EV B2 Chapter 39:

Even Loki leaned forward in interest as Alana did the status ritual directly onto the fancy, polished wood table. It was a modified ritual, something I had the ability to do, and I assumed most people did, as statuses could get ridiculously large. She only showed the updated trait, which had predictably changed from Savant to First Savant. The description, though, was a little more elaborate:

"You are the first savant recognized by the gods. And with this path that you have begun to forge for others come certain benefits and drawbacks in equal measure. Savants are naturally good at one thing to the detriment of many, many others. Sometimes, slots can be good for a few things. Most find that the trade is worthwhile if properly used. You, however, will have a certain degree of freedom that other savants will not. Periodically, you will be given the choice if you want to become a savant at something. However, making that choice will force you to become unskilled at an equal weight of other things."

Savant choice: Verbal Savant predilections. Spellcasting: Achieved. Detriment: Melee combat.

We looked at the first one—that was the initial savant effect—and it made sense that she would be terrible at melee combat and excellent at spellcasting. I wondered if there were other versions of her, just a natural savant in terms of intelligence with a drawback in social skills or something like that. But it was impossible to be certain, as it could just be that she was brilliant on top of being a savant at spellcasting.

She also had the ability to become a savant at control magic at the expense of attack magic, healing magic, and buffs.

"Oh," Alana smiled and picked it up before Loki, or I could give our opinions.

"What?" I spluttered, and Loki just smiled.

"That's a good choice for you."

Alana looked at me and shrugged. "I still think there are mild damage-over-time effects that come with control. I'll still be able to do damage. I'll just be even worse at casting my mana bolt, buffs, and healing."

"Healing yourself is pretty important."

She shrugged. "I don't need to be great at healing as long as I can cast some version of it. If I'm only responsible for healing myself, I'll be okay," she said, far more confidently than I would have.

I hummed idly. Without a doubt, it would make her even more valuable as a party member if she was even better at her control casting on top of her spellcasting smarts. Well, if equated for level and experience, I didn't think we could possibly get a better control caster. But without her being able to self-heal, I was nervous about her ability to survive outside of a party. And as much as I liked Alana and wanted to support her, I wasn't comfortable tying myself to her for the rest of eternity, even though that probably was her goal.

In hindsight, perhaps I had been a bit naive to think there wouldn't be any problems with her infatuation. I blew out a breath. "Well, I suppose if we have other party members, this will work. But just for the two of us, it's going to be kind of rough. I mean, I can heal myself somewhat, and you can heal yourself somewhat, but if one of us is incapacitated, we're going to be in a bit of trouble," I thought out loud and privately wondered what I was going to do if I ever managed to get out of Aholla again. Would Alana and I have to set up some sort of party system that could survive without me and also be willing to accept my return when I needed it?

I ran my hand down my face and looked over at Loki. "Any word on Astrid?"

Loki shrugged. "She should be done soon. Not today, though."

"Still not going to tell me who exactly is getting the blessing? Just one of your sisters?"

"I didn't say sister. I just said relative, and it doesn't have to be a female god," Loki said.

"But you know, don't you?" I asked.

He nodded and smiled.

"Is there any particular reason you're keeping it from me?"

He shook his head. "No. But there is no particular reason I have to tell you either. It won't matter one way or the other."

"Is it even going to be some big reveal? Some surprise god I've heard of? Or, you know, your father or something? Otherwise, I don't even see why it would be funny," I said exasperatedly.

But Loki just chuckled. "I think seeing you frustrated is amusing enough, especially when I know that there won't be any harm in it."

I growled, and Loki just laughed.

"Oh, you two are too cute."

I looked at him, betrayed, while Alana covered her mouth as she chortled. I sighed. "I just can't win, can I?"

***

We stopped at a few different spell shops, trying to find something that Alana could work with. There were a few different poison spells that were potentially decent. Still, she found that the savant trait would actively work against her there. I thought we were both beginning to feel that she might have made a mistake in highly specializing in control-type magic.

But eventually, we found one that was about corruption and rot. The rot was primarily a slow and mobility spell that meshed very well with her control-type savant nature. She would be able to cast it exceedingly efficiently and with excellent effect. The damaged part was a side effect—it lessened the amazingness of her ability to cast it, but the Festering Rot spell would work just fine. We had to pool most of our coin, but she could learn it just by touching it.

I had mentioned the benefits of learning a spell naturally. Still, she shrugged, saying that she wasn't in any hurry to learn skills. I realized that while I had learned a few spells from spellbooks now for convenience, I wasn't as certain that my initial information about it being much harder to learn skills that way was as relevant as I had once thought. But she already knew more about it than I did in many ways, so I let it lie.

We went in and attempted the trial again, and this time things went better. It wasn't just the new spell—her improved control spells allowed her to control nearly three-quarters of the opponents in the first wave. That number decreased a lot slower than it had previously. On top of that, by the time I was done with the monsters she hadn't controlled, some of the monsters she had were starting to die as well, making it even easier for me to chop through them with axes or with my arcane edge.

We were at round 18 before we even started to see a bit of a challenge.

"I really want to make 20," she said. "It would be great not to have to worry about it anymore."

I shrugged. "Yeah, yeah, we'll make it. I don't think you really need to worry about it in the first place. Getting to 12 with just the two of us on our first try with no preparation—that's a good sign. I'm more worried about getting coin now because, well, I think we can probably go about upgrading some of your basic spells. What about you? Should we buy you a skill?"

She asked, "What about you? You want to?"

I shook my head. "No. I think I need to create one from scratch. Besides, I don't feel the need to. I feel like I'm better off messing around with spells for a bit. Better to get you up to speed quickly. I think if we specialize you hard enough and have you do some impressive things, we can get you a class quickly."

She nodded. "Okay, I understand. Besides, we're also going to have to build a full team. I hope Astrid is still interested in working with us, but we have a couple more slots we can fill. Do you have any ideas?"

Alana tapped her chin. "Hmm. I didn't really make many friends, but perhaps the captain?" she asked. "I don't know if he's out of the Lesser Hall yet, but—"

I blinked. "The captain of the guard? How do you know he's in Valhalla?"

I felt terrible that I didn't remember the man's name, but I remembered him being a solid warrior and sound with the men. He didn't know who I was, though. But he would recognize Alana.