Shielded by Seals [Chapter 29] (Patreon)

Apparently I'm just bad at Monday's. Should I just do Tuesday, Thusday, Friday?

ToC: https://www.patreon.com/posts/132353583

The group broke for lunch and ate a watery rabbit stew, leaving me impatient, right on the cusp of obtaining my new Skill. Toby happily put away three bowls, only half the amount that Toad managed to guzzle. When he had finished with the physical food, the hog turned and gave me a hopeful look.

I shook my head. “Soon. Probably tomorrow. But for now, please bear with it.”

“Right?” Toby interjected. “I’m close. Soon my whirlwind kick-jump spy hero leap… will finally be complete.”

“Hunhk,” Toad agreed after a second. The two pushed back from the dining table and moved to return to the training. The hog walked on his tiptoes. The giant, golden-haired Toby squatted down, did a somersault, then executed a hasty roundhouse kick.

I shook my head. Do I look so silly while training?

Well, maybe.

Back in our private corner of the solarium, I activated Concentration. Then I activated Emit Mana, focusing on different parts of my body. Mana bulges curled out through me, causing my muscles to shake. The seals stretching from the ring hissed and flared, but paled in comparison to the raw power of my Mana. I felt as though I had punched my way through the ice and fallen into a frigid lake.

I released several quick breaths, but didn’t lose focus. For a while, I simply endured the pain. Then, when the shakes finally had decreased to the point that my body behaved, I executed the technique.

I crouched. I twisted my feet and launched myself with the method I had memorized. I arced forward and crashed into the ground. When my muscles tensed to absorb the force of the impact, the Mana within my limbs twisted further, ripping through my muscles. I released a small gasp of pain.

Yet also…

Due to resistance to pain, Proficiency of your Skill Concentration has increased! Proficiency +1%.

Due to your unusual Mana State, Proficiency of your Role Genius has increased! Proficiency +3%.

Due to your unique actions, Proficiency of your Trait ???? Learning has increased! Proficiency +3%.

Your Trait ???? Learning has reached 100%! Calculating gains… determining result…

Warning! Unusual activity has created an unpredictable result.

The Learning Trait has been consumed. You have gained the Skill Corrosive Leap (Worthless).

Corrosive Leap (Worthless): A strange combination of techniques. Technically, can be used to move. When landing, user alters the surrounding Mana so that it degrades ambient energy around the impact. Effects are unpredictable.

For learning a new Skill while a Child, the Role Child has gained Proficiency! +15%.

Your Role Child has reached a new Proficiency! Proficient II-> Proficient III. You have gained the Temp Trait Quick Learner (Locked). Temporary Trait will vanish when you lose the Role Child.

Quick Learner (Locked): When you earn Proficiency, earn 5% more Proficiency.

For learning a new Skill while a Child, the Role Genius has gained Proficiency! +10%.

A lot of notifications came at once. When I read, I felt happy… and then I felt disappointed. Based upon the description of the System, the Skill I earned by following the nudges from the notifications… actually wasn’t that good?

Perhaps it needs to grow some Proficiency Tiers before it can showcase its true potential, I comforted myself. On the other hand, I was pleased to see more growth from the Child Trait. Not only that, but I gained access to a Temporary Trait that would increase the amount of Proficiency I earned. Because it was tied to being a Child… wouldn’t that mean I would have it for a little less than two years?

More than anything else, it made me wonder about why the Fang Family seemed so disinterested in improving Roles. Sure, I would lose the Child Role, but the extra Proficiency I earned until then would remain. I made a mental note to ask about that issue in the next lesson. In the meantime-

I rolled my shoulders. I planted my foot, following the instincts I received from the new Skill. I twisted, I threw myself into the movement, I pounced forward. For a split second, my awareness of my toddler’s body fell away. I felt… graceful and competent.

At the end of my leap, my feet hit the ground and I collapsed. My impact also released a small impact of Mana, but mostly I just fell over. 

Due to the user’s actions, Proficiency of your Skill Corrosive Leap has increased! Proficiency +12%.

At least early Proficiency comes easy… I mused as I pushed myself back up. I also paused and tried to sense the surrounding Mana. My eyes went down to the ring on my finger, which kept me sealed. The seals, as usual, crackled with disapproval. Definitely, something had changed in the surroundings… yet probably the effect was too small at the moment to really notice. The only shift was that the seals on the ring glowed slightly, perhaps as it resisted whatever effect I had created.

“Improving will solve it eventually,” I sighed to myself. 

The door to the Solarium swung open. To my surprise, it was Prefect Nightflower. The head of the attendants in the villa swept her gaze around. “If everyone is prepared, it is time for your excursion. Follow me, we will be heading down to the market for today's time. You may spend the day as you wish.”

Her gaze swept to me, amongst the crowd. She pressed her lips together. "Let's try not to cause any trouble, shall we?"

*****

The day after he had encountered the two runts and the pig parading across the bridge, Josef of the One-legged hovel wrung his tiny brain dry trying to think of methods to prevent them from crossing.

After all, in the outer hand hovels, tradition was everything. And everyone he asked said the same thing: you could not let the inner hand disciples cross the bridge, not without a fight. Hamstringing him was the fact it was only considered a ‘fair’ fight if the opponent was someone in the same age group.

A core tenet of the Feng Family was fairness. To those whom much was given, much was expected.

So, after great soul searching, Josef decided to meet the problem with the easiest solution: by dragging along someone from their zero-legged building to fight. However-

The kid wiped his sleeve on his nose. “What, go outside and wait by the river? Don’t want to.”

Josef suppressed the impulse to make a fist and smash it into the kid’s face. He stood at the edge of the enclosure for the zero-legged kids. The kid before him, the largest and meanest of the youngsters, sat in the shade of an apple tree on a cushion. He played with a very cool-looking wooden horse. 

Josef released a breath. “I’ll give you points.”

“How many?” The kid’s eyes brightened.

“Ten,” Josef said.

“Ten a day,” The kid countered, toying with the horse.

After gritting his teeth and considering it, Josef agreed. So he brought the kid out to guard the bridge. Although everyone else did it for free… zero-legged members were different. They were simply waiting to obtain the proper Trait. They didn’t even need an apprenticeship. Because of Child-protections, physical training of kids didn’t go well. As such, they were gathered and lectured, but they didn’t have responsibilities.

Josef missed those days.

However, now he had a job to do. He was responsible, practically a teenager. And now he had a foe to fight against those inner hand bastards. So they went to the bridge and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

As the days passed and the amount of points spent to keep the kid grew, Josef had an increasingly sour feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was able to take missions at night to earn some points back, but the longer he bankrolled the kid, the more he was hurting his own chances of improving. Competition in the one-legger house was tough, and only grew worse as you grew older.

The whole debacle culminated in an episode where the kid leaned over the bridge to see fish, leaned too far, and then fell into the water. The group guarding the bridge had to rush down and drag the kid out of the river. He whined and cried and shivered in his wet clothes until they sent him back to his hovel.

Josef’s best friend hesitated, but then said. “Maybe they won’t come by again. We don’t need that crybaby.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Josef said. He felt bitter about the whole experience, but tried to remember the lessons given by the instructor. Life is full of failures. You cannot avoid them all. What truly determined the measure of a man was how you incorporated the lessons of the failures and learned from them.

So Josef meditated on the failure, trying to understand where he went wrong. Yet just as he felt finally at peace, the next day-

“Oh, you were still here?”

Josef’s eyes bulged. The same tiny little kid rode a pig across the bridge. Behind him swaggered the blonde dolt. The kid nodded to him. “Greetings. Anyway, we will be on our way-”

“Wait!” Josef threw himself in front of the pig. “You can’t! You need… a fight against…”

“Didn’t you say we needed to fight someone our age? There is no one like that here,” The kid said. “So let’s just skip the waiting, we are in a hurry.”

“You-” Josef felt anger rising through his body. He stepped forward and clenched his fist. Yet in the face of his aggression, the hog snorted in displeasure. Before Josef could react, the hog stomped forward and knocked him aside.

Josef panted on the ground as the group passed by. He could hear the kid calling out. “Sorry about that! My hog is a bit… excited today…”