“So you guys are the ones who’ll be taking me to the next town? Gotta say I’m a little underwhelmed.” The merchant whose job we’d be taking was surprisingly short. About 4 feet high, but with an extra foot if you count the huge rabbit ears sprouting from his head. “Two girls and a blind guy backing up the one fully functioning dude, man your party sucks. Are you guys sure you can handle it?”
I was in the middle of debating whether killing him would technically be violating the job, given that it was only specified that we had to keep him safe from bandits and monsters. Nothing about the job said I had to protect him from someone who just wanted to kill him for being an asshole. While I was deliberating over potential murder, Ash started laughing. The merchant looked over at her in annoyance and confusion and she explained, “The blind guy is probably the most dangerous person you’ve ever met. Hell, when we met he was ready to kill all three of us in about a second. He’s been surviving alone in the woods for months, so if there’s any one fully functioning dude who everyone else will be backing up, it’s prolly him to be honest.”
The merchant responded by glancing at Liz and Mike, who happened to be standing rather far away from me and Ash as they nodded. The merchant then turned to give me a concerned expression as I scratched my head, uncertain how to respond to someone else talking me up like that. I heard a cheer of approval from Sophia go off in my head, only adding to my discomfort. I decided to ignore it and just flush out the details with the client. “So, exactly where on the map do you want us to take you, and when are you trying to leave?” I brought out my map diary. Fortunately I’d been able to add a lot of pages as beastkin generally had further to go when they wanted to travel, meaning their maps were usually bigger than in human towns. On the other hand, that meant that my map was bigger than just the two pages I could have open at once, so I had had to use my sewing skills that my enchanting work had helped me to develop to rip out pages from the back and attach them to the map I was using, making it one big map instead of a collection of small ones. Given my location finding enchantment, it would be a lot easier to use to get relatively close to the target destination that way, and once we were close enough, it would just be a matter of finding traces of life and following them. He gave it a look through, and pointed at a town by the top left corner.
Just by estimates, it was something like 3 times the distance as the trip from the first town to this one. If we maintained the same pace I had, it would take a little over two years. Only, this time it wasn’t just me, it was also three other presumably capable people and a merchant with very short legs. I would have to assume that our travel speed would be considerably slower, and assume that this job would take about 3 years. Fortunately, there were a couple of towns between here and there, so we’d be able to resupply, however: they were human towns, so it’s very possible that I’d be the only one who could safely enter. We’d have to determine that once we get to the towns in question.
“As for when we leave, I’ll need to pack up all my stuff first, should only take a couple of weeks. I’d have had it ready, but there weren’t any parties willing to travel so much distance back when I posted the job.”
I nodded in understanding and turned to the other three, “That time frame good for you guys as well? Or do you need longer to get your affairs in order?” Ash responded with the double thumbs up I’d happened to show her the other day when we were chatting. Apparently she found the concept of using your hands to display intent rather than your words fascinating, and had theorized that she might be able to develop a way to cast spells from body language. I was inclined to agree, as it would actually most likely mesh very well with demonic magic in particular. Depending on how close we end up getting on this job, maybe I’ll teach her a little bit.
As for Mike, apparently his situation was a little complicated. He’d been the golden boy of his family, the esteemed young master if you will, but lately his relationship with them has been strained due to his pursuit of Liz. After all, should he succeed, their child would be a mutt, not accepted by either clan. One would think that Liz would have a similar problem with her family, but from what I heard, she’s still the birds’ little princess. Not sure why they seem to be more chill about it, but all in all, it has absolutely no bearing on my life, so I haven’t really dug into it all that much. The only reason I know as much as I do now is that Ash had mentioned all of that in passing.
It did make it so that Mike was ready to leave whenever though, as he had most of his stuff already packed up in case his clan kicked him out one day. Which also meant that he would be able to help Liz pack up all of her things, meaning we should be perfectly set once the merchant was ready to go. We all spent a few more minutes debating things we would need to figure out, sleeping arrangements, how to secure our campsites, how to acquire food, etc. I also spent this time figuring out how I would be able to slip away to join Sophia at night, cuz there’s no way I’m about to potentially spend 3 years in what is functionally a long distance relationship.
After we set all of the arrangements, we all split up to take care of our own stuff, agreeing to meet up at the adventurers guild in two weeks. I got myself a room in the adventurers guild that I could pop back into existence in in a couple weeks, as I had decided to spend mine in the subspace, making blindfold 2.0. I had noticed a few areas that could definitely use improvements, and had a few ideas on how to implement them, one of which would completely change the way I go about enchantments.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
The first thing I wanted to change was my field of vision. I wasn’t being limited by the shape of my eyes and face anymore, so theoretically I could expand that in order to make my sight cover the entire 360 degrees around me. I got a new piece of cloth and sewed in the image I thought would get the job done. It was still an eye, but this time inside of a circle. When I ran my mana through it, it worked….but at a cost. I had never once in my life fully seen all 360 degrees around me, and my brain wasn’t used to processing that kind of information. It all came really fuzzy and disorienting, and I had no frame of reference to know what direction the things I saw came from. I withdrew my mana and nodded, as that had been precisely what I was expecting. The next thing I did was to take my old blindfold and sew in a second battery into the circuit, right next to the first one.
Ever since my vision had turned entirely enchantment based, I had gained a heightened sensitivity towards perceiving mana. Not enough to really be useful in day to day life, but definitely enough to provide me with far more information about the energy effectiveness of my enchantments. This meant that the moment I finished the new battery, it was easy to see how the mana in the first battery split off and filled the second one as well. By observing this process, I gathered a lot of insight into the potential pros and cons of having multiple batteries in a set like this. On one hand, I would be able to store more mana and use the enchantments for longer, which was a plus. On the other hand, it wasn’t as though the two batteries were now operating as one large one, instead it was two batteries that were constantly moving mana around, discharging one in order to maintain the same level of power in both. This meant that my efficiency would see a drastic decrease, not to mention the fact that now there would be leakage from both batteries instead of just one.
I theorized that instead of doubling my time from 12 hours of vision to 24, it would only increase to around 16-18 hours. Still plenty though, and now I also had the option of using my original blindfold as something like an emergency backup, the role that used to belong to my drone knife. Because yes, despite the vertigo-inducing disorientation, I still planned on mainly using the new blindfold. I spent an hour or so stitching two batteries that connected to the new symbol for vision, then went to go find Sophia and tell her about my plan.
“So you are intentionally going to put yourself in a position where you can barely function, can hardly perceive the world around you, in the hopes that your brain will figure out what’s going on and fix your sight for you in a few days. And if it does, because of the change in how your brain processes images, going back to a normal field of view will most likely be just as uncomfortable as this is now. And you want my help to guide you around during this process so that you can provide your brain with data from different scenarios so it can figure out how to fix your vision faster. Did I get all that right?”
I nodded in response. I wasn’t just being stupid and desperate this time, as there was a definite proof of concept that existed. Back in my old world, I had read about a psychologist during World War One or something who had done experiments with glasses that flipped his vision upside down and switched left and right. After a few days, his brain had eventually figured out workarounds so that he could function normally despite wearing these glasses. However, when he took the glasses off after the experiment was over, he had to go through the process again to change his vision back to normal. The only difference between what I was attempting and his experiments was that I was increasing the amount of information to process, whereas he was altering how the brain processed the amount of information it was already accustomed to handling.
Sophia sighed in acceptance then agreed to help me, filling the batteries to my new blindfold for me. For most of my equipment, I charge them myself, but anything related to sight, Sophia had made sure that she was the one who took care of it. I think it was her way of taking responsibility for my blindness, or maybe it was her version of penance. I wasn’t all too certain, but didn’t stop her, as I figured it was a good thing that she was doing something to start forgiving herself. Also, I wasn’t nearly as skilled at mana manipulation, and charging all of my equipment already takes a few hours, and that’s just topping off from leakage and occasional light usage. My blindfolds though, that get completely used on a daily basis? Those would be a bitch and a half to charge fully, not the easy minute and a half that Sophia used. I put my new blindfold on, and prepared myself to spend the next few days as a completely non-functioning person.
Sophia’s POV
Taking care of Leo as he was completely disoriented had given me a few realizations. As long as I’d known him, he had always thrown himself into whatever project happened to be on his mind without any second thought. I had simply assumed that it was due to finding himself in a completely new place, and that was his way of expressing curiosity for the world around him. And to some extent that was probably right, but it ran deeper than that. Leo had a problem. Almost a desperate need for distraction. A need to have something to completely obsess over and fix all of his attention on. And during these few days I saw what happens when he doesn’t have that.
Whenever I left him alone for a moment to go take care of something, when I returned I would pause and take him in. He would just be pacing around, walking with one hand to the wall and the other one out, so he didn’t run into anything. Ever since I stole his sight from him, it had gotten almost impossible to read his expression, but from what I could see, he looked…lifeless. Like a doll that was cursed to do nothing but walk back and forth for eternity. Seeing him this way… it tore at me.
Another thing that I discovered is that I actually rather enjoy taking care of people. Things like making sure he’s eating, helping him walk around, assisting with all of his self made exercises to help his brain figure out where information is coming from, it all scratched an itch deep in my chest that I hadn’t even realized was there. It made me feel… useful. Needed. While I absolutely adored how self-sufficient Leo is, as demonstrated by his ability to survive alone in monster infested wilderness for months on end, it didn’t really pose any opportunities for me to feel like he needed me around. Sure I knew that there was the psychological component, but nothing tangible like this. It was rather nice.
The last realization: Having Leo be temporarily completely helpless and dependent on me was apparently rather… stimulating for me. For these few days I had been taking the lead during our nights, and having him lie there on the bed, completely at my mercy? I felt something akin to a sexual awakening. I could do whatever I wanted to the man I liked after all, and I found a small part of myself hoping that Leo would take a bit longer to adjust to his new vision than he previously thought.