Stanis found himself between a rock and a hard place. She had made a u-turn in her attitude and clearly wanted something from him, but on the other hand she was a follower of Zelgard. After a very awkward pause between the two, Stanis succumbed to the toothy smile and shook her hand, "Stanis".
She seemed fine with his short answer as a wave of relief rolled across her face. The following minutes were filled with her making up small talk and Stanis mindlessly nodding while trying focus on his work, until he realised her distraction was far too much.
"Cut to the chase, what do you want?" asked Stanis. She seemed shocked but quickly recovered.
"A direct one, eh?" said she, raising a provocative eyebrow as she did so. The more time he spent with her, the more annoying Stanis found her… Sensing the drop in temperature, she stopped the jokes and carried on.
"I've been trying to work out how mana works all this time. I've had a little success" said she while pointing at a smaller pile filled with sturdy looking weapons, "But I just can't break the final door. You clearly know what you're doing and I've got to hand a good blade to a big-wig in this Village called Caleb within 2 days. I won't ask you to make it for me but can you at least give me a tip?" she asked, her tone pleading.
Stanis thought about this; she hadn't pushed her luck by asking him to make the weapon for her and seemed genuine enough about her request. Stanis sighed while nodding his head, lost for words at her joyous expression. He didn't know the true difficulty of controlling mana, after all, Yils had taught him the techniques before he had learnt their uses. However, he could take a wild guess at the difficulty as he saw the joy on Rikkey's face, and thus he decided to hold back on what he was going to say. He wasn't just going to cheaply throw around the things he had learnt from Yils.
"Circulate your mana around your body" commanded Stanis.
Her joy turned to confusion as she heard this. "Circulate? You mean like move it through my body? What's the point of that?"
He ignored her questions and insisted, forcing her to eventually do it. Stanis then gripped her arms, causing her to break the circulation much to his irritation. Once she had restarted circulating, Stanis closed his eyes and focused on her body.
He could sense the mana moving through her body, the pseudo-liquid moving at a snail's pace compared to his. He warned her not to stop before injecting some of his own mana into her body. He could hear her jolt but she managed to remain in control, the mana still revolving. After having injected his own into her, he could sense her body with greater ease and forced his own mana into her streams.
Rikkey was now sweating bullets as she realised what kind of man she had been messing around with. The mana that Stanis had injected into her body was far more concentrated than her own, almost like wolves next to her sheep-like mana. And his quality wasn't even the most terrifying thing, rather when he had injected his mana, she had briefly sensed the truckloads of mana hidden within his body. She had acted rude to him at first since he had been the worst for wear person she had seen so far in this Village, using him to deplete some of her anger at Caleb, but boy had she dug her own grave by doing so…
Within seconds, Stanis had found several mistakes within her circulation. He usually circulated very precise and small steams, all the while training his body. She merely revolved the mana around her whole body, very simple but somehow still filled with a multitude of mistakes. Stanis injected more mana into her streams and used his mana to seal up the areas she was going wrong in. His mana acted as sheepdogs, directing hers away from mistakes and onto the right pathways. This sudden change clearly brought about difficulties as he could hear Rikkey whimpering and struggling as he did so, but he had an iron grip and thus forced her to stay in place.
It was at this time that a shout came from just outside the forge.
"AI. WHAT ARE YER DOING TO MY GIRL, BASSTARD?"
Stanis was about to ignore this rude interruption until he noticed Rikkey had stopped her circulation and was now struggling to get out of his grasp. He let go of her, turning around as he did so to face the rude man.
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The man was tall and lanky, a greying beard and small wrinkles giving proof of his age. He was wearing leather armour and looked furious at the moment, but the most striking thing was the smell coming off the man. He smelled very strongly of leather… Rikkey had already ran towards the man and was now trying to placate him, her back once again drenched as she feared what would happen otherwise.
"KEVIN, SHUT UP OR YOU AIN'T GETTING ANY OF ME TONIGHT!"
Faced with the loss of company in his bed, Kevin immediately stopped, his face distraught as he imagined what tonight would be like.
"Alright luv, but yous was struggling in this hobo's arms. You gotta at least give me an explanation." Said Kevin, although that only seemed to anger Rikkey even more.
Stanis felt a bit hurt by Kevin's comment and looked down at his clothes. He didn't really look like a hobo, did he? The answer was quick and harsh, Stanis's gob dropping as the fact that he was still wearing Zelgard's clothes dawned on him. He had worn them for so long that he had forgotten how dulled and ripped they were. Out of the corner of his eyes, he caught long strands of hair by his chin. He rubbed his jaw, only to be further saddened by the rough texture of his dirty, messy beard.
He was brought back from depression as he realised Kevin was actually standing in front of him, rubbing his hands in an oily way as he spoke.
"Sorry about that ser, thought you were hurting my girl and that. You know, she would run from me to another man if I left her for even an hour." After getting a good old whack across his head, Kevin carried on. "Could you carry on helping my girl, she really cares about the work. Real sorry ‘bout interrupting you."
"That's fine" responded Stanis, gesturing a gleeful Rikkey forwards as he restarted his work. Most of her channels were cleared after a few minutes had passed and he let her go. Dimples were visible through her soot-covered face as she tried her best to not break out into raucous laughter in front of him. Having already thoroughly confused Stanis, she then rushed back to work, zealously hammering away.
Stanis took a step back and sat near the corner of the forge where Kevin was drinking. He offered Stanis a bottle and the two began talking.
It turned out that Kevin worked in the tannery next to the forge. Apparently, he wasn't from here but had just one day woken up to find their Village in a new place.
In shock and worry, the leader of their Village, Drak, had asked several people to scout out their new surroundings. He hadn't been pleased with the news that a large Village was but a few minutes away, even worse being the fact that this Village seemed to have many more people than their own.
That night, the Riverbeat Village had held a meeting and the conclusion was that they would try and join this Village if possible. Humans had hardened up ever since the apocalypse but most were still against random slaughterings of other Humans for power, and thus most of the Riverbeat Village was fine with joining the other Village if they agreed to be fair.
Meetings between the Villages had taken place and things had gone fine. Apparently, Drak and Alyona had worked out a way for the system to combine the two villages, the new larger Village called Yora village. Kevin was especially glad of his singular wit that had allowed him to turn around Riverbeat's decision from fighting to an alliance as he recounted how he had single-handedly convinced everyone. Stanis trusted the alcohol more than him but was also far too wise to stop a man from singing praises to himself.
It seemed their decision had been right though, as Kevin then talked of how shocked he had been when he had come over to the new Yora village. The strongest from Riverbeat were quickly overshadowed by the monsters from Yona; the current ranking in Yora being Caleb, Orena, Xin, David and Sil.
Stanis was pleasantly surprised as he realised Orena was still alive, alongside Caleb and David who he vaguely remembered as people from the tutorial. Kevin then talked about how strong monster camps had emerged all around Yora, although there was a good part which was that they seemed to be against each other as well as the Humans.
He then drunkenly talked off how he was annoyed none of the others were helping him or Rikkey with their work, and how he was sure that the two of them would become the most famous and requested in the Village in little time. His inner dreams now shared, he strangely looked at Stanis and talked off how he had thought Stanis was a straggler at first, suggesting that he came to Kevin's tannery to get some fresh armour when he had the time.
Stanis slightly flushed at this due to the alcohol, suddenly reminiscing of times he had at the top of the mountain. Tears weren't far off and Kevin very quickly found himself having to deal with a crying drunkard. After a bit of talking, he managed to get the now-giggling Stanis up from the ground and asked where his bed was. Stanis, after many tries, managed to say that he wanted to go to the Classer's Hall. Kevin whacked him across the head, claiming this was why Stanis was a straggler, since his judgement was so bad that he would drink this much of strengthened alcohol with no care of repercussions. Nevertheless, Kevin, who was just as drunk, was more than happy to entertain a drunkard and the two of them began stumbling away.