Chapter 73

While everyone is upstairs with the new parents I decide to get my arm fixed, there are many skilled healers in the village, they are in high demand after all. I visit one I have visited a couple times before and pay him to regenerate my arm, it costs around 100 jaers, a pretty standard procedure around here. He gives me a potion designed to boost the effects of healing magic and gets to work on my arm, it takes around ten minutes for the healer to finish, but it will still take a couple days for a full recovery, it would have been hours if I had managed to keep the old arm.

I blink back home, mostly because I don’t feel like walking, and sit on the couch in the living room. I pull out the first of two notebooks that Alfred kept as well as a couple soul stones, I begin to absorb the soul stones as I read the notebooks, with emotion focusing on absorbing the soul stones while logic reads. I start with the thing that is on my mind the most, his pseudo evolution. After not finding anything about it in the first notebook I put it away and pull out the second one, which has information about it on the first page.

Supposedly the first thing he noticed was the horns, which are now a full three inches long each, followed by his skin slowly starting to turn a darker shade of green, then he started to grow a tail. The tail is an odd one, instead of being controlled by muscles in the tail and around the base it is controlled by soul energy and can even be used to directly attack someone’s soul, and even siphon soul energy from them in a similar fashion as you would drink from a straw. He has also noted that his mind has undergone many changes in the absence of his soul, the most obvious of which being that it is bigger, a less obvious change is that it has become more complicated, more structured, in order to get more concrete information about that I would have to observe his mind directly.

I wasn’t able to read any further as Johanna interrupted me. She glances at my new arm before speaking.

“Your being summoned upstairs” Johanna

I put the notbook away, but continue to absorb soul stones, it has gotten easier to do, requiring less concentration, but it is going increasingly slowly.

“lets spar a little after this, ok?” Johanna

“sure, let’s go” jack

I stand up, startling hunter, who had fallen to sleep beside me, and follow Johanna upstairs. When I get to auntie’s room I find the new parents and their child, mary, the old man, and an Anchient Halfling I have never met before.

“there he is, Nathan’s god father” uncle

“that must mean you are my grandson, Jack, I have heard much about you” Anchient Halfling

“and yet I have never heard of you, I had assumed you were dead, of old age if not that or killed in a battle.” Jack

“why so guarded? Call me gramps. As for my long life I was lucky enough in my youth to obtain a number of life extending medicins, although I have no way of obtaining any more any time soon. That coupled with my cultivation has given me an unnaturally long life, although if I don’t get a breakthrough soon I will be dead before the decade is up.” Gramps

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“my father has been in secluded meditation for the majority of your life, only even comeing out to communicate with my sister and I.” old man

“when I heard my little girl had given me a grandchild I just had to come and see him.” Gramps

“does this mean—“ uncle

“no, I still think my little girl should have married a true warrior, not some apocathary like you.” Gramps

“I AM AN ALCHIMEST, AND ONE OF THE BEST DAMNED ALCHIMESTS IN THE WORLD!” Uncle

This makes everyone go silent, I have never heard my uncle yell before. Gramps ultimately breaks the silence.

“what’s the difrence?” gramps

Uncle is visably holding back his rage, up until Nathan touches his mind in an attempt to calm him down.

“anyway, thank you for coming out to see us dad, it means a lot to us.” Auntie

I chose this time to observe gramps’s soul, to my surprise it was rather powerful, even when you take into account his age. to further my surprise, he notices me observing his soul.

‘you know it’s rude to look at someone’s soul without telling them’ gramps

‘well, you’re the first to care, not that anyone ever notices’ jack

‘with how obvious you are, I’m truly surprised. So you’re a soul mage huh, definitely not a cultivator.’ Gramps

‘thank you, you have confirmed one of my suspicions.’ Jack

‘and what would that be?’ gramps

‘that cultivation has something to do with the soul’ jack

‘you are only partially correct, some methods of cultivation do use the soul as a medium to turn mana into qi, but it is far from necessary’ gramps

“Everyone out, it is time to give the poor girl some time to rest.” Mary

Johanna motions for me to follow her and five minutes later we are standing in an arena.

“This sparring match will be two out of three, first one to be knocked to the ground loses. Feel free to use any form of magic, even your soul magic.” Johanna

Without waiting for me to reply she rushes at me, ducking low. I attempt to jump to the side to avoid her, but she reacts too quickly. She jumps and grabs my shoulders with her hands before swinging around to kick me in the back of the knees, knocking me into the dirt, she recovers by pushing off the ground with her hands and landing flawlessly on her feet.

“first point too me” Johanna

With a smirk I stand up, she has definitely improved significantly, but I have also gotten stronger. I dust myself off and get ready again. Before she can react I blink behind her and swipe at her legs, she jumps up over my swipe and kicks me in the side of the face. I disengage by using wind magic to push us away from each other. She lands on her feet and starts rushing me again, this time I use earth magic to make her trip, and when she moves her hands to recover I tie them up with a bit of stone, effectevly making her fall over.

“second point to me” jack

She breaks the stone cuffs easily and jumps back up, brushing herself off. She grins and charges me again, this time dodgeing the rocks I put in her path to trip her up, so instead I decide to slow her reaction speed, this makes it almost too easy to trip her.

“Third point to me” jack

When I say this she stands up and glares at me accusingly.

“what, you did say I could use soul magic.” Jack

“I know, but it still feels like a cheap trick” Johanna

“doing something like that is a lot more difficult than you think it is, you have to concentrate on several things at once which can be very straining.” Jack

“whatever” Johanna

“I think that you should try cultivation, I know I’m useless at it but I think you could be good at it.” jack

“maybe” Johanna

“ask gramps for advice, I’m sure he’ll help you get started” jack

She seems to ponder it for a minute before speaking again.

“so you have mary’s present for tomorrow in the dungeon right? That goblin you brought in has been keeping us out of certain areas of it, says he is using them for ‘research’ or something, saying you gave him permission to use them” Johanna

“yeah, I have Alfred doing some experiments for me.” Jack

“well, whatever, I’ll see you latter” Johanna

“see you” jack

I head back home and go too my room, it is starting to get dark and I want to continue absorbing soul stone, I feel like something interesting will happen soon, maybe even tonight.

end chapter 73