A small gust blew through the room. Papers fluttered around, and the dust that had gathered over the past few days was being moved around here and there. But the windows were closed. So was the door.
This wind didn't come from outside, or some kind of fan. It came from a canvas. On that canvas. A stone dragon was flying through the air, carefully flapping its wings, surrounded by softly shifting clouds. It was flying away from a city in the background.
And in front of this animated painting stood Silvia. Her hands and her clothes were covered in splotches of paint. She had even accidentally smudged it through her hair yesterday, and though she had washed most of it out, there was still a soft shade of blue shining through her already dyed pastel purple hair.
During the creation of this painting, Silvia had levelled up twice. She was completely locked in, letting the magic flow through her fingers into her brush, clinging onto the paint as it was placed onto the fabric. Somehow, though Silvia had painted things many times in the past, this was different.
Silvia had always loved painting, and sculpting, and kitting and sewing. Ever since she was a child, since her father had bought Silvia her first paint and brushes, she never put them down again. But somehow this was different. Her paintings in particular had always been an escape for her. A place that she used to dump her pain and sorrows; a way for her to process her emotions in a way that wasn't self-destructive.
She was praised for those paintings. By her parents, by her sister, by her teachers. Everyone said that they were amazing, and that she was some sort of prodigy. So, of course, Silvia ha them put out into the world. She had them put into galleries, and made quite a bit of money. All of that money was of course almost completely put into a savings account that she would be able to access in a few years. Technically she could have had it already, but she pushed the access date back until she would be done with university. It was just too much pressure.
Not that Silvia didn't use plenty of that money to buy herself some things. Fabrics, toys, games, literally whatever she wanted. She had the money, after all.
But then, at some point... things dried up. Painting had become a burden. Silvia had grown strong enough to not let her past keep dragging her down every single day of her life. She wasn't able to get herself to keep painting anymore. At least, she couldn't draw the sort of things that were expected of her. Somehow, it was always just painting. Even sketching or drawing digitally never felt the same to her, not to mention all her other projects. But there was something about painting that just used to make Silvia feel an intense, visceral pressure that was hard to put into words.
But this? It was... different. It wasn't art born from trauma in the same way that her old paintings were. It wasn't a place where she dumped her pain or fears. She was using a sort of hope that she hadn't felt in a while.
Silvia had a wonderful girlfriend, and two best friends that she connected with more and faster than she ever expected. Plus, she was now working with, or rather for, a group that was causing actual positive changes in this world. Not to mention awakening into a power that truly allowed her to live her passions. The fact she awakened as a type of artist somehow gave her validity.
What part of all this exactly allowed the spark to come back to her wasn't really clear, but Silvia was glad. She was so, so glad.
Carefully, Silvia picked up the canvas, carrying it downstairs to the living room. The sound of the wind whistled through the stairway together with the soft flapping of the Forge Elemental's wings as it flew through the skies. Silvia could hear her parents talking to each other downstairs, watching some TV show together, lounging on the couch.
But when they noticed that Silvia was the one approaching, they quickly turned the TV off; after all, they hadn't really seen their daughter for the past few days. She had been completely engrossed in her process in a way that they had never really seen before.
"Honey! Are you alright? Are you done with that painting?" Silvia's mother, Athina, quickly asked, not even looking at the painting itself.
Silvia slowly shrugged, "Sort of. The paint still needs to dry, and then I need to put on a layer of varnish for it to be completely finished. But I'm done painting for now."
Slowly, Athina looked at the painting itself. Her husband, Dimos, was already staring at it right now. This was something that neither of them had really seen before. A painting that was moving on its own in this way; letting out wind and even producing sound, no matter how faint either was. That was something neither of them expected, and they especially didn't realize that something like this could be made by their daughter.
"Silvia, this is... I don't even..." Dimos muttered, unable to move his eyes away from the canvas.
Both of Silvia's parents were staring to intensely to the point where she didn't even know what to say anymore. If anything, she felt a little awkward, almost exposed, at the painting being stared at like this.
"Isn't there something like this? In this super famous museum in Gardia?" Athina asked, and slowly, Silvia nodded her head.
"Yeah, it's the 'Advent of the Cosmos'. The one that's basically an animated meteor shower," she responded, "I looked into it and apparently the one that painted it was also a Soulspark Artist. Of course, Soulspark Artists aren't the only ones that can make paintings that move, or even ones that make sound or produce wind like this. The paintings created by Soulspark Artists are said to produce the emotion placed into the painting within the person that looks at them."
"Really? Is that why I feel so... excited?" Dimos asked, but Silvia just chuckled.
"Maybe. But it depends on what you're excited about. I just wanted it to show freedom, feeling unbound, and being yourself. If it's that kind of excitement, then yeah, that might be why."
Athina and Dimos looked at each other for a few moments, and then turned back to their daughter. Dimos asked, "Is this something that you want to display somewhere? It's very different from your usual paintings, but I'm sure you could get it a spot in a gallery."
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Silvia thought about it for a few moments, but she didn't know how to answer it. Of course, she felt excited about the idea of showing this to people. But at the same time, she didn't really feel a need to. She was content just having created it, and even if nobody else ever saw it, she would be happy. Maybe getting others to see this would make her even happier, but she felt no need for it.
There was also another part to this though. The motive of the painting was the Forge Elemental, and she hadn't asked for permission before drawing it like this. So, even if she didn't feel the pressure to show this to people, it was better to ask Runar about it beforehand. Just in case.
"I'm going to bring this back upstairs to let it finish drying," Silvia said, quickly walking back up the stairs to her room. She placed the canvas onto the easel, stopping for a moment to feel the painting's wind on her skin.
"... I made that."
A smile on her face, Silvia kept staring at the painting. She felt simply invigorated by it. And then, though she didn't know what exactly drew her to it, Silvia approached her window, taking a slight peek outside. There was a woman standing on the sidewalk next to the steps leading up to the front door.
Quickly, her smile disappeared. But for once, she didn't feel that sense of hopelessness that she usually felt when looking at that woman. Silvia turned around, rushing out her room as if her very own painting was giving her a push on the back.
She walked down to the ground floor, practically tearing the door open. The woman at the bottom of the steps looked at Silvia startled, as the young elf looked at the woman that gave birth to her.
"Fine. I'll listen to what you have to say."
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"Push! Come on, one last push! You got this!" Yanna's booming voice sounded out, piercing clean through Ryan's ears. He was currently in the university's Awakened gym, doing a deadlift that broke his personal best. Or at least, he was trying to. His whole body was screaming in resistance of lifting something this heavy. but he still had to do it. It was part of making his Strength stat awaken.
Ryan pushed through, trying his best to keep breathing as he tried to straighten his back. When he finally did, he had to just hold onto the bar for a little bit longer. It felt like his arms were about to be torn off, but he just had to do it.
He had made such incredible process over the past few weeks, much more than Yanna had ever expected him to. He was growing much, much faster than anyone else that she had seen try to awaken their stats. Then again, Ryan also seemed incredibly motivated to do this, and had been coming here to work out every single morning for a few hours, and was eating and drinking all the supplements Yanna could think of, so maybe it made sense to some degree.
"Come on, alright! Five, four, three, two, one, you can drop it!" Yanna exclaimed, waiting for Ryan to let go of the barbell. But instead, he just kept standing there. His pained expression was lifted in an instant. Of course, Ryan's body was still shaking, but it was like he consciously forgot about how tough it was to hold onto the barbell.
"There's no way, right..?" the minotaur muttered. Only one real explanation popped into her head, though it was one of the most nonsensical ones, "You can't have awakened your strength stat yet... have you?"
A broad grin formed on Ryan's face as he let go of the barbell. It slammed into the ground, as Ryan looked at his friend with an excited, almost smug, smile.
"Oh really, I couldn't have?" he asked, turning back toward the system window in front of him.
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[Due to adequate growth and effort, you have unlocked the -Strength- Stat]
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Immediately, Ryan opened his status window, quickly looking for it. At the bottom of the 'stats' section, separated from the rest, a new line had popped up.
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-[Strength - 1.35 (New!)]
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Ryan let out a laugh of excitement. Of course, 1.35 wasn't at any totally supernatural level yet; there were actually plenty of people that awakened with strength stats higher than that just because they've been actively working out for a while. But awakening a bonus stat was about showing effort deserving of that stat. Maybe it was good that Ryan had never really worked out much before because he felt fine with where he was. He heard that people like bodybuilders that awakened into a class without the strength stat innately applied had a much, much harder time to get it.
"Alright, I guess now it's time to continue trying for agility, stamina, and physicality," Ryan said, waving his status window away. As the message disappeared, though, he just saw Yanna's stunned expression peek out from behind it.
"How... You seriously awakened your strength stat already? It's been just a couple of weeks, so how..?" Yanna asked, staring at Ryan with absolute confusion written on her face.
Of course, Ryan knew why she was so confused. After all, the only reason Ryan was able to awaken the stat so quickly was because Tiar boosted his growth, but that wasn't something he could just tell her. So, instead, he used another excuse that he had thought of beforehand.
"Well... I'm not entirely sure, but I think it's possible that the Spirits I've formed contracts with affect me somehow. So maybe Maximus' physical stats helped me out a bit," Ryan suggested, and Yanna let out a loud groan.
"Seriously? What kind of a cheat is this unique class of yours? You get stronger faster just because of your spirits?"
"That's the best guess I have," Ryan replied awkwardly, trying to come up with an explanation, "I mean, you see it when I use my skills, right? My mana is coloured based on Gaia or Maximus, depending on which of them I'm interacting with at that moment. My mana is usually pretty colourless, so that might be part of it. I've thought that was weird for a while anyway."
Though, Ryan wasn't actually lying about that last part. His mana was undeniably 'weird'. Innately, his mana didn't have any qualities. It was colourless, and was basically in its 'basic' state. At first, Ryan thought that was just a quality a Spirit Keeper's mana took on when they awakened, but that didn't seem to be the case at all. According to Runar, the mana of Ryan's father was recorded as a dark, brownish green. It was sharp and swift, like a flower's thorns being pushed through the air by a storm.
Well, it didn't matter much to Ryan in the end, but it was still true that he found it a tiny bit weird. But for now, that wasn't important. After all, Ryan's workout wasn't over yet. He still had to do cardio.
Since he awakened his strength stat already, he was sure that the other physical stats weren't all too far away either. As a clearly jealous Yanna set up her treadmill properly, Ryan turned away and held his hand in front of his mouth, whispering to Tiar.
"Good job, and thanks for the help so far. Let's keep at it, alright bud?" he said, already feeling the symbiote's pattern wriggle happily on his skin.
With that, Ryan got onto his treadmill as well, starting the cardio part of his workout. For now, Ryan just had to keep going at it. And sure, he was excited to have awakened his strength stat, but that didn't mean that he was suddenly stronger than he was a moment ago. It just meant that the system would give a certain amount of growth correction to him. Plus, from now on, he would not grow weaker. That was the other benefit of awakening. Even if you never grew stronger, you would never grow weaker than you were before.
So even if Ryan never did any more strength training in the future, his stat would not ever drop below 1.35. For now, that also meant he could relax on strength training and just focus more of his time on other stats without needing to be concerned he would lose all his progress.
"Alright, let's do this."