tMFUtM - b1c11 - Well, That’s Just Primal (Patreon)

AN: OMFG, I didn't even realize today was Tuesday, I am so sorry about the delay!

Seriously, I feel like Saturday just didn't even happen. Sleep has been a bit fraught lately, but that's no excuse.

Rugrim had a few regrets, yes.

First, his muddy spell took about fifteen minutes to finally wear itself out. By that time, Dawn had finished off every single monster (that part was good), everyone else was more than a bit battered and filthy (that part gave him a few regrets), and Steel was missing (and that part was pretty silting awful).

Fortunately, a plan to resolve that last issue was swiftly formed. Once Tin was back on their feet, the golem threw Dawn into the air, repeatedly, while the fey spread her wings to slow her descent. After the fourth repetition, she finally spotted Steel—trapped in bramble—and Tin promptly sprinted off to rescue the poor… whatever the stone that thing was.

Still, regrets or not, Rugrim was also feeling a bit pleased in spite of his better judgement. As the great dwarven explorer, Maltaka, once said: With risk comes reward, so long as you survive. And rewarded, he was.

-----

Magic Points: 1/5 -> 7/11

Class: [Primal Magic User] (Lv. 1) -> (Lv. 3)

[Focusing]: 1 -> 5

[Magic Proficiency, Basic]: 4 -> 7

[Vivid Imagination]: 2 -> 7

New: [Improved Momentum Control]

[Improved Momentum Control]: 1 -> 3

-----

He still refused to think of himself as a mage, of course. Rugrim was stubborn enough that a single intoxicating success didn’t budge his beliefs—especially not when said success was followed by utter madness when he tried to recast the muddy spell. Magic was just too unreliable and absurd to be trusted. He still wanted it purged from his being.

But he hadn’t ever seen so many System gains all at once. Two levels in a class felt downright absurd. Even if he hoped to lose all of the loamy nonsense, reaping the rewards still felt good.

So yes, Rugrim had regrets, but he was still content. Everything ended up just fine and there were no lingering problems whatso—

“I truly wasn’t planning to ask. It was alarming, but you seemed intent on keeping it secret and not using it. Fine, I can accept that. I carry a few secrets of my own. But now that you have proven yourself… somewhat less wise than I had hoped to assume, I must ask: Why do you have a core?” Origin stepped around the rock that Rugrim was quite comfortably perched on to face him directly. The demon’s arms were crossed, and he was wearing an exaggerated frown upon his face.

“And what the stone is a ‘core’?” He probably should have kept his own mouth shut, but Rugrim found himself too muddy curious about the accusation to choose a safer path.

“Ori, where are you going with this?” Dawn’s question had a slight edge to it.

“Okay, fine. An explanation.” The demon cleared performatively cleared his throat, straightened his posture, and raised a finger in front of his face before he began, wiggling the finger like a metronome with every word he uttered. “The upper tier monsters, like dragons and black tentacles, all have a core. They’re basically like the magic stones or crystals we mine for or find at the bottom of monster-filled caves, except these have twisted into something more. They’re very much a living part of the monster that they’re embedded within, providing limitless fuel for its awesome magics. This is what divides the upper tier from all other monsters. They also can’t be killed without destroying their core. Not permanently, at least.”

“I’ve certainly never heard of such a thing! How about you, Ruggers?” Dawn glanced his way after shrugging.

“Never heard of cores, dragons, or black tentacles.” Rugrim affirmed. How he managed to overlook the latest nickname was a question that not even he could have answered.

“Never heard of—” Origin seemed agitated. “Dragons are the apex monster of this planet! The winged terrors. Destroyers of civilizations that have the misfortune of inciting their wrath or just building in the wrong place. So long as their core remains intact, they persist forever, growing in size and power with each year that passes.”

“Do not worry, for I have heard of dragons!” Dawn preened. “Mom spoke of them sometimes. Pity they all died.”

“They what?!” Origin seemed stricken.

“Well, there’s rumors that there’s still one, but—” Dawn, as always, was eager to run with any and all tangents.

“On topic! What gave you the loamy idea I have a core then?!” Rugrim was less eager to indulge in whatever nonsense tumbled out of their mouths.

“He asks a good question!” Dawn agreed.

“I said it before, you aren’t a mage.” Origin paused, frowned, and continued once it was clear that his simple statement failed to answer the question. “Okay, more details. Mages—whatever their form—all use System-standard magic. How it originates can vary, but the end result is always the same. There’s a certain structural formality behind the spells, and with practice anyone with Magic Sense can tell the difference between that and Primal magic.

“You, on the other hand, radiate Primal magic, even without actively casting anything. Just like a core-bearing monster would. And that is how I know your secret.”

The idea of having a stone lurking inside of his body didn’t really bother Rugrim. Honestly, he’d be muddy honored! But he was pretty sure there wasn’t anything in there. He was something of an expert in stones and crystals, and they were, with no true exceptions, hard. Sure, some loamy fools called certain stones ‘soft’, but they were largely just mistaking brittleness for softness—just because a stone yielded under someone’s usual pressure didn’t make it soft. And he was rather certain that he’d have felt any unexpected hardness. Unless it was incredibly small, perhaps.

Besides, he didn’t have the loamy magic because he swallowed something. It came from elven muck!

“He feels normal to me!” Dawn oh-so-helpfully patted Rugrim’s helmet for emphasis.

“The Origin speaks with incomplete information. Primal magic is not restricted to the cores of old, it was the first magic, and it predated the System. We have memories of it, though this specific iteration of us lacks details. We never expected to see Primal magic in use, yet the effect was undeniable. Primal magic cares not for the rules and structure that the System prescribes. As we witnessed, this dwarf cast a spell with an effect that should have been impossible in scale by the standards of this era.” Souna was the next person to chime in as she approached.

…And Rugrim politely averted his eyes, because at some point during the past few minutes, the olore had stripped off her (quite literally) muddy clothes. Which promptly sent a screeching Dawn scrambling off to find where the woman abandoned them.

He was kind of grateful to have a moment to think. Origin seemed to be chewing on the olore’s words, Souna wasn’t one to keep talking without cause, and Tin and Steel weren’t back yet—such profound peace and quiet was all too rare.

But he had found himself at something not unlike a tunnel that split into two routes. It was his own muddy fault, of course. And he had a new regret or three in his heart as he wondered just how far he wanted to trust the weirdos that he travelled with. It wasn’t like the source of his magic was some grand secret that he had any desire to keep.

He just wasn’t used to opening up and trusting others, let alone asking for help. Rugrim was a self-made man and had been independent since his mother returned to the stone, all too young. His heart desired one thing and his society demanded something less of him.

Yet there he sat, beneath the sun, surrounded by people that… well, they were weirdos, but they weren’t terrible people. Legitimately, several of them had shown him more kindness and patience than most dwarves ever had. Okay, fine, Steel and Souna were the only real exceptions left, and even that felt like a matter of time.

None of them deserved coldness.

“Agh, sand it all. Fine! Just wait until everyone’s gathered, because I don’t want to repeat myself. I’ll tell you what I know.” He was going to regret his decision, he just knew he would.

But it was still the muddy right thing to do.

<L2 Divide>

The problem with making up his mind and making a grand promise? Life didn’t always play out and reward him for his decision immediately. Instead, Rugrim was forced to stew in his thoughts while they moved on a bit further. Which, unfortunately, made sense.

No one wanted to camp in the muck amidst a bunch of dead monsters.

Then, once they finally made camp, there were still quite a few things to do. Sheltering structures of fabric—tents—had to be erected because the sky was ominously cloudy. Food had to be prepared, even if Dawn had already plied them all with cheese during the walk. Equipment needed maintenance, sleeping arrangements had to be sorted out, and various other odds and ends demanded attention.

Until, at last, everyone gathered around the campfire to hear Rugrim out. Origin poked at the dregs of his dinner, but most of the group just sat there or sipped water while they watched him intently, waiting for him to start speaking.

He’d spent the day impatient for the moment, but once it arrived, Rugrim was tempted to do something loamy and selfish—he wanted to just go to bed.

“This muddy magic wasn’t always part of my System. It all started with a crate.” He still started to speak, because he wasn’t a muddy child.

“You mean a core.” Origin piped up with a correction, briefly interrupting his important mission of making a complete mess out of his chunk of a travel biscuit.

“A crate.” Rugrim repeated. “My people do hazardous waste storage and disposal as part of our trade with the outside world. I was working the cranes that day, and one of the crates that came through was tagged as a magic hazard.

“While I was lifting it, the loamy thing began to get heavier. Ended up destroying the crane and it hit the ground like a master miner’s sledgehammer. Smashed to pieces and filled the entire area in a sparkling cloud of colors. Me, I was in the middle of that and blacked out.”

“Wait, are you claiming a cloud changed your class?” Dawn sounded appreciably horrified by the implication.

“When I started working that day, I was a [Miner]. I still was when I woke up, but I had a second class. [Primal Magic User], at level 1.” In the wake of that proclamation, there was silence.

For about three silting seconds.

“You’re kidding!” “Two classes?!” “I presume that this is unusual?” Dawn, Origin, and Tin, respectively. Steel was also chittering, but the weird metal thing hanging around its neck elected to remain silent. Souna, on the other hand, remained silent and thoughtful. That or she fell asleep or had no real interest in his predicament—she was hard to read at the best of times.

Which was fine, because Dawn and Origin clearly had enough questions to make up for those unwilling or unable to ask.

<L2 Divide>

Yes, Rugrim was sure that he had two classes. Yes, he was aware that this was unusual, though he was unhappily unsurprised to know that it was unusual by their standards too. Yes, he could level his new class. No, he did not know if he could still level his beloved original class and yes, he was worried about that too. Yes, he had two sets of Class Functions and seemed to have two sets of Core Skills.

And no, he did not want to keep the muddy magic.

“All I have is a name and a location. Tharamond’s responsible for this. He can fix it.” Rugrim finally concluded what he needed to say.

“We would trade much to have a clear location for our own objective.” Souna offered a surprisingly wry retort.

“Bah, fair.” Rugrim conceded. “And now you all know why I’m out on this loamy journey.”

“I shall not insult our mutual intelligences by saying that this is impossible, but… If there were such a method to give people second classes reliably, you would think that it would have made a significant stir. Yet even our most worldly and current colleagues are unaware of this.” Origin paused to pick another crumb off his plate. “I… do not wish to discourage you, but I wish to caution you that Tharamond may have little more to offer than we do.”

Rugrim knew that! He did, truly. But he needed to cling to hope.

He had to believe that there was an answer.

“Don’t worry. Whatever comes of it, you’re one of us now! That’s like being family, except I don’t have to worry that mom secretly loves you more than she does me.” Dawn offered him a dazzling smile.

“Thanks.” Rugrim managed the word on his third attempt to say something nice.

Did he feel better after sharing his ‘shame’ with the group? Not really, no. But it had to be done. He still needed to take every day as it came, but he had his goal—and for the first time they actually knew both what it was and why it was important to him.

No one had any real advice about how to handle his magic, but he had somewhat expected that. It was hard to miss just how different his magic was from that of Origin or—presumably—Souna. If anything, Dawn’s oathsworn power was the closest thing he’d seen to his own magic. But while she grew more powerful when she actively adhered closely to her oath, his own power came without warning or intent.

It was powerful and useful, but it wasn’t something he could rely on. It truly was an anathema to his sensibilities. As a miner, he needed to be able to trust in his tools.

His magic, on the other hand, had already caused the party harm. They got out of the situation just fine, but had Dawn not been able to fight in spite of the slippery situation he caused, someone might have gotten seriously hurt.

He wasn’t stupid enough to vow to never use his magic again, but it needed to be the last resort. Instead, he needed to… trust his party members.

Ugh.