Chapter 116: A moment to think

Felix Sythias’ pov:

I cursed as I stared at Alex’s sketches of the two System windows. The change in stability was small, but it was there. If we were right about the theory that the decreased stability caused the monster wave that cost me my wing, this was really bad. And that’s nothing said about the other effects the System warned about.

The promise of decreased experience gain was bad enough, but the decreased mana density could be catastrophic. Aside from the many enchantments and arrays that kept the campus functioning, the very islands of the academy themselves depended on the ambient mana to stay afloat. If the density decreased too much, the large plants underneath the islands that kept the islands in the air would start to starve, and perhaps even die if things got bad enough. The whole campus would literally fall apart.

And in the case that the decrease in mana density wasn’t quite that severe, reduced experience gain would drive high-leveled people away. And what did ‘violent rift displacement’ even mean? From the sound of it, maybe it had something to do with spatial magic? If that was the case, this might be really bad. No, who was I kidding. Anything described as ‘violent displacement’ was extremely unlikely to be good for anyone involved.

Would the campus need to be evacuated? If so, for how long? Would we even be able to come back? I didn’t like that idea. I didn’t like it at all. I’d lived here my whole life, one way or another. This is where I learned to fly, where I gained an interest in magic, where I made my first friends, where I met my first boyfriend. People accepted me here. I’d been to other places—it wasn’t the same. I didn’t want to feel like a freak all over again for years as people got used to me. This was my home and I didn’t want to leave.

I took a deep breath to calm myself down. It wasn’t quite that bad yet. While we didn’t know how long the degradation had been going on for, this place had remained standing for years. It could just be pure coincidence that we witnessed it tick down a tenth of a percent. For all we knew, it could be another few years before it happened again. Or it could happen again in an hour.

I looked up at the clock, then wrote down the time on the piece of paper with the decreased stability. Alex said he was notified when the decrease happened. We’d have to keep an eye out. With some luck, it wouldn’t decrease again in our lifetime. I didn’t think we were that lucky, though. Either way, we’d need to find a way to fix it. This test would just reveal how hurried we should be about it.

I ran a talon down my snout. “Why did it have to be us?” I asked with a groan of frustration. “I mean, we can’t just leave this be, nor can we let someone else deal with it. They would need you to deal with the core and the System, and I’m definitely not letting you go by yourself.”

Alex sighed. “And we just got home as well. At least we won’t have to deal with it alone?”

“That’s true,” I said with a nod, ”and we’ll probably have a few weeks, months, or perhaps even years to deal with this. We’ll have to see how quickly it degrades. With any luck, we won’t have to deal with this for another decade at least.”

Alex shook his head. “Don’t jinx it. ”

I chuckled and smiled at him. “What will happen, will happen. We’ve had a little too much happen to us these past few weeks for me to have any energy left to worry about the future.”

Alex was quiet for a moment. “That’s true enough, I suppose,” he said, then shook himself out of the somber mood. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t still try to prepare. Let’s gather as much information as we can, then go to your place to talk to your dad. We’ll need to convince him to help if we want to get anywhere.”

I nodded and we got to work. We began by sketching down every relevant System window and meticulously going through them for information. I made a summary of the situation while Alex began cross-referencing the settlements listed with the information known about them. It quickly became clear though that the information we had at the dorms was very limited, so we moved to the library in dad’s house.

The knowledge here was much more complete, and soon we had most of the bigger settlements nearby checked. The data the System gave us matched pretty closely with the information available in the library. We wrote our conclusions down, as well as in which book we found the information. Some time later, we had done everything we were able to do right now.

Still, dad probably wouldn’t be home for another few hours. I would’ve suggested we would go visit him in his office, except he wouldn’t be there. So instead we waited around the house. I did some chores for a bit, and Alex helped.

Doing chores wasn’t strictly necessary, as the many enchantments took care of pretty much the whole house. But it felt nice doing something normal and plain for once. We cleaned for a little bit, dusted my room, and I finally sorted out the mess I had left behind when I moved into the dorms. Afterwards, we sat down in the garden. It drizzled slightly, but it had started feeling suffocating inside the house, between all those walls and beneath the ceiling. It was like someone had been standing on my chest, even though I’d told myself it was fine, that the walls were thin. Alex didn’t really feel it as severely, but he was still more than happy to join me, so long as I shielded him from the rain with my wing.

It was nice feeling the drops of water hit my scales. I hadn’t really realized while we were underground, but I’d missed the gentle pitter patter of the rain. It was a pleasant, calming, rhythmic sound, filled with just enough randomness to be relaxing instead of grating. I felt a smile creep onto my snout as I stared up at the gray clouds. This was nice.

It was a weird feeling knowing how close we’d come to never experiencing something like this ever again. It made the moment just all the sweeter.

The good mood didn’t last, though, as my mind went over the events of the last weeks. It truly had been fucked up, hadn’t it? I’d already known, of course, but I hadn’t really thought about it. I hadn’t realized it.

We’d almost been killed by a cave-in, then forced inside a way too small room, without any bathrooms, forced to drink piss or risk dying of thirst. If it hadn’t been for that door and the tunnels and cave system beyond, it was entirely possible we would’ve died in there before we could be found. From what dad told us, the people searching for us didn’t find the cave we’d been in until days after we went through the door. We would’ve run out of water by that point.

For that matter, we’d come close to death a ridiculous number of times. If we’d been a moment slower fleeing the rockfall, we would’ve been crushed. If we’d been a bit less careful while fighting all those high-leveled monsters, we would’ve been eaten alive. If we hadn’t found that water, if that undead abomination had cut just a little deeper, if there hadn’t been a village nearby, if the healer had been unable to help…

If. If. If.

The thoughts were sobering, to know just how close we’d gotten to never getting out. To never feel the rain splash against my scales again.

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“What are you thinking about?” Alex asked, shaking me out of my thoughts. I’d completely forgotten he was here as well.

“Why do you ask?”

Alex poked my snout. “You have this look. Do you want to talk about it?”

I thought about it for a moment, wondering if I should just keep it to myself and not burden Alex with my realizations. But he’d probably already had the same thoughts, and if there was anyone I could talk to about this, it was Alex wasn’t it? Who else would understand it as fully as he did?

“It’s just… I just realized how close we’d come to death during our time underground,” I said, then shared my thoughts. “And like, I’d known, of course. But… I don’t know.”

“You hadn’t internalized it yet?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yeah, I hadn’t internalized it yet. We haven’t really had a chance to rest and really process it, you know?” I said. “I think that when we’ve talked with dad about this System thing, I'll see if I can’t find someone professional to talk to about this.”

Alex hummed his agreement. “That’s probably not a bad idea. Maybe we could find someone together?” he asked, and I nodded my agreement. “In the meantime, I do think it might help to reframe the problem. We came close to death, yes, but we didn’t actually die. We persisted, and we survived. Don’t you think we have the right to be somewhat confident we can handle anything life can throw our way, given what we’ve already dealt with?”

I thought about that for a bit. It had some merit to it, but I wasn't sure I entirely agreed. Nothing about those situations pointed to skill or control. Then again, wasn't that partly the point? Even without skill, we managed to survive our way through that mess. Surely that spoke to a general ability to handle ourselves under unfortunate circumstances?

"I suppose you're right," I said, causing Alex to let out a pleased huff.

"Of course I am," he said with faux bravado, then he leaned into me, twirling his tail around my hind leg. "We'll get through this, don't you worry. Knowing our experience down in the training grounds, we'll hardly be thinking about this in a month or two."

I smiled and pressed a kiss to Alex's forehead, before turning my gaze back towards the clouds. The drizzle was starting to turn into a full on downpour, and we'd need to get inside soon. But neither of us moved, even as errant raindrops started hitting Alex. It wasn't until twenty minutes later, when both of us were fully soaked, that dad finally came home.

He gave us an odd look, then gestured us to follow him inside. "Come on, let's get you both warmed up before you get sick on top of feeling down."

We followed him inside, where the water promptly vanished from our scales and Alex's clothing, whisked away by unseen enchantments. It didn't make too much of a difference to me, but Alex looked relieved to not be wearing wet clothes anymore.

"Can we go to the library?" I asked dad. "We have something to talk to you about."

Dad's eyes flicked between the two of us, and I got the distinct impression he was completely misunderstanding what I meant. "The library? Sure, I guess that's as good a place as any to talk."

We made our way to the library, only for dad to stop in his tracks at the open door. "You've been busy," he said, looking at the stacks of paper and books lying on the tables. He turned back to us. "I think I might have misunderstood. What was it that you wanted to talk with me about?"

I shared a glance with Alex before I took the lead. "So you know how that unexplained beast wave happened some weeks ago? We think we might have figured out the cause," I said, then gestured to Alex, who shared his title and relevant screens directly with dad. "We've confirmed the information as much as possible. It's all on the tables."

Dad was quiet for a small moment while he read through all of the screens. It was something we had realized a little late. Just because he couldn't share his screens directly with me and had to draw them out, didn't mean he couldn't share them directly with dad. It made trying to convince him quite a bit easier. The System didn’t really lie, after all.

Without a word, dad moved into the library, books already flying off the shelves towards him as he walked. By the time he reached the table, a few dozen books hovered around him, displaying various pages of information. Dad's head was a blur as he read through all the books, his Attributes and Skills letting him read faster than I could see. Then he went on to check our work. All in all, it took him maybe less than a minute before he, too, cursed.

It was never good news when dad cursed.

He let himself fall into one of the plush and comfy chairs near the fireplace, which he lit on fire with a torrent of paperwork that appeared out of nowhere. We sat down near him while he thought. After a few minutes of thinking he spoke.

"Alright, as far as I can tell, this settlement-aid system is accurate. All those places exist, and it's all the places you might call a settlement within a hundred kilometers. Furthermore, it contains a number of locations no one outside a select few should even know exist, neither of which include you two, so I know you're not making things up—though being able to share an actual System window made that a moot point, anyway."

"In terms of consequences, you mentioned the time when the last decrease in stability happened in your summary. From Alex's screen just now, I can see it's still the same, so at the very least, it takes about four hours between decreases. That means we have over a hundred days until the stability hits zero at a minimum, assuming the decrease is linear—which isn't a good assumption to make. And I imagine things will get much worse before it hits zero, anyway. Since mana density is the most pressing issue, I'll put some research teams on that issue immediately, and see if there's any noticeable pattern of decrease in the last years. Since there's only been the one beast wave, I can't really do anything with that information, but I'll see if I can find someone to go over reports of level gain over the past few years and see if anything can be found from that angle."

Alex and I both nodded. That was a good idea, and not something we would've been able to do ourselves, already proving it was a smart decision to approach dad with this issue.

"In any case, while knowing the immediate consequences is useful, I'm glad we have some time to solve the issue," he said, then focussed on Alex. "If we are able to find this 'node', would your Title let you repair it? Or at least stabilize it?"

Alex looked a little uncomfortable under dad's intense stare, but answered to the best of his ability. "I don't know. Maybe? Either way, we won't know until we find the thing."

Dad nodded. "Fair enough. Let's hope it helps. But you're right that we'll need to find it first. I know someone with excellent senses who might be able to sniff it out if she knows what to look for, but in the meanwhile, we'll need to plan an expedition to that underground complex you both got stuck in. It's the only core I know we can reach safely. The other, the one where I found your egg, poses too much risk."

I shot dad a confused look. "What do you mean?"

Dad sighed. "I didn't mention it earlier since it wasn't too important and I figured we'd have plenty of time. But the place I found your egg and that other core is one of the most dangerous places in this world for people under level 100. The monsters there are rather high leveled, and they are numerous. I was level 118 at the time and still, I barely made it inside to your egg alive. To be fair, I wasn't the best combatant, and my Path wasn't entirely oriented to combat. You two would probably be fine at a much lower level considering your better base abilities and advantages, both natural and artificial. Still, it's not a place I'm letting you go anytime soon."

I frowned, but conceded the point. He'd know better than I, even if I did really want to visit that core.

"That's a good idea," Alex said. "At least we know the big scary monster in the desert is already dead."

Dad nodded. "Exactly so," he said, before standing up. "I'll need to talk to some people, so I'm afraid you'll have to eat dinner by yourself. I'll keep your identity hidden as much as is possible Alex, but I can't make promises for something this severe. Also, since you're both critical to this issue, you'll need to power up quickly. Meet me here on Friday. I'll set up a training program."

Dad gave me a quick hug and gave Alex a handshake, before gathering all the paper and disappearing in a fumble of paperwork.