DD1 ASC - Chapter 13 - Questions

*Congratulations on defeating a level 12 Adolescent Ogre, experience is awarded.*

*Congratulations, you have reached Sorcerer level 2.*

*Congratulations, you have reached Sorcerer level 3.*

Upon seeing the System notification Typhoeus immediately cut the flow of mana to his spells, and Arilla collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Her moment of triumph cut short as the mana that had been keeping her going abruptly dissipated, her inflated stats plummeting to her much more modest baseline.

He rushed forwards to catch her as fast as his 37 dexterity would allow, arriving by her side just as the cramps started. Her body pushed well past its limits by Typhoeus’s mana and her own determination. She tried to talk, raising a contorted hand up to reach for him, but instead, he shushed her, taking her hands in his and placing them gently over her stomach.

“Sleep now, you did well, so very well...” Typhoeus said softly as he cradled her head against his chest, taking the time to carefully tuck a loose strand of her long auburn hair back behind her ear. She started to seize a full minute earlier than he had anticipated, and while he had the strength score to hold her still, his [Alternate Form] was simply too small and lacked the necessary leverage. So with reluctance, he pulled once more on [Sovereign’s Arcana], burning through his deep mana reserves in order to keep her still with golden bands of hardened light wrapping around her body as it desperately tried to shake itself apart.

As the seizure continued for far longer than he had anticipated, Typhoeus started to grow a little concerned, and he was forced to admit to himself that maybe he had pushed a little too much mana into Arilla’s body. She was only human after all, and a low levelled one at that. While he may have been empowering his own body as needed since he was just a wyrmling, he had to remember that just because he liked her, it didn’t suddenly mean she was as resilient to manaburn as a dragon was.

Attempting to quash his budding worries for Arilla’s wellbeing. He told himself that he was just using her to help ensure his survival and that her rapid growth was part of his plan to help draw attention away from his own. She was disposable, replaceable, and not someone that he could allow himself to become overly attached to. For the same reasons the goblins would never forgive humanity; he too had to maintain some distance. He was already an exile. The last thing he wanted was to be labelled a traitor too. And yet, the thought of leaving her behind left a sour taste in his mouth that he could not ignore. Her brief presence in his life emboldening it and providing a welcome respite from the solitude that had defined his youth.

Once he was confident that she would recover from the backlash of his spell, Typhoeus decided to take advantage of his adventuring partner's unconscious state and do a bit of quick hunting in order to raise his level to match hers at 4. He had enough experience with levelling to know how to 'feel out his' levels, and he knew that contributing to the ogre kill was just enough for him to reach the cusp of level 3, whereas Arilla, lacking a second class would probably be well on the way to 5. He was going to have to come up with a better long term solution to hide the fact that he was dual classed and was therefore able to use less than half of the experience that he would otherwise earn, but for now, killing things while Arilla slept was the best plan he could come up with to maintain their level parity. He wove a few hundred mana into a quick ward that wrapped around Arilla and the nearby ogre’s corpse, powerful enough to dissuade anything without truly sizable mental scores from venturing close.

He carefully took off his clothes, reverently folding them and placing them next to Arilla's unconscious body, before walking several steps away as he reverted back into his true form. He shivered with pleasure as he cast off the constraining flesh of a human, stretching his wings out wide for the first time in over a week as the delicate membranes caught not just the gentle winds but also the thick life-giving mana blowing in from the Dragonspines so many miles away to the west. He stretched out his back and bared his fangs as he took the time to revel in the joy of being a dragon.

Without the cloying intensity of human hormones addling his mind, Arilla looked so very different through his draconic eyes. Smaller and more vulnerable but no less precious to him. He was equal parts relieved and dismayed to feel his physical attraction for her wane with his transformation. The knowledge that his lust was part of a biological reaction that he could simply turn off was not as comforting to him as he had hoped it would be, as he now felt his desire’s loss as if it was a physical thing now denied to him in his true flesh.

He turned away from Arilla, lowering his serpentine neck closer to the ground, spending mana frivolously to obscure any signs of his presence on the already disturbed soil. His much stronger nose had no trouble picking up the scent trail that he was interested in, and he took to the sky just as the setting sun finally transitioned into twilight. Flying low so as to avoid the attention of anyone watching the horizon for signs of a dragon's passage, as unlikely as that may be. The ogre was young, a few years old at most, which meant that it couldn't have roamed too far away from the rest of its brood. Typhoeus began his hunt, starting first with its siblings as he kept a careful eye on his sense of fullness as his progress towards the next level ratcheted up several notches with each ogre kill.

Arilla slept for two days. Finally waking in the evening of the second night to the presumably comforting sounds and smells of Typhoeus cooking over an open fire.

“What happened?” Arilla asked, her eyes widening with surprise at the hoarse sound of her own voice, her hand raised to cautiously touch her own throat.

“You won,” Typhoeus said, walking over to her where he crouched down and handed over a heavy waterskin. “Don’t you remember?”

“I think so? How long was I out?” She asked, drinking deep from the waterskin, only stopping when Typhoeus pulled it out of her feeble grasp.

“Easy, small sips or you’ll make yourself sick,” Typhoeus said before handing it back to her as he carefully watched her to make sure that she followed his instructions. “Considering how close you came to dying from manaburn, not that long. Two days.”

“Two days!” She exclaimed in horror, dropping the waterskin on the ground as she tried and failed to sit upright. “I nearly died?”

“Nearly, I may have misjudged how much mana your body could safely handle, but you’re fine now, and two days for two levels isn’t a bad trade if you ask me.” He said, retrieving the waterskin from the ground and carefully replacing the stopper in its spout before too much water could leak out.

“I guess, although you warned me that I might pass out. You said nothing about a bloody coma!” Arilla retorted, wincing as she sat up onto her elbows in her large sleeping bag. “Uhm Typh, why am I naked?”

“You were asleep for two days. I obviously had to clean you, and this way, I didn’t have to do any extra laundry.” Typhoeus said, ignoring Arilla’s deep blushes that started at her cheeks and radiated all the way down her bare chest. “Now, do you think you can handle food? You woke up just in time for dinner.”

“Yes, I think so,” she said as Typhoeus returned to the fire, briefly passing out of her eye line and returning a few minutes later with a thick marbled steak on a thin wooden plate.

The two of them ate in companionable silence, the only sounds being that of the gentle wind blowing over the plains and the crackling sounds of the nearby campfire.

“Typh, with you boosting my stats like that, shouldn’t that fight have been much easier?” She asked.

“No, not really. Why do you ask?” Typhoeus said between large mouthfuls, each one straining his jaw as he passionately overindulged in his meal.

“Well, I thought your spell made me stronger than it.” Arilla asked, clearly confused by his answer.

“No. My spell gave you a higher strength score than the ogre. It was still much, much stronger than you.” Typhoeus said.

“But...” Arilla trailed off, her confusion clear on her face.

“Arilla, you do know how your stats work right?” He asked.

“Not really, I mean I know the obvious stuff, but the orphanage didn’t really teach us much beyond how to read. Once we were too old to get adopted or receive an apprenticeship, they pretty much just left us alone until we aged out.” She said glumly.

“Okay, so what do you know about exponents?” Typhoeus asked.

“Uhm... Is that a monster?” She asked.

“No, it's maths.” He said, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Right, all you need to know is that your stats act as a modifier to your innate abilities. At low levels like ours, the modifier isn’t that big, and in terms of raw power, you're probably better off focusing on improving your baseline abilities through diet, exercise, and expertise. But each point added to a stat increases the modifier more than the last, and at high levels, it adds up to a lot.”

She stared at him blankly, causing him to groan in despair.

“My spell made your stats so high that you were nearly twice as fast and strong as you are normally. While the ogre’s stats were much lower, it was so big that it had a much higher natural baseline strength than you. So much so, that even when you were twice as strong as your base, you were still its physical inferior.” Typhoeus said, wincing internally as he dumbed down his explanation. He knew from his ancestral knowledge that dragons had in the distant past have humans serve under them, but the memories he had access to glossed over the minutiae of how irritating it was to explain every little detail about the world to them.

“Huh...” Arilla said awkwardly, the look of understanding on her face spoilt by her tone that suggested she had more questions.

“What?” Typhoeus asked, bracing himself for the inevitable.

“You know so much about adventuring,” Arilla said, her voice sounding cautious as if she was sounding out his reaction with every word.

“I do....” He said suspiciously.

“And you know the Shining Swords.” She continued.

“Yes...”

“So… is Caeber your father?”

“No of course not.” He said, somewhat relieved that this was her big question.

“But I thought… Doesn't he have a clandestine relationship with Mara? A forbidden love that can never be between two party members.” Arilla said dejectedly. “I mean, that’s what the songs say!”

“It wouldn’t be a clandestine relationship if every bard in Rhelea already knew about it, now would it? Anyway no, Caeber is not my father. I highly doubt he's anyone's father seeing how he's only sexually attracted to men.” Typhoeus declared, deriving a small amount of amusement from how Arilla’s eyebrows twitched upwards in surprise.

“He is?” Arilla asked, sounding shocked.

“Yes, it’s obvious. He’s never once looked at my breasts.” Typhoeus said.

“Typh, you can’t use your tits as a way of divining which way someone's interests lie; maybe he just likes a more modest bust?” She said, briefly looking down at her own chest.

“And he keeps having sex with the innkeeper where we are staying,” Typhoeus added.

"You mean Julian? That nice older man?" Arilla said, her voice pitched higher in surprise.

"I think Caeber’s older actually; he just has a very high vitality score. And yes I’m sure, I just told you so didn't I?" Typhoeus said.

“Oh... Well if Caeber and Mara aren't your parents and they didn't raise you in secret then who taught you all this?" She asked, swiftly moving on.

"You listen to way too many bard tales if you believed for a second that I'm some high-level adventurer’s bastard starting out on some grand quest to prove my worth." Typhoeus scoffed.

"You're dodging my question," Arilla said.

"No, I'm not," Typhoeus said, dodging the question.

"Yes you are, you change the subject and imply that I'm stupid whenever I ask you about your past." She said, sounding more hurt than angry, a distinction that made him feel strangely uncomfortable.

"I do not, I'm just a very private person." He said defensively.

"Typh, I'm not an idiot. I know you have secrets. You know way too much magic for someone who just got their class. Mages are supposed to spend months and months just learning how to cast their first spells, yet you know all these different spell forms that I've never even heard of!"

Typhoeus was silent. He was completely at a loss as to how to answer that. How was he supposed to have known that low level human mages were so woefully inadequate? Every lie that could explain away his prowess fell flat in his head, and he belatedly realised that he was more than a little scared of saying the wrong thing and making things worse.

"Typh, you can trust me. I've proven that much haven't I?" Arilla asked, her eyes pleading as she looked up at him from the sleeping bag that had until so recently been her sickbed. A sick bed that he had put her in, first with his carelessness and then again with his need to protect his secrets.

"We barely even know each other." He said, his resolve wavering.

"We sleep in the same bed every night!" She yelled back at him in exasperation.

"I'm just being frugal." He said quietly.

"Right, and the bath? That was just chalkoi pinching to you?" Arilla said, hurt and anger in her voice. "We had sex Typh! It may not be a big deal to you, but it is to me!"

"I…" He shut his mouth before he could say anything else.

"I just don't understand why you're so hot and cold. One minute you're weirdly intense about how we'll be adventuring together forever under the banner of ‘The Golden Scales’, and the next, you treat me like I'm nothing but a warm body for you to boss around." She continued, her confidence seemingly building upon itself as her righteous complaints poured outwards.

There was a long pause, and at some point, Typhoeus realised that his eyes were wet despite not knowing why. "I'm sorry." He said quietly, his eyes downcast as they filled up with water.

"That's not good enough! I'm a person, and I have feelings. I really like you, and I already owe you so much, but I deserve to be treated better than this." Arilla said, her anger still building despite his tears.

Silence again, he felt terrible, like a coward who was unable to even talk back in his own defence. An uncomfortable mix of nausea and anguish broiling in his stomach as his stupid human feelings got in the way of his plans. How confident he was only moments ago that things were going smoothly, but apparently he was very wrong on that front.

"Look I'm tired, and I don't want to fight. I can respect that there are certain things that you want to keep private, but you need to stop lying to me all the time. I just wanted to know a little bit about the woman that I'm trusting my life to!" She said, looking away from him as she turned onto her side in the sleeping bag.

He knew that he had failed, that the smart thing to do was to leave and try again with someone else. In her weakened state, Arilla probably wouldn't survive the journey back to Rhelea by herself, and if he really wanted to make sure then it wouldn't be hard. He had killed and eaten adventurers before, and that's all that she was to him, just another human. He looked at her and imagined biting down on her throat. The feel of her hot blood spurting around his teeth as the rich metallic taste of her filled his mouth.

It immediately made him feel sick. The very idea of harming her turning his stomach as he almost shivered with revulsion. He couldn't hurt her, and he wouldn't leave her, which only really left one option.

"...I-I have a hidden class, this mage tagged class is just my second one. My main class is nothing bad, but it would get me in a lot of trouble if anyone ever found out about it." He said, trusting her with the tiniest sliver of his secret as wet tears steadily dripped down his face.

"Thank you for being honest with me," Arilla said, her tone saying that this conversation was done. For now.

"Can I come in?" He asked, reluctant to sleep alone now that she was finally awake.

"Yeah okay, but I'm still too upset to be the big spoon." She said as she turned over to make space for him.

He quickly crawled into the sleeping bag next to Arilla, finding comfort in her warmth even if it was less intimate than usual.

“Hey, Typh?” She asked.

“Yes?” He answered, dreading another difficult question.

“Where did we get all that steak from?”

“Didn’t you like it? That was ogre meat. You should always eat what you kill.”