Chương 256: Graduation approaches

Our final year of school passed by both slowly and quickly. As if he were trying to test our qualifications, Mr. Delmont gave us a huge mix of tests and projects. The workload wasn't unbearable for our group, but many other students struggled to keep up. However, the constant stream of tests and projects took a backseat for us, because we had other things to worry about. Namely, monitoring the worldstriders. Over the next few months, more and more worldstriders appeared in the mountains.

A few people who lived in the mountains were driven away, and brought tales of talking blobs of ink to the cities. At first, people discounted these claims as rumors. Most Zelyrian creatures weren't intelligent enough to talk, after all. But as more and more people reported that the worldstriders had talked to them and driven them away, people gradually began to believe it. The Vernese government didn't take kindly to the presence of the worldstriders.

After four months, Verne launched an expedition into the mountains to get rid of these 'monsters'. The expedition army returned with half of its members dead. The others claimed that the worldstriders were very much sapient. They demanded that Verne recognize them as a new, independent country. They claimed the mountain range they had appeared in, as well as most of the surrounding land. Verne did not agree.

The fact that an intelligent, organized group of 'monsters' were negotiating with them seemed to enrage Verne. Things devolved into an all-out war two months later. For our part, the three of us found it surprising that the worldstriders were engaging in diplomacy. This made me realize, grudgingly, that the worldstriders truly weren't monsters. They were an intelligent species of people. They hadn't killed people randomly, or just squatted in the mountain range.

They had a civilization and a culture that they wanted to preserve. Not that I cared much. They wanted to kill Anise. That meant they didn't need to exist. It was as simple as that. The first few months of fighting went catastrophically for Verne. They sent a few armies towards the mountains, but they were annhilated. The survivors claimed that the worldstriders were invincible. No gun or blade could harm them. No modern weapon could even interact with them.

The Vernese soldiers couldn't find a way to fight back against the worldstriders at all. Instead, the worldstriders quickly spread across the south of Verne. In less than three months, they occupied more territory than the coalition army had taken. Of course, we had no way to figure out the finer details of how the war was going. The Damilian newspapers seemed to think it was Verne's problem. We also didn't get any hints about possible ways to fight back against the worldstriders.

We didn't even know what Verne had tried, and how or why everything failed. All we knew for sure was that Verne was losing. The rest of the continent… was content to sit back and watch. After the industrial revolution, most nations still felt threatened by Verne. In their eyes, Verne growing weaker was a good thing. Of course, I wasn't pleased to see anyone getting defeated by the Worldstriders. The more successful they were, the more potential they had to hurt Anise.

The advent of the worldstriders also had incredibly unfortunate timing. After Verne had lost during the last war, they surrendered their Zelyrian artifacts. I doubted that Verne had fully complied with this demand, but they had certainly lost a lot. Since their Zelyrian artifacts were so rare, they didn't try to use them against the worldstriders... which meant we had no clue whether Zelyrian artifacts were useful against worldstriders.

One of our best opportunities to gather information was being completely wasted. Still, there was nothing we could do to help. None of us were eager to go face an army of worldstriders all the way over in Verne. Instead, we immersed ourselves in research. Anise and Felix, in particular, started researching ways to counter the worldstriders. Felix focused on affixation and alchemy, while Anise focused on Zelyrian magic. I frequently helped both of them with their testss.

Since we didn't have any worldstriders to test new items on, I instead set up target dummies using my {Fragmented Space} Skill. It was the best way we had to test whether a new spell or item could hurt worldstriders. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Unfortunately, none of Anise or Felix's tests bore fruit. If the Zelyrian magic system had an easy 'worldstrider be gone' spell, we were missing it.

Felix's attempts to create new anti-worldstrider weapons also failed. The only 'victory' we had was when we tested the lightning bolts left over from Felix's rescue. When we tried hitting one of my target dummies with a binding-essence lightning bolt, the target got singed. It was nowhere near the normal effect of getting hit by a lightning bolt, but it was a start. Felix used that as the foundation for a lot of his own item-creation attempts.

They had yet to bear fruit, but at least we knew it was possible to hurt the worldstriders using alchemy. That lightened our mood considerably. I also grew during our final year of prep school. Through a great deal of effort, I had condensed my sixth magic rune. Power: Form your sixth rune (Note: this dimension does not have the laws to support runes, although it does somewhat support absorption spellcasting. moderate Achievement penalty). Achievement +420 This pushed my Achievement total from 9, 772 to 10, 192.

Once I formed my sixth rune, I realized that I wasn't finished yet. The [Ocean] keyword consistently activated, due to the presence of my dress and the fact that we were in a coastal town. That approximately doubled the rate at which I regenerated absorption essence. Furthermore, I no longer had quite as large of a maintenance penalty for creating extra runes, due to the ability upgrade I had gotten last world. With these two factors combined… I suspected that I could actually push out another rune or two.

It was more than I had expected out of that magic system. Just like with my fourth and fifth rune, creating another rune gave me the chance to upgrade a sensory organ. For my final sensory organ evolution, I chose my nose. I had already evolved my ears and my skin, and every single new rune brought about a small upgrade to my eyes, as well. I felt that my nose was useful for detecting any would-be assassins. It was hard to say if or when the worldstriders would come for Anise.

Having as many ways to detect intruders as possible would make her safer. During this time, I also reconnected with my mother. My mother spent another month recuperating at home, and I spent time with her every day. I kept a close eye on her, to make sure she didn't lapse back into her addiction, and I also tried to get to know her better. We had missed the best years to form a bond, but I wanted to make up for that lost time. Getting to know my mother was...

odd, and it brought home how little I knew about my mother this life. Still, we were trying to form a real bond. After a few months, my mother started looking for a job. My mother didn't have any skills, so she struggled to find something. The only openings she found were for factory workers - but I had seen plenty of horrific injuries from factory workers during my time as a healer. I wasn't exactly excited at the prospect of my mother losing an arm and bleeding out after a machine took her arm away.

It was entirely possible for her to die if she worked in a factory. After a few months, I started encouraging her to just find a hobby instead. I was making enough money to support our lifestyle already, so I didn't mind my mother relaxing. But I thought a hobby would still be good for her. If she had something she enjoyed to occupy her time, she might not get pulled back into Fizz. My first suggestion was singing, since I also enjoyed singing, and I had been hoping for an activity we could do together…

but my mother didn't enjoy it. She gave it a fair shot, but after two weeks of singing lessons, my mother ducked out. She seemed to enjoy knitting much more. Weaving and knitting were declining, since spinning-machines produced so much more fabric per hour. Still, if my mother was enjoying herself, that was good enough for me. There was one final thing that concerned me. Old Mo was getting… well, old. His joints were starting to act up and his body was struggling to stay alive.

Old Mo was nearly seventy now, and most people in this era died around sixty. I constantly healed Old Mo, to keep him healthy, but there was only so much I could do. I suspected that if I pushed my abilities further, it might be possible to 'heal' old age… but right now, I couldn't do it. The one time I tried, I went from a full essence pool to nearly empty. By my and Old-Mo's reckoning, I healed away about one minute of age. This was an atrocious exchange rate.

Even though it was apparently possible to heal old age, my essence pool was a few dozen grades too weak to support longevity. It was something to think about for future lives... but it was useless for Old Mo. Despite my concerns about Old Mo's age, my healing magic kept him pretty healthy for his age, and he was very physicall active. I just hoped that he would stick around for another few decades. During the times when my mother had been lost in her addiction, Old Mo had stepped in and acted like a father for me.

I didn't want to say goodbye to him at all. A small part of me hoped that he would somehow make it into the Market, although I suspected that was unrealistic. Still, I could hope. Finally, as the year drew to a close, the tests, research, and business of life started to slow down. We had turned fifteen, and finished our final year of alchemy prep school. It was time to graduate.