Current Story – Jillesha

Character – Ryworn

Role – Major

Stage Directions (Day 12) –

Train with Wellath

I worried for the poor pets who were suffering for my sake.

Around four days ago, Wellath had told me that my block had been perfect. And then, he had given me the assignment of disarming him with one strike. That happened in the next two days. After that, he had asked me to use the two exact moves as much as possible, and then started sparring with me. I didn’t understand how it all worked, but I could feel myself steadily getting better, so I went along with whatever he wanted me to do. According to him, it wouldn’t be long before I would be ready to go on the hunt with Hess and Typhen. I really hoped he was right.

Once I was done breaking my arms in the morning, I went to sleep in the evening. At dinner time, some random person would come and give me my food. I still hadn’t become confident enough to go to the main table, and I was way too tired most of the time anyways. After eating dinner, I kept the plate outside and went back to sleep. Then, I was woken up again at two o’clock, every night, without fail, by Sylvia. She went with me to Kaisel’s tent and the two of us practiced magic, which made my hands pain even more.

Magic training usually consisted of practicing manipulating the element in its neutral form. Every single time, I was able to harness it visually, which impressed the other two very much. Then, they asked me to make certain shapes and move it around in particular manners. The main idea behind the neutral magic was to act like a multi-purpose material. It had little to no attack value in almost all situations, and only used a base for better types of magic when in a fight. To that effect, Kaisel and Sylvia threw rocks and other such things at me and asked me to trap them using the magic. I was able to do it almost every single time. It wasn’t that difficult to manipulate the magical element.

I had asked Kaisel about when I would be able to practice a proper, specialized type of magic. Here’s how that had gone –

“You will learn all of them eventually.” Kaisel replied, “For now, you need to master this. You’ll understand why when we get to the other parts, so stick with it. Give it another few days and I’ll start with the specialized stuff.”

That had been three days ago. Now, I was walking with Sylvia to his tent once more. She did not seem to be in a particularly cheerful mood today, so I let her be. It was better not to ruffle any more feathers. Typhen still hadn’t found out about that day, and I was hoping that he never would. Although, at this point, it would be weird for him to get angry at me. Who held a grudge for something that happened almost ten days ago?

We got to the tent, and Kaisel was drinking tea as usual. He nodded towards me with a smile, and I nodded back.

Sylvia was already looking up at the sky, so I decided to do the same. I had gotten a hang of the position of the stars at two a.m. So, when they were just a little bit ahead of where they had been yesterday, it was probably safe to talk. That’s the logic that the people here used. I was slowly learning.

The particular constellation that her and I seemed to look at was one that I had never seen before. It looked like a very fat crocodile, if connected properly. I don’t think those existed in this world, because Sylvia had seemed a bit confused when I called it that. But even then, she didn’t ask me what crocodiles were. I guess they weren’t as interesting as the stars themselves. That was fine, because I had always preferred alligators anyways.

The fat crocodile was a little further than where it had been yesterday. Just to be a bit safe, we waited for a little more displacement. Once that was done, Sylvia called out to Kaisel and he got out of the tent with some gloves, which I was given to wear.

“When are we going to start with the styles?” I asked. The idea of not having a sword fighting style had made me fairly sad, so I was looking forward to this a bit more than normal.

Sylvia looked at me with crooked eyes, but Kaisel smiled like usual and answered, “How about today?”

I laughed and got ready.

“Well, there are nine types. Red is fire. Blue is water. Green is nature. Yellow is healing. Grey is steel. Purple is the atmosphere and White is weapon summoning.”

Those were just seven.

“As you might have obviously noticed, I just took seven names. That’s because the other two stem from them. There’s clear magic, which is what happens when you’ve mastered a particular specialization to the point where you can use a percentage of the element to mask the color of it. Then there’s black. That is when you merge two or more types together to achieve a combined result. But because you’re forcing the element to convert into multiple types, it becomes black.”

“So, black is the strongest type?”

“No. It’s one of the weakest.” Kaisel corrected me, “The strongest would be Green or Purple, but they also take the longest time to learn and understand. Black is weak because you are merging two or more types, which causes both of their individual powers to be halved. There’s no point in making flying steel blades covered with fire if the steel will just bend on hit, and the fire will do nothing more than tickle.”

He looked back at Sylvia with a smile. She scoffed and turned away. She had tried that, hadn’t she?

“Which one should I learn?” I asked.

“That’s your choice.” He said, “You could start with the ones which are easiest, like weapon summoning or water. The former is easy because you’re just bringing the neutral form into a certain shape, and making the edges sharper. There’s no real transformation. As for water, it just works like that. The element seems to have very little resistance when being converted to it.”

Maybe it had the right properties for it, I thought.

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“Which ones are you really good at?”

He smiled, “I told you before, I believe. But to repeat myself, I hate using aggressive magic, so I worked really hard on healing. Otherwise, I do know all of the types. My second strongest is water, and third would be the atmosphere. Both can be used for healing in specific contexts, after all.”

Interesting.

“Let’s go with water, then. I’d really like to get to know what conversion feels like.”

“You’ll master that in a matter of days. Keep a second one ready in your mind.” Kaisel said as he got into position.

“Alright, then. How about nature after that?”

If it turned out to be what I expected, it would be very fun.

“It’s nice to dream big.” His hand moved in a circle, and left behind a trail of water. It kept floating even after the let go of the structure he had created. Then, his hand turned red and he let a small flame travel under the circle of water he had created. It caused it to change forms into vapor and fly into the air. Very cool trick.

“How about trying to do that?” He asked.

“But you used fire.”

“I guess you’ll need to learn it, then. We have around nineteen minutes left today. Paired up with around twenty minutes each for the next four days, I expect that the hundred minutes will be enough for you to perform it.”

Great. More timed goals to satisfy certain requirements in training was exactly what I needed. However, though, I accepted it. At least they were kind enough to waste their own time to teach me. I needed to respect that.

I shook my head to bring myself back to my senses and raised one of my hands. As expected, Kaisel was not going to tell me how to do it. In fact, he had already pulled his chair out of the tent and was sitting down on it while looking at me. Inside the tent, Sylvia seemed to be reading a book while occasionally looking up at me to check on the progress. When our eyes met, she gave me a thumbs up before turning her head back into the book once more.

With my hands raised, I closed my eyes and started to think about what I wanted to do. The neutral element needed to be converted to water. I moved my hand just a little bit, and I could feel it gathering on my hand, like always, but it was still orange. I strained my eyes even more, and tried to concentrate all my thought into the magic. It needed to transform.

Then, something fell on my head. A small drop. I wiped it off with my other hand and opened my eyes to look at it. It was water. My head shot up to look at the other hand, and I managed to catch the blue glow as it disappeared. I had done it just now. That was how simple it was. Just imagining it. I laughed, and Kaisel seemed pleased. Sylvia looked up from her book with a bit of shock, but then made a face and started reading it again.

I closed my eyes, and started again.

Six days after that, I was sitting with Wellath.

The last night, I had managed to do the exact same move as Kaisel, and he had been very happy. I was supposed to practice both water and fire magic for the next few days, and then he would allow me to start with nature. That would apparently take an average mage a couple of years to understand and use, so it would probably be around a year for me. This was with keeping in mind the proportion of how long it took people to learn water magic compared to how fast I had learned it. That’s how difficult nature and atmosphere magic was supposed to be.

Wellath had just given me permission to go on the hunt with Typhen and Hess the next day if I wanted to. Right now, before our daily practice began, we were waiting for the blacksmith to bring my weapon. It had been finished last evening, and now Wellath wanted me to use it for practice today to see how well I would be able to adapt to the change. According to him, the change should be negligible due to the talent of the blacksmith. I had heard a lot of good things about this blacksmith, so I wished I could see him once, whoever it was.

I looked at my teacher. He looked quite pleased. He had been happy with my progress, according to what I had seen. Over time, he had also gotten much more pleasant when I came to practice in the mornings. Over the last many days, however, I hadn’t really gotten very close to him. I barely knew who he was other than his name. Maybe I could go and talk to him during dinner today. I could finally step out of my tent for once and meet other people too. I wonder what kind of reputation I had built up till now. Some people used to stare at me when I walked by, so maybe not a very good one.

A thin, weird looking man came running by with a large parcel in his hand. He bent down and gave it to Wellath, before standing up and running back towards the tents. Looks like he was just the delivery man.

“Who was that?”

“That’s the blacksmith.” Wellath said with a smile, as he removed all the cloth around the sword.

Right. That was the blacksmith. This place was more like a comedy than a domain of suffering. But knowing what had come before, it was probably safe to assume that it wouldn’t last for very long. After all, God would eventually get tired of the fact that we weren’t being put through death every single second.

Wellath finally unwrapped the entire sword and threw the cloth to the ground. It seemed very short in his hand, but was shining majestically in the sun. He held it in both of his hands and pushed his hands towards me rather ceremoniously. I smiled and picked the sword up.

It was surprisingly easy to swing around. He had been right about the blacksmith. The difference was unnoticeable. I might as well have been using the same wooden sword. I wasn’t sure what my face looked like right then, but I felt like I was smiling like a madman. It felt really nice to hold a sword that had an actual edge, knowing how much I had disappointed everyone earlier.

I turned to Wellath, ready to start the training. He was crying. I felt a bit awkward. It made sense for him to cry, since I had been a pretty average student, and he probably felt nice seeing me happy with the sword.

“Um, thanks!” I managed to say. He nodded his head and wiped his tears.

I didn’t feel like crying, which seemed pretty normal to me at this point. Maybe if Kaisel had presented me with some special kind of gloves that he only gave to accomplished students, I would cry. That’s what I felt like, at least. But this did not affect me any more than just being glad about not being useless anymore. For now, though, I pushed those thoughts aside and got ready to practice.

In the end, I slept once more, and did not go to meet Wellath during dinner. Later during the night, I went and practiced water and fire magic with Kaisel and Sylvia.

The next day, I met Wellath, and we practiced once more. He was more joyful than he had ever been. I laughed with him when I made small mistakes, and we had an overall good time during practice that day. Even then, I got to know nothing about him. When I was leaving for my tent, he told me that the hunt would take place tomorrow, and that Typhen and Hess had been informed about the same. He would be coming with us too. I thanked him and headed back to my tent.

Later in the night, I practiced magic once more, and went back to sleep, eager for the hunt.

Current Story – Jillesha

Character – Ryworn

Role – Major

Stage Directions (Day 20) –

Step up after Wellath’s death

I should have known.

I had been way too caught up having fun with Kaisel and Sylvia. I hadn’t even paid any attention to him. But then, why was this supposed to cause me problems?

I thought, and thought, still lying in bed after me eyes opened.

Oh, right.

I would probably have no reaction at all. That was the point. Even now, I was thinking about it analytically. That’s what God wanted. All of the mercenaries would see me have no reaction to this man’s death, and dismiss me as some heartless crook who didn’t have any respect for the one who taught him everything. And even if I did feel bad about it, nothing would show on my face.

My body felt a bit heavy due to all the training, but I pushed myself up and looked at the sword on my table. I held it for a while before keeping it down.

Then, I got ready for the hunt, gathered all my materials, and got out of the tent to meet the other three near the training grounds.

Typhen, Hess and Wellath all looked very happy to see me. Wellath in particular patted my back and told me to not let him down in front of Hess. I managed to give him a smile, and my reassurance.

As we walked away into the forest, the only thing on my mind was how I was going to get out of this. How I would make the others believe that this was something that I had been told, and there was nothing I could do about me not being able to feel. I could tell them during the unmonitored time. Yes, that would be nice. Making plans, the hunt started.