Oil Tongue - Chapter 3

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Chapter 3

Vagan grinned to himself. He had actually managed to unlock a skill associated with his oil affinity.

But why is this one based on Charisma as well?

With the two new points he’d gained in Intelligence, he could feel some invisible part of himself expanding to create more room.

He continued practising with a smaller amount of oil for what must have been hours, manipulating and lifting a palmful repeatedly until he felt exhaustion draw near, and then devouring mushrooms to slowly bring mana back through Magical Appetite.

Eventually he unlocked another skill.

< < Skill Unlocked > >

< Mana Capacity >

< Scales with Intelligence >

Makes you able to store more mana in your body.

Finally. This will help a lot.

And it doesn’t scale with Charisma for once.

Still, I wish I had a way to actually see what my mana was or how much each of my actions consume.

Before getting Mana Capacity, he was able to shape and lift a small blob of oil about five times until nearing exhaustion. Afterwards, it was up to seven.

Vagan figured he might finally have enough mana to pull off more than just the simple shape-and-lift trick, but he first took his time refilling his reserves with mushrooms.

It was kind of bizarre and a little worrying how using magic seemed to hollow out his stomach, robbing him off the food he had just eaten, but since he was making progress and food was plentiful around him, he was not too worried about starvation.

Still, if I didn’t have Affliction Eater and Magical Appetite, then this kind of rapid progress would not have been possible.

Not to mention, I’m fairly sure there’s some kind of affliction tied to mana exhaustion, but since I’m immune, I haven’t been reduced to a drooling mess by the repeated blackouts.

Though there was no way to know that this was actually what was happening, it would explain why he was able to spring back so quickly after exhausting himself and passing out. Given the headaches and nosebleeds, it was all but certain any normal person learning magic would severely debilitate themselves following Vagan’s training regimen. The confluence of the Goddess’ gift, Niamh’s curse, and the magically-infused environment she’d left in her wake, provided him with the means to rapidly grow. He just hoped he was not doing permanent damage to himself in the process.

Once he felt full and was sure his mana had replenished, Vagan finally attempted to cast a proper spell.

A small puddle had formed under him from the many successive attempts and he focused his mind on it, quickly pulling all of the oil into a ball the size of his fist. With a beckoning gesture, the ball lifted up to chest height.

The tinnitus reappeared in his right ear and Vagan did not waste a moment, punching his fist forward. The ball of oil shot away from him as though he had physically spiked it, flying eight or nine metres before striking the ground and popping, showering the white grass-like mould with black spatters.

Vagan stumbled back a step, steading his hands on his knees to try and stop himself from collapsing again.

< < Attribute Growth > >

< Intelligence 3 => 4 >

From how Benja had talked about his progress, mainly with Strength and Vitality, Vagan knew that the single-digit progress was quite fast. Still, the most Benja had ever accomplished in a day was a growth of two points. Vagan had already surpassed his record, making him certain that magic was unlikely to be designed for this kind of training.

He continued practising with the oil ball spell until he was able to perform it without staggering afterwards. It took him until the sun was about to set, since refilling with the mushrooms was not that fast. Still, at the end of it he was rewarded with yet another attribute point.

< < Attribute Growth > >

< Intelligence 4 => 5 >

Vagan gathered mushrooms into his lattice net and slung it over his shoulder, chewing on a bright-blue cap while he walked around the ruins of Sirk, looking for one of the detritivores to use for target practice.

All he found were mushrooms and mould however, as well as a few stones that had survived the storm of decay. Most of them looked to be from fireplaces, but there was somehow an entire basement below what had been a tavern that was still intact. He hoped for a moment that he might find people huddled together down there, but it was completely barren, all the inventory rotted away and devoured by the monsters.

Regardless, it was a lucky find. It was the early weeks of Harvest season and thus the temperature could still be slightly cold at night. Having shelter below ground might benefit him, but it would not be warm, so he was still going to freeze.

He thought again about how Niamh had clad herself in mushrooms, and after stashing his net of food, he went around town looking for materials to use as clothes and improvised bedding. The wild nature of Niamh’s power meant that there were a near limitless variety to all the fungus that covered Sirk. Granted, the white mould grass and rust-orange spores were the most dominant.

After an hour, when the sun’s light was entirely gone and the spore cloud became more like a haze, Vagan had found himself a large puke-green puffball mushroom that was squishy enough that it could serve as a pillow. As for clothes, he had no luck, but he had managed to learn that one of the towering types of mushrooms could have their stems unfurled like rolled-up linen, and this would serve as both his bedding and duvet. However, it had the texture of sticky rubber and smelled like spoiled milk.

He looked around at the little hideout he had made himself in the tavern’s basement and felt somewhat proud of himself. He had inserted glowing neon-green and yellow toadstools into the cracks in the stone walls, giving his shelter a tiny bit of light, which helped stave off the night’s all-encompassing darkness.

In Sirk, night time was properly dark. The kind of dark that made you fear leaving the town’s walls. Though, without the light pollution that had been a constant in his previous life, it was possible to gaze up into the sky and see a universe of stars and cosmic bodies. The sight always reminded him of his meeting with the Goddess.

Vagan lay down on his mushroom bedding in the corner of the basement furthest from the steps and put his head on the puffball. As he pulled the duvet over himself, it finally hit him.

He was alone.

Entirely alone.

There were no sounds of people outside.

No sounds of animals.

The wind was barely even audible.

It struck him then that since coming to this world, he had never ever slept alone. Not truly alone.

The orphanage had been full of children and adults, never farther than a shout away, and their voices had always murmured softly through the wooden walls.

Vagan had not realised until this moment how much he had treasured that feeling.

In his past life there had been countless nights where he felt this way, but in this new life it was the first time.

And in the silence, his mind began to churn, replaying everything that had happened.

He curled up under his improvised duvet that smelled of spoiled milk, begging for exhaustion to claim him.

But instead he started to see the images of that storm of decay, of the last undignified moments of his friends, and the hateful woman who had brought the sickness with her.

In his lonely despair, he begged to receive a skill that let him shut out all the bad memories and thoughts, but it was no use.

Vagan awoke with a start, his head buzzing with remnant nightmares that immediately slipped from his mind the moment he tried to recall their events.

Every muscle in his body was sore and he realised that he was lying on the cold hard stones of the basement. His bedding and puffball pillow were gone and only a small bit of his duvet remained. Instead of the fungus was a black puddle of oil around him.

Vagan sat up with a groan.

Am I going to wake up in such a mess every day going forward…?

There was one upside however, and that was the fact that he could be quite certain that his oil was potent as a corrosive and toxic element.

If it can dissolve mushrooms with ease, then I should be able to use it against those giant insects.

But before he went out hunting, he had one last place in Sirk he needed to visit.

The orphanage.

Vagan gathered the net of mushrooms, which he had fortunately put far enough away that it was not destroyed by the oil, and then he left the basement.

Outside was the same sight as the day before. Swirling clouds of rust-orange spores were carried around on the wind and towering mushrooms rose from the ruins of buildings while the ground was covered in the fuzzy white mould grass.

He walked across the town, passing through where buildings would have barred his way before, until he reached the area where the orphanage had once stood.

His home of nearly sixteen years was gone. Not even a speck of it remained and now a cluster of tall white-grey trumpet-like mushrooms took its place. They were like conquerors laying claim to something that was not theirs, and he hated the sight of them.

Perhaps it was foolish, but Vagan spent the next two hours shooting his simple oil ball spell at them, until the entire cluster collapsed and started to dissolve. He gained nothing for his efforts, except the need to refill his net with more food for his mana, but he still felt a sense of accomplishment.

Though the two-storey orphanage had left no trace of its existence, since it did not even have a simple fireplace whose stones had survived it, Vagan still spent a while rummaging through the soft earth for any remnants of his life. He knew from what he had seen that not everything was devoured by the detritivores and decay, and there was one memento he was especially eager to retrieve.

The orphanage had had a basement, but it had been built entirely from wood, and aside from a small indent in the ground there was no sign of it. However, this spot helped Vagan orient himself and enabled him to find his way to Benja’s room which had been on the first floor. Vagan’s original room had been on the ground floor, but after his best friend moved out, he had swapped to his room.

After maybe an hour of mindlessly digging in the spot where his room had been, Vagan finally found a tiny sign of his own existence in the form of a flat polished rock that he and Benja had fought over in the past, but which Vagan had eventually won in a foot race.

Not long after locating the stone did he find the thing he had been seeking. It was a pale ring the colour of seashells and which had a golden pearl attached to it in a socket and fastened with tiny claws.

Vagan held the stone and ring to his chest and wept. These were truly the last mementos of his friend and of the childhood they had spent together.

They had stolen the ring from a Merchant in the market shortly after they had first gotten acquainted, back when Vagan had been eleven. What they had not known until after their robbery, was that the ring was worth more than forty-thousand Regals, enough money to buy two or three houses in Sirk.

The fear of the punishment they were due had made the two boys form a pact together, and they had hidden the stolen ring in a hole in the bottom of Benja’s bed frame, the same bed frame that Vagan used after his friend became a Guard. It was quite literally the thing that had cemented their friendship.

The ring’s owner was long gone now and the evidence of the crime likewise erased. At the time, Lisbeth had rightly assumed Vagan was involved, but her error had been to focus on searching his room and not Benja’s, allowing them to get away with it for all those years.

He got up from the dirt and slid the ring over the middle finger on his right hand. The pearl seemed to almost glow in the sunlight that filtered through the orange spore clouds. He did not have any pockets to store the polished stone in, but he was able to quickly fashion a kind of string out of the roots of one of the mushrooms in his net, and he wrapped this around the middle of the stone, producing a pendant of sorts, which he slipped over his neck.

For the next ten minutes he gathered enough mushrooms to refill his net, and then he set off towards the gate of Sirk, finally venturing beyond the town to find out where Niamh had gone.

He thought for a moment that he could find more jewellery if he rummaged around the remains of the market, but there was no one here he could sell it to, and even if he did find a Merchant, he was unlikely to be able to sell anything with his new horrific appearance.

Vagan reached the town gate and looked at what it had been reduced to. The towering gate had been built from wood and iron braces, and as a result nothing was left behind. The gatehouse above it had collapsed and created a barrier that he had to climb over.

He paused before reaching the top of the obstruction and spared a glance over his shoulder at what his home had become. He had not gone through the garrison in the western corner, but he also knew that he was unlikely to find anything that had survived, since the Guards relied on leather and cloth armour, and used iron weapons. The garrison’s main building had a foundation of stone, but the rest of it was built of wood, so there was little point going there.

But maybe there’s something worth finding in the rubble and dirt, he considered.

After a moment of hesitation, Vagan shook his head.

No, I need to leave it behind me. My true objective lies beyond these walls.

Part of him was simply worried because this was his first time leaving his hometown. He had seen the world outside a few times when he had stood upon the walls, but he had never set foot out there.

Vagan clutched his stone pendant and pushed himself over the rubble, finally leaving Sirk behind.

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That's all you get for now, folks. The first three chapters are roughly 13.5k words combined, but the rest would probably end up around 2-3k long.

Anyway, this story probably won't get new chapters on here for the next few months, unless I end up writing a bunch when time permits.

I'd love to hear what you all thought though, so please leave a comment below.

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