When Shaun heard that people had obtained affinities during the fight he stuck around and listened into the conversations he could hear. He was still a decent distance away that not many people had noticed him and he made a conscious effort to stay shielded from view.
“How did you do it Lisa? I thought it was really hard to get an affinity and you had to do it in specific places if you wanted one?”
The girl, Lisa, was the one who had gotten an affinity, he didn’t hear what one but it wasn’t hard for him to focus his echo and perception on her and figure it out. Fire. He knew it the moment he concentrated. By the look of the girl she was also a fighter that used swords and although the affinity he felt was on the weaker side he imagined that with some time and effort she could grow the power inside of her easily enough, especially if she used the treasure back at the settlement.
“It just happened during the fight! I was getting angry and frustrated with how many people were coming at us and something just cracked open inside of me. But honestly, I have been feeling kind of weird ever since we did that thing at the compound. When he linked to us, something changed in me. I think he was the one that helped me get fire!”
After hearing that she had somehow linked her affinity to him and what he did he started to move away but stopped when he heard someone else join the conversation.
“You got fire? That’s so cool! I got earth somehow! It happened the same way to me too though, I was fighting and blocking with my shield and I just kept pushing and holding strong and then, Bam! I have an affinity. It feels incredible though right?”
He was going to have to take count of just how many people he had unknowingly given an affinity too. Thankfully it sounded as though people only got one and that they were basic, but still, not a good outcome if even more pop up and there is a full spread of people with affinity running around connecting it all with him and what he did.
He spread his awareness around and quickly found Eric and Yarila together, Gabe was off elsewhere but thankfully the two people he needed to gather information were close by. He made his way in the most roundabout fashion to get to them, avoiding being seen as much as possible. When he got around the corner of a building he made sure to grab their attention. Yarila was the first to notice him and when he pointed at Eric and then waved them over she did what he needed and grabbed Eric, whispered in his ear and they both walked away from the crowd.
He followed them for a minute until they were at a fairly secure area just off from the main building where everyone had congregated.
“You have heard then?” He nodded at Yarila and Eric groaned, wiping his hands down his face as Shaun seemed to confirm everything he feared in a nod. “Are they right, our affinity is due to what you did?”
He hadn’t really been paying much attention to the two of them, but at Yarila’s words he looked deeper into he and found that each of them now had an affinity, Eric earth and Yarila some kind of off shoot of nature.
“Fuck sake! How many people have affinity? What kinds as well?”
“I don’t know about the elves, but of the people that joined in the link and that are still here I would say around 10% have an affinity now. So somewhere between 50 to 100. That’s just a guess though.”
“We are similar, although it is a higher amount of people, closer to double from my estimates.” Yarila actually looked ecstatic about this which he could get. It would boost the overall ability and power of every one of them.
“What about types of affinity? Are they all basic or is there some different ones out there?”
From what they had heard, most of them were the standard five basic affinity, some were different though, like Yarila, although she didn’t confirm what exactly the off shoot of Nature was. He used his echo to the max and tried to locate anyone that felt more powerful than others. If anyone had an advanced affinity he should be able to feel it.
He searched hard but outside of finding people boosted by basic affinity he couldn’t locate anyone with a higher graded element.
“Do you know how it happened? Why did linking to you unlock peoples affinity? It cant just be mana, right?” Eric looked very interested in hearing the answer, as did Yarila. But what could he say? When people took mana from him they also took a small part of his affinities, probably the one most aligned to them? Nope that wouldn’t work, he would be asked how people got earth and water and nature.
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“I think it is my weird class.” Blame the class, that’s all he had. It was an elemental class anyway so maybe he could pass off this explanation. “Elemental blade slinger, it works with all the elements. So maybe, when people took mana from me, even though I said not to, maybe my mana did something as it is tied to my class. Even my profession is elemental based too. Maybe the creation aspect mixed with the element aspect and mana helped people unlock affinity they were close too?”
“Right, that makes sense. If people only had fire air or even lightning than it would probably be because of the affinity you have. But I have earth, people also have some kind of nature affinity and people even spoke about water too. So that rules out your affinity being involved, right?” The look Eric gave him said a lot more than his words did. Not for a moment did he believe that it wasn’t tied to his affinity, but for his sake, vocally anyway, he was going to agree with the explanation. “We probably don’t even need to mention you in an explanation, the link did weird things to everyone, maybe being connected to so many people unlocked something inside those lucky enough. Its very possible, no one has any idea what that linking was anyway, not even you.”
“I agree. All of this is very unknown, I think that it was all luck that there was an effect on us from the linking, its not like you can steal affinity from someone else so that rules out Shaun being involved in this affinity aspect.” Although Yarila was agreeing with what he and Eric said, the look on her face said she didn’t believe a word of it.
“Great, now that we all agree, you should tell everyone that it had nothing to do with me and only a result of some weird effect of linking to everyone.”
Both of them left and did as he asked. He didn’t rejoin the group though, instead he stayed by himself a while and just reflected on everything that had happened in such a short amount of time. He was happy that people were getting affinity, he just wished that it didn’t involve him.
“Can I ask you a question?” He had felt Eli tracking him down for a while so he wasn’t shocked when he spoke from behind him. He gave a nod and Eli came to stand next to him as he stared up at the now dark sky. “Do you think enjoy killing?”
The question threw him, he had expected a lot of other questions but asking him if he enjoyed killing was not even close to what he imagined. It was also a rather complex question. During that last fight he didn’t enjoy it at all, he loved a challenge and he enjoyed improving himself but he didn’t actually enjoy killing people.
“Eli, I like to fight, but I like a challenge more. Killing a monster that is stronger than me and puts up a fight is something I enjoy. Killing people? No, I don’t enjoy that. I do it because I have to sometimes, or at least that’s what I tell myself. But today? Fighting all those people? There was no joy in that.”
Eli processed that for a while before he spoke again. He was being serious as well, not the fun and light-hearted boy he knew. “I like fighting in dungeons. But I don’t like fighting other people. Not just humans either, but any other race. I will protect myself if I have to but fighting in a war like this isn’t for me.”
“Yeah, I understand that. Its not really for me either. The only reason we are doing this event is so that the war didn’t occur back on earth where people would actually die. But if I had a choice I would have done a treasure hunt for an event, or even some kind of competition. If I could I would probably leave now, there is now way anyone is going to beat me in points anymore so its pretty much done. But I don’t get a choice. You do though.” He gave Eli a small smile and put his hand on his shoulder and gave it the lightest squeeze.
“You wouldn’t be ashamed of me? Or my team? If we left?” Eli barely whispered the questions, scared of what his answer would be.
“No, I wouldn’t be ashamed. It takes strength to know when you are done and to be able to walk away. If you and your team want to leave, I say go for it.”
“We will think about it, but I think we will go.” Eli started to walk away before he stopped and turned back to him. His cheeky smile and laid-back attitude returning. “Everyone wanted to say thanks as well, for helping them get an affinity. You can probably tell but I got a weird one, frost.”
He knew he had a weird offshoot of water, but he didn’t expect frost. It was still a basic affinity, a level down from ice, but knowing that he had a frost affinity made him want to scream. Now he had to worry about weaker offshoots of his advanced affinity getting out there.
After Eli left he took a while to calm himself down. Still being so close to everyone put him on edge though so instead he decided to go for a fly through the night sky and perch up above. When he was truly alone he started to think about the next few months and a large part of him wanted to throw in the towel and leave Earth straight away, preferring to be around people like the Dragon and Elves where he wouldn’t have to hide his secrets or pretend to be so obtuse every time he did something beyond what a human was capable of.
The night passed quickly with him losing himself In his thoughts and plans. He made a decision quickly though. He wanted this event over as soon as possible, he was done with it. He couldn’t leave yet though, as a leader he had to be here till the end. So he still had weeks of traveling and fighting with no real benefit or he could go out and finish it now.