Chương 158: Chapter 179: Capybara

The other Natural Philosophy students were each at their benches, furiously trying to titrate the proper proportions, checking their notes frequently. The professor stood ready to deal with any incipient disasters, watching for anyone that was mixing in the wrong order and about to set themselves on fire. I hung out nearby in case he was slow and someone did catch fire. My chair was back on two legs, my arms folded behind my head, both my feet up on the desk.

Not a pose one normally adopts in a bell skirt but I'm cheating physics to keep it modest and dapper. While the other pupils were trying to get their lab assignments done, he and I had nothing to do but watch for mistakes and chat between us, voices low to not bother the experimenters.

"You're kind of a mess, aren't you?"he said, smirking over at me. The words themselves stung a little. The fact that the system immediately rewarded me with +1 XP was an additional sting. It felt judgmental. Like the hidden laws of this universe were also telling me that I need to work on myself.

"Would you believe just last night I was heartily congratulating myself on how much of a mess I'm not?" I replied.

"Everything ship-shape and squared away." He was leaning back against the wall, his arms crossed in front of him, next to a poster of lab safety rules with clip-art illustrations. I made that one myself with my affinity to ink, apparently nobody in this world thought to put up checklists of good and bad lab safety procedures. He shrugged at my words.

"Sure, if your only standard is ' things didn't go worse', then you're doing great."

"And I am. What other measure is worth anything? I could be doing worse and I'm not. I'm doing fine. I'm holding it together. If the target is not marked by 'better', if improvement and progress are not the goal, then you're just espousing a useless perfectionism." But my logic did not seem to impress him.

"The objective viewpoint like that has its time and place. In the moment that the stakes are high, by all means judge your results as 'not worse' than the alternative. But I don't think you recognize how harsh and unyielding that viewpoint is, how far off normal your standards are. I think that you've been living in an extended state of crisis-mode, Trying to live your entire life by the same principles you'd get through a single stressful evening or a difficult midterm or a dangerous dungeon or whatever.

I'm not entirely informed on what kind of high-stakes crises you get involved in, but I know that you can't manage day-to-day under the same conditions you would survive a pitched battle."

"Pfft. You're an expert?"

"Best expert in this room," he said confidently.

"Look, I'll try this with an analogy, personal experience. I-""You're a lifelong academic. I'm juggling the fates of millions and I've almost died like nine times this year."

"Hear me out," he chuckled, holding up a hand to forestall.

"Look, I'm not saying- okay, yes. I'm a lifelong academic. But at one point, I started getting worried about next year's finals. It dominated every waking hour. I trained, prepared, worried, paced, I started drinking, I obsessed, I seriously considered various methods to cheat on that test. Now, it was not the fate of millions or near-death experiences. But at that time, in that experience as a lifelong academic, I could not have told the difference.

I was perceiving the same amount of stress as if I was fighting monsters at the risk of my life and saving nations and bleeding into the mud. Because once you cross a certain line of disordered thinking, the process is all the same."

"I haven't taken up drinking."

"Consider it, it was the healthiest habit that I had back then."

"What? No. No? No. Look, I was saying that it's not actually the same. My situation is not your situation, and they cannot be comparable."

"You say that, but- " He paused, and considered. The professor watched the room, where one student was starting to get an energetic reaction she wasn't supposed to get, smoke rising, and with a frown she diluted the mixture and added a neutralizing agent, then started over from scratch. Ryichsur glanced over to me.

"All right," he said.

"Let me try an alternate method: appeal to intellectualism. Right now, you've got a lifestyle and a cyclical thought pattern that are reinforcing each other. You've built your habits and your environment to respond to crisis, so crisis is never far from your thinking. You're holding yourself in a perpetual state of readiness for catastrophe, and you're not built for that. Tell me, Natalie: when was the last time that you were relaxed, actually laid back.

Not in a crisis mode, and not taking a temporary reprieve from a crisis mode that you know will end soon. More than just a morning's worth of a break from anxiety." He was asking that he thought was a rhetorical question. What he did not know was that this next weekend is my birthday party.

"Almost precisely six years," I answered him promptly and confidently. That drew a double-take out of him.

"Wait, really?"

"Yeah. The last time that I wasn't reacting to a grave danger present or in the near-future or the recent past? Six years this next Sixthday."

"Shit, really? Actually six years? All right, if you say so. And now you're so habituated to your meltdown mode that you don't even know how to get out of it." He shook his head sympathetically, and hunched his shoulders as if shuddering at the thought of what six years of constant gnawing pressure would do to someone. The reality of being set down with a twenty-year deadline to save the world. [Quest Begun: Teaching Tranquility. +10 XP. Advancement: The Sorcerer]"What's that mean?"

I said, both to the questlog and to my professor-slash-therapist. Ryichsur is not the Sorcerer. He's the Professor. What's going on here?

"It means you're a mess." Ryichsur said with a chuckle, but I was quite distracted now. He's not wrong, but now I've got new questions.

"He said that?" Coppor Cseyz said, side-eyeing me as he hobbled along.

"Yeah. A mess. Psychologically, at least." I'm walking with Coppor because of a breadcrumb trail of XP. At first I'd been baffled why a conversation with one 'love interest', Ryichsur The Professor, was kicking back plot hooks for a quest with Kimothy The Sorcerer. But that has happened a few times in the game, where one person has the key to someone else's solutions. Like how Nathan can talk to Kurumi about her Student Council problems and open up the quest for Clash Atland's Bully-Buster quest.

Well, in this case it seems that discussing mental health issues could bring me a quest relating to Kimothy. I had first gone directly to Kimothy to see what he could tell me about this, but that was a dead end. I told him I had a sliver of a vision, not much more than an intuition, that told me to pursue "teaching tranquility". So he suggested I speak to our teacher. I mean, it's kind of right there: teaching + sorcerer = sorcery teacher. +1 XP.

So I did, and now I've got this conversation, which again is quickly spiraling out of my expectations. Literally every time I talk to Coppor Cseyz. The sorcery teacher nodded sagely.

"Yes, that checks out. And your affinities and channeling sure don't help matters." +1 XP Well, shit, that means I'm on the right track. And I don't like where that is going. I scoffed.

"What does that mean? My affinities aren't helping?" He arched an eyebrow at me, and opened his satchel. He drew out a notebook, and flipped to a dog-eared page. Reading aloud: "Your most-used essences to channel are: steel, owl, lightning, water, peacock and void?"

"Should add clay to that list," I said.

"But yeah." He trooped along, tucking the notebook back into his satchel.

"And you're not concerned that owls and peacocks are both habitually nervous animals? And they don't react well to stress, often engaging in self-destructive behaviors?"

"What?"

"You have been paying attention to how your channeled essences affect your emotions and behavior, right?"

"Absolutely. I use steel and water all the time in particular to regulate my emotions when I'm having trouble." He nodded.

"Ah. You do like a challenge, don't you?"

"What does that mean?" I snapped, fed up with this mysterious sage bullshit and - oh, this is what it feels like to talk to me. We kept walking down the path to the class building, but he was giving me sidelongs like he was trying to figure out if I'm kidding or not.

"Steel? In times of stress? And water to regulate aggression and anxieties?"

"Yeah, why? Sometimes I need to be strong, and sometimes I need to let things float down the river." He reached out and grabbed my arm, tightly, which nobody ever does. Even Yheta has almost learned that lesson by now.

"Water essence does not wash things clean, it submerges them," he hissed.

"Every bad emotion and terrible memory you've tried to escape with water essence is not cleansed from you, it's been building up a sand bar to scuttle ships sailing by. And steel? Well, I'll have you know that iron and steel essence makes you a, please forgive the very necessary pun, a rigid thinker. It makes you less adaptable." I was stunned.

"What?"

"Yeah," he said.

"Look, I'm sure that when you start looking back, you're going to see that pattern emerging. It's not a minor shift." Was that true? Was there a correlation between me channeling steel, and my continuing problem with improvising in the moment? Where has that most affected me... um. The camogie match where I got pinned in and couldn't figure a way out. The Uchislowi village where I couldn't think of a single way to defeat a fire-mage other than burning out all my mana. Honestly, most of the Uchislowi mission.

The party where Wendy was poisoned. Conversations with liches. My post-fire rage-out revenge-spree road tour. Where are the moments I've done the best at improvising? The second Egg-vitational when I was channeling peacocks and silver. My fight against Cheresa Braux after she shut off my spells. Uchislowi, after my mana burned out. My entire childhood before my sorcery developed. Anytime I was channeling lightning and had to shut off steel. +1 XP"Oh, for fuck's sake," I grumbled.

"I've been giving myself stupid pills on a regular basis. Especially when it matters most. All just to armor my skin, bulk my muscles and deflect my sense of doubt."

"Not stupid," he admonished.

"You were still very intelligent. But only in the directions you were already moving." I sighed.

"Lightning definitely affected me emotionally. More erratic, and impulsive. But the birds? Really?"

"You should spend more time around them, they have strong startle responses, and their handlers have to constantly monitor for signs of stress." He shook his head.

"I did this research when I found out they were commonly used for you. I didn't realize that you just... took them for granted." I groaned, putting my face in my hands.

"Great. So what animals should I embrace for good mental health and emotional regulation?"

"Have you considered the noble capybara?" +1 XP Fucking really? This has been one of the more generous quests so far, and I feeling the supernatural hand of the isekai goddess at work here, using her system rewards to steer me along some path. This makes me deeply suspicious because she's a total bitch. Here's my conflict. I don't trust her, and I don't like her. I don't approve of her methods and my most life-defining decision so far has been to defy her.

I have put some very serious evenings into internal debates as to whether I even believe her that my actions here could save this world from dissolution and The End. What decided me to trust that, was several factors. For one, I can't figure out what reason there could be for her to lie about that. For another, if someone gives you the chance to save the world you take that chance. If she's lying and I believe her, it's because she sucks. If she's telling the truth and I ignore her, that's because I suck.

So letting XP rewards and quest notifications steer me through subplots is something I have very mixed feelings about. I vastly prefer doing things that are completely off the grid. Building roadways, distributing adventurers, killing a princess, influencing political appointments. Those are things that are my choice, and the benefits and repercussions are all mine. And yet, my allies and love interests are an extremely powerful asset. And leveling up is nearly impossible without quests, lots of them.

The main plotlines were enough to get off to a good start, but you can't stay ahead of the curve just focusing on the plotline. And that's why I need to stay close to them. Licard, Ryichsur, Rabert, Yheta, Thumper, Kurumi... but also Kimothy.

"How are you doing, Kimothy?"

"HOLY SHIT" We're headed to a spot called Bucktooth Baths. It was a geothermal spring over one of the fault lines in Fidiange. The few faults in Hearstwhile mostly just expressed themselves in springs and a few geysers, none of them had the energy for a quake or any real vulcanism. And none of them were anywhere near the east-west centerline of the continent, where the Fissuring hit. I did not have any waypoints anywhere near this place, no previous exposure to set a portal there.

My abilities don't have many restrictions, they're honestly pretty broken, but when I do have to work within restrictions, for example having to fly cross-country instead of portalling, I tend to resent it somewhat. I get a little impatient. So, when I was curving wind to fly us from Quupinur Headwaters to Bucktooth Baths, I added essence of levinbolt to speed things along. So I am finding out that he's surprisingly good with high-speed flight, and seems to be having the time of his life.

Because all I had to do was ask him and he's willing to join me on a brief quest. He's not even asking any questions, he's more accepting of my suggestions than I would be under the circumstances. There's an irony here. I would be leveling up fast, and very powerful, if I just did exactly what the goddess wanted me to do. Just like Nathan would be leveled up and very powerful if he just quit fighting me over stupid shit and did what I told him to do. Juxtapositions like that could make me feel like a hypocrite.

So, if I'm going to reach a respectable level and not be badly outclassed in the late game, I need to play her version of the game and walk the path she's picked out for me, at least somewhat. The love interests she's assigned me, the quests she signals to me. So, the further along I get, the more I'm letting her influence my actions and relationships. And obviously I'm not comfortable with that. And if I find a better alternative, I'll take it.

Kimothy opened his mouth to shout something, but the wind tore his voice away from my ears. But from how his mouth was stretched, and the way his finger was pointing, I'm pretty sure it was "there". I followed his pointing finger, and I quickly saw a haze of humidity rising over a portion of the landscape. The steamy mists of the hot springs. Kimothy was navigating on this trip because he's channeling geese, who have excellent senses of north-south direction, he could keep us on-target even at very high speeds.

I rarely needed a sense of navigation like that, I just went from place to place, instead of direction to direction. But when I do need to travel overland, I need a navigator. None of my birds are migratory. The heated pools were a set of tiers, one spilling to the next, next to a large wooden cabin that stood on high ground. A trail on the ground showed which direction the local residents came in from, but we ignored the road entirely and just landed at the front of the cabin.

As soon as his feet touched the ground, Kimothy was stumbling.

"Holy shit that was so much," he said breathlessly.

"Nobody has ever moved that fast!" We had been doing well under four hundred miles, less than half the speed of sound. But, with only shaped air to keep us from being blasted apart by the sheer speed of it, it had sure looked and felt impressive. I had been in a hurry to arrive because I was trying to give us time, it was Fourday now and I'm trying to work with our schedule. School takes up a huge amount of the day.

I scooped Kimothy up before dinner and into a portal, and from there we flew at the cruising speed of a decent airplane until we got here. Because Bucktooth Baths is the capybara temple. Serenity washed off of it, as thick as the mists and the scent of lush growing trees. I'm here for the tranquility. Capybaras are laid-back creatures, sure. But they are famous for being agreeable and patient. They're the standard, the high-water mark. And just like other channeled essences, that is what matters.

I don't just want to be as chill as these creatures really are, but how chill they proverbially are. What people say and believe about them. And so, a deep well of ease and peace that can stop me from breaking down.

"Nice place," he commented.

"Most of them are," I said idly.

"The essence temples make themselves easy to take care of, only requires a little help from humans to keep them kept up. They often attract at least a small community. This one doubles as a bit of a resort, which is unusual but not unexpected."

"I thought you hadn't been here before?"

"I read up ahead of the journey," I said.

"There are a lot of travel guides for the essence temples. Popular pilgrimage sites." We followed the posted signage set up for the public usage, and found changing rooms. Our clothes went into cubbies, and I whipped up towels and robes and slippers for us. Then, out to the springs, to recline and relax. Each pool of the springs had two to four of the creatures, that looked rather like a cross between prehistoric horses and a nice throw pillow.

Steps had been carved into the stone so we could let ourselves in without too much splashing. We moved slowly, and the placid peacefulness of the place was pervasive, as thick as the fog drifting off the water. I was feeling more modest than terrycloth robes were good for, I had conjured myself a cotton one-piece swimsuit underneath, just in case. Stepping down on the textured stones, we put our concentration on not slipping. The water was up to my waist before I knew it, and I settled in for a long, relaxing soak.

I found a seat that kept my chin just above the water, and let myself absorb the ambience. And from four feet away, a capybara watched me with little curiosity and no apprehension at all. These guys were what we were here for, after all. I watched them, their eyes. And I let my soul start to slowly seep out of me to sample the elemental essences around me. This could- [Capybara 100%] Okay, shit that was fast. I barely had to open the doors at all.

In fact, now I'm disappointed that I don't have a great excuse to lounge around in this hot tub for a few hours. I started reeling my soul back in, sighing. A little disappointed, but also contented. We'd had a good swift exhilarating flight, and I could spend a little while in a relaxing soak. I tipped my head up, looked at the darkening purple, the sun had set and its vestiges drained out of the sky slowly, giving way to real darkness and starlight.

I looked over at Kimothy, and he was in a trance of concentration. Huh. He was staring without seeing, his mouth moving slightly but soundlessly. There was no indication he was aware of this place, or of the fluffy friendly creatures that were staring at him. One got up and ambled over, seemingly just making itself comfortable. But bit by bit, move by move, the massive rodents were casually surrounding him. It was like he was hypnotized by this place, and I understood what was happening to him.

Because it was what was supposed to happen to me. I've not done a lot of sorcerer runs in Glitter, but a few, and I made sure to always visit some element temples. And each of them had a graphic of Nathan sitting, spellbound, as a new element bonded with him at a fundamental, ontological level. It was the same look that now spread over Kimothy's face. I tuned my sorcerous senses in. The essence washed over me, like I was submerged in capybara. That's what it means to be in their temple.

A font of essence, a nexus of the affinity. And right now, I could feel Kimothy attuning himself. He was working to absorb it, sieving the resonant mana into his soul through his mind and body. I could feel the process. I can't feel Kimothy, he's a human and the only human attunement is Nathan. So he's like a blank space in my essential perceptions. Ironically, that made this easier for me as I watched the process.

The way that the warm serene ether was osmosed into his soul and integrated there, I could feel it enter him and then it left my senses, joined with his own mana which I was blind to. Particles of warm brown energy that entered a human-shaped blank space, slowly spiraling in like a whirlpool before they vanished from my sight. His attunement seemed to tug at the temple's ether, a low-pressure zone that attracted more attention.

The capybara animals followed this tug, and gathered around him in a friendly, unhurried cluster. This is what it's supposed to look like, if you don't gather your affinities all in one huge gulp like I do. This is my first time observing this process, in person.

All my temple experience is from either a video game that would rather use sparkling lights than usefully-specific worldbuilding, or from books written by sorcerers who assume that their readers have already experienced this personally at least a couple times. I studied it, paid attention to details Somewhere in this process are the answers, why my sorcery has these limitations, why I've such an unusual inability to merge with certain essences. Some of my... differences... stem from the Untethered trait.

And I hate what that represents but I don't flinch away from considering it. But it doesn't explain everything. And I want to understand everything. The essence stilled around him, slowly settling. The swirling intake slackened, the low-pressure behavior eased. His body stopped acting like it was taking in the ambient mana, but suffused with it, merged with it.

For a few seconds, I could feel Kimothy, his entire being suffused with the capybara essence, flushed with it, and then he faded from my magical perceptions, once more a null-space pressed into the world. And then he gasped like he was coming up out of the water, like he hadn't breathed in minutes, eyes wide, body trembling. [Quest Complete: Teaching Tranquility. +10 XP]"Feel better?" I asked, still relaxing in the heated water. It was doing wonders for my shoulders.

"I feel... so much better," he laughed, and reached up to start petting one of the furry bodies near him. I had idly been running my hands down another one, they really were quite well-tempered creatures in person, as well as proverb. And their fur felt soft and interesting, more like a chinchilla than any other fur I'd known. He was still lost in his own wonder.

"Wow, I feel... quieter. In a good way. Not so many broken thoughts spinning around in here."

"Glad to hear it," I said, but I wasn't actually experiencing anything like that. He seemed to be experiencing a significant change at his resting state, similar to my experience when I'm channeling an essence. I pushed mana through the capybara essence and felt a sense of steady, grounded goodwill flush through my body. But when I retracted it from my mana channels, I felt no change. He sat up, shook himself all over. Then he turned to me with fervor.

"And you've got... whole books of places like this? And the ability to just whisk from one to another? Why aren't you taking us out every day to explore one of these?!" And like that, my mood soured again.

"I'll tell you," I said, "but don't give me a hard time about it. Even to me, it feels like a cheap excuse, all right? So I don't want to hear you jeering at me."

"Sure," he said, still lost in the afterglow. My nails were in need of some work, I noticed. The eponychium was ragged and dried out. I kept my eyes on my nails while I talked.

"So, I've had my name on the reservation list for the temple of fire. For a long time now. I've quietly been fixated on it. One of my first experiences with magic was a demonstration by a fire sorcerer. And I was so ticked off that I could learn almost any affinity I wanted, except that one. It felt like I was being taunted. Or worse: tested. So I've hung a lot of hopes on the fire temple. And, for reasons that make sense to my guts and my heart, it always felt like that should be my first temple.

I can't explain it in a way that sounds convincing to my brain, but... well, my lifetime is not exactly a parade of best decisions. I felt like visiting other temples would be giving up, in a way. Like I was settling for lesser choices." Kimothy listened carefully, nodding.

"I understand. But it is going to be really hard not to jeer at that. C'mon, let's get out of here. It has to be past last bell, we're after curfew anyway. But I think... I think with the right affinities, we could try some more of those dungeons, monster-hunting expeditions." [Quest Available: Temple Tour. 10 XP, Advancement: The Sorcerer] [Quest Available: Guild Business. 10 XP, Advancement: The Healer] I sighed. Twenty points was just too rich a reward to pass up.

"All right. I'll start putting together a list," I said. Now where the fuck am I going to find time for this? It takes hours to do one of these events, even if the transport time is low. Good thing I started with capybara essence. I think this is going to get more stressful. And besides, end of year vacation is coming up soon.