Chương 145: 60. Better Late Than Never

When we meet up with Fargo at the usual place, his posture is as relaxed as ever, but there's an unmistakable tension in his voice as he greets me.

"Ah, Miss Maev," he says, looking up from feeding Taaka a small snack.

"It seems I owe you an apology. I've been ingracious."

"Well, I can't really blame you for being confused after Maggie ran off on you," I reply.

"I take it Rara scolded you?"

"To say the least." He winces.

"Lady Tara can be quite protective of her friends."

"I'm almost sorry I missed it," I chuckle.

"I haven't really seen that side of her before. But you're a friend too, aren't you?" He shrugs.

"Perhaps, but one who's been overstaying his welcome of late. I'm but a humble freeloader, getting by on what remains of my dwindling reputation. You, on the other hand, are the star guest—the talk of the house." I shake my head.

"I meant our friend. Maggie wasn't comfortable answering your questions because she wasn't sure how much we could trust you."

"Ah. And by prying, I suppose I've breached that trust."

"A little," I admit, "but I don't think it's irreparable. We'll answer your questions when we're ready, I promise, but until then I'd still like to be friends. Would you still help us raise Nipper?" He scratches the base of his horns bashfully and smiles.

"It would be my honor!" *"Nipper, use string shot!" I shout, mostly just for show, since he can't hear me. The real signal is a magical mark I place on Taaka, which Nipper will hopefully recognize as a command to attack her specifically with his webbing. Fargo's pet cat-ferret takes advantage of her incredible flexibility to contort herself in midair to avoid the attack, but it's no use. Nipper spits out a sticky line of string that clings to Taaka's fur like chewing gum.

She twists and flails to prevent her limbs from sticking together, intentionally rolling through grass and sand to neutralize the string's adhesive coating—clever little shit.

"Blood and acid, Maggie, do you have any idea how hard it is to wash that out of her fur?!" Fargo complains.

"Taaka always fights me about bathing."

"Nyehahaha! It's super effective!" I cackle gleefully.

"That's not even how it works," Violet groans.

"String Shot is a status move." Normally I'd call her out for being such a nerd, but she's still getting the kid gloves while she recovers. Allie's got her language studies, Vi's figuring out magic between chess games with her new girlfriend, and even E'ava is doing... whatever the heck she's got going on with our weird dream persona. Everyone's moved on and we've got a busy schedule. Now that Allie's smoothed things over with Fargo, I need to lock the fuck in if I'm going to catch up.

"Come here, girl," Fargo sighs, beckoning Taaka over.

"I need to get that stuff off of you before it dries." She skitters towards him, but as soon as his hand goes to the waterskin at his belt, Taaka pulls a one-eighty and forces him to chase her down. In the meantime, Nipper slithers over to nuzzle my ankles, and I kneel down to give him some attention.

"Good boy, Nipper! I'm calling that one a win for us." [Level up!] Tamer has grown from level 6 to 7. +1 Ego. Engie approved, even! Still, I think I'm gonna need to start taking this to the next level if I'm going to impress our omnipresent arbiter into giving up the goods. Now that Vi's got [Adept] and Allie has mastered [Teacher] I think I have just the thing.

"[I've decided to make a spell]," I declare, switching to our native language for privacy.

"[I don't love Engie's building blocks, but I may as well use what's there, if that's what it takes to get people off my back.]""My most sincere apologies if being restricted from self-destructive heretical arts has inconvenienced you," E'ava says sarcastically.

"[Fuck you too, Evil]," I reply.

"That's not my—no, I won't rise to your provocations anymore." Aw, she's learning. How adorable!

"Why now?" Vi asks.

"You could have done this at any time."

"[I didn't need any of the skills we had available]," I answer.

"[And it'll be more productive now that you've got a class for it. We can cross-train for each other, remember?]""I suppose," she sighs.

"It's not like I can stop you." Goddess damn it. Any other time, I wouldn't care, but if she genuinely has a problem with me doing this, I don't want to make her even more depressed by ignoring it. I'm a bitch, but I'm not a fucking monster.

"[Sure you can]," I say.

"[Just give me a reason.]""I guess I don't have one," she admits.

"Could you at least tell us which skill you're planning to use and what you want to do with it?" I roll my eyes.

"[It would be a lot easier to just show you. It's the Teacher skill.]" [Skill - Efficient Training] Faster advancement for pupils studying under your tutelage.

"Wait," Allie interjects.

"How would that even work in a spell?"

"[Only one way to find out, right?]""Alright, that makes sense," Vi agrees.

"Go ahead." I bite back a quip about not needing her permission. Fuck my life, once she's feeling better I'm gonna roast her alive just to make up for lost time. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. This is my first time actually using [Pyrothaumaturgy] like this. Using it as a shortcut to control flames is second nature for me now, though I've been quietly working on doing so without it behind the scenes.

If I'm just copying a skill we already have with chaos magic, nobody can really tell the difference, and it's a much better way to work on my fine control. Anyway, creating a spell is totally different. I'm supposed to meditate and visualize it or whatever, but magic is magic. I don't see the point in pretending it's something else. Each skill is a connection to Engie, carefully packaged and delivered through a little black box.

The mechanism doesn't normally let us see inside the box—we can control how much we put in or pull out, but it's totally up to Engie what actually emerges when we do. What thaumaturgy allows us to do is make a little box of our own. Actually, Vi and Anna's chat about it was surprisingly useful for wrapping my head around it. If each "box" has an input and an output, then what the skill is letting us do is combine those in whatever way we like.

We can merge inputs, or have one box feed into the next, or even have both of them feed into each other in a loop. Throughout the process, we can totally control what the magic does along the way, but once it's finished, Engie slaps a new box around it. A tiny glimpse behind the curtain, but no more than that. She's very protective of her secrets, isn't she? Well, I've already seen what she's hiding, and when I'm strong enough I fully plan on taking a good long look under the hood of this reality.

But for now, I just need to teach my pet worm a new trick. The magical "wiring," so to speak, of the [Efficient Training] skill already feeds back into itself. I assume that's because it's a passive skill. It just does its own thing without much interaction from us. Now that I look at it more closely it's probably possible to pull more juice out of skills like that, but it's a lot trickier, since there's less to grab on to.

In theory that limits how it can combine with other skills quite a bit, but since when have I been the type to follow the rules? As I play around with it, I start to pick up on certain limitations. Even though spells are basically just custom skills, there are certain shapes that Engie doesn't like. A completely passive spell, for example, really doesn't want to exist.

There's no reason it couldn't, but the mechanism strongly resists the attempt—spells are supposed to be active effects that require the caster's attention, either as a one-off or a channel. A one-and-done blessing is hard, and a completely passive always-on spell is nearly impossible. Nearly. I'm not doing that this time, but seeing how much Engie resists it makes me want to experiment more with the possibility later. For now, I think I've done enough disassembling to make what I want.

And once I know what that is, putting it all back together is trivial. [Magdalena's Fiery Curse] Permanently grants the skill [Limited Pyropathy] to a target. [Limited Pyropathy] Increased Awareness and Ego when sensing flames. All energy needs slightly increased.

"Holy frick!" Allie exclaims.

"Permanently?! You can do that?!"

"It's not actually permanent," E'ava comments.

"Blessings and curses are rare, but not impossible to dispel."

"[Why is it a curse?]" I mutter irritably.

"[It's supposed to be helpful.]""Blessings are voluntary," E'ava explains.

"They can only be applied to willing recipients and may be cast off at any time. Even if the effect is mostly beneficial, if you force it onto the subject, it's a curse."

"[Huh. By the way, what's stopping people with skills like this from just slapping their blessings on everybody they see? Or one person going around collecting every single one they can find?]""By all means, try cursing random people and see what happens," she says sardonically.

"As for the latter, some people do. It's not a very good idea, though. The upkeep costs aren't trivial and they add up quickly. Even two or three blessings at once can be exhausting." Okay then. Good enough for me, I guess.

"Come here, Nipper," I beckon him, holding out my arm as he slithers his way up. Then I give him a gentle poke to the top of his head.

"Boop!" I feel something leave me as I cast the spell, followed by an intense wave of dizziness and a rapidly mounting headache.

"Oh fuck, that took more out of me than I expected," I groan.

"Is it always like that?"

"Do you think the Goddess would allow you to share her blessings cheaply?" E'ava asks.

"Spells like that shouldn't be used lightly."

"Could have warned me sooner," I grumble. For Nipper's part, he doesn't seem particularly bothered. Curious, eager, a bit hungry—it's hard to tell if he even notices anything different. In theory, he should be a bit smarter when reading my signals now, but I'm not sure how to test it. I guess I can just try something that he's struggled with before.

"Let's see..." With a flick of my fingers, I conjure up three signals—Nipper's not the only one getting better at this. The first is a "move here" signal, the second is a generalized "attack," and the last one is "return." Aside from the order that they were made, there's not much to indicate which order they're supposed to be done in. My intent, of course, is for Nipper to attack the indicated position and then return.

Normally, he's not very good at figuring out multiple commands like this—he usually either picks whichever one he likes and ignores the others or does them in order of whichever is closer. He perks up at the signal, then after a moment of hesitation he leaps from my arms to take a gouge out of the ground where I indicated before slithering back to my feet. [Level up!] Tamer has grown from level 7 to 9. Adept has grown from level 4 to 6. +2 Awareness (Violet). +2 Ego. Well, I think I can call that a success.

Too bad I didn't max it out—it would have been really funny to pester Violet about it. Goddess, it's good to be making progress again, though.

"Impressive!" Fargo cheers, returning with an angry cat-ferret dripping sullenly in his arms.

"Most tamers would struggle to convey such complex orders at your level."

"Thanks," I mutter in reply.

"I gave him a blessing to help." His expression sharpens suddenly at that.

"You did? I know you've asked me not to pry into your skills, but I wasn't aware that was something you could do."

"Well it is," I reply.

"Is that a problem?"

"Not inherently, but be very careful with that," he warns.

"Not only can it influence evolutions, but the upkeep can be very taxing. I've seen careless tamers overburden their partners with an over-reliance on such skills." I nod.

"Okay, I'll be careful."

"My recommendation would be to apply no more than one such effect per evolution," he suggests.

"Once he reaches the next tier, he will likely incorporate the blessing into a native skill. Then you can safely apply another, if you wish." Fargo's usually kind of a slacker, so when he gets serious like this, I don't argue.

"Got it. How do I know if I'm going overboard, though?"

"That's just it," he sighs.

"You don't. Nipper doesn't understand upkeep costs or know how to pace himself. His instincts tell him how much he needs to eat or sleep, and the blessing throws that into disarray. He'll adjust over time, but I have to stress that for sub-sentient creatures, there's little difference between a blessing and a curse—either is capable of serious damage if applied carelessly." Now I'm just feeling embarrassed. I really should have checked with him before doing this, come to think of it.

"Thanks for the warning," I say.

"And uh, sorry for acting carelessly." He waves me off, smiling.

"No harm done in this case," he assures me.

"And the fact that you're actually listening places you ahead of most. Far too many tamers see their companions as expendable tools, rather than treasured partners." I shrink in on myself, recalling my original plan to vivisect Nipper once I learned what I could from him, or the time I threw him in frustration. Fuck. I'm exactly the kind of shitty person he's talking about.

"Miss Maggie? Are you alright?" he asks, reaching out to put a hand on my shoulder before stopping himself. I shake my head.

"I don't think I'm a good mom for Nipper. I treated him like shit when we first got him. It wasn't until I got the class that I even started thinking of him as anything but a specimen."

"Hm, well better late than never, eh?" he replies with a smile.

"Besides, when I look at Nipper, I don't see a creature that's been abused." Fargo gestures down at Nipper, who is currently coiled around my leg and nibbling affectionately on our shoes.

"You told me that you wouldn't have entrusted me with Nipper if we weren't friends, yes?" he reminds me.

"I'll say the same. If I had suspected you of mistreating him, you'd never find him or me again." I chance a look up at his face, and despite his affable smile, even I can see the resolve in his eyes. He means it. Averting my gaze to stare back down at Nipper, I smile and nod.

"Thanks."