Chương 359: Heroes (3)

One day later, someone from the meeting came to meet us. It happened right after I healed another two patients who had lost their hands during a previous fight. As they were making their way out the door, an elderly woman and two men flew to the front of our bakery. The elderly woman appeared to be in her early forties… which meant that she was ridiculously old.

In this world, people's appearance froze the moment they turned fifty, and they stopped showing any change in appearance until they were around four hundred and fifty. For someone to look like they were forty meant that they were around four hundred and seventy years old - about thirty years away from dying of old age, give or take a few decades. Like my mother, she had fox ears, and seven tails. Her hair was starting to turn gray, although there were still streaks of her original green-blue hair color.

The two men didn't have the same aged appearance as the old woman. They seemed to be twenty years old, so I had no idea what their age was. Unlike the old lady, One of them was elven in appearance, and had sturdy, chiseled muscles showing that he spent a great deal of time honing his physical abilities as well as his magical ones. The other one looked like some sort of insect-man. His eyes were abnormally large, and looked faceted, like a gem.

Attached to his shoulder blades was a pair of delicate, butterfly-style wings that flapped gently in the wind. I had no idea whether they were just decorative, or could actually let him fly - but either way, he was one of the more aesthetically 'normal' insect-people of this world. All three of them were clearly using absorption essence, and quite a bit of it. I was surprised they were wasting essence just to fly down and meet us, when essence was so limited and difficult to come by in this world.

Perhaps the three had deemed it important to make a good impression on the first heroes born in millennia? The old lady alighted in front of the other two, before all three approached the bakery. The old woman saw me behind the window, and gave me a friendly smile as she approached. One of the two young men opened the door for the old lady as she stepped inside.

"Hello there, little one. Are you Anise or Miria?" she asked.

"Or perhaps you're just a visitor of this fine bakery? It does smell quite nice, so I wouldn't blame you for coming to take a bit of bread."

"I'm Miria," I said. I smiled back at her. Since she was making an effort to be friendly, I saw no reason not to reciprocate.

"Wonderful! You're a lovely little girl. Could you go get your parents for me? And your sister? I have something I want to discuss with all of you."

"Got it," I said, before I ran out of the room. My mother and father didn't seem surprised when I told them that someone had flown in front of our building, which made me wonder if that was why they had chosen to fly to us. It might not just be a way of showing off in front of the first heroes born in generations - it might also be a way of establishing that they were who they said they were. It only took a few more minutes to fetch Anise.

My parents hung a 'closed' sign in front of our bakery doors, before we wall reconvened in the kitchen. The place was unusually dim, since all of the ovens had been turned off. It gave the room a dim, cheery feeling. My mother gave the old lady a scrutinizing look, before she followed up with a respectful nod. My father did the same. The two younger men trailing behind the old lady gave our parents their own respectful nods, before they moved just behind the older lady.

I was starting to get the feeling that they were more like bodyguards, rather than part of the official delegation coming to meet us.

"Now that everyone is here, I'll start by introducing myself. I am Veridian, advisor to the second Sentinel-Reclaimer. I'm here to talk about the future of little Anise and Miria," said the old lady. I noticed that she didn't introduce the two young men, and they didn't take the initiative to introduce themselves, either.

"As I'm sure you know, there haven't been any new heroes born in thousands of years. However, Anise and Miria have quite decisively proven that they're heroes. They are constantly using essence, without using any type of essence-restoring food. Several people also witnessed them walking up the staircase that is supposed to be located near the trunk of the tree, and which only heroes are supposed to be able to see or walk upon.

"Having two new heroes born is a cause for celebration. However, this also creates a lot of difficulties. A lot of what we know about heroes is from stories, and much was lost during the flight towards the sanctuaries. So we have no idea how to train heroes, or what they're capable of." Our parents nodded thoughtfully. It was true that they didn't know what we needed, or what we were capable of. To be frank, our group also had no idea how we stacked up compared to the rest of this dimension, or what we needed.

All we had right now were vague long-term goals and rough guesses about how we might accomplish those goals.

"Anise and Miria, can I ask you what you're capable of?" Asked Veridian.

"Rumours say that heroes can generate essence practically from nothing, and use abnormal magics beyond the reach of normal magic systems. Heroes are also supposed to be incredibly powerful - well beyond what regular spellcasters can do. Both of you used magic competently during the attack on the city, so you must have some familiarity with your abilities and limitations. Can you give me a rough overview of what you can or can't do? Afterwards, I'd also like to go through some tests, if you don't mind."

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. I looked at Anise, before we both shrugged. Wanting to test us didn't strike me as too odd. Perhaps it would even help us with our own goals later.

"Well, the first thing we know is that we generate essence from nothing," I said. I opted not to mention that some of our essence generation was technically conditional, such as my alteration essence, which needed me to be touching water. Since my dress was made of water, I didn't need to do anything unusual to generate more essence, at least.

"We only generate specific kinds of essence though!" said Anise.

"I have manifestation essence. Miria has alteration and absorption. For other types of essence, we would need to eat food like other people."

"Oh?" Veridian gave us surprised looks.

"So heroes all have specific specializations as far as essence goes. Well, that's not a big deal. What about your abnormal magic?"

"Well… I can fight a little bit and develop new spells," said Anise.

"Right now, I'm still defining what else I want my magic system to do, but I have four spells available. I can learn new spells based on my needs though."

"So you can redesign your abilities based on your needs? Fascinating," said the woman, before she turned towards me.

"I'm good at healing and projectile manipulation," I said.

"I also have one other ability, that lets me attack the life force of enemies. But that one is a lot less useful than you might think. If an enemy has way too much life force, my essence reserves are usually insufficient to do any major damage."

"I'm surprised you know the weaknesses of your magic systems already," said the woman.

"It almost sounds like you've tried to fight with them before." I blinked in surprise, and then realized that the old woman was correct. It was pretty unusual for us to know so much about our magic systems.

"We have helped out with other, smaller raids," I said, after a moment of hesitation.

"We just usually use less visible abilities. I don't usually finish off enemies, either - I just weaken them a little bit and let other defenders handle the aftermath."

"I see," said Veridian.

"Well, about those tests… can you show me what you're capable of doing? I'd like to see both of you use magic, so that I can get a better feel for how much essence you have and how powerful your unique magic systems are."

"Of course! I'll go first!" said Anise, as she practically quivered in excitement. She started accessing her manifestation essence, and a moment later, one of the nearby objects lifted itself off of the table and started floating around.

"This is {Mage Hand}! said Anise.

"I only know four spells right now, because I need to spend a lot of time creating a new spell if I want to use it. This is the one that has the least direct use on a battlefield, but I like it because it lets me do unexpected things sometimes. Like shoving a projectile out of the way if it's heading towards someone, or moving materials around if they're in the way." After that, Anise demonstrated her other spells, although she toned them down to avoid harming any furniture or the walls of the house.

I could tell that Veridian was a bit disappointed with our lackluster display, but she didn't say anything about it. After all, there really wasn't a good way to test our abilities 'in full' when surrounded by so many fragile objects. After that, it was my turn. Since there weren't any nearby injuries, I was about to give myself a small papercut - but before I could, one of the young men took a black knife out and gave himself a cut on his palm.

"Please, use this to demonstrate," he said. I was a bit surprised that he had stepped in so quickly, but I didn't think much about it. If the man wanted to experience my healing himself, or just didn't want to see a kid hurt herself to show off her healing ability, I wouldn't complain. I splashed him with a bit of water, before I used my healing ability. His skin knitted shut in seconds. Veridian seemed far more impressed this time.

"To heal so quickly and effectively… it's almost like the Eldimian system is supposed to have looked, before we lost the complete magic system," she muttered. She turned towards me.

"Are there any illnesses or wounds that you can't heal?"

"I can heal most wounds, but I've noticed that sometimes head wounds can't be healed," I said. That wasn't entirely correct, but head wounds were the ones that most frequently impacted the soul. I still had Soul Clamp, the third spell I had developed from my alteration magic, but I still didn't have a way to properly heal soul damage.

"I see…" said Veridian. After that, I demonstrated all of my other abilities. I extinguished a few pieces of grass, showed off my portals, and showed Veridian my spatial tripwires. She seemed more interested in the tripwires than the portals, especially when I told her about how the leviathan from the last raid had been so seriously injured by it. After Anise and I finished demonstrating our abilities, she looked at us with emotions that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

On one hand, she seemed to feel at least a bit of excitement at seeing real hero abilities being used in front of her. However, especially after she had us discuss how much essence each move took, she had a lingering expression of… disappointment. It was as if she had found a gold bar lying on the street, only to realize it was actually a silver bar with a very thin plating of gold on top of it. She spent a few more hours with us, discussing schedules and needs with our mother.

The two of them quickly determined that Veridian would come to our house four times a week, to start our education. However, I couldn't shake the disappointment I had seen in her eyes out of my mind. She didn't seem that worried when we had been demonstrating our abilities, but once she had a good grasp on the size of our essence pools, she had seemed far less enthusiastic than before. It looked like my earlier suspicion was correct. This world wasn't designed for people with our level of stats.

I just hoped that the staircase of heroes would give us a huge boost when we used it… because if it didn't, we were going to have a huge extra obstacle to overcome during our time in this dimension.