Chapter 65: Testing skills

I didn’t start like this. My soul wasn’t blackened from the beginning. Your hatred did this. The world, shaped to suit your ideals, shaped me as well.

You. Did. This. To. Me.

And now…now I’ll break you all. Let the tyranny end.

Proclamation to the Greater races by Zierann (?) before destroying the Capital city Izekaliis.

***

I lean back on the bench in the middle of Zillindial’s garden; an island in an ocean of green. All around, the flowers jostle against each other for more space as they compete in their small war for dominance.

One, a bulbous flower that seems to perpetually droop down, the icy-blue petals bleeding out of its centre like tears, is my favourite. But something has changed it. The vibrant colours painted on the petals have dimmed as if a shadow hangs over them, and the leaves sport holes as if snails or caterpillars took a bite out of them.

Looking around, the new changes aren’t exclusive to that particular bloom. Where everything seemed polished to a shine, all is now tarnished. The brilliant yellow of dandelions and sunflowers has been touched by an ashen grey. The oranges of sunset have fallen away into teary twilight. And the royal purple of the flowers is worn out, the silken petals faded and threadbare.

Only the crimson blooms remain unmarred, revelling in blood and power that was torn from an unfortunate human soldier.

Corpse Flower is the skill's name. I don’t have the description but seeing it used is enough to deduct the skill’s nature. Zillindial was a forest dweller who only focused on bloom and the very best of his flowers. Now, he has decided to throw death into the mix, opting to pick something that only grows on the life it takes from others.

Even now, when I look at the bear, his skin is grey and weathered like slate beneath his fur. The skill took not just resources and pieces of his garden, but something inherent in the bear as well.

“So,” I say. As much as I’d like the bear to throw the skill away immediately, it isn’t the right time. Not yet. “You can help me with Scent of Bloom?”

Zillindial nods with a crick in his neck, the movement robotic and stiff. “Yes, I think you are using the skill wrong. Well, not wrong but on the wrong thing. Tell me, on what have you used it on?” Zillindial asks while petting a flower bush right next to the bench as if it is a cat.

I ignore the bear’s antics, favouring to count how much damage a single use of that skill caused him while I answer, “My bindweed, Sairal’s tree and moss, oh and your flowers. There isn’t much more to test it on.”

He smiles impishly, “That explains it. The grass in the outskirts, you see, rarely registers to these kinds of skills. I don’t know why but you haven’t likely gained any levels in the skill since the grass doesn’t count. The same holds for most of the plants out here.”

The grass doesn’t count? For a second I think that the System has decided on some weird minutiae or something else I can’t comprehend. As far as I know, grass is considered a plant by…everyone. It has leaves and everything.

But it would explain my progress with the skill. The scent, not noticeable, didn’t have a target for me to work on. “And my bindweed?” I ask growing confused.

Zillindial shrugs, “What is the rarity of your bindweed skills?”

“Rare. Why?” I ask the bear as he stops petting his favourite bush.

“You likely don’t know this since all the skills you have are quite strong, but low-rarity skills are far more limited, meaning that since your bindweed is the production of a skill, Scent of Bloom doesn’t like to layer onto it.”

I fold my arms over each other, “That seems strange.”

The bear sighs, “See it as a tall tree shadowing the forest around it. How can a flower in the shade compete for sunlight?”

It isn’t an answer exactly. At least not one that is easy to understand. In the past Sairal told me that he sees skills as laws, bendable yet unbreakable. For him each skill lets him exercise rule on a particular concept the world contains. So, does Zillindial see his skills as vegetation?

“I still don’t understand it,” I say. “Weak it might be, but why shouldn’t it work on my bindweed walls or the grass? Skills can layer on top of each other in multiple ways. I’ve done it before.”

He huffs in annoyance. “Hm, maybe I am wrong. It can always be something else that makes it unable to work on your bindweed skills. I might not know the problem but I do know the answer.”

I follow his gaze around the garden, “Aren’t your flowers also products of a skill? One that is higher than uncommon rarity?”

“Yes,” the bear admits. “Luckily, not everything here is made by me. The mushroom guardians found seedlings from my previous garden in my fur when they combed it.” He pushes himself off the bench and onto his legs, hissing in pain as several of his joints pop.

He walks to one of the few bare spots amongst the greenery. Somehow, with the jungle of flowers around us, they do not dare to approach this single spot of bare ground.

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“I planted them but they do not want to sprout, likely needing some extra help. It’s a perfect opportunity to train that skill of yours,” he says as the flowers make way and he sits on the ground. I’m reminded that this is one of the few things he likely has left from his time before the Bastion.

He puts his paw gently on the bare patch of ground, “My skills are not enough to give them a second life. Yours’s might be.”

“Of course,” I say and kneel next to him, careful to avoid something that looks like a venus flytrap the [Green Bear] has been growing for the Cave crawlers.

I press down on the skill in my mind and feel it snatch onto the buried seedlings, finally turning on after what feels like aeons. If I get this to the level cap, the first thing I’ll upgrade is that it’ll work with my bindweed. Honestly, why get a skill that doesn’t play nice with other skills?

Even if the system is strange at times, I can’t believe that it hands out skills that are simply incompatible with higher-ranked skills. Though, that seems strange. It has always been fair in some measure of the word. Risk comes with reward and all that.

What if, according to Sairal’s analogy, it doesn’t work because the laws interfere with each other? It does match up with what Zillindial says about sunlight. Something is prohibiting Scent of Bloom from working. There has to be something there, and not just skill rarity.

My focus leaves the buried seeds and I turn inwards. The things I’ve tested on have mostly been skills from other people and me. Except for the grass, yet what if that’s an outlier? Or even stranger, is the grass someone’s skill?

All of these skills work on energy, be it Stamina, Health or even Mana. And what if that energy conflicts? Not just because of skill rarity or the construct themselves but because it comes from someone else?

That might explain it and does align with what Zillindial said. However, that leaves the question of why it doesn’t seem to think that any of my bindweed is a valid target. And perhaps this too, can be somewhat explained by the bear’s analogy about trees and shade. If my Bindweed is made by a Rare skill, wouldn’t it be more difficult for something of Uncommon rarity to affect it?

It leaves me with more questions regarding skill constructs and what they exactly do. Surely, they do not only shape the Resource but do something more with it, explaining how rarities affect how much strength can be put out.

I stuff the questions away to ask the local dryad later when he has finished playing around with highly explosive spores and focus back on the seedlings. Through the skill, I can sense them under the ground. Their cores slowly shifting while the roots spread out ever so slowly.

Getting the levels to upgrade this skill will take a long time. I sit down on the ground, content to look at the flower jungle around me. Even in this far-off corner, there are dozens of his artworks to see.

I look at the Joys of spring, Zillindial’s favourite flowers, and they too are less. As if a bleakness washed over them, a crack in a smile or the tiniest blemish on the piece of art.

The bear catches my gaze and freezes up. “Zillidnial,” I say finally letting the words I’ve been holding back the entire day pour out of me. “That new skill of yours. What was its name again?”

The forest dweller avoids my eyes and looks away, “Corpse Flower. I got it after I killed enough Cave crawlers.”

The lines of his posture are rigid as if he’s fearing a reprimand. His hands clench into fists on his side and the fur on his body poofs out, making the tiny bear seem slightly larger. “You never killed anything before this, did you?”

He stays still like a statue until the seedlings gain enough confidence to rise out of the dirt. “No,” he finally says. “I haven’t killed a single thing before the war started.”

And that is how he unlocked it. The System saw fit to reward the bear for a shift in mindset with a skill that shows the depths of his pain. How colour faded, the garden eaten and gone. His friends dead and war clouding his mind.

I should’ve never taken him beyond the walls.

I clear my throat somehow drawing a flicker of his eyes onto mine. “Don’t use it again.”

Zillindial lets out a low growl from the back of his throat. The flowers around us start to vibrate with his emotions, “Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Sorry. I won’t budge on this,” My throat closes as I force the words through. I can’t waver on this. I will not stand by while he hurts himself to hurt others in turn. “If you use that skill again, I’ll make sure that you will be stuck behind the walls until the event timer reaches zero.”Heat and a semblance of shame crawl up my cheeks as I’m reminded that this is what I did to Sairal. How I made him worry, almost the same. I’m such a hypocrite.

The bear, already angry, begins to rage, “That isn’t fair! You don’t have the right!”

I force myself to look at him. “It isn’t,” I admit. “But outside you are in my domain. My space, my rules.”

“You- you are just afraid! You hesitated to kill those humans. If I wasn’t there, you couldn’t finish it! Because of what? That they can talk just like us? That they feel just like us! Because you saved one, you now want to save all of them?” the bear yells, spitle flying everywhere.

“Zillindial,” I say the words barely a whisper. “Don’t you see what you are giving up?”

He reels away as if I poked him with a burning rod. Without a word, the bear stands up and heads into his burrow, vanishing behind a curtain of moss and leaving me alone in his garden that has gone dead silent.

Chaco comes into existence right next to me, his arms folded over each other as the flowers on his skin that painted him into the background make way for grey scales. “Did you have to?” he asks in the most provoking tone I can imagine.

I ignore the Chameleon’s sudden appearance and watch the seedlings sprout out from the ground. “No. No, I didn’t,” I confess to the Chameleon. “He doesn’t deserve this. None of us do.

I look away from the budding seedlings and meet the Chameleon’s eyes, “Look around you, Chaco, and tell me what you are seeing.”

The Chameleon scans the garden with his reptilian eyes and lets his arms drop to his sides as he peers closer to a patch of dim and wilting flowers, “Yes, I see what you mean.” He turns back to me, leaning over my shoulder as he watches the seedling sprout.

“I’ve watched you in the past week. How you interact with the dryad, the guardians, Hornet and even Zerzia,” the Chameleon admits as if it isn't creepy to say that you’ve been stalking someone. “Green, you are a good forest dweller. Certainly not perfect but good enough. Take it from someone who isn’t, you can’t protect them from the choices they make. I couldn’t do it for Hornet and you can’t do it for him.”

“You know, when you aren’t trying to get on everyone’s bad side, you’re actually kind,” I say not wanting to hang onto those words. War already has taken enough.

Chaco wheezes out a laugh, “I choose who I spend my kindness on. I don’t have enough to waste it on people I dislike,” he says, already fading into the background. “But I will be kinder in this place.”

There isn’t even a rustle of wind as the Chameleon leaves the garden, or at least, I assume he did. I spend my time pushing the skill beyond the limits training both the amount of System-induced headaches and the skill as much as I can.