[ Body Attribute Increased : Strength ]
(Current Value: 3 -> 9)
[ Body Attribute Increased : Durability ]
(Current Value: 13 -> 21)
[ Skill Refined : Shock Absorption (Lesser -> Middling) ]
Allows the entity to distribute the force of physical impacts and electrical discharges more evenly across their body. Decreases the conductivity of the entity’s skin and related secretions. Increases the maximum potential pressure threshold of the entity’s flesh, reducing the impact of blunt-force trauma. Affects scale with resilience. (2 SL)
[ Skill Refined : Adrenaline High (Middling -> Mighty) ]
Increases all body attributes in proportion with the amount of adrenaline currently in the entity’s bloodstream. Effect scales with the severity of the entity’s injuries, if they are wounded. Increases the effects of adrenaline on the entity, and the speed at which it is produced. (3 SL)
[ Skill Manifested : Creeping Shade (Mighty) ]
The entity’s summoned shadows are more difficult to penetrate. When used to attack, corporeal shadows will gain strength scaling with the entity’s poison aspect. If the entity possesses natural venom or poison, the effects are added to corporeal shadows used to attack. (3 SL)
[ Body Attribute Increased : Vigor ]
(Current Value: 10 -> 13)
The distinctive itch of notifications washed over him and then faded before he could tell what they were about. Faint warmth tickled Cain’s senses, and he slowly came back to himself. Wind could be heard rustling stalks of grass, and birds sang some distance away. He became aware of the cold air stinging his skin, and of a pair of hands pressed firmly against his chest. Oddly, the fingers ended in small claws, similar in shape to a dog’s. Did he know anyone with claws? The question was wiped from his mind as his awareness expanded, revealing the familiar form of Magira leaning over him, ears folded back. I didn’t notice she had claws…
“Cain? Are you awake?” Magira’s voice punctured the gentle sounds of nature, filled with worry.
Cain opened his eyes, and had to suppress a giggle at the sight of two fluffy ears barely poking into his view. “Yes, Magira. I’m awake now. Anything interesting happen while I was out?”
“No, nothing,” she sighed in relief, removing her hands and the mysterious warmth from his chest. “I’m frankly shocked you survived that though. A direct hit from an ogre would flatten most people. Not to mention… whatever you did.”
Cain did his best to hide his own shock at being alive. “So that was an ogre? There was another contract mentioning a sighting in the highlands…” Cain sat up and slapped his forehead, causing his bloody shirt to fall back over his chest. “Shit! I could’ve avoided this! I looked at that and knew it wasn’t a good idea for a first job, but — gah! I even re-read the contract for the lynx and didn’t make the connection that we’d be heading right towards where the ogre was spotted! God, I’m an idiot.”
Magira’s expression was torn between saying ‘it’s not your fault’ and ‘this was your fault?’
“See, you agree with me.”
“Well, no… yes? Sort of.” Magira shook her head. “It is on you for missing that, I guess, but… how could you have known the lynx was its pet, Cain?”
Pet…? The collar. Cain suddenly remembered the collar he’d seen on the lynx’s neck — a crude thing made of dried vine, but unmistakably a collar. “It kept a pet…”
“Yes…? I mean, it’s definitely an uncommon behavior, but ogres are known to have slightly more intelligence than the average beast.” Magira tilted her head at him.
“I killed the thing’s pet… of course it went for me…” The ogre had almost completely ignored Magira, fixating wholly upon Cain. He’d felt a little bad for killing the cat, but now he felt way worse about it.
Magira picked up on his mood, and immediately tried to reassure him. “Hey, seriously, there’s no need to feel bad about it. It was just a monster, Cain. They’re not people, you don’t need to beat yourself up for killing them.”
Cain almost argued, but shook the words from his head. “Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it anymore, so let’s talk about something else. Why am I not in excruciating pain right now? I know that impact broke at least… ten of my bones, maybe. Actually, it was definitely more than that.”
“I, uh… healed you.” Magira’s ears folded sideways, but not fully back against her head. “You were unconscious and couldn’t use your blood magic to do it, so… I healed you. I have the life aspect now.”
Cain latched onto the topic, letting his brain start to pick the subject apart. “I see. First, thank you. I would probably be dead without you here. Second, this puts you on a time limit. You’ll only have a few days before your mana cements itself, so you’ll need to start thinking about what other aspects you want, and what role you want to fulfill.”
Magira looked slightly startled by the sudden shift in his attitude, but went along with it. “My role? What do you mean?”
“Do you want to be a combatant, or non-combatant?” Cain mentally sifted through his knowledge of party composition from the few RPGs he’d played when he was on Earth. “Combat roles can be generally sorted into offensive, defensive, and supportive roles. Supportive roles include healers and what I think you call enchanters here. Their job is to make sure their allies can keep fighting, rather than partaking in the fight themselves.”
Magira nodded uncertainly. “What about defensive?”
“Defensive roles focus on weathering damage and manipulating their enemies’ focus. They’re not good at dealing lethal blows, but they can fight most enemies to a standstill so that someone else can focus on dealing damage.”
“Enemies like ogres?” Magira asked.
“Well… yes, if they get good enough. You can see why it’s not the most popular pick.”
Magira shuddered. “Yep. I’ll pass.”
“Fair. Last is offensive. There’s a lot of smaller categories within offense, but they all share the same general focus: hurting things. Whether it’s a sorcerer or a swordsman, offensive roles share the sole purpose of killing things as fast as possible.”
“Which do you think you are?” She asked him, tilting her head curiously.
“I would’ve said offensive before, but after having my bones shattered twice in one fight…” Cain shivered. “I probably count as an offense-defense hybrid. Most of my focus is on ending the fight as quickly as possible, but I can take a hit if I need to. Any idea what you want to be?”
Magira glanced behind him. “I’m not sure yet, really. Maybe let’s deal with the corpses first and then talk more on our way back.”
Cain blinked, spun around, and saw the face of a dead ogre staring at him. “Um… yeah. Alright.”
----------------------------------------
Magira sat by Cain near the mouth of the ditch, staring at the massive multicolored pyre eating away at the ogre’s corpse. In the knapsack at her side lay the front-left paw of the spiny lynx, the collar it had worn, and one of the ogre’s tusks, though it poked out a fair bit. It had taken some convincing to get Cain to help carve out the massive bone, though it didn’t seem to be squeamishness that held him back. He seemed to have a strange sympathy for the monsters, even though they’d come within a hair’s breadth of killing him. It was the same as he’d been after killing the adventurer that saved his life, although the strangest bit was that he seemed to have an easier time with that. He seems to be a decent person, but some of his morals just don’t make sense.
“It’s because pets are sacred,” he said in a husky voice. The sound was almost lost in the crackling of the blaze.
Magira turned to look at him, but said nothing. His tone was more emotional than she’d heard from him before.
“If you treat them right…” Cain paused, staring with hollow eyes at the pyre. “If you treat them right, a pet can be a best friend. If you treat them with love… they learn to love you back. They don’t plot against you like people. They don’t have ulterior motives. They just do what they’re taught. If you love them, they’ll love you back.”
Magira gazed back at the burning corpse. The lynx had been on top, but the fire consumed it quicker than the ogre.
“Killing someone’s pet is like killing a family member. When a pet dies, it’s an emotional blow that can absolutely wreck a person. The ogre, it… he didn’t care about you. Because you didn’t kill his pet. I did. He looked at me like he hated me more than anything. If he hated me that much… he had to have loved that lynx.” Cain paused again, and Magira saw the faintest trace of wetness around his eyes. “If monsters can love like that… what separates them from people?”
Magira opened her mouth to speak, but the argument died in her throat. That’s why he didn’t want to talk about it. She knew instinctively that the ogre was a monster, but she just couldn’t find the words to back it up. The ogre had ignored her. It had been fixated completely on Cain. If monsters can love, what separates them from people? An argument popped into her head — people are more intelligent. Then even that argument seemed to stand on shaky ground. Plenty of people were dumb. Some more than others. But it wasn’t their brain that made them people, it was their soul. Like Cain had told her — ‘you have a soul, I have a soul, and that’s all I need to know.’ That was why the treatment of demihumans was wrong in the first place! Humans and demihumans both had souls just the same, but humans treated demihumans as lessers simply because their bodies were ‘impure.’
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
Do monsters have souls?
The thought sent a chill down Magira’s spine. “It’s j-just…”
Cain turned his head to look directly at her. She couldn’t meet his gaze.
“It’s… just survival,” she said softly. The words felt hollow as they left her tongue.
“I know,” Cain replied. His voice sounded just as hollow as hers.
----------------------------------------
The pair walked silently east, back towards the Fellgrave. Despite saying they would talk about it on the way back, Magira couldn’t pull her thoughts from the spiny lynx and its owner long enough to keep up a conversation. The simple vine collar, easily the lightest item in the bag, was an aching weight on her shoulders. She mentally cursed Cain for a moment — cursed him for making her doubt such a fundamental fact of life. Monsters will kill people without hesitation. Most of an adventurer’s job is just killing monsters. Cain must be a shitty adventurer, feeling guilt over killing a monster. Especially one as dangerous as an ogre. Though, Magira couldn’t hold any real resentment towards him for long. She’d seen hunting dogs used by her tribe growing up, and his words fit with everything she’d seen of them. Nice people raised nice dogs, and mean people raised mean dogs. They just do what they’re taught. If you love them, they’ll love you back.
She tried to shake the thoughts from her head, but couldn’t quite manage. I need a distraction. Cain always seems interested when we’re talking about magic and things… maybe that’ll help?
“So, um… aspects.”
Cain slowly turned to look at her, before replying in a dull voice; “Aspects?”
“Yeah. You’ve only been on Erdau for a few days, and Earth doesn’t have magic, so… you probably don’t know much about them yet, right?”
“So this world’s named ‘Erdau…’” Cain trailed off, then came back to himself. “Sorry. You’re right, I don’t know much yet.”
“Do you want me to tell you what I know about them, then?”
“… Yeah, sure.”
“Okay, great. I’ll start with… life, I guess, since that’s the one I have now. Life is… basically just healing magic. That’s the only known use for it. The great thing about it, though, is that you can heal other people with it. You can’t do that with blood magic. People with a life aspect also tend to live longer and be healthier in general.”
Cain nodded, a little of the dejected look leaving his eyes. “Makes sense. What about blood?”
“Blood is pretty similar to life,” Magira answered. “It actually has more potent healing, and a lot of possible skills that aid a person’s recovery, but you can only use that part of it on yourself. Blood magic leaves a lot more scars, too. Life spells are good at removing those.”
“What else?”
“It can strengthen your body — it looked like you used that part earlier. People use it to move faster, hit harder, that sort of thing. A lot of battle-enchanters use blood magic to strengthen their allies. It also extends a person’s lifespan similar to how life does.” Magira trailed off for a moment, before thinking of something else. “Witch-doctors also use it with their medicines to change people’s bodies, somehow… I don’t know how that works. It’s mostly just a thing people use on themselves.”
“That sounds in line with what I’ve learned so far,” Cain replied. “The bit about witch-doctors is interesting. I had the option to pick that for my primary class.”
Magira blinked, and focused on Cain again. “Wait, when did you get a class?”
( Cain, SL: 25, [ Possessed ] )
Human (Modified), Male
“While I was unconscious,” he answered. “I guess I upgraded enough skills in that fight to put myself past the threshold. I’ll sort through what exactly I got later.”
“You… didn’t even wait to pick a class? Wait, how did you pick one while you were knocked out?”
Cain gave her a puzzled look. “Well, it… didn’t let me leave until I picked one.”
Now Magira was puzzled. “Leave where, exactly?”
“The Domain of Order. It said it temporarily moved my soul there because…” he blinked. “… of endangering circumstances. Huh. I guess that means I was the exception, not the rule. While we’re on the topic, what do people usually do with their class selections? If they’re able to wait to pick like you said, when does it normally happen?”
“Well, most people wait to pick a class until they’re adults. It’s a lot rarer for someone under fifteen to have a class. There’s no way to change your choice later, so it’s even commonplace for someone to wait until they reach level sixty and get to pick a secondary class at the same time.”
“Sorry, wait a second… did you say ‘under fifteen?’ Is reaching fifteen years old considered adulthood here?”
“Of course,” Magira replied. “Is it different on Earth?”
“Fucking medieval shithole,” Cain muttered.
Magira flinched. “S-sorry, did I say something wrong?”
Cain flinched as well, then put up his hands in a placating gesture. “No, sorry. I’m mad at the world for being as messed up as it is, not at anything you said. Don’t worry about it. Let’s get back to talking about aspects, I still have questions about those.”
“Alright, if you’re sure… what did you want to ask about?”
“I’d like to hear more about aspects like poison and water. I also heard about one called wind during my class selection.”
“Okay, sure.” It was weird talking to someone who knew as much about magic as a toddler, but Cain’s curiosity was making it easier for Magira to engage herself. “Poison, despite the name, is used for way more than just poisons. Every alchemist worth their salt has it as one of their aspects. Using it on certain ingredients lets them mix powerful medicines and antidotes, or even create wards against certain diseases.”
“Huh,” said Cain. “I didn’t expect there to be vaccination here. Continue.”
There was another word Magira didn’t recognize; that was a little frustrating. “Water is pretty simple, but pretty common because of its utility. People with the water aspect can create water and ice. My dad told me there are even desert cities that use water runes to keep the entire city cool year-round.”
Cain nodded, seeming more present.
“Wind is another common aspect. Warriors can use it to move faster and hit harder, musicians use it to make their voices carry farther, and archers can use it to direct their arrows mid-flight. I’m not quite sure why it’s able to do all that, but it’s very useful.”
“It’s because ‘wind’ is just kinetic energy,” said Cain, tapping his chin. “Wind is created by moving air particles, and movement is kinetic energy. Moving faster and hitting harder are just a question of force. Adding more energy makes more force, easy. As for music, sound waves are just patterns of movement in air particles. Adding more energy to those patterns can make a sound louder, or make it travel farther. And bending arrow flight paths is just textbook telekinesis.”
“I’m… not sure I understand, but I’m glad you seem to.” Magira didn’t like not knowing what Cain was talking about.
“Right, sorry. I can see why wind is such a popular aspect, the number of potential uses for it is staggering. Now, do you have any questions for me?”
“… What?”
“Well, apart from my motives, you haven’t really asked me much. Since there’s so many things I have to ask you, I just figured it would only be fair if I let you ask me some questions of your own.”
Magira pondered that. What do I want to know about him? All she really knew so far was that he was from Earth, and that he was against slavery. She had a basic idea of what his beliefs were, but didn’t actually know much about him. There was a whole slew of things to ask about; where did he grow up? What was his family like? What was life like on Earth? Why did he talk like a scholar half the time only to abruptly curse like a sailor? How was he able to adapt to an entirely different world so quickly? How did he die? He looked at her expectantly. She had a few too many questions to ask at once, so she settled on just one for now.
“What was your family like?”
A bitter expression flashed across his face. “They were good, at first. My parents were what I’d consider average, middle-class citizens for where we lived. We weren’t rich, but we weren’t poor either. We had a decent house that was home to me, my little sister, and our parents. Between our schooling and our parents’ work, we didn’t get to spend as much time with our parents as some kids might, but things were alright.”
Magira spent a moment unsure of whether she should pry further, but Cain resumed on his own.
“Then our parents got divorced. I don’t know if divorce is a common or accepted practice here, I know it was taboo on Earth for a long time, but it happened to my family. When my mother cheated on my father, he filled out the paperwork for divorce and started the legal process to dissolve their marriage. They couldn’t agree on who would take custody of Lily and me, so they went to civil court.” He sighed, and took a breath. “For over a month, we could hear them screaming at each other almost constantly, just casting blame on each other and hurling insults. In the end, Lily went to live with my father, and I went to live with my mother. I wound up resenting them both for it. They never once considered how we felt about what was happening. They just selfishly decided for us. That’s why I don’t use my family name anymore. Family have a responsibility to care for each other, and they didn’t care about us.”
“Oh…” Magira hadn’t heard of ‘divorce’ before, but she knew what it was like to listen to her parents arguing. This sounded like an even worse version of that. “Did you and your sister… keep in touch? I know you wouldn’t have had telepathy runes, but… were you able to write letters or something? Did you get to see each other again?”
“Sort of,” Cain smiled ruefully. “We were able to keep in touch for a while, and even got to visit each other, but as I said, our parents were selfish. Eventually, we stopped being able to visit, and later they even stopped us from communicating with each other. After that, I never heard from Lily again.”
“That… sounds awful.” The worst part of slavery for Magira had been being taken away from her family.
“It was. Any more questions?”
“Um..” Magira felt bad about asking more, but still couldn’t shake her curiosity, so she decided to try a hopefully harmless question. “You mentioned your schooling… what kind of school did you go to? You said you weren’t rich, but usually only the wealthy can afford an education. Also, if your world didn’t have magic, why did you need to go to school from a young age?”
Cain picked up on the new topic with an eagerness similar to what he approached magic with. “School is a lot more available to the masses on Earth. In fact, a lot of places have laws requiring you to send your kids to school, otherwise it’s considered negligence and your child can be taken away from you. There are elementary schools for little kids, middle schools for slightly bigger kids, and high school for adolescents. Some other countries had different names for them, but it was mostly the same system.”
“Okay, but… why?”
“You know how there have been a couple times I’ve said something that makes absolutely no sense to you? Whether it’s a word or a phrase, just something that sounded completely foreign.”
“Yes,” she replied flatly.
Cain was unfazed. “A lot of that is because of education. We don’t have magic, so we developed technologies that didn’t use any. Entire cities were made of steel, concrete, and glass, and some buildings had over a hundred stories. We replaced a lot of common labor with machines that would complete simple tasks automatically as long as they had fuel.” Cain paused to smirk at Magira’s expression. She could tell her eyebrows had nearly left her head. “The thing is, that tech is complicated. If we didn’t start learning the basics from a young age, new generations wouldn’t be able to replicate or improve upon old technologies, and a lot of different aspects of our society would start collapsing because there was nobody qualified to fill necessary jobs. In order to maintain the standard of living, education was a necessity, and filled the void that magic left. My education would be considered relatively basic on Earth; I got the bare minimum schooling required by law. But because necessity drove the standard of education so high on Earth, even what I consider a ‘basic’ education would probably let me pass for a scholar in some places here.”
“You know, your world is—” Cain’s eyes broke from hers, darting to the road ahead of them. When Magira followed his gaze, she saw the western gate of Fellgrave drawing steadily closer. The sunlight had turned orange while she wasn’t paying attention.
“Thanks for the distraction,” he said. “After we turn in our contract, and report on the ogre, I’ll probably want to practice with some magic in our room for a bit. If you want, I’ll probably still be able to talk while I’m doing that.”
Magira hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “If it’s okay, I’d like to talk with you more. Learning more about Earth interests me, and learning about you is kind of necessary.”
Cain smiled. “It’s a deal, then.”