Chapter 78, 1/2

Chapter 78, 1/2

Erick woke and it was still dark outside. Ophiel trilled at being disturbed, asking in his own way if it was time to get up already. After blinking in the dark for a few moments, Erick decided that yes, it was time to get up already. He felt pretty good, and there was stuff to do, like organizing his stuff for the return to Spur, and figuring out [Cascade Imaging] a bit more.

So he got up.

He went to the bathroom, shut the door, and flicked open the shutter around the light orb, over the bathroom mirror. Ophiel complained in flutes at being locked on the other side of the door as he usually did, but he quieted down soon enough. Erick shucked his clothes as he prepared to hop into the shower. [Cleanse] was good enough to fall asleep with, but he had forgotten to take a bath last night, and there was no better way to wake up than to a hot shower—

He saw himself in the mirror. He paused.

Life on Veird, walking everywhere, or blipping somewhere to then walk more, or sparring with various people as he trained in his magic, had been good for Erick. His 48 year old dad bod had looked the best it had ever looked. He imagined that if he had gone to the bathhouses in Spur, that were still open even after water season because of his extra rain, he would only feel half as inadequate these days. Orcols were still way too damn beautiful for Erick’s Vitality to ignore, but at least he was not the ugliest duckling in town.

But something had changed last night. It was probably Rozeta’s Recovery.

Erick saw his body, first, because how could he not. There were muscles on his arms and chest and shoulders and ass, like he was 25 again. He had never been big like some of those guys at the gym when he was 20, but he had certainly been attractive. His long trail of satisfied lovers could attest to that.

And then there was his face! It was like he was wearing makeup, but better, because he wasn’t. The bags under his eyes were gone, and the loose skin of his neck had tightened, and the creases on his forehead and his laugh lines had vanished. He looked 30, maybe? 35? He was still 48, but he certainly didn’t feel 48, and he didn’t look his age, at all. Except for the grey in his hair. That was still there.

As he was staring at himself, he realized that his eyes were better, too.

Erick had never needed glasses, though he was starting to squint sometimes. But apparently that was a thing of the past, too. Even without using [Hunter’s Instincts] he could count the hairs on his eyelashes, without leaning into the mirror to get a better look.

He activated [Hunter’s Instincts] and suddenly the world felt malleable, like he could reach out and touch Reality to break it, or save it. Muscles corded down his forearms as he made a tight fist. It was hard to make a fist first thing in the morning, but as he continued to force a fist, his strength came to him. Bones seemed to creak, then settle, as his fist tightened hard, his body fully waking to the day. He smiled, as he glanced at his HP. It didn’t drop from full even with [Hunter’s Instincts] demands.

Erick smiled. He stretched his arms up—

Oh. A strange feeling twinged through his shoulders and back, and then it was gone. It was like he pulled a muscle, but that uncomfortable feeling passed almost immediately. He stretched his arms forward again, and his body moved fluidly, like it did when he was much younger.

He stretched again, this time down, to touch his toes. The same pulling sensation came, then went, as he settled into his new position. He wrapped his fingertips around his toes. He bent further down, to put his palms flat on the ground, without bending his knees or lifting his feet. Whatever stretching sensation passed through his groin, and his calves, and his back, felt like a small sigh as his body seemed to say, ‘I guess we’re doing this now’, and promptly obeyed his wishes. The taut feelings in his muscles relaxed.

He stayed like that for a moment, just pressing against the ground with the palms of his hands, while his legs were perfectly straight. His body didn’t seem to mind its odd position.

On a lark, he put his weight on his hands, and did something he hadn’t been able to do in 25 years. He slowly, but easily, lifted his legs off of the ground, careful to avoid the walls of the bathroom, and did a handstand like it was nothing at all. He swayed from one hand to the other, then transferred over to one hand, supporting all his weight on one palm. He had never been able to do that before. He had tried, a lot, when he was younger, and he had even tried on the sands of the arena a few times before he gave up, but he had never been able to do a single handstand, until now. And it was easy, too!

Blood rushed through his body as he laughed at the floor.

With all the grace of a gymnast, Erick methodically lowered his feet to the ground. Blood rushed around his body, filling out other, more sensitive locations, as he stood up straight and smiled at the mirror. Vitality was amazing, for sure. He smiled. He poked at his muscles. They seemed real enough, and he was able to cast magic and bring up his Status, so this wasn’t a dream. Or if it was, it was a really well done dream.

He mentally poked Poi, ‘Hey, Poi. Are you awake?’

Poi grogged back, ‘Yes.’ He rapidly asked, ‘Is everything okay?’

‘Probably.’ Erick cast a [Cleanse], blowing away a tiny bit of thick air from his body and the room, as he began to put his nightclothes back on. ‘Something weird happened to me and I want your opinion. Fair warning: I do not look like I looked when I went to bed.’

‘... I guess it’s time to get up, then.’

‘It’s practically morning anyway!’

Erick exited the bathroom, to stand on the balcony that wrapped around the second floor. Poi opened his door, and saw Erick. Both of them were in their nightclothes, though Poi liked to sleep shirtless. Erick smiled, while Poi stared. Poi frowned. Erick smiled wider, then laughed.

Poi said, “You...” He thought. He said, “You got Immune to Health Fatigue, somehow, didn’t you?”

Erick frowned. “How did you know! Dammit! Is it really that easy to be young again?!”

“No. It is not. And you’re not young again.” Poi asked, “When in all the hells and heavens did you switch your Scion— You didn’t switch your Scion at all, did you.” He frowned again, saying, “This was one of the abilities you got, wasn’t it. Is this permanent?”

“Pretty sure, yeah.” Erick smiled wide as he thumbed backward, saying, “I just did a handstand in the bathroom. One handed!”

Poi sighed out, as he turned around and walked into his room, muttering, “Guarding an older man was so much easier. Shit.”

Erick laughed.

Rats opened his door on the third floor and came to the banister, yelling, “Don’t you know what time— Oh.” He looked down at Erick. “So I wasn’t hearing things. That’s strange. But good. You didn’t switch your Scion but you got Immune to Health Fatigue, didn’t you.”

Erick smiled, saying, “It’s pretty great!”

Rats said, “You should wear some heavier clothing so no one can tell.”

Erick balked. “All the lines on my face are gone, too!”

“Are they?” Rats said, “Oh. I guess so. Maybe? You don’t look that much different to me.”

Erick balked, again.

While Rats dismissed Erick’s looks, Kiri came out of her room on the third floor. Her room was above Erick’s, so she moved around a bit to the north, to look down from that banister. She came into view, and paused.

Erick waved.

Kiri said, “Shit.” She deflated a bit, saying, “You got Immune to Health Fatigue. My gods, what were the options you gave up?”

Poi walked out of his room, still putting on his uniform jacket, saying, “This is why I told you not to say anything, sir.”

Kiri threw her hand out, exclaiming to Poi, “Anyone with any adventurer training at all would know what he got by looking at him! You all did, right away!” She put her hands on the banister, daring Poi to say otherwise.

Poi just frowned.

Erick chuckled a little, feeling his body move in ways he hadn’t felt in years. Mostly, there was a lot more weight in his upper body. He wished he could have kept going to the gym, back on Earth, but he slowed down like everyone did when they got to his age. Now, it was like he never missed a day.

Without someone to tell her to stop, Kiri continued, “It was the Recovery option, wasn’t it? No. Wait. It could have been Resilience.”

Poi said, “This is why I said not to say anything, sir.” He added, “If this Fatigue Immunity thing going on with you is anything like normal Fatigue Immunity, you’re likely to age at half-rate, too.”

Erick felt his heart pump hard, and the feeling that simple action gave him was one of adrenaline, instead of a half-realized thought wondering if he was having a heart attack, or not. After he sorted that emotion, he asked, “Half-rate?”

Teressa hummed from the balcony beside her door; she had come out when Erick wasn’t looking. She looked down to Erick, and said, “Congratulations.”

Rats said, “Congrats.” He added, “And I worked a 20 hour shift. Are we going back to Spur today?”

“Not till the afternoon, at least,” Erick decided, just then.

Rats said, “Thank the gods. I’m going back to bed.” He went back into his room and shut the door.

Teressa smiled, and said, “If we’re up, we’re up. I’ll start breakfast.” She walked to the stairs downward, saying, “You must be hungry, sir.”

Erick felt his stomach rumble as a primal need for food overtook all of his desires. He declared, “Yes. Oh wow. Very hungry.” He muttered, half to himself, “When did that happen.”

Teressa chuckled as she walked down the stairs to the kitchen.

- - - -

Teressa did most of the work of making breakfast by beginning with bread, but Erick helped by washing and chopping a good dozen potatoes. Poi got an early start on telepathically talking to whoever he usually talked to; he sat on the couch, drinking coftea, radiating varying numbers of intent-filled lines into the manasphere. Kiri, for her part, pored over a meter wide red book on [Identify]. It was the same one Erick had started to read last night.

Teressa placed the kneaded dough into an oiled bowl, and said, “I once knew a guy who switched his Scion to Vitality later in life. He was 80 years old and done with the adventuring life, but he wanted to see if he could actually do the switching quest.”

Erick listened as he boiled potatoes in a heat ward, to get them ready for oven frying faster. “Oh?”

She smiled as she said, “It took him a year without a Scion, but he managed to do it. He came back to the village...” She frowned. She faltered. She put on a happy face, saying, “For a little while, everyone thought he was his son.” Her smile seemed to turn genuine. “He played a lot of tricks on a lot of people for about a week, before everyone decided to play a trick back on him, and declare him legally dead. We had a funeral and everything, but he turned that around on us when he gave a speech about himself.”

Erick chuckled, saying, “Sounds like a fun guy.”

Teressa grabbed sausages from the cold box, smiling faintly as she said, “He was.”

Moments passed. The scent of grilled sausages soon filled the air with spicy, meaty flavors.

And Erick was feeling a little weird. No one seemed to care that he had undergone a massive physical shift. Or. Maybe it wasn’t that massive? According to Teressa, his own experience was the normal experience for those who acquired Fatigue Immunity later in life, just like him... So... Maybe this wasn’t a big deal?

Erick asked, “Does anything special happen when you have stacking Immune to Health Fatigue? Or Mana Exhaustion, for that matter?”

Teressa said, “No idea. Professor Rue Downs might know.”

Kiri spoke up, “Four times normal life span for stacking Fatigue Immunity. Constant low-grade [Treat Wounds].”

In a quick emotional sense, Erick felt the floor drop from under him. Four times normal life span? Constant [Treat Wounds]? What?

“Where’d you hear that?” Teressa asked.

Kiri paused. “I’m not sure where.”

Teressa said, “You might be right about the life span thing, but that [Treat Wounds] effect comes from having a high Health Regeneration somewhere in the 5000 range. It’s often conflated with Immunity, but they’re not the same. A lot of orcols will spec into Vitality just enough to break that threshold and get that effect, since we’re naturally pretty close.” She added, “Like me.”

Kiri frowned. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Completely sure.”

“Well...” Kiri said, “Good to know. I’m pretty sure about the life span times-four thing, though. That’s well documented— Oh.” Kiri paused. She said, “I read about that in a book on the nuances of Vitality. It was written by an orcol, now that I think about it.”

Teressa smiled.

Kiri said, “I have no idea what stacking Mana Exhaustion Immunity would mean.” She paused. She eyed Erick a little, glancing down, but she returned to her book as she said, “Probably nothing, now that I think about it.”

Erick slowly came back to himself, listening to Kiri and Teressa talk. He noticed steam billowed up from below. He looked down. The potatoes were boiling. He quickly poked one with a knife on hand, then seeing they were soft, he took the boiling chunks of potatoes out of the [Heat Ward]. He drained the water in the sink. More steam filled the air.

He turned back to the room, holding the potatoes. He said, “You’re probably right about the mental Stats, Kiri. They don’t make you smarter, after all.”

“Of course they don’t.” Kiri said, “The Script was created to stop the abuses of the Old Wizards. If the mental Stats made you smarter, then that would just make mages that much more dangerous.”

Nothing.

So Ophiel wasn’t a real being with real memories... Erick knew this. Still, to have it pointed out so solidly still felt weird.

Erick got his mind back in the moment. He transferred his senses into Ophiel, and had Ophiel search for ‘Tyli’. A blue dot appeared where it should have. That was proof enough that with Erick riding Ophiel, Ophiel’s ability to search was similar to Erick’s own. With that test’s positive confirmation, Erick had Ophiel hum Tyli’s magic, as Ophiel cast the search. Nothing appeared on the white map.

“We can do more testing later, but that seems like a dead end.” Erick turned back to Tyli, and said, “Thank you for your assistance. That will be all.”

Tyli bowed, then puffed away in a blip of pink light.

Erick searched for [Sleep]. He had seen Alibeth cast that spell enough to hear the sound it made multiple times. He imagined he would get at least one hit all the way at the hospital, which was barely at the edge of the map, just in front of the foggy edge. After all, there was at least one rune there that was constantly charged with that magic, in Jane’s room.

Nothing appeared on the map.

He searched for ‘Jane’. Her dot appeared exactly where it should have. ‘Alibeth’ returned a blue dot higher in the hospital tower. They weren’t currently interacting, so that meant that Jane was certainly sleeping—

Erick just cast a [Scry] on Jane. Yup. She was sleeping.

He dismissed that spell and returned to himself. He searched for [Teleport]. It was an instant spell, but there was a slight delay between the cast time to the activation time, which was mainly due to people needing to really picture their destination before the spell would activate. [Blink] was usually much faster than [Teleport], because all it took was looking at the destination, and blip, there you were.

After a minute of waiting, and explaining to Kiri what he was waiting for, one blue dot appeared, near Oceanside. Erick smiled. That blue dot faded, but other dots soon came into sight. Those too faded, as the spell was no longer there after it departed that location.

Erick searched for [Teleport] and [Dispel] at the same time, hoping to come upon some of the anti-[Teleport] runes that were surely in Oceanside. And sure enough, a few dozen blue dots appeared here and there in the city. Erick’s eyes went wide. He quickly searched for the color ‘red’, to clear the map as fast as he could. By successfully searching for [Teleport] and [Dispel] he had found every single secured location in the northern half of Oceanside.

Whoops!

Kiri said, “That was an anti-[Teleport] search, wasn’t it.”

“... Maybe.”

Kiri just laughed. She said, “This means you need to buy some of those restricted-by-law spells, too. [Invisible] and [Force Trap] are the big ones.”

Erick paused. He asked, “Is that what this means?”

“Oh yeah.” Kiri said, “Merit is going to love you. Killzone too, probably. He was always going off about how much he hated [Invisible]. Two-copper adventurers always thought that they could sneak into Ar’Kendrithyst without getting noticed, and sometimes they could, but mostly they’d get caught and their bodies would get waved at Forward Base because they didn’t properly enter the city.”

Erick stared down at the map floating around his waist, and considered a scan of the Dead City. Ar’Kendrithyst was about 140 kilometers in diameter with an average depth of 50 kilometers, and full of kendrithyst crystal towers. [Cascade Imaging], cast from Spur, could likely see the whole of the top layer of the Dead City, but the middle layer and the bottom layer were out of the question; that evil place ran too deep into Veird.

This spell was not a solution on how to assault the city; to find defenses and eradicate them in a methodical, terrible manner. But it was a long range [Scan] that others would know how to use properly. Other people like Merit or Silverite, or probably Killzone, now that he thought about it...

Yeah. Killzone would know how to use this to best kill every single Shade.

But getting to that point would take some time. None of the leaders of Spur desired the destruction of Ar’Kendrithyst, and it wasn’t because of reasons the Headmaster believed. Spur was not profiteering from the Dead City. The Dead City was simply too strong. Every single Shade was as powerful as an immortal archmage, and each of them controlled enough shadowy creatures to each count as the general of their own personal army. It took a Champion and her whole team to kill a single one of the more powerful Shades, and Jane only managed to kill one of the weaker Shades because circumstances placed them both in a sea of antirhine shards, and her in a position of absolute power, wielding an antirhine mace designed to kill magic-users.

So getting everyone into the mindset of needing to kill the Dead City would take some time.

Whatever they were planning in there, whatever the rumors were about Ar’Kendrithyst shifting around into a new internal structure, political or magical or theatrical or whatever, whatever it was that was going on in the deeper shadows of the Dead City...

It would likely be terrible and vast. But it would also likely mean that others, aside from Erick and Jane, would soon desire a final end to those monstrous Shades.

But for now, there was one final string of testing.

Erick asked, “Kiri. Can I have a drop of your blood?” He thought for a second, then added, “Ah. Wait. No [Polymorph] form, right?”

Kiri frowned a little. She said, “Not yet... I was thinking of light slime, though. I... I want [Lightwalk].”

“That would be a good form, then.” Erick said, “Talk to Poi or clear it with Calzin or Merith, or whoever you need to. Do you think you could get it done in an hour?”

“Yes.” Kiri asked, “Then we test [Polymorph]?”

Erick nodded.

- - - -

Kiri returned to the front yard of Windy Manor wearing nothing but a green [Conjure Armor] in her normal design; mostly cloth, done up like normal-looking clothes, but constructed like Jane’s [Conjure Armor], with tight, kevlar-like threads, and plates inside the cloth, over her chest. Her armor was slightly brighter than her own green scales. She walked through the map to Erick, and used a talon to nick a finger. She placed a bright red dot of blood onto Erick’s hand, then walked out of the map.

Erick searched for ‘Kiri’. A blue dot appeared on the map exactly where she was.

He ignored the drop of blood in his hand as he searched for ‘Kiri’s DNA’, trying for a purely mental idea of a search; one where he wouldn’t need a part of the person he was searching for. The map turned white; nothing found.

Erick focused on the drop of blood in his hand, and searched again.

Nothing.

He channeled mana through [Cascade Imaging], into his hand. A bright, splashing orb appeared in his palm, around Kiri’s drop of blood. He searched for her DNA, again.

Swaths of blue layered through the house, and the yard, and many different places in Oceanside.

Kiri looked from Erick’s hand to the map, saying, “That’s unconventional.”

Erick smiled. “I can search for people based on blood.”

Kiri seemed stuck between concern and surprise. “Blood magic?”

“Oh? No. Not actually blood magic.” Erick said, “I could do the same with a hair or something. Well. Not the hair itself. But the biological material at the root of the hair, I think. Or a scale, in your case.”

“Connection searching, then.” Kiri smiled small, relieved. She added, “Onto the next test.”

“There are traps out there in the forest, so be careful.” Erick said, “I’m pretty sure that Tyli’s spell was [Stone Trap], and it’s cast in more than a few locations.”

Sunny lifted off of Kiri’s shoulders; she would stay here for a little while.

In a brief moment, Kiri transformed from a young dragonkin woman in [Conjure Armor], into a bright ball of white light nestled into the neck opening of her [Conjure Armor], on the ground. Her voice came out of the air, “This is such an embarrassing spell. I don’t know how Jane does it.”

Erick smiled, looking down upon his blobby apprentice.

“So just go anywhere?” she asked.

Erick looked down at the map. It was still covered in blue. He pointed to a white spot out in the forest. “Here. Or anywhere that you might think of going that isn’t already blue.”

Kiri, still on the ground, said, “I can’t see where you’re pointing.”

Erick pointed up at Sunny, floating in the air above, looking down at both of them. “You can’t?”

“... Right. [Familiar].” Kiri paused. Sunny turned attentive and dropped down on top of the map. Kiri said, “Okay. I see where I need to go.”

Erick added, "Also, we can use [Telepathy] through Sunny, since I can't send directly to you while you're a slime."

A tendril of thought connected from Kiri to Sunny, then to Erick. 'Sure.'

'Oh good! It worked!' Erick sent back. 'The books said it would, but I wasn't sure.'

Kiri gave a gentle, mental nod, then vanished in a blip of green. Her [Conjure Armor], now separated from her body, began to disintegrate into the ambient mana.

Erick watched as an unexpected dot of blue appeared where he had pointed.

“That shouldn’t have—” Erick said to himself, “Right. Contamination. Probably a rub off from her armor.” He sent, ‘I need you to blip again.’

‘I see... Yeah...’ She paused.

Another blue dot appeared in another blank part of the forest, not too far away. The first unexpected dot began to dissipate, but there was still a blue smear on the forest floor where she had been. DNA just got everywhere, didn’t it?

Kiri sent, ‘I’m still there?’

‘No. This is a cross contamination, for sure. If you were a flame or acid slime I doubt this would be a problem because you would have already destroyed your outermost layer. Go take a dip in the ocean, or one of the lakes in the interior, or something. Get really clean then come back to somewhere else in this white space.’

‘Sure.’

Kiri’s second blue dot began to dissipate as a third dot appeared down the cliffside, on one of the tiny beaches near the vertical stone wall. Kiri’s blue dot did not move, but instead slowly faded as it began to spread out. Erick felt a spike of worry.

‘Are you okay? Your dot is spreading out a lot!’

‘Just a [Watershape] bath.’

‘Oh. Okay. Good. I didn’t expect it to look like that.’ Erick said, ‘Saltwater on a slime can’t feel good.’

‘It’s not pleasant, for sure. I feel like I’m drying up, but I’m okay.’

‘Try a [Cleanse], too.’

‘Already done.’

‘... And yet it didn’t change the blue smear.’

After a while, the blue smear near the water went still.

‘Looks like that did it.’ Kiri said, ‘Whatever you were tracking did not track me here.’

Erick looked down at the map. There were no new blue dots. ‘Where are you?’

Sunny dropped down into the map, pointing her tail at a white space. ‘Here.’

Erick sent, ‘That solves that. Cross contamination will ensure tracking until measures are taken to clean the target. So it’s kind of like scent tracking, but better. This is good.’ He added, ‘Come on back. We’re done. It’s time to go back to Spur.’