Chương 93: A Glimpse Of What Lies Beneath

Avelyn does, eventually, purify everyone. As well as the ground we are standing on. As well as a sizable portion of the lake, allowing us to refill our waterskins without accidentally consuming liquefied serpent.... As well as a random chunk of meat I retrieved from the surrounding battlefield for stat acquisition purposes. The convenience of the Holy Aspect is unmatched. Except by Star. Obviously. I settle onto a nearby rock. Avelyn immediately sits beside me.

The rest of the party similarly chooses to rest, everyone collectively deciding that the treasure chest can wait a few minutes. A reasonable decision. We did just kill a kaiju. Naturally, I immediately summon Zeke. The mage trudges over with the exhausted resignation of a man who knows exactly what is about to happen. I thread six chunks of Depthscale Tyrant meat onto one skewer. Six pieces of Depthscale Spawn onto another. Then I have him work his magic.

A few moments later, they are cooking over an open flame, seasoned with salt and pepper. Nothing else. Experimental conditions should remain controlled. Once they are done, I divide the meat evenly, giving each member of the party one piece of Tyrant and one piece of Spawn. Avelyn looks disappointed. Rin notices immediately.

"Too tired to make a feast this time around?" I shrug, picking up my plate.

"I must admit that my knowledge regarding the preparation of giant magical sea serpents is somewhat incomplete." A brief pause.

"I apologize in advance for whatever this tastes like." I place a piece of Spawn meat into my mouth. Then immediately grimace. Chewy. Slightly undercooked. Metallic and fishy. Unfortunately, not in a pleasant way. Snake likely requires slow cooking. The muscle density is probably absurd. Noted. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Initial Consumption of Tier 2 Depthscale Spawn Meat Confirmed Vitality +2 Strength +2 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ My Foxkin canines make short work of it regardless.

Raw meat also proved significantly less unpleasant than anticipated. Which is concerning. Now that I think about it, I also licked dragon blood off my fingers while preparing food during the tutorial. At the time, this did not strike me as unusual. In hindsight, that is perhaps slightly alarming. Likely the same Beastkin instincts that have rendered berries completely irresistible.... Acceptable. Speaking of berries. I place the second piece of meat into my mouth.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Initial Consumption of Tier 2 Depthscale Tyrant Meat Confirmed Vitality +3 Strength +4 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ I nod. Not bad. A reasonable increase. Especially considering I am likely missing out on several magical statistics due to my complete and utter lack of mana. With the important part complete, I immediately pull out a large supply of berries and the remaining sandwiches from lunch. The reaction is immediate. Several grateful looks are directed my way.

A few tails lose all composure. One particularly undignified tail belongs to Avelyn. My own remains perfectly dignified. As I munch on a handful of blueberries, I open my status window and distribute my points. Five into Vitality, everything else into Dexterity. Then I take a moment to review my progress.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Lyn Health: 6180 / 6180 Stamina: 11372 / 17270 Race: Starborne Foxkin (Level 62 | Tier 2) Class: Starlit Blade Dancer [Epic] (Level 62 | Tier 2) Aspect: Star Traits: [Starborn] [Atrocity] [Pride] [Living Calamity] Titles: [Apex Predator] Stats Vitality: 618 [+103] Strength: 761 [+127] Dexterity: 1727 [+288] Perception: 1230 [+205] Charisma: 132 [+22] Free Points: 0 Class Skills (8/8): [Horizon Slash (Rare)] [Stellar Finesse (Uncommon)] [Twin Arc (Epic)] [Astral Veilstep (Rare)] [Starfall Sequence (Legendary)] [Celestial Momentum (Epic)] [Severing Arc (Rare)] [Starfire Resonance (Epic)] General Skills (8/8): [Inspect (Common)] [Running (Epic)] [Evasive Footwork (Uncommon)] [Astral Manipulation (Epic)] Reading on Amazon or a pirate site?

This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. [Volatile Rune Crafting (Rare)] [Blazing Star Dance (Epic)] [Guiding Star Dance (Rare)] [Exotic Cooking (Uncommon)] Racial Skills: Cosmic Perception Silent Star Astral Reflex Special Skills: [Arcana: Garden of Eternal Midnight] [Universal Translation] [Slipstream] [Peripheral Continuity] [Load Bearing] [Homeostasis] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Excellent. Tier Two stat gains really are absurd. My special skills list is also expanding nicely.

Smug confirmation complete, I close my status window and devote my full attention to the significantly more important task of consuming berries. I pick up a strawberry. Then Avelyn finally asks the question that has very clearly been tormenting everyone for the past several minutes.

"So... was that a legendary skill?" I take a small bite. My tail swishes contentedly.

"It wasn't." I pause for a moment.

"That explosion was the result of an uncontrolled runic failure."

"... Huh?" The entire group manages to synchronize their confusion. Impressive. I take another bite before continuing.

"Some runic sequences possess active components that allow energy absorption. Enhancement arrays are the most common example, although certain active skills seem to function similarly." Blank stares meet me. Expected. I continue.

"This is normally harmless because the runic sequence only receives energy when you intentionally activate it." Another bite.

"You provide energy." I gesture with the strawberry.

"The trigger activates." Another gesture.

"The effect occurs. The release fires." The party nods along. Mostly. I finish off the strawberry and grab another.

"However, mana armor seems to continuously circulate mana throughout the body. Any runic sequence embedded inside the target is therefore receiving a constant supply of energy whether it wants it or not." I glance toward Avelyn. The Foxkin has a finger pressed thoughtfully against her chin. Processing. Good. I decide to test her understanding.

"So." I point the strawberry at her.

"What do you believe would happen if I embedded a runic sequence containing no trigger and no release into a creature actively using mana armor?" Avelyn's eyes widen. Then she points back at me.

"Oh! I see!" Her tail immediately begins swishing.

"The energy would have nowhere to go!"

"Correct."

"It would just keep building up!"

"Correct."

"Until it exploded!" Her tail swishes even harder.

"Correct." The triumphant smile on her face suggests she has just solved one of the great mysteries of the universe. I resist the urge to pat her head. A difficult task.

"Then, if you additionally fill the construct with dozens of incomplete runic sequences that were never meant to coexist, you create an exceptionally unstable system." I pause.

"A system that responds to excessive mana intake by catastrophically ceasing to function." The party falls silent. Several people slowly turn to look toward the distant corpse of the Tyrant. Then back to me. Zeke is the first to speak.

"So your solution was basically to feed the giant magical sea serpent a bomb and wait for nature to take its course?" I consider the question. Then nod.

"A surprisingly accurate summary." His eye twitches slightly. Fair.

"I don't think I've ever heard of someone using runes like that." Zeke gestures vaguely toward the Tyrant's corpse.

"Pretty sure rune smithing is usually used for making equipment." I shrug.

"Creative differences, I suppose." I place another blueberry into my mouth.

"It is clearly effective, therefore I see no reason to conform to established standards." Zeke looks at the Tyrant for a few seconds. Then, he shrugs.

"Fair." Rude. That is my line. Avelyn, meanwhile, slumps slightly.

"I was so sure you had a Legendary." Her ears droop.

"With how strong you are..." She pokes at the remains of her sandwich.

"If even you don't have one, what chance do I have?"

"I do have one." Avelyn freezes. The rest of the party does too. Her tail immediately springs back to life, swishing with enough enthusiasm to qualify as a small weather event.

"Really?" I take the hint. Picking up the skewer I used to cook the serpent meat, I lazily slash it through empty air. Nothing happens for approximately half a second. Then another slash appears. The delayed attack carves through the space I originally struck, arriving from nowhere. Rin's ears twitch.

"Ah." He points.

"I saw that during the fight." A pause.

"Although... doesn't that seem a little lackluster for a Legendary?" I raise an eyebrow.

"Lackluster?"

"Echo attacks are strong and all." He shrugs.

"But Legendaries are ridiculous. Rare as hell, too." I eat another blueberry.

"It is more nuanced than that." The skewer moves again. This time I subtly alter the angle. Half a second later, the delayed strike slices a chunk from the rock Avelyn and I are sitting on despite the original swing hitting nothing but air. The party collectively draws in a breath. I continue.

"Every projected attack retains the properties of the original." Another casual swing. A sapphire glow runs through the skewer as Horizon Slash activates. Half a second later, Starfall Sequence triggers. The sapphire light appears again. The projected slash shoots forward, stretching just far enough to clip another distant rock. The stone separates cleanly. Another sharp intake of breath follows. I place the skewer down, then eat another blueberry. Priorities. Even Marek and Sylrae look slightly astonished now.

Rin stares at the severed rock.

"... What the fuck?" He falls silent for several seconds. Processing.

"Remind me to never piss you off." He pauses for a moment to process reality.

"You are the living nightmare of every close-combat specialist on the planet." Obviously. I nod graciously, accepting the objectively correct observation. Avelyn's tail swishes even harder. Concerning. We continue talking as the food gradually disappears. Most of the conversation consists of me asking questions about the Adventurer's Guild while everyone else asks questions about... well, pretty much everything. My tutorial. My old world. My weapon. I answer the non-concerning questions.

The concerning ones remain my property. Everyone besides Avelyn was surprised to learn I used to be human. Why she wasn't surprised… I have no clue really. As for the information I receive in return, I learn a surprising amount. Most notably, I discover that I am apparently standing on a tiny island. A tiny island. This is deeply concerning. The mountain range I observed earlier from my vine-assisted altitude experiment had dominated the horizon so thoroughly that I would comfortably classify it as planet-sized.

Possibly larger. On a tiny island. The implications are alarming. It turns out Asteria is significantly larger than I originally assumed. By "significantly," I mean "the laws of physics should currently be filing formal complaints." Which raises several important questions. Primarily: Why does gravity still feel normal? How has this planet not collapsed into a star? Or, more realistically given the apparent scale, a black hole? Physics-wise, the entire thing makes absolutely no sense.

Even if the planet possessed the approximate density of cotton candy, the pressure at the core should be utterly absurd. The numbers simply do not work. I spend several minutes attempting to make them work. They stubbornly refuse. Conclusion: magic. The answer to every sufficiently annoying scientific problem. The second thing I learn is how everyone knows they live on a tiny island despite kingdoms apparently occupying enough territory to qualify as continents. The answer is surprisingly elegant.

The Adventurer's Guild. Apparently, the organization spans the entirety of Asteria. Every branch possesses an artifact known as an Archive, which is an immensely complicated runic construct capable of storing a truly absurd amount of information. Most of that information originates from the mainland. Any adventurer can access the Archive for a fee. Either mana or money. More obscure information costs more, as does distant information and detailed information.

Essentially, somebody invented Wikipedia and then immediately monetized it. Fair enough. I donated to Wikipedia back on Earth anyway. The conversation eventually shifts toward adventurer rankings. Apparently those exist as well. Also unsurprising. The ranks are roughly aligned with tiers, although advancement is based on demonstrated combat ability rather than direct level. According to the group, information regarding higher ranks becomes prohibitively expensive rather quickly.

As such, they only know the first four. Iron, Bronze, Silver, and Gold. Avelyn is Iron. The rest of the party are Bronze. I spend several moments considering where I would fall. Silver seems reasonable. Then I learn the next advancement occurs around Level One Hundred Twenty. I immediately abandon this theory. I am powerful. Obviously. Easily the most powerful existence currently occupying my level bracket. Also obviously. But nearly double my level? I possess many positive qualities. Delusion is not one of them.

Tragic. As we talk, Avelyn's tail brushes against my arm more than once. There are implications there. I will not be decoding them. Eventually, the food disappears entirely, and people begin standing to stretch. Marek glances toward the distant treasure chest.

"Guess we should go see what we nearly died for." I wave him off.

"I shall remain here and establish camp. No offense, but I find it unlikely that anything inside that chest exceeds the value of my tutorial rewards." He shrugs.

"Fair enough." Avelyn speaks up before anyone else can.

"I'll stay too. My equipment is already pretty good." She pauses.

"And someone has to stop Lyn from setting up both tents upside down." I side-eye her. Absolute slander. The party departs shortly thereafter. Rin freezes a path. Sylrae takes to the air. The others follow, leaving just the two of us behind. … Avelyn chooses to help with my tent, instead of the other one. We work side by side. She never strays particularly far away.... She is becoming rather attached. The camp is finished quickly, and the deer hide is returned to the male tent. The sleeping bags are deployed.

Then we both make the entirely reasonable decision to lie down and rest. This is clearly a tactical decision, and absolutely not Foxkin laziness. I will die on this hill. Silence settles over the campsite. Minutes pass. Then Avelyn speaks.

"I really liked watching you fight." She smiles to herself.

"The way you move... it just looks so natural. Every step flows into the next one, and somehow you always look so calm, even when everything around you is chaos." Her eyes soften.

"And you always seem like you're enjoying yourself." My eyes widen slightly.

"I do?"

"You do." I see. That is completely unacceptable. I will work on that.

"When you fight, it's like you're dancing." She lets out a quiet laugh.

"I know your class is Dancer, but... it really fits you. It's beautiful to watch." She hesitates for just a moment.

"I admire you." I nod seriously.

"I am very beautiful, after all." She blinks. I blink. Then she giggles.

"You let your inner thoughts slip." I freeze. Completely. The laughter fades, though the warmth in her expression remains. When she speaks again, her voice is quieter.

"I think... because I've been watching you so much, I've started noticing little things." She fidgets slightly with the edge of her sleeping bag.

"I've always tried to pay attention to people. It helps when you're trying to take care of them." Another brief hesitation.

"I don't know if you've realized it yet... but I don't think you hide things as well as you think you do." She turns toward me. Her gaze is warm. Far too warm. I become acutely aware that I am no longer breathing automatically. I already know what she's about to say, and I really wish she wouldn't. Because then I would have to acknowledge it.

"You can't really hide behind that mask anymore, Lyn." My smile becomes slightly more perfect. Reflexive. Automatic.

"You're a Beastkin now, and no Beastkin can control their instincts. A Foxkin like us will always be dramatic. We will always play pranks, and we will always be a little vain. It is simply how we are." She pauses a bit to let the words settle before continuing.

"People can see your ears, Lyn. Your tail as well." A tiny smile appears.

"They're actually really expressive." My tail, hidden beneath the sleeping bag, goes completely still. As do my ears.

"When you're proud of yourself, your tail swishes." She smiles a little wider.

"When somebody says something nice about you, it swishes even more. Your ears perk up whenever you're excited, and..." She lets out a tiny, amused breath.

"You get this really smug look sometimes. It's kind of cute." The smile slowly fades.

"I don't know what happened before we met." She lowers her eyes for a moment.

"But sometimes... it feels like you're trying really hard not to let yourself react to anything."...

"And I don't think that's making you happy." A long pause settles between us.

"I might be wrong." Her voice grows quieter still.

"But... I wanted to tell you anyway."

"... Sorry." I don't respond. I simply pull the sleeping bag a little higher and turn away. My hands are cold. So, so cold. Somewhere beneath the sleeping bag, my fingers curl into the fabric. My smile doesn't falter in the slightest.