Chương 12: You’re still doing this?

[Tutorial Quest Received: Emotional Competence] Objective: Perceive an emotion by observing another person currently exhibiting it Reward: +100 EXP [New Passive Skill — Empathic Observation (Basic, Rank I)] Type: Passive (Aether) Effect: When you successfully perceive an emotion exhibited by another person through observation alone, gain progress toward the understanding of that Emotion. [SYSTEM NOTE: Skill activation requires successful perception of the observed emotion (PER check).] [ADDITIONAL NOTE: Speed of emotional mastery increases with higher EMO.] What? There's emotional mastery now? He rubbed at his eyes. No. He should stop. The Eidralith kept introducing new concepts as though it were trying to cram an entire curriculum into a single evening. Dubbie had long since dozed off, and his own head was beginning to ache. Just... just one more notification. He only wanted to see what emotional mastery actually meant. He checked. [Status → Emotional Parameters] Calm — 12. 27% Triumph — 4.

90% Rage — 33. 88% Joy — 7. 62% Pride — 6. 04% Resolve — 29. 11% Reverence — 22. 22% Trust — 11. 59% Compassion — 3. 47% Passion — 5. 56% Mischief — 2. 01% Hope — 14. 00% He stared and scrolled down. Shame — 93. 96% Anxiety — 66. 52% Fear — 44. 20% Guilt — 62. 36% Disappointment — 49. 55% His head spun. He regretted having checked the numbers at all. Lorvan had said he was emotionally 'insufficient'. Maybe his mentor had been wrong. He was just… emotionally specialized, on the worst traits.

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators! He glanced back at Dubbie. One of her feet had kicked free of her boot and was tapping against the dirt. Her snoring had gained rhythm now. I'm going to have to wake her, aren't I… I sure wonder which emotion I'm going to get from her… He did anyway. It was for the quest. Fabrisse crouched beside Dubbie and reached out, tapping her shoulder with two fingers.

"Dubbie. Dubs, I need you to—""Whuzzat..." She swatted at the air.

"Did the roots move again?"

"No. No roots. Everything's stable. I just—" Her eyes cracked open. She looked like a predator fixing her eyes on its prey. It was not a good sign.

"I've told you to not wake me up when I'm asleep."

"Then why was it fine when you woke me…" She pushed herself upright. Her hair was now sticking out in three different directions, and her cloak tangled around her knees.

"You shook me."

"I only applied a minimal oscillatory input." Her glare finished assembling.

"Oh. You oscillated me." He sensed annoyance. Definitely annoyance. Eidralith did not register that, which felt unfair.

"Also, you're drooling," he added. The silence that followed was synthetically-induced. Dubbie looked down and touched her chin. Then she looked back up. Her ears were pink. Her glare acquired edges.

"You woke me to tell me I was drooling," she said. The situation required reevaluation. Raised voice: absent. Threat proximity: decreasing. Word choice: simplified, declarative. Eye contact: sustained past comfort threshold. Correction behavior: none. Calm speech plus aggressive posture plus verbal reframing. That was anger. [Emotion Perceived: Anger] [Quest Completed: Emotional Competence] Reward: +100 EXP Empathic Observation (Basic, Rank I) Yes. Confirmation.

"Why are you smiling?" Dubbie grumbled.

"I'm not," he said. Then, because he was apparently incapable of stopping himself once a process reached completion, he added, "You still need to wipe your drool, though." She swatted the air in front of his face.

"Get out of my face, you lint-brained pebble goblin." The conversation appeared to be deteriorating despite measurable progress. Dubbie eyed him suspiciously as she wiped her chin on her sleeve.

"… Why are you looking at me like I'm an experiment?"

"I might have acquired a new skill."

"That sentence almost never ends well."

"It says it helps me understand emotions." Dubbie stared at him for a few seconds and shrugged.

"That' s probably a good thing for you. So what does the weird artifact ask you to do now?"

"It says I have to perceive emotions through observation." Fabrisse scratched the back of his neck.

"Could you... think of something that makes you feel a particular emotion and let me guess?"

"That sounds easy enough." She leaned back against the porch post, folded her hands in her lap, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the corners of her mouth had lifted. Her shoulder had loosened and even her breathing seemed lighter.

"Well, guess now," she said. Her eyes kept drifting slightly upward whenever she thought about whatever memory she' d chosen. He' d known Dubbie long enough to recognize that look.

"Joy?" he ventured. [Emotion Perceived: Joy] Understanding of Joy: 8. 22% → 8. 23% Nice! That was easy enough. Fabrisse had never thought of himself as completely incapable of reading people. Reasonably bad, perhaps, but not hopeless. He could usually tell when someone was happy, angry, or upset from their face, their voice, or the way they carried themselves. His problem had always been producing the same shape inside himself. Watching someone beam with joy rarely made him feel joyful.

Seeing someone grieve didn't awaken grief in return. But only one hundredth of a percent? [SYSTEM NOTE] Emotional understanding gained scales with skill rank and EMO. Current EMO: 1 Fair enough... He should just be content the Eidralith had offered him an avenue to improve at all. Just show me the next quest, please.

[Tutorial Quest Received: Aetheric Efficiency Calibration] Objective: Cast a spell and achieve ≥ 80% Aetheric Efficiency Reward: +100 EXP New Skill: Aetheric Readout (Passive, Basic) +5 Mastery Points (Mastery Points is rewarded for the affinity corresponding to the element successfully cast) Oh? Aetheric Efficiency? That sounded measurable. There had to be variables and relationships involved, maybe even a formula. His notebook. Where was his notebook?

He patted at his robe pockets hoping he'd tucked it into his satchel. He only needed to jot down a few observations before— A sharp pain seized his ear, followed by a voice.

"Fabrisse."

"Ow—ow—ow!" Dubbie was pinching his ear, just enough to make it uncomfortable.

"You're still doing this?"

"I'm nearly finished!"

"Have you got any idea what time it is?" She gave his ear another twist.

"Do you want me falling asleep on top of a boulder again? Do you want me using your rock as a pillow? Is that what you want? Hm?"

"It's just one more quest!"

"I don't care if it's one more quest or one hundred. You have lectures tomorrow."

"I'm on medical leave."

"No, you're not. You told me your timetable. You have a Fire Lecture at nine."

"But I really—""Shh. I'm not going to stick around watching you stare at dirt for another hour. We're going home. End of." Fabrisse sighed. Dubbie was objectively correct. If they stayed any longer, he would almost certainly sleep through his morning lecture. And if Mother learned he'd stayed up all night talking to an invisible glowing glyph... Dubbie would seem merciful by comparison.

"Fine," he conceded.

"Let's go home."