Chương 79: 14 – Interlude: Blizzard

Six Years Ago Withered Talent Identified: Chemical Savant. Rank: Masterful Acquiring… Control Granted. From the free points accumulated by Emmaline's Chemical Savant Talent, you have gained 2, 512 free points! I nearly choked. Two… two thousand five hundred free points? By the gods. I was trembling, as I stared at the screen. This… this couldn't be right. It couldn't be. With that many free points, I could… I could do anything!

"So… what was it? How good is your talent, dear?" Mom asked. She didn't even seem to know. I had control of her hysterics, and she couldn't even tell? Strange. Fascinating. … Terrifying. They were going to kill me. I had to hide this. I wouldn't be able to hide it from Mother. She'd figure it out sooner or later, but I could hide it from everyone else. It hurt something inside me to consider hiding anything from Uncle Clestar but no one could know. I had to hide what I was.

Thousands of skill points did nothing to protect me from a knife to the back. It had been an effort to stop trembling ever since I first read the rank. The world over, everyone knew that Legendary Talents caused wars. From Tacuria to Rechin Amut to Charlost, Legendary talents were a threat. They upset the current order. They destroyed countries and brought up new ones. Philosophers theorized that it was in their nature.

Anyone with enough ambition to gain such a laudable talent would never suffer the constraints of the nation that birthed them. They stretched, and the world bent before they did. I felt a bit safer now. Now that I'd seen what my talent could truly give me. On the one hand, I felt all consuming power. On the other… existential dread. I didn't hate Eschal. I had no problems with my country as it stood. It wasn't perfect but nowhere was perfect! I was in the running to be a counselor for the sake of the heavens!

Why would I ever start a war? The histories must be wrong. Either that or they were missing all of the quiet Legendary talents that lived and died, making no impact upon the world at large. … Except every last one of the rift border nations and a few more besides had origin stories with Legendary talents as their founders. Except Tacuria of course. Those pompous assholes claimed their founder had a Mythic talent. That was absurd… but less impossible today than it had been yesterday.

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"Well? Out with it!" Mother said. I was still slightly out of breath from my trek through the castle jungle, but I'd long since let the silence stretch on to discomfort. I glanced up, and was amazed even more. This one small area, protected by the Cedovan Artifact, didn't seem to have stopped my talent. The artifact had been created by someone with a Masterful Talent. Was it so simple as that? My talent outranked the artifact and therefore it had no effect on me?

I'd been prepared to conduct safety experiments where we temporarily removed the artifact, in order to give my talent a chance to work, but it seemed that was unnecessary. Fortunate. The room pulsed and thrummed. Beyond the walls, beyond the doors, I could see where the edge of the artifacts power ceased. All around, a green hue'd light pressed against the artifact's power, unable to gain entry, but running wild outside the range. I saw the light, and I manipulated it. I couldn't see it, but I felt what I'd done.

The grass sprouting horizontally out of the castle wall melted away. It swirled inward in a spiral, the exact same way it had done so many years ago when I'd first witnessed my Mother's hysterics, hiding in that little cupboard. That wall became regular stone once more. I controlled Mother's garden.

"Daughter, are you… alright?" Mother asked, now looking genuinely worried.

"I… I did it," I said softly. I turned back to her, meeting her eyes.

"I surpassed you, Mother." The Chemist blinked. There weren't any active Masterful talents to study save Mother herself, but conventional wisdom held that, on average, over the course of someone's life, each rank of talents gained about five more free points per month. So, common talents gained five, uncommon, ten, and so on. Mother's talent was masterful. Due to complex theories and studies the average number of points per month a masterful talent was expected to gain was thirty-two.

I'd gained 2, 512 points from Mother's talent. Multiplied by four… 10, 048? Mother had gained just over ten thousand free points with her masterful talent. She was fifty, and had her talent for thirty-two years. She should've had twelve thousand points, or so, but of course she'd had the hysterics for the past six years. Even when her talent behaved normally, it did not grant her free points anymore. It was somewhat humbling to realize just how many points the woman had accumulated. How many skills did she have?

How long would it take me to catch up? Years probably. I'd never successfully found a person with the Hysterics yet, but that would have to change going forward. New policies around how people treat their neighbors, especially considering I could control the effects. I was… disappointed that it appeared to grant me no further insight into what had caused the hysterics, or fixing them. Mother's talent, as it had once been, was beyond my reach. Instead… I could craft a jungle.

Chemicals mixed to form life from thin air, which was what her talent had been twisted into by the Hysterics. It was… potentially even more powerful than her original talent but it would require extensive experimentation.

"I'm proud of you, dear, but I hope you are not implying what I think you…" she trailed off, looking at me with the multitude of points invested in her Observe skill.

"Ah. Well. That does complicate things, doesn't it?" I shivered.

"What… Mother, what do I do?" Mother paused to think for a moment.

"Well. It… you… shit," she said.

"Fortunately, we have this place. It's almost impossible to have a more private place to plan our next moves. Tell me, what exactly does your talent do?"

"It… I can control your Hysterics," I said fearfully.

"You what?"

"Your Hysterics. I can control them," I breathed.

"It also granted me a portion of all your accumulated free points. I have twenty-five hundred of them." It shamed me to admit that I was lost, and for the first time, I desperately wanted Mother's help. The only difference was that, for the first time, I was probably interesting enough for Mother to devote her full attention to. She leaned back in her bed, and for the first time in a very long time, I watched a small smile creep across her face.

"Let's test that, shall we, daughter?"