Chương 204: Sleight of Hand

The next morning, we set out on our journey, as usual. We still had quite a bit of territory to cover before we even left Verne, and we wanted to be away from the coalition army and the Vernese army as quickly as possible. As planned, Old Mo led us closer and closer to the campsite of the 'scout' we had found, until after half an hour of walking, we were nearly upon the site we had set up. Old Mo discreetly winked at me, and I smiled back at him.

Felix pretended to squint in concentration, out of the view of Anise's parents, but fully in view of Old Mo. Just to make sure the story that Felix was the illusionist was maintained, although I was really starting to wonder if Old Mo knew that something was off about us. After Felix started squinting, Old Mo raised an eyebrow at us in a way that felt very accusatory, and I had a very hard time maintaining a poker face after that.

Either way, the parents seemed surprised when our group stumbled upon the burnt-out husk of an old camp, complete with the remnants of a long-ruined bonfire, a pack full of frostbitten supplies, and a tent that seemed likely to collapse under its own weight - as well as the corpse of a scout from the coalition army. Anise's father looked at the dead soldier with a strange expression on his face.

For a moment, it looked almost like fear - before it slowly morphed into curiosity, and then a mixture of relief and sadness. Finally, he simply sighed.

"He's already dead." Anise's father kept looking at the corpse of the scout for several seconds, as if lost in thought. I looked at Anise's father in curiosity. The man's feelings about finding a corpse seemed oddly mixed. Perhaps he felt relief that we wouldn't fight, and sadness that he was happy to find a human corpse? I wasn't able to completely understand the man's feelings, but I could still sympathize with how much of his life must have been thrown away for him to come this far.

And in contrast to the mixed feelings of Anise's father, Old Mo looked at the campsite and simply grinned. Part of me suspected that even if Old Mo didn't know the campsite was completely fake, he wouldn't have been too worried about finding a human corpse. Instead, Old Mo simply examined our surroundings, as if checking for any other coalition army members, and then moved into the campsite.

"I'll check to see if there's anything useful," he said, as he started carefully rifling through the illusory supplies I had prepared. Old Mo made a show of checking everything over, before his eyes lit up, and he pulled out a small, half-frozen glass vial. The liquid inside was a very faint blue color, and looked… well, kind of like someone had crushed a few of the purple berries that grew in this area and then tossed it into a vial of water. Which was exactly what I had done.

Old Mo squinted at it, tapped the glass several times, and then carefully held it up to the light.

"I think it's an ability potion," he said.

"Is it… real?" asked Anise's father, frowning. At the same time, Anise's father seemed… excited.

"Why wouldn't the scout have drank the ability potion? Why keep it?"

"Maybe he already had an ability," said Old Mo, with a shrug. Then, Old Mo found the orb and old Zelyrian books, and shrugged.

"Could have also recovered the ability potion from wherever he got these. Hard to say." From the corner of my eye, I also saw Sallia's parents start to eye the potion with an unhealthy amount of interest as Old Mo talked about the 'ability potion' in greater detail.

"If that's the case… who gets it?" asked Sallia's father, eyeing the potion. I frowned, before nodding to myself. I admittedly hadn't thought about fighting over the 'ability potion' quite as much as I should have. I was much more used to the dynamic of the four of us, where none of us really fought over objects. If something was more useful for one of us, the rest of us were usually fine with stepping down and letting the others take it.

After all, we were a team, and we would ultimately live and die with each other in the future. We trusted each other enough and cared about each other enough to yield items to each other the moment it seemed reasonable to do so. But Sallia's parents, Anise's parents, and my mother weren't really a team. They barely knew each other. The only thing bringing them together was a mutual desire to escape the coalition army and Vernese conscription. They had no reason to yield items to each other if they wanted something.

<I messed up, guys! > I sent through the communication bracelets. <My parents seem pretty interested in the ability potion, > said Sallia, frowning. <I guess it makes sense. My parents are essentially disempowered factory workers who lived in the slums. If they can find a way to get out of their crappy life circumstances, I can see why they would be desperate to take it. The fact that the ability potion isn't real poses a bit of a problem to their plan…

> Before we could continue debating how to proceed forward, Old Mo stepped in. He looked at Sallia's parents, and shook his head.

"I said it might be real. It also might be poisonous, or acidic, or something else entirely. In other words, to safely drink it, you need to either have some identify it, or have Miria willing to heal you up if things go wrong." He turned towards me.

"Miria, are you confident that you can heal poison or any problems that might arise from drinking an unknown liquid?" Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. I nodded.

"I can heal anything that isn't mental in nature. I can even regrow limbs if they're cut off. I'm very confident in my ability to handle a poison, as long as it doesn't instantly kill you." Old Mo actually gave me a thoughtful expression after that statement, before he shrugged and concentrated on the ability potion again. I saw Sallia's father eye me a bit more intensely than before as well.

"Wait, can you really restore lost limbs?" asked Sallia's father.

"Do you want me to restore a lost limb?" I asked, surprised. Most people in this world seemed pretty attached to their prosthetic limbs. Even though they cost binding essence to move around, unlike regular limbs, prosthetic limbs were much stronger and sturdier than real limbs. There were definite advantages to them to make up for the essence costs. I took another look at Sallia's father, and once again noticed his missing arm. The prosthetic he had used to replace it was rather… scrappy.

With how low quality it was, it probably didn't get most of the benefits of a real prosthetic arm, and also probably cost quite a bit of essence to move around. When I thought about that, I could see why he was interested in regrowing his arm.

"I could help you regrow your arm, if you want," I said.

"But this ability potion is Anise's. I won't heal anyone else who drinks it."

"Anise's?" Sallia's father actually looked dumbstruck for a moment, before he glanced at Sallia, Felix, and I. I nodded.

"Anise is the only one of us who doesn't have an ability. She should get one." It wasn't the most sound argument - but then again, I was six years old. I felt that I could get away with fudging a 'real' argument this time if I relied on my status as the group's healer. I felt a bit bad holding healing over people's heads to get my way, but at the same time, this was just a glass of water and fruit juice. Drinking it wouldn't give anyone an ability at all. It would just give Anise an excuse for using her abilities.

Sallia's father frowned at my words, before eyeing the potion again. Then, Sallia's father turned towards Old Mo.

"Do you think it's a good idea to let a kid drink an ability potion?" Old Mo shrugged.

"Childhood is the best time to drink a potion. I drank mine when I was… twelve? The longer you have your ability, the more time you have to train with it and get used to it. Besides, I don't want to piss off the healer who's keeping frostbite away from all of us," he said, raising an eyebrow.

"The only real problem is that we don't know what ability is contained inside the potion, and you only get one chance at drinking an ability potion. If you don't like the ability, you won't get a chance to change it later on. One ability per person, no exceptions. But frankly, most people never get a chance to drink an ability potion in their lifetime. And if you really hate an ability, you can just not use it." I blinked in surprise. So people could only have one ability in this dimension?

I hadn't actually thought to check that before. I had known that each potion granted someone one ability, and so I had only pretended to have one ability - after all, the odds of us finding three different ability potions was already really low. Finding six or seven would have been even weirder. But apparently, I needed to pretend to only have healing for the rest of my life, because there was apparently no way to get a second ability here. That was something I hadn't thought about until now either.

I was glad I had pretended to have a healing ability. If I was stuck using only one ability in public, I definitely didn't mind that one ability being healing. Old Mo's words also let me confirm something else. Old Mo did have an ability. He had gotten it at the age of twelve. That made me wonder why Old Mo had qualified for an ability potion at such a young age. He couldn't have been an assassin at that time… right? There was probably a long story behind that statement.

Sallia's father eyed the potion, looked at me again, and then sighed.

"All right, Miria. You want Anise to drink the potion?" I nodded.

"But don't you think that it would be a better idea to have one of the adults drink it? After all, we might run into more scary soldiers in the future, and having an adult who knows how to use an ability is more willing to step up and fight might-""I want Anise to use it. I trust her more." I said, cutting him off. I actually sympathized a bit with Sallia's parents, but I wasn't going to budge.

"Are you sure-""Anise is drinking the potion. End of discussion." I said. Before Sallia's father could badger me any further, Old Mo quickly handed the potion to Anise, who downed it in seconds, while I tossed a few drops of water at her and started making a show of trying to heal her. A few moments passed, as Anise blinked a few times in confusion, and then she grinned, and used a single magic missile. It flew out of her hand, and slammed into a nearby pile of snow with a force only slightly inferior to a bullet.

"Some sort of… force manipulation bolt? Or a bolt of pure energy?" asked Old Mo, sounding more confused than anything else. I frowned. Did this world not have any ability similar to 'magic missile?' Old Mo seemed a little baffled, and looked at Felix, Sallia, and I for confirmation.

"I've… never heard of an ability potion like that. It's sort of similar to lightning or fire ability potions, but it seems… unique," he said. I tried not to squirm under Old Mo's scrutiny. I definitely felt like he was starting to confirm that something was up. A few moments later, Old Mo sighed, and shook his head slightly at me. I realized that I was going to have some explaining to do that night when we settled down for camp, and I wasn't sure if I was comfortable lying to Old Mo.

For the second time since our journey had started, it was time to tell someone else about the Market and the greater Multiverse. For now, though, Old Mo simply shrugged.

"The orb and the books are probably Zelyrian artifacts, but the books don't seem that impressive. The orb also seems to be a bit broken. I doubt either is very valuable." Sallia's father eyed the orb and the books, before he shrugged. After hearing Old Mo say they were broken, he didn't seem terribly interested in them.

"Do you want to read over them? Maybe they'll explain a bit about the ability potion you just drank." Anise nodded. Old Mo tossed them at Anise, and then our group set off again.