Chapter 20 - Gift

Alicia Dellacletra Seitra was not at all used to being anyone's equal.

Among her sisters, she was the youngest, the last in the line of succession, the last amongst the high, and she was treated as such by many of them.

She was sent to serve a master whose renown and station are equal to, if not potentially higher than, her mother's. Her mother, the empress of Twilight, one of if not the oldest nation still standing after the coming of the system to Alea.

Her closest friend was Lilly, her maidservant. But even she couldn’t step over the divide in their station. Worse, she hadn’t seen or heard from the girl in over five years.

No, in Alicia's whole life she had always been above or below, but never on equal standing.

She had hoped that might change when her revered master had commissioned a team to run her through this trial dungeon. He had purposely withheld the information of her station; the team still all but alienated her. They didn’t include her in anything other than that which they deemed was strictly necessary.

Syl and Kai, however, were different. Worlds apart from anyone she had ever met.

Syl had somehow known of her station from the moment she flittered about her head pretending to be nothing more than a simple system guide. Yet Syl treated her no more or less than her equal. And that was despite her being some strange quasi-former super being.

Alicia wasn’t actually sure what Syl used to be. All she knew about Syl was that she used to do something with the system itself, and she was possibly older than her master because of it. And while the scope of her power used to be nigh unlimited, her experience in that time was severely limited. Only Kai had been there for her in that time, and in that time she had come to love him.

Kai, Kai was a conundrum she hadn’t quite figured out yet.

Like Syl, his soul was old, but unlike Syl, he lacked the memories of that time, that time in which Syl and he had shared.

At first Alicia had seen Kai as a duty. Making the contract with him was something she could do to easily resolve a complicated situation. It was a profound yet simple solution she naively thought she could dismiss once the situation at hand was resolved.

She had been prepared to do her duty all her life, literally prepared, with lessons and lectures about why she was expected to do this and do that. So she reasoned the contract with Kai was nothing to her; only now she felt different.

Alicia was the youngest and thus the last in line to succeed her mother. But being last in line did not mean there wasn't a long line of viable suitors she was expected to do her duty with.

The list she was to consider for actual marriage was considerably shorter, and that wasn’t a good thing. Her prospects were all men of station and means her nation wished to embolden or empower with a connection to the throne. It was nothing more than a list of men her sisters had already spurned for being less than ideal in one way or another.

Five years ago, a greasy old man with unfathomable connections had taken an unwavering interest in her and he had started a rather distasteful pursuit of her.

She had tried her best to deny the man's advances; the only problem was that it seemed to invigorate him further. His persistent insistence that she would be exclusively his concerned her, especially when her more moderate suitors started mysteriously stepping aside.

No matter how she manoeuvred, the greasy old fool always had just the right connection and means to exploit her action to his favour.

The only thing Alicia found that could delay what seemed to be an inevitable conclusion was for her to partake in an age-old tradition. She had just twenty-five years in which she could adventure undisturbed by her political duties. Twenty-five years later, Level up to such a degree, no one could force her to do anything she didn’t want to. Twenty-five short years to improve her station above just being the youngest princess.

Part of Alicia suspected that after twenty-five years the man might just lose interest. Though she didn’t put it past the greasy old man to continue his pursuit out of spite. Even now she regularly burnt the letters he sent her.

He had been furious when she declared her intentions. Apparently she wouldn’t get away so easily, and she would rue the day she made things so difficult for him.

When her mother summoned her to the throne room that same afternoon, Alicia thought he had managed to counter her plans yet again.

She, of course, tried to leave, to run, to pretend she hadn’t received the summons. But the high guard had shown up at her door and that was that; there was no escaping while the empire's elite had an eye on you, unless, of course, that was what they wanted.

She had been dragged to the throne room where the greasy old man was indeed waiting with a smug look on his fat face. By his victorious demeanour, Alicia had thought it was all over, that she would be married to the man within the week if not the day.

Alicia had not expected her mother's proposal of an apprenticeship under the sage as her one immutable condition for allowing her flippant disregard of her station, her dereliction of duty and her expectations.

That day, five long years of rigorous training under the mythical man everyone of her kin called great grandfather out of respect, began.

Five years where she had been forbidden from any action that would let her gain essence, anything that would let her level.

At first she felt like her master was holding her back, preventing her from ever reaching the level of power she needed to escape her duty once her twenty-five-year escape from responsibility was through.

But the more the sage trained her, the more of his knowledge he imparted, the clearer her naivety had become.

It was only with those five years of his training that she even began to measure up to the likes of the guild team her master had contracted to take her through her first dungeon dive.

When he had finally deemed her ready and informed her she would be doing her first dungeon soon, she was ecstatic. She was so eager to finally level up, finally fight with people who would be her equals.

But a week just before her first dungeon dive was arranged, there was the notification of the system event in a month's time. When she found out her mother had requested her master's attendance, Alicia had expected her master to pull her from the dive. But the sage had merely mentioned the contracts in place with a premier guild team and given her a deadline she must return for.

It was in the event she ended up doing the very thing she was trying to avoid. Marrying a stranger because of an inflated sense of duty.

Who was she kidding? Syl had offered her something too difficult to refuse.

And Kai, Kai was a nobody in baggy clothes. She could have easily had that contract voided. At least that’s what she had thought at the time.

But now, things were entirely different.

Turns out when you put a tall, broad-shouldered, foolish boy in clothes that fit and manipulate him a little into having a decent shave, he was quite the sight and when you couldn’t help but consider the implications of their agreement, she would be lying if she didn’t admit to having thoughts.

One look with his piercing blue eyes could actually make her weak in the knees and bring warmth to the tips of her ears; it was positively unladylike, which just made her colour all the worse, especially when Syl teased the two of them.

When Syl had first teased Alicia about being Kai’s type, Alicia had been dubious, on guard. She, of course, had noticed his scrutinising looks before, but he never lingered anywhere she didn’t want him to linger. And when they spoke, she always felt she had his attention; his glowing gaze never wandered, always caught by her own. She just wished she knew what he was thinking.

What's more, when he found out she was a princess, nothing changed. He even joked about it as if it meant nothing to him, changed nothing for him. Even if someone tried to force propped etiquette on him, she doubted he would change.

He was blessedly clueless in many more ways than he realised and yet insatiably thoughtful. The juxtaposition was dizzying.

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The gift he had given her was wondrous, and it came with no expectations; she had shown an interest, and Kai had answered.

Alicia, of course, planned on returning the favour manifold. She knew if she could get the design of compound bows reverse-engineered and then patented in his name, the revenue would support Kai for years, whilst simultaneously invigorating a whole new caste of arcane archery.

She knew compound bow design and how it exploited a system of pulleys to store energy would intrigue many, especially anyone who cast spells through their bow or arrows.

When Alicia had committed to changing the bow Kai had given her into a growth item tailored just to her, she hadn’t known what to expect. She certainly had not expected the bow to require more material than what it was made from. She had assumed the power of the stone Atheos had given her would do all that was needed to be done.

But the change had demanded more, first sucking in the bow her master had given her, then the recurve bow she had been borrowing. Alicia had been mortified, but Kai had just thrown more in, feeding her growth weapons development further. Even going so far as throwing in parts of his soul when he ran out of items he deemed as appropriate material.

He hadn’t noticed it but Syl was concerned, only relaxing when she could discern no damage was happening to their cores above.

Syl had later explained the change would have still happened, with out the additional items, only that the materials supplied amplified things. That in the future, such as when Alicia tiered up, her bow would require more higher-quality material to make a similar transition to keep up with her.

The resulting weapon was something Alicia knew she did not yet deserve.

Whilst they could discern no real powers or abilities of the weapon from its system description alone. It was undeniable that the bow had developed arcane properties.

Kai even had a theory about it being a living weapon; apparently, talking swords were a fictional trope in his world. But the idea seemed ludicrous to her; that was until she began practicing with it and she started to learn what the weapon could do.

Her arrows fell into place as soon as she showed them to the bow. All she had to do was place the arrow on the rest and get the nocking point in the general area of the string that still remained tangible and the bow would accept the arrow on its own, nocking them perfectly each time without her even trying.

She couldn't even begin to guess the weight of the bow either; it seemed to be closer to what she was used to with her short bow, if not lighter still. So light and comfortable that she knew she could fire off arrows for hours and never get tired. Yet despite that same lightness of draw, her arrows fired off with the force of a bow she deemed far too heavy for her to handle comfortably.

The draw was always clean and smooth, the bow never fighting her as she pulled back the string. And at full draw she barely felt anything at all, just enough tension to let her know the bow was in fact waiting for her to release all its stored energy at once.

If Alicia needed to, she knew she could keep the weapon drawn for an extended period of time. There was so much potential in using that time to lay some complicated spell forms on her arrows or even empower her shots with ridiculous amounts of mana.

And how the weapon sang to her.

Each time she sighted a target, the string would thrum the moment the shot was perfect. The first time she noticed it, it had been disconcerting; she thought there was something wrong, a flaw in the weapon causing the vibration when under too much stress.

The thrum had grown angry, more pronounced the longer she tried to ignore it in her initial practice.

She had approached the others with her concern cautiously, worried that she had wasted her growth stone, worried that she had wasted all those materials making it.

Syl had explained that the weapon was in fact part of her, and that meant the only way something could be wrong with it was if there was something wrong with her, something wrong with her soul.

That didn’t exactly calm Alicia's concerns, but when Kai suggested she instead try to listen to what her soul bow was telling her, things changed.

After a few more test fires, Alicia realised the weapon was telling her when to release it; the angry thrum changed into a pleased chime as she got used to letting go the moment she felt the slightest vibration in the string.

Even when Alicia tried a few power shots in time with the weapons singing, she was pleasantly surprised to find she was using far less mana and getting drastically more impactful results.

At some point, Syl had set up a variety of regenerating targets for Alicia to practice with. Some that moved, some that teleported from one spot to another, some that were armoured, and even some that could only be seen with her new mana sight skill.

Syl and Kai had told her to take the afternoon and practice. They had only run the dungeon once that morning, killing the rune bear. But with the new dungeon path ahead of them, they didn’t know what to expect and decided it was best for the three of them to face it when they were fresh and ready tomorrow morning.

Time passed and she practiced. At some point she had to be pulled away for something to eat, roast duck cooked by Kai. He complained about the lack of ingredients, experience and something called the internet to look up cooking instructions.

But the meal was a pleasant surprise; out of the three of them, Kai's cooking was the most consistent. The most she knew was from watching her old team heat up rations in a pot, and that knowledge she had learnt disastrously, only carried so far.

Kai had tried to explain something called Chinese food as best he could. When Alicia could not come up with a comparable cuisine, he got this distant, forlorn look in his eyes that he tried to hide from both her and Syl.

Alicia did her best to describe how varied the food on Alea could be. But Kai just mumbled something about not eating goblins and changed the conversation to how she was getting on.

She enthused about how using her new bow felt natural, better than natural. It had taken her no time at all for her to get a feel for it; she was eager to see what else it could do and how it would grow.

Syl insisted that it entirely depended on her.

But there was one thing that concerned Alicia and that was the rate she was going through arrows. Their supply just wasn’t robust enough for the forces her new weapon delivered and she was breaking arrows at a prodigious rate.

Kai asked why she hadn’t been using her new skill, mana conjuration, to make arrows.

It was obvious now that someone had suggested it, but it was also easier said than done.

So after eating, Alicia went back to the range with determination to figure out mana conjuration.

Conjuring an arrow with the knowledge from the skill book was actually the easy part. It was just a matter of having an in-depth mental image of an arrow and using the skill and her mana to give it physical form.

The problem, however, was when she tried to fire the mana-constructed arrows.

As soon as she released the string, the arrows would explode in a cloud of mana that the bow itself seemed to drink up.

After a few explosive attempts to fire a conjured arrow, the bow went back to its angry thrumming. But Alicia didn’t give up.

Syl gave her tips on conjuration. Too much mana was as bad as too little, and apparently it mostly came down to her will and intent.

After another half an hour of a few dozen failed attempts, her moody beau decided enough was enough and started to help.

When she fit her conjured arrow It was as if the bow had a clearer idea of what the perfect arrow was and enforced that upon the arrow she had offered it. The length of the arrow growing slightly, the fletching adjusting and the head of the arrow shifting slightly.

The newly bow-defined arrows fired off perfectly each time, and Alicia tried to mimic the bow changes.

Her bow, however, now seemed to be doing its own experimentation, as each time she fed it an arrow to the specification the bow had previously used, the shape of that arrow would change slightly.

It got to the point where she gave up trying to conjure a specific form and just worked on giving the bow a basic arrow as a template, letting it figure things out.

It actually worked out; she used far less mana this way. So much less that making ten basic conjured arrows at once barely used one percent of her total mana, whilst the bow itself got its mana to make its own alterations from somewhere she couldn’t determine even with her new mana sight.

Kai came over late in the afternoon. He was about to head out of the domain and set up for the night and he was curious how she was getting on.

When she got a hold of her emotions and resisted the urge to hug him in thanks for his monumental gift, she let her frustrations go and sighed, “I am a little annoyed.”

“Why’s that?” Kai asked, cocking his head slightly as he looked her in the eyes, “You don’t look annoyed, actually; if I had to guess, I would have said you’re in a good mood.”

“It is the bow that is moody; it has even taken all the skill out of conjuring arrows. Made my new quiver all but useless.”

“The quiver keeps up appearances; an archer without a quiver just wouldn’t look right, would it? That quiver resting on your hip looks good; it makes you look dangerous, especially with your new bow in hand. That and you can keep speciality arrows in the quiver, like whistling arrows for signalling and-“

Alicia pointed the bow up in the air and fired off a conjured arrow; she didn’t even have to check to know the bow had modified to whistle.

“Damn, what else has it figured out?” Kai asked as he tracked the still-whistling arrow.

“For now all I really do is choose the target. I can conjure an arrow right onto the bow, then the bow changes the arrow for the target I’ve chosen and what I intend to do to it.”

She pointed the bow at Kai and an arrow with a massive cloth head appeared at the ready. The bow thrummed when Alicia didn’t fire off the arrow at Kai.

Kai didn’t even flinch; he just studied the bow curiously.

“See, moody,” Alicia said as she aimed it downrange, and the arrow changed again. Alicia started firing off arrows in quick succession, all of them conjured, all of them slightly different, all of them hitting the target perfectly.

“Looks like you're both ready for tomorrow.”

The bowstring chimed and Alicia studied it for a moment. “I think it liked that… when you acknowledged it.”

“You should probably do the same,” Kai said as he summoned a sword with a strange blue tint; using her mana sight, she realised the weapon had not been taken from the storage but he had actually conjured the blade from mana.

“The path I have chosen means I will probably never come to rely on any one weapon.” He swung his blade through the air and it trailed wisps of blue before finally, at the end of his swing, it burst into mana that Kai rapidly reabsorbed.

“I'll have a hard time finding something worthwhile to make into a growth item,” Kai pointed at her bow, “But for you, that’s different. That bow is part of you, a lifelong companion. Treat it well and it should return the favour.”

Alicia nodded; in the hours she had spent practicing with it, it had become clearer to her that the weapon really did have an ego, and that ego was growing rapidly.

“Speaking of which, are you going to name it? Alicia's Soul Bow is a bit basic for such a cool weapon.”

The bow chimed again.

Alicia bit her lip as she thought about a name. “It was a gift from you; why don’t you name it?”

The bow thrummed.

“I agree with the bow,” Kai groaned. “I’m actually terrible with names. I like to keep things simple, but then I still get bogged down in the details. I actually made Syl pic my name, probably the only reason I like it.”

Alicia just chewed her lip some more; keeping it simple was actually a good idea.

“Gift,” Alicia said cautiously.

The bow chimed.

“I think it likes that name,” Kai said, smiling gently. “And I appreciate the sentiment. Hopefully, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.”

Gift chimed enthusiastically.