Giving up on pushups, I dropped my spell and tilted my head back to look at where Barti’s voice had been coming from this entire time. His brows were furrowed. So much so that it almost looked like he had a unibrow. “What?” I demanded.
Barti looked like he was lost in thought, Tindi was the one who answered my question. “That’s not something a human would get.”
“Why?” I wanted to stand up and look at the three of them in the eyes and demand to know what was so weird about being offered this skill but whatever was on my back was very heavy. In fact, now that I thought about it, how was I holding them up? The spell that had been enhancing my muscles was long gone. The mana either dispersed or returned to my mana pool.
“Honestly, no clue. All I know is that it is a skill reserved for Fox Beastman. You are the first person I have heard of that has been offered it.” Tindi answered.
“That makes no sense. I thought skills were related to one’s elemental affinity and personality”
“They are.” Barti finally spoke up. The blocks on my back vanished with a wave of his hand. I didn’t hesitate to stand up and face him. “But some personality traits are so ingrained in one's upbringing that it is nearly genetic. The relevant trait here has to do with foxes and their need to trick people. Typically in revenge for something the target has done to them. Apparently it is to the point of being a part of their culture. To not get pranked is to be insulted.”
That sounded closer to Kitsune than foxes, but then again this is a magical world so who knew what traits foxes would share with their mystical counterparts? Thinking back over how I dealt with issues and bullying, I found that I loved to trick people. Both subtly and not. After all, if no one had any evidence that you were the perpetrator then you couldn’t get in trouble.
While I thought myself a bit of a prankster, who wasn’t in one way or another, I didn’t think that I was good enough to be on par with legends and myths. Yet this game seemed to consider me on par with similar creatures. Not only that, but creatures that have grown up in a culture based completely around it. I didn’t know if I should take that as a compliment or a subtle jab. “So, do I take it or not?”
“Up to you.” Barti shrugged as he turned around to grab something off the table. “If you are going to I would do it sooner rather than later.”
“Why?”
“Because you're still learning magic,” Mindi spoke from just behind me. For some reason, having her there caused a shiver to run up my spine. It took everything in me to not spin around or jump away. “It will change your connection with fire enough that you will need to retrain with it. Not because it changed how it works, but how your mana interacts with fire.”
I am sure to her that sounded like it made sense but it didn’t. A skill would change how another skill interacted with something without changing how it worked. I could understand if it was a circuit or something mechanical, but it was energy interacting with other energy. There was nothing between the two. Unless Fox Fire stepped in but then wouldn’t it make me weaker when it comes to fire? It would be adding another step in the process to control anything fire-related after all.
Shaking my head, not really knowing what else to do, I asked my AI to flip a coin. If it was heads I would buy the skill, otherwise fuck it. “Flipping coin. The coin landed on heads.” Sighing, I opened up the market screen and bought the skill.
With no warning or notice, I felt pain. My heart felt like it was burning up. Wait, not my heart. It was whatever the sphere holding my mana was. The damn thing felt like it was on fire. Flares of searing heat flashed out of it and across my body. Burning everything as it passed through. I heard people talking around me but I had no time or energy to spare to understand them, let alone answer. My instincts were screaming at me just as loudly.
Those I could understand. They were telling me that I would regret it if I didn’t get control of whatever was going on. Something also told me I didn’t have long. Even over the couple of seconds that had passed since they started, the flares were speeding up and growing in strength.
Dropping into a meditation, I forced my mind toward my chest. The sphere sat there. The liquid radiating heat and pressure that could have given the sun a run for its money. As the pressure built, small, thin streams of mana burst out from the surface. As soon as it escaped, it flashed past. Moving at a speed faster than anything else I had ever seen. I fell to my knees, giving up as there was nothing that I could do. Not against something so powerful or unpredictable.
As if in response to my giving up, everything stopped. “What the fucking hell!” I screamed, though if I screamed in here did I physically scream? Does it matter? Sitting there, I waited to see just what else was going to happen. Maybe the sphere would explode or something.
A series of god-damned fireworks erupted from the surface. Leaving behind sparkling words that hovered in the air for a couple of seconds. I groaned as I read them. ‘Got You!’ Now even my mana was playing tricks.
“Damn,” Mindi’s voice cut through the sudden fog I had found myself in after my mana seemed to calm down. “If you don’t respond in the next couple of seconds I am going to have to do something we both don’t want.”
Did I want to know what she meant? No. But I also needed to deal with my mana and its behavior. If a little kid, hell even an adult, had pulled such a trick on me I would have likely decked them, or their parents. The amount of power and heat being given off reminded me of something working its way up to an explosion.
Given that it had been coming from inside of me, I didn’t want to know what would have happened to my body. Would I have died only to respawn with it happening again over and over until I logged out? Yeah, no.
Of course, that brought up another question; how did one punish a piece of themselves? I couldn’t just whack it like I did a hand as it reached for my food. What about the fact that it was energy and not a physical object? That added yet another problem, though maybe instead of hitting it physically, I could hit it with mana instead.
My mind had been wandering down track after track of ideas on how to deal with my mana. So much so that I hadn’t even realized a minute had passed since Mindi had yelled at me. So when someone put an ice-cold hand against my neck, I nearly jumped out of my skin. I say nearly because at nearly the same instant a bolt of mixed mana shot up and down my spine.
Mentally, I reeled against the feeling of lightning racing along my nerve endings. They weren’t strong, only leaving the feeling you get when you move a limb that has fallen asleep. One limb or a muscle would be fine, but piece after piece got zapped. As soon as one fully recovered, another was hit. All while yet a third was in the middle of recovering. Add to that the feeling of my blood turning to slush or nearly boiling, I was in hell.
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To top it off, as if it had been waiting for this moment, my mana decided that its earlier joke was nothing. Only, instead of sending out small flares of hot mana, it shed an ever-expanding shell. It burned, oh did it burn.
My heart had been starting to stutter under the onslaught of fire, water, and electricity when my mana hit it. I swear the thing stopped. Muscles freezing and relaxing as everything burned. Almost as soon as the mana washed over it, every muscle quivered before contracting as hard and as fast as they could.
If you have never felt your heart beat with all of the force it could muster, be glad. I sure as hell wish I could say the same. Thankfully, the next beat was normal, as were all the subsequent ones. Not a trace of the foreign mana lingered as it kept going. It felt so realistic, though, given that the pod wasn’t kicking me out, this hadn’t affected my real heart. All of what I had felt was inside the game.
The wave of mana didn’t stop there. It expanded outward. Wherever it met the foreign mana, it burned it away as easily as if washing away some dirt. “Fuck!” Mindi shouted as the wave struck where the hand lay on my neck. The hand was pulled back so fast that I swear I heard a small pop of displaced air.
“What happened?” Barti and Tindi asked.
Snapping my eyes open in a mixture of fear and anger, I demanded, making sure they heard me. “Why don’t you tell me?” Standing there, looking at me, were Barti and Tindi. Mindi was just visible out of the corner of my eye. Her hands clenched together. Given how she was holding one, I was sure that it was hurt in some way.
“He burned me,” Mindi said as she walked around to the two of them. Tilting her hand enough for them to see any damage.
Given that she was the one that my mana had burned, I snapped at her. “And you electrocuted, froze, and boiled me.”
“I told you we both wouldn’t like what I was going to do if you didn’t respond.” Her voice was clipped.
“Yeah, and how did doing that to me hurt you?” My anger was rising, beating out the fear of whatever it was she had done. “If not for my mana doing whatever it had done, I probably would be dead.”
“Like that would be much of a problem for a traveler.” Snorted Tindi. I shot her a look that said to stay out of this. She did.
Mindi spun to face me. Frustration and anger on her face as she started to shout. “You think I like hurting people? Do you think I like seeing other people hurt in such a way that leaves them unable to do anything to stop the pain? This was something that my professors did to us whenever our mana ran wild. Did they go far a few times? Yes, and some of those people are dead or crippled.”
What the hell kind of place did she go to? No punishment should ever have the chance of crippling or killing a person. Not unless there is no other choice.
“I had to watch as one of my best friends was burned from the inside. All because a new professor put too much power into their spell.” She continued, tears starting to stream down her face as she recalled the event. “She wasn’t my only friend lost either, only one of the first. At least her death was accidental. My boyfriend killed someone when learning to use this spell and ended up taking his life.”
That academy had even taught the kids how to do this to others? That thought, coupled with hearing about her friends and seeing her emotion-filled face, I couldn’t stay angry. Not at her. Not really. I wanted to just leave. Be done with this group and forget anything had happened here. But before I left, I had to ask one final question. “Why? Why do such a thing to me if doing so hurts you?”
“Because a mage whose mana is running wild is a danger to not only themselves but everyone around them.” Barti cut in as Tindi wrapped Mindi up in a tight hug. “As you know, mana is power. A living creature can contain it, concentrate it, and use it. Doing so is what gives each creature mana to use in various spells and abilities. The moment the body loses control over the ability to contain it, the mana will break free. Rapidly expanding outward until it reaches equilibrium with the mana present in the world around it.”
He didn’t have to finish what he was saying. The picture he had painted was enough. It would have killed me and likely everyone else in the room. She hadn’t attacked me but tried to save me, or at least she thought she was doing so. Of course, I wanted to know just how such a technique would have stopped such a thing, but I felt like such a question would be best left for another day.
Not knowing what else to do, I skirted around the group as I went for the door. Not really sure where I was going, just knowing that I needed out. “Will you be coming back?” Mindi’s voice was soft. Barely audible even in the silent training room.
Her question had me stopping. My hand on the door as I contemplated if I would be back. If I could be back given what had just happened. Yes, she had hurt me and been hurt in return. But she had a good reason for doing it, even if the reason was wrong. “Maybe.” That was all I could say before I left. Closing the door and walking to the large room at the front of the guild hall.
The place was nearly deserted. Given the time, I wasn’t surprised. Most of the people here were probably off doing some quests or out shopping. Both were options that would give me time out of here and get my mind off what just happened. The prospect of which instantly caught my attention. It wasn’t as if I didn’t need to go shopping. After all, I still needed to go get some more ingredients as well as a stove. Though, there was one major issue with shopping. I would still be surrounded by people and I just, I didn’t want to be around anyone right now.
Seeing as the other option would likely be free of people and give me something to take out my frustration on, I walked toward the one place I had not been in the room yet. The quest board.
Barti:
My shirt was practically soaked as the door to the training room closed. Not that I cared. The moment Mindi stopped crying and stood on her own I would cast a simple cleaning spell. I could even do it now but my mind was stuck on something else. Someone else.
That boy, his mana was something else. At first, I couldn’t place it. It felt wild. Almost like that of a beastman on the verge of losing their mind. But he was human. Not only that, his mana was always like that. While I had a special skill that allowed me to see mana as if it was physical, I still couldn’t help but wonder why not a single other person had noticed or felt the difference.
Neither of the girls had even guessed that his mana was closer to that of a beastman like theirs than any other group. For the last few days, I had been trying to find out what a beginner like him could have that would cause such a thing, yet I had come up empty. The only options were impossible or not something that would be found here in this little town.
That is until he had told us about the shop offering him the Fox Fire skill, something impossible yet explained so much. While Mindi had given him fairly good advice on buying it, I had been skeptical. So had he, judging by his expression. After simply mumbling to himself about flipping a coin, his decision was made. Within moments, he purchased the skill.
Not that you could miss him doing so. His mana was fierce. Raging out at everything and everyone. Making its presence known to the world as it changed on some fundamental level. Not losing something or anything like that, but almost like it was getting closer to being complete. As if it had found a piece of itself and was simply welcoming it home.
Of course Mindi would go and misunderstand what was going on. The places the humans called academies would not allow one to lose control of their magic. To do so was to let tragedy befall hundreds, if not thousands of people given how much mana they had access to. Even if it meant that they lost mages and scarred even more with this barbaric method of getting someone's mana under control.
Yet I still did nothing to stop her. My mind and body were frozen as I took in the magnificence of his mana and what it was doing. It had snapped at her mana as if it was a beast defending its territory.
As Mindi pulled back, I acted as if I hadn’t seen a thing. After all, no one other than the guildmaster and the sub-guildmaster knew of my ability and I sure as hell wasn’t going to share it with someone who seemed to be cozying up with the demons, even if he didn’t know it.
Though, I will say, the shape his mana took was interesting as hell. I didn’t even know that mana could form a pair of fox ears and a tail with nothing physical there to form around. Guess the wiseman of that beastman village long ago was right. ‘Even the gentlest breeze can hide a storm within.’ I would just have to wait and see if this was a storm blowing with or against us and our goals.