaphor didn’t help here, but Dyani had heard another that tried to explain this, which compared the spirit to a pond. The hole represented the strength and capabilities of someone’s spirit and the water was the mana that filled it.
Absorbing ambient mana was like adding more water, which gradually eroded the edges and widened the pond. Increasing in skill and achieving new things were like manually widening the banks, as the spirit stretched to accommodate the new achievements. Since creating things was more complicated and difficult than other abilities, it expanded the banks the most.
It wasn’t the best explanation, and it had some holes, but it was the best one she’d heard so far.
Maybe that could be Dyani’s way forward. She’d been so fixated on becoming a slayer, that she hadn’t even considered an apprenticeship to learn a trade or a craft. There were so many options, the obvious being the trades that created Root Perch’s major exports.
Those exports were, of course, related to the enormous magic tree at the city’s center, wood, textiles woven from leaf fibers, and the alchemical and medicinal products created from the many species of magical insects and symbiotic flora that could be found on, in, and around the mountain oak.
Dyani would have to canvas any nearby crafters to see if she could gain an apprenticeship. She was apprehensive that any worth learning under would require that she shared her talent, which wouldn’t be a mark in her favor, but it was at least worth trying.
Dyani looked back at her mother and opened her mouth to ask if she knew any crafters, but hesitated.
“Out with it, acorn.” Dyani’s eyes darted around, looking for an escape, but found none, so she sighed and said what she’d been thinking.
“I was going to ask if you know any crafters that might be looking for an apprentice. But…”
“But you didn’t want to upset me,” her mom finished Dyani’s line of thought. Dyani nodded awkwardly. She recalled a number of times her mother had been turned away or thrown out of workshops or shops, not for her strange ghost-like appearance, but her talent-granted skill to absorb mana from enchanted objects.
It wouldn’t be so much of a problem if they had enough money to keep her spirit topped up on mana, but since they couldn’t, her mother passively absorbed mana from everything in her presence.
The passive drain wouldn’t damage completed enchantments, like their stove, since the mana inside was woven tightly together, but anything that was in progress, or less skillfully enchanted would be drained in minutes.
By now, her mother avoided anywhere that would be a problem when she could, and asked workers to come outside to assist her when she couldn’t.
“I may not be a social butterfly, but I can still ask around. Some of my co-workers might know about an opportunity from someone we supply.”
Dyani’s mother worked at Root Perch’s only recycling plant, draining mana from broken and discarded items that could otherwise react violently when the materials were broken down into reusable material. The job would’ve been perfect, given her large mana needs, if the management didn’t require that she transfer any mana gained into the generator that kept the plant running.
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Even if her mother wanted to cheat the system and skim some mana off the top, which Dyani doubted would even happen, there were sensors and monitors that measured the level of mana in the trash she worked on and her own spirit. Any mana lost would be deducted from her pay.
“Thanks mom, just as long as it's a job where I can get experience, I’ll take it, doesn’t matter how difficult.”
Her mother’s brows knit as she looked down at her daughter and brushed her hand against her cheek, exerting the smallest bit of mana to make herself felt.
“When you’re ready to talk, I’ll be here.”
Dyani saw her mother’s other hand was clenching and unclenching in anxiety, and she touched the necklace that contained her skill shard.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Even admitting there was something to talk about was difficult.
“I know, acorn. You don’t have to.”
“But I need to.”
So she told her mother everything, about her talent, about being turned away at the Slayer’s Guild, and her hopes that reaching level 2 and getting her second talent would turn it all around.
Her mother listened silently until Dyani ran out of steam. Her eyes were wet with tears that dissipated into nothingness when they fell from her cheeks.
She was upset on her daughter’s behalf, but Dyani could tell that her story had opened some old wounds.
“Oh Dyani, I’m so sorry. I know how much you wanted to go out and fight monsters like your father.” Her mother had always been supportive of the choice, despite the significant danger. After all, humans had killed her husband, not the monsters he fought every day.
“Are you okay, mom?”
It took half a minute for her mother to collect herself.
“Yes Dyani, just some old memories that are best left in the past.”
“I’ll be right here when you’re ready to talk about it.” Her mom laughed at her sentiments from earlier being thrown back at her.
“I’ll take you up on that, but not today. You’ve got enough to be thinking about right now.” She looked down at the skill shard hanging around Dyani’s neck. “I’m sorry for giving you that. I should’ve waited until I heard about your talent, but I didn’t expect anything like this.”
Dyani assured her mother that it was alright, but hinted at returning the shard for the money and was startled at the response.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea. I may have…stolen it from work.”
“You did what? How? Why? What?” Her mother laughed mischievously.
“One question at a time, Dyani. I’ve only got one mouth.”
“But why was there even a skill shard at the plant? Why would someone throw it away?” Dyani couldn’t imagine the kind of irresponsible wealth that would make that possible.
“Someone did throw it away. It was the city lord.”
Dyani was only getting more confused.
“You met The Squirrel Lord?”
“No, I did not meet The Tree Beast Lord,” her mother said, emphasizing the man’s actual title, “Really, you should show the man some respect. He’s done great things for you, with the investments in schools and orphanages.”
Dyani waved that tangent away.
“Why did he throw it away? Doesn’t he know that stores exist? He could sell it, or just give it to someone on the street.”
“If you give me a few seconds, I’ll tell you,” her mom said, playfully scolding, “He didn’t exactly throw away that skill shard. He commissioned the plant for the disposal of any forbidden skill cores and shards, and delivered several for us to destroy.”
That silenced Dyani. There weren’t many skills that were outright illegal to use. Even brutal combat skills were freely allowed, since the world outside a defended city was so dangerous. The only skills that were outright forbidden were attack skills that only worked on people, not monsters, or those that caused significant damage to the user.
She knew of only a few from her lessons on skill structures and categories.
Athame conjured a knife of dark mana that drained the spirit from a victim to empower the user. While the skill could be used on monsters, it was far more effective when used on sapients, since they had more developed and powerful spirits.
Mental Partition was a useful skill that let the user isolate parts of their mind, emotions, and memories from their consciousness. It had been quite popular with academics before a serial killer was found using it to remove any feelings of empathy, compassion, or remorse.
Avaricious Blood Magic wasn’t outwardly very dangerous, but had caused enough deaths from those that used it that it had been added to the forbidden list. The skill converted health into mana, which was common enough and not incredibly dangerous if one was careful. The issue with this specific skill was it was automatic and wouldn’t stop draining health until the user’s mana pool was full, even if that meant killing them outright.
Dyani considered the implications. She knew skill shards were the broken pieces of more complete skill cores, but she couldn’t think of any forbidden skill that would contain something as mundane as increased jumping ability.
“You’re saying this,” she held up the skill shard, “Is a piece of a forbidden skill?”
Her mom winced.
“Yes, but it doesn’t have anything evil in it. I had it examined by an enchanter.”
“What was the skill?”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
Dyani surprised her mother by breaking out into a massive grin.
“Of course I do, that’s awesome. Turning something evil into a force for good, that’s classic, chosen warrior of good behavior.”
Her mother shrugged at that, but had long grown used to Dyani’s obsession with stories of chosen ones defeating dark gods and other heroic tales.
“Well, you should be happy to know that the skill core your shard came from wasn’t evil at all. Personally, I don’t think it should’ve been forbidden.” Her mother looked into the middle distance as she pondered.
“Don’t stop, what was it? Tell me….please.” Dyani was nearly dying from curiosity. Her mother smiled, well aware of what she was doing to her daughter.
“The skill was Expeditious Assent. It rapidly throws someone upward, but doesn’t do anything to protect them from falling afterward. Some young noble got themselves killed from using it without another skill or talent to handle the descent, so the city lord had it added to the forbidden list.”
That was disappointing. While it made no difference to the function of her jump skill, especially since she couldn’t actually use it, a shard of a forbidden skill that was only on the list because of a stupid kid who couldn’t read skill descriptions was less exciting.
Not that she could think of a truly devious skill that would involve a jumping component, unless it involved jumping on orphan baby bunnies or something similarly evil.
“How did you steal it, didn’t the Squirrel - I mean the Tree Beast Lord want the shards? And how did no one notice?”
Her mother shook her head.
“It's illegal to use a shard from a forbidden skill core, even such a straightforward one.” She noticed Dyani opening her mouth to interrupt and forestalled her with a hand, “I know it doesn’t make sense for this case, but think about it.”
“Shattered skills sometimes leave behind unique shards, so there’s no way to add every variation to the forbidden skill list, even if they end up worse than the original. It’s easier just to outlaw them entirely.”
“At least my shard’s illegal, that’s still pretty cool.” She touched the skill’s warm, blue surface, again saddened that she couldn’t use it.
“It is illegal, so we can’t sell it, as nice as that would be. A powerful analyzer can tell the original skill core a shard came from, and will flag it as on the forbidden list. That would lead to questions, and considering our company was just hired to destroy a core with that skill, I’d get caught for sure.”
That was disappointing, but not surprising.
“I’ll just keep wearing it. Thank you so much for getting it for me.”
“I’m just sorry that it didn’t end up being useful for you.”
“It is useful,” Dyani said, breaking away from the somber subject, “It’ll remind me what I’m working toward.” She tucked the shard under her shirt and smiled up at her mother. “And it’ll remind me that my mom is a criminal genius. Are you finally going to tell me the devious plan you used to steal it?”
“Fine, fine, but the reality is less impressive than anything you’d come up with. Since skill cores are such dense mana sources, no one else wanted to be in the room when I drained them, since we don’t have the protective gear rated for that level of mana, and no one wanted to overdose on mana.”
A mana absorbing skill, like her mother’s Wraith’s Hunger, protected the user from many of the issues from absorbing large quantities of mana. With it being a talent-given skill, it was even more effective than an ordinary mana draining skill.
“When the core finally broke, it overloaded all of the sensors, so no one could tell anything was missing from the mana levels. Wahkan just told me to wait inside the drain chamber until the ambient mana settled. I had hours to run every shard through our identifier. Most of the shards didn’t come up with anything, since it didn’t have a record of their specific variant, but I couldn’t use our analyser, since it creates a record of anything we put in.”
“When I finally found something useful, I had so much mana that I could move it into my employee locker with no problem. From there, the only issue was getting it back home after I gave up all that mana, but I managed it by directly absorbing my day’s pay.”
Dyani wasn’t even upset about the wasted money. Even a cheap skill shard was sold for hundreds of notes, and her mother made five level 1 notes a day, so it was certainly worth the cost.
She thanked her mom again. She was impressed with what mom had done, risking her job and the consequences of breaking the law, all for Dyani.
All Dyani had to do now was prove she was worth it.
After her mother left for work, Dyani cleaned their small home and left to wander the city, looking for anywhere she could apprentice.
The best crafters were clustered together in the Red Eye District, which was named for the constant noise from blacksmiths and other crafters working long into the night. She didn’t bother with those since they would certainly have more impressive and capable potential apprentices than her.
Instead, she found tucked away shops in the poorer parts of town, hoping their standards would be low enough for her to be considered.
What she hadn’t considered was the same rush of applicants to the slayers guild from the awakening two days ago was occurring at business all over the city.
“What did you say your talent was again?” her latest potential employer asked. He was a well built man with the beginnings of a gut reaching over his waistline. He shouted to her from his forge, where he pulled red hot metal from the fire with his bare hands.
“I didn’t. It doesn’t do me any good here, so I didn’t think it was relevant.” With this, the man actually looked at her with a pained expression.
“Look kid, I know how it goes. You’re not the first and you won't be the last to get shafted by the goddess, but unless you’ve got a useful talent or skill for smithing, I just don’t have anything for you to do.” He gestured to his nearby workstation and the scattered tools floated back into place, while metal filings and scattered powder deposited themselves into a bucket for waste.
“I’ve got Local Reversion, so I can make anything nearby revert back to a recorded state, so I don’t even need anyone to clean up after me, which, not to be rude, is all you’d be good for.”
Dyani stared in jealousy at the results of the skill, imagining how easy it would be to keep everything clean at home if she could just clean up once, then when it became messy, just wave her hand to return everything to that state.
Most other crafters gave her the same answers. There was one, a tanner in a building that stank of resin and animal fat that offered her a job on the spot, before she even explained she had nothing to offer, but she turned him down and ended her search for the day, going home to scrub off the stink and the slimy feeling those wide, feverish eyes had given her.
That man didn’t have any apprentices or other workers, and the way his eyes darted at his open door, as if seeing if anyone would notice if Dyani didn’t leave the building raised enough red flags for her to not want anything to do with him.
Dyani didn’t know if Root Perch had a market for human leather, but if it did, this man would be a supplier.
On her way home, she overheard a conversation between two older women on their porch.
“The healer said he would be fine, but that monster gave him a real shock. We paid out the nose to have the wards on the toilet renewed and strengthened, but Verik’s still refusing to use it. He bought a chamber pot, the silly bastard.”
“You can’t blame him. If a monster rat attacked me while I was doing my business, I’d be just the same.”
Dyani’s mind spun. The world outside Root Perch’s walls wasn’t the only source of monsters. While the city was protected from generating normal monsters with some powerful magic she didn’t know about, the sewers beneath the city were notoriously filled with low level monsters.
Something about the rotting waste and the magical leftovers from the city crafters still allowed them to form, though the overall city protections kept their level low.
Root Perch’s sewers relied on the roots of the Mountain Oak for which the city was named, which greedily absorbed any source of nutrients, regardless of how disgusting. And since the sewage system was self-sufficient, no one needed to go down to perform maintenance.
The city had plumbers, but they were largely specialized ward crafters, creating and renewing the wards that repelled the weak monsters from crawling up the pipes and taking a bite out of your unmentionables.
The thought made Dyani shiver. She’d be checking their own toilet wards when she got home, just in case they were run down enough to let a monster though. She wanted monsters to fight, sure, but there was a time and place for everything and that wasn’t it.
As she walked, her enthusiasm for the idea waned. Visions of piles of slain monsters running with their blood transformed into piles of human waste running with things better left unmentioned.
If her mother found her a crafting apprenticeship, she would much rather do that, even if the experience gained would be lesser. After all, she only had to reach level two to get her second talent. Gaining levels grew progressively more difficult as you advanced, so this one would hopefully not take too long.
Her hopes were dashed again when her mother arrived home from work, right after Dyani finished confirming that their own plumbing wards were intact..
“I’m sorry, little acorn. No one at the plant knew about any openings for apprenticeships. But I was able to convince Wahkan that you could be a good assistant. I know it’s not what you wanted, but it’ll be a good job, not too difficult. You’d mostly be doing paperwork and running out to grab lunches, but it pays well enough.”
Dyani hated turning her mother down, especially since she’d stuck out her neck for her, but coin wasn’t the most important thing on her mind. If she’d eliminated every option for gaining experience, she might’ve accepted, but the dubious prospect of hunting sewer monsters was still viable.
“Thanks mom, I’ll think about it.” She made an excuse about being tired and went to her room to prepare, glancing longingly at her father’s favored weapon on the wall.
It was a golden sword hilt with a crossguard like flames. It was bladeless, enchanted to produce a fiery blade on command. Unfortunately, it was a level seven weapon, which she couldn’t hope to wield.
You could use enchanted items above your level, but the mana requirements and the strain on your body and spirit were tremendous. Without some extreme talent, someone could at most use an item one level above theirs.
If she even managed to activate the sword, which was doubtful, it would probably kill her.
She would have to make do with what she had, a short combat knife that had been gifted by her father and promptly taken by her mother on her fourth birthday. It wasn’t enchanted, but it was still good steel smithed with enough magic and skill to keep an edge after all these years.
Dyani gave it a few practice swings, running through the forms she’d been taught at school. She would’ve preferred a sword, it had been her favored weapon when training, but she could barely afford a wooden practice sword, let alone a real one.
Given that a lack of reach would be deadly if she met something large down there, Dyani strapped the knife to a sturdy stick with a coil of thick wire. The wood was sturdy, since it came from the Mountain Oak, so if all else failed, she could just use it to bash in a monster’s skull.
Rations, a waterskin, her thickest, most durable jacket and pants, a small glowstone she pried from her bedroom ceiling, everything went into a backpack. She sheathed the blade on her improvised spear and stuck it in the bag point down, to hide it from her mother and anyone on the street.
Finished with her preparations, she pushed the bag under her bed in case her mother decided to check up on her or her room.
She was ready to brave the sewers, once she found a way down.