Magic Breaker Ch 79-81

Chapter 79: Silliness and Skills

Turns out, fae doesn’t taste very good. Everyone eats, though. Even as it feels weird and disgusting and more than a little like cannibalism. The white-blue flesh turns translucent under heat, and it feels chewy, almost like gum. I hate it. It’s horrible.

For a moment, I consider starving instead, but decide against it. We need food, simple as that. So, we eat. To distract myself from the awful sensation, I [Suppress] everything coming from my mouth, and instead focus on the new spell structures in my mind.

Deconstructing the fogfae has apparently brought multiple benefits. A construct for freezing touch, one for illusions, for manipulation, for etherealness… they used a lot of abilities only to have them countered and torn apart and devoured by my apathy. 

My memory is now the limiting factor. I saw them properly when taking it apart, but there is no perfect record anymore, and due to the fact that I was both freezing and starving and resisting mental manipulation at the time, it’s a little blurry. Which annoys me. I want more magic to study, so I can see about implementing any lessons into my healing skill.

How can I record it? The first idea I have is creating solid mana crystals stored somewhere on my body, maybe like tattoos? But those could be worn away. I consider inscribing it into my brain, somehow. That seems like a horrible idea, though. Crystalline mana interfacing with the primary place my consciousness is hosted sounds like one of my worst ideas. I should be at least on the third floor before trying that.

Oh, who am I kidding. 

Without further hesitation, I start solidifying some mana inside my skull. [Observation] does some heavy lifting there, letting me see inside it. I try to keep the inscription small, a tiny little rune that describes the pattern I remember for Kuro’s shadow abilities.

Instantly, pain blossoms in my skull. It hurts so bad that the mana falls apart, and my vision goes black for a moment. I hiss out a breath of air, then take another bite of the horrid food we’ve made. At least I’m not throwing up. 

Frowning, I drag my hand through my hair. 

Then I try again.

- - -

Thatch sits in front of me with a handkerchief he pulled from his backpack, wiping the blood from my eyes, mouth, and nose. “You really should stop doing that,” he chides, calmly. He doesn’t look into my eyes.

I may have made a tiny cut in my brain with the mana. Just a little thing, really, when I lost focus. It healed right back up with [Biological Restoration] - which I’m really glad about. This was something I needed to test anyway, so I don’t have to feel too bad. Surely. Maybe.

At that, Thatch pokes my cheek to get my attention. “I know that look,” he says, meeting my eyes this time. “Don’t cut your brain again.”

“Ah but you see, this leaves the loophole of bludgeoning-”

“Snow,” he says, seriously. “I get that you wanna push yourself. But please, no bleeding from your eyes?” he pleads.

I blink. Damn it. Now I have to take it seriously. “What about my mouth?”

“No.”

“Nose?”

“No.”

Slowly, my frown deepens. “What if we die because I’m not strong enough?”

Thatch smiles, thinly. “Then we die,” he says, quietly. “We say we gave it our best shot, and fall over. We can struggle and try as hard as possible when we need to.” The smile grows wider. “Plus,” he adds, “no one can beat us.”

I tilt my head. “No one?”

He nods. “No one. I’ll smash in the face of anyone who tries. You can take it a bit easier. Can I ruffle your hair?” he asks.

“Okay,” I agree.

Thatch reaches out and does just that. I see that it makes his smile more genuine, even as I give him my typical deadpan stare. That makes it worth it. “Ask for help if you need it, dummy,” he chides without any heat. “You’re not the only one here.”

Finally, he is entirely right about something. I want them to have an easy time, but that’ll never happen. I understand that. The tower won’t let it. Even in the trial, when I cut my own arm off, it seemed to hurt Sylves more than me. Both because she was anxious, and because she knew what even the best case was for her. She wanted me to cut off my arm, and that thought probably terrified her.

Now, Thatch sits in front of me, wiping my blood off my face because I messed up. Inu almost died in her trial. Sylves lost an arm. I won’t be able to protect them all the time.

I look at Thatch. “Okay,” I say. “I’m trying to create a skill that allows me to store patterns in some place on my body. I want to be able to store inert versions of the mana signatures of any skills I break apart so I can learn them myself. Any ideas?”

He tilts his head, then smiles. “Sounds a lot like Inu’s [Reservoir]. Maybe mix in some of Amelie’s threads, or Sylves’ tailoring. Even Opal’s [Echo] might hold a hint.”

At that, I blink. Because he’s entirely right. I literally have the ability to analyse people’s skills, have been working with Bay for days to get a grasp on [Pulse], and yet, I didn’t think to ask. Slowly, I smile. “I am a bit silly, huh?”

Thatch laughs at me. Out loud, full on laugh, and I can’t help but share his amusement. “Yeah, you are,” he says. “And that’s alright. Go on. Ask Inu. Silly Snow.”

I rise from the soft grass, feeling my stomach rumble in protest, but ignoring it. I’ve had enough of the fae flesh, even though I’m still hungry. Even with sensation cut off and chewing on autopilot, eating it is nightmarish. Nothing worse than food with bad texture. Maybe I really should just cut off a leg, even if I can’t regrow it, just so I don’t have to eat the fae anymore.

“Hey Inu,” I say.

“Hey Snow,” she says, then takes another bite of the food I got us. She’s so focused on the meal, not letting it leave her eyes as if it might evaporate if she looked away. 

“I need help,” I say, slowly.

“I heard,” she says. “Ask.”

My lips press together. “You’re making this awkward,” I say.

“Mhm,” she nods. “I sure am. That’s what you get for falling unconscious for five minutes in the middle of my meal.”

Okay, I see how she may have a point. “If you would show me your [Reservoir] it would help me to not fall unconscious the next time,” I supply hopefully.

“That’s a statement, not a request,” she says. By now, though, all the cold has melted away from her voice, and she smiles a little as she speaks. 

I sigh, faintly. “Fine. Thine ladyship, dearest Ms. Brook-Chavez, would’st thou be so kind as to grace this unworthy one with a display of thine great and incredible skill of storing things?” I ask.

Her smile brightens until she bursts out into a laugh. “Your ladyship?” she asks.

Shrugging, I tilt my head. “Is it inaccurate? If you’d like different pronouns, that’s no trouble either. I can call you lord, monarch maybe if that’s too gendered, squire, page, knight… Ah, but Opal has more knightly vibes, y’know?”

“Opal must be the most un-knightly knight out there,” she teases.

The enby shoots us a look, then grins. “Oh really? Well, I s’pose my manners must be too rowdy for the esteemed lady. From this point forward, I shall thusly be the wayward knight, Opal. Or perhaps I would do better as a ronin?”

Inu grins. “A samurai without a lord! Now that suits you.”

Dar huffs. “I would take my blood sibling over any lord,” he says.

“Now, now, let’s not limit us to lords,” Sylves adds. “Ladies make fine rulers too”

“Of course,” Opal says, bowing. “A dastardly trickster like yourself would make a monarch like none other.”

In response, our haughty fairy flicks her hair behind her back. “And you’d do well to recognize such, ronin! Perhaps we may find a place for you at my court yet.”

“What an honour,” Opal replies with a bright smile.

We all laugh. By the end of the conversation, Inu has already reactivated her skill on me and let me take it apart a dozen times. Bit by bit, I’m learning.

Chapter 80: Nomadic

Thatch stops in the middle of the field, making little Richard bump into him. She frowns, and as retaliation, starts nibbling at his thighs with her mandibles, harmlessly. She doesn’t even make it through the fabric. “City ahead,” he says.

At that, everyone snaps to attention. Bay drops a screwdriver, Jess’ icy visage lightens up, and Sylves almost falls out of the air. “Food,” Norman whispers. “Please, normal, pleasant, food!” I can practically see him drooling, the ungrateful bastard. Then again, I would probably kill for a bag of rice just about now. Maybe I shouldn’t judge. At least hunting the fae has let us all level a bit.

“Do we run?” Inu asks.

“Yes,” Opal replies. Then, a moment later, they blink forward. Instantly, Dar dashes off in a blur of movement, manipulating their inertia. Richard opens her mouth and eats… space, apparently. 

Sylves flies, Thatch channels red hot anger into his feet, Bay pulls out a hoverboard, and Norman uses some kind of dashing skill, too. Which leaves Inu and me to walk, without skills, like the peasants we are. “I can’t believe I have as many movement skills as our tank,” I sigh.

She gives me a sympathetic smile. “Well, I’m sure you will figure out teleportation soon enough, mage.”

Smiling, I look to the sky. “Can you cast [Reservoir] a few more times?” I ask.

Rolling her eyes, she nods. “Fine, Snow. Yes, I can.”

As we walk, she casts, and I break it apart. Over and over and over again. That’s what friends are for, after all.

- - -

When we get to the city, we find it’s about what one would expect of a nation eternally moving away from a storm. It’s tents, wagons, tamed beasts of burden, constantly moving. In fact, Inu and I eventually have to run to catch up with it. It’s easier, with higher heart and power stats, even though my friend is still wearing her full armor.

But we do catch up. Jess is already cooking. Thatch traded in a minor request for a wagon for a few days. We’ll need to figure out other ways to pay soon, but we’ll make ourselves useful, for sure. We did, however, receive an allocation of food.

Apparently, seeds had been brought down from the third floor before, and this mobile city had multiple greenhouse wagons. Nothing actually grew on the floor itself, but a few people with classes in a ranger-slash-druid direction - making me curious to see their skills in action - did manage to maintain a few decent plots of soil entirely separated from the grassy hills that blanketed all of the second floor. 

With that, there was a meal. A large pot of stew, made from water from a few of our magic items - ones I haven’t broken… yet - and some of the vegetables we were allocated. Meat is scarce here, since no one sane fights the fae more than needed, or eats them, for that matter, and no one wants to sacrifice beasts that could be put to better use as companions or carriers. 

The leader of the convoy, an old zoof man with fluffy, charcoal-black fur, greets me and Inu too. “New climbers, hear hear!” he says, with a gruff voice. “I’m Malcolm. Make yourselves at home. Put your skills to use, don’t cause any trouble. Benefit of the doubt usually goes to whoever was here first, so don’t start things. If you’re treated unfairly, tell people.”

He pats Inu on the shoulder, with a long, thin, gray limb, and tries to do the same thing with me, but I step back. He eyes me suspiciously. 

“Snow’s particular about personal space,” Thatch fills in for me. “Means nothing by it.”

“Hmmm, ain’t ever met a do-gooder who minds a pat on the back,” captain Malcolm says. “ I’ll have my eyes on ye. Don’t stir up anything.”

With that, he’s off. 

I look around at all the other climbers. There are a handful of humans around them. The noise of it all is already enough to get on my nerves and I really, really want my headphones back. I turn to Bay, staring. She looks up at me, mouth full of stew. “Wha?” she asks.

“Have you managed to charge anything yet?” I ask.

She shakes her head, then swallows. “Sorry, no,” she says. “Getting closer. Got a phone to just about two percent before it fried and blew up.”

At that, I nod. She’ll figure it out. She has to. Maybe I should be paying more attention to this project? Ah, but then again… my magic is already helpful.

With a quick twist of mana, I [Suppress] my own hearing, and the world becomes dull and quiet. I put on my headphones, too. They’re not on, out of battery, but I tweak my skill until it feels almost the same. Then, I close my eyes, feeling slightly at peace. 

“Hey Bay? You’ve got some kind of storage skill, right? Can you cast it for me to take apart?” I ask, not hearing my own voice. 

The world is so quiet, I don’t hear Bay’s reply, but a few seconds later, the spell weaves itself into being, and I [Deconstruct] it. Again. And again. And again. In blissful silence. I love my headphones.

- - -

When evening comes around, we are all fed, housed, and even as we catch the slightest edge of the storm, we bear with it without complaint. It’s a drizzle on the tarp, quite calming, really. Jess creates little fires that don’t spread and cause no smoke, fuelled entirely by mana. I take one apart, and she looks at me, summoning it again. 

This time, when I try to deconstruct it, there’s resistance. Some kind of cohesive force holding the little flame in place. It’s like I’m trying to blow out a fire, and it sparks back to life from the embers, feeding off the residual air. Is this flame feeding from my mana?

Jess smiles at me.

It’s the first time I’ve seen the frozen expression on her face move in a little while. She’s genuinely amused by the fact that she gets to poke back at me a bit. I pour some more mana into [Deconstruction], and properly reach into the toolbox.

My skill is full of little tricks to pick at the mana of a construct. If Jess is adjusting her skill to be more resistant to it, I’ll just find a new weakness. 

And I do.

[Observation 3 > 4]

When I cut through a few threads of mana, the flame sputters out, and the remaining fragments of the skill fuel my own mana, falling into Abiding Apathy. I smile, and Jess returns it, brightly. She summons a new flame, adjusting the pattern again. Somehow, it’s almost like a game.

The evening passes peacefully. Rain falls on the tarp. Opal sleeps on top of Dar. Thatch is bundled up in blankets. Inu leans against the wall, her eyes closed serenely. Richard has a full belly and seems satisfied at the food.

I breathe the wet air of the storm infested highlands, and the fog slowly seeps into the world, becoming denser as the night comes. And then, when everyone is asleep, I go outside, to help with the defense of the caravan. Sylves follows me, calming the air to silence our steps. And we head out to fight, to do our part in earning our keep.

Chapter 81: Trouble

I take a deep breath of the cold morning air. Five days have passed since we started travelling with the caravan, and people are suddenly afraid of me. I have no idea at all of how this could have happened.

Sylves has made herself rather popular, though, giving out food, and asking for thread and cloth in exchange. Bay has been doing some tinkering with the wagons, fixing wheels. Norman’s mainly been running back and forth the caravan, probably looking for some type of messenger job. 

It’s fun seeing how everyone fits in. Amelie’s puppets do a lot of work in duties no one else wants to do, like latrines and crop-tending. Jess feeds fires, Richard cooks… and I enchant. 

Well, granted, saying that my main job is enchanting would be grossly inaccurate. 

What I really do is kill.

My build counters the fogfae. Hard counters. I kill them, and help my party kill them, too, to level. It’s come to the point where I’ve saved a half dozen lives, just by turning them ethereal when an attack was meant to land. People are thankful… but scared. Because they see the way I fight. The way I walk up to the monsters, and take them apart. 

That’s okay. They aren’t talking to me as much anymore. There is, however, a conversation going on. I yawn, gently, having tuned it out.

“Are ya listening, brat?” captain Malcolm asks. His wiry hands are crossed in front of his body with disapproval. “Another party reported a runic item going missing from their tent last night. You’re an enchanter, right?”

I nod. “Sure.”

“You don’t happen to know anything about this?” he asks, annoyed. 

“Nope,” I shake my head.

Narrowing his eyes at me, the old zoof frowns and grumbles. “Fine then. Make sure you don’t enter others’ living quarters, though. Or else there’ll be trouble.”

“Of course,” I nod.

Grumbling some more, the old man stomps off, back to the front of the caravan. We’ve been pushing hard the last few days, since the storm is nearby and pulling closer, so we’re trying to outrun it until it changes direction again. Which means long days and even longer nights. 

I’ve revealed my healing abilities. On the third night, one of the pulling beasts, a bison looking thing, caught a leg in a hole left by a fist-sized hailstone, and snapped something in their ankle.

So, I healed it.

There is another healer in the camp, but the owner of the bison didn’t offer enough of a reward, apparently. Additionally, he was very tightly guarded by his own group, hardly ever leaving their tent. Coward.

With my experience healing ants, the flesh knit back together under my touch, and we continued moving, but people started treating me with a lot more… not warmth, really. More like hunger.

I went from scary to a commodity. 

That’s fine, though. Whenever I don’t want anyone to talk to me, I simply put on my headphones, sit on the outside of our tent-wagon, and [Suppress] the sounds of the world. I take out another wheel they want me to work on and start carving enchantments into it with a stylus made from mana. It’s not the first I’ve made, and it’ll be far from the last.

[Inscription 8 > 9]

It is enough to tick over my skill. I’ve been studying the runes in the booklet that a minor request bought me, as well as threading my mana through my upgraded maze and tracing the runes on that, too. Enchanting is progressing. Almost, for a moment, I consider smiling.

Then, someone sits down next to me.

It’s a girl. She’s small, timid looking. Probably towards the end of her teens. Her legs dange in the air as the tent pulls forward, and she pushes a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. Tinkling shards of sapphire are folded neatly behind her back, wings kept aside.

“You’re a healer, right?” she asks, piercing green eyes staring at me.

I look at her. Slowly, I tilt my head. She smells like strawberries. I know because of how close she chose to sit. Gently, I use [Suppression] on myself, smoothing out my emotions. “No,” I say, my expression entirely neutral.

At that, she seems confused. “Liar!” she protests. “I saw you heal the inson!” 

Shrugging, I look back at the wagon wheel. “Must’ve forgotten since.”

She looks at me, mouth open wide at my shamelessness. “No you haven’t!” she says. “Teach me.” Then she tries to reach over and grab my shoulders. 

I look at her, and in that moment she decides to touch me, I [Select] her. [Suppression] flares, and a good quarter of my mana pours into the skill, relieving some of the pressure that’s constantly building in my chest. Her slowed movements crash into a wall of mana around me.

[Suppression 12 > 13]

“Please don’t touch me,” I say, calmly.

The girl looks at me, aghast. Her mouth struggles to move against the oppressive pressure. I look at her, and wait for the mana powering it to run out. It takes another ten seconds, then she gasps for air for a second. 

“How dare you use a skill on me?!” she demands, looking angry.

I tilt my head. “Haven’t you been trying to use one on me this whole time?”

She flinches. 

“Now, maybe I’m wrong, but I suspect it’s stronger if you touch me,” I say.

“No, I-”

As she starts, I just stare at her. She talks on and on, about how she definitely wasn’t trying anything, and another, much more subtle attempt to influence me in some way reaches me. I break that, too.

Her words stop flowing as her skill falls apart. I just keep staring at her. She looks at me. Now, she seems scared. “I’ll just…”

“Opal,” I say.

There’s a tiny pop, and my friend appears where she was just turning, both hands crossed behind their head. “Yeah, Snow?” they ask.

I smile, slightly. It never gets old. The girl starts to look more scared. I should feel bad, probably. She’s, what, nineteen? Well, old enough to need to take responsibility at least. “Charge for causing me trouble is one minor request.”

She balks. “What?!”

“Charge for causing me trouble is one minor request.”

“No way!” she protests. “Do you know who I am? My mother is a climber on the sixth floor! I’ll have her-”

“Okay,” I say, leaning back. “No problem. If your mom is so important, you can scamper off.”

She grins, victoriously. “Then you’ll have to teach me.”

“Nope,” I say. “Leave.”

The girl gives a few more attempts, but I tune her out. She’s some kind of beast tamer, I think. Except, well, there’s no such a thing as “beast tamers”. It’s all the same kind of affection-increasing skill. The same she tried to use on me, trying to make me into a loyal follower of hers.

When she gives up, she eventually scampers off. I look at Norman. He looks back at me. I finish the wheel I’ve been working on, then pull out the cloak I’m preparing. He rolls his eyes with annoyance, but nods.

The girl wanders off to her tent. Surely nothing bad will happen. Surely none of her magical belongings will disappear. Surely there will be no trouble at all in the camp. Not by me. Never. 

Surely.