Chapter 99

 

 

 

Demon Inventory Box Dream State

I found myself in Fox’s bedroom.

Wow.

This is weird.

I look around.

She’s never pulled me in here before.

But Fox has clearly pulled me here shortly after we’d found a private room to rest in and before I could go visit with Sunghee for a bit…which has me disappointed. I’d been hoping to have some alone time with her first. We probably don’t have much time. The dwarves will wake us up.

It’s the same room like a tatami room of something like a royalty bedroom that is great and spacious, but oddly mostly empty. Only Fox’s bed is in the room except for the faraway wall having those dressers I’d seen before.

Fox is ahead of me about ten feet away kneeling on the floor as if facing a military superior officer. But I’m not sure if she’s like that thinking she’s the superior officer or me the superior officer. But she’s got a kimono like robe on. It’s not the same style as an Earth kimono though, and more like how things are for here with their own style from this world. That raises questions too. Did she pull that image from me or Sunghee’s mind, or like something that evolved on this world?

We greet each other with smiles and bowing. But like usual she’s careful to avoid touching me.

“So what’s the occasion?” I asked.

“You’ve got to step up your skills. You are being hunted,” Fox said.

“What?” I asked.

“You didn’t know I can see outside the box into the real world did you?” Fox is giving me a straight face.

“You can?” Ugh…that could be embarrassing depending on the circumstances.

But surprisingly as I study her reaction Fox looks at me with admiration.

“Like all the time or on certain conditions?” I asked carefully. This brought out some complications. What if she could also figure out a way to ask someone to ambush me to rescue her?

“Well…I wish I could say all the time. But it’s actually dependent on certain conditions. I can only feel and see faint images when a threat or something dangerous draws near. If you or my survival is threatened I may get small bits and pieces. I’ve wanted to hone it further and sharpen it, but it’s a difficult skill to use,” she shrugged.

“Oh, I see,” I managed.

“Don’t worry, you are actually doing pretty good when you remember you aren’t from this world and yet you seem to do better than most who do come from it. But I need to give you some feedback because of where you are and what’s ahead,” she said smiling.

This is confusing.

Can I trust her?

She seems trustworthy...but she might be desperate.

A few thoughts keep going through my head.

First, is she trying to watch for a chance to leave? She did say she wants the archmage and magic skills to go up for both of us…but now that I think about it, how do I verify that’s the truth and not just something she told me?

We ended up doing some small talk and apologizing to each other for past offenses.

But rather than lowering my guard, I’m still keeping it up a bit.

She shrugged, “So back to your skills…any good wizard or mage will usually have a few good basic skills to fall on. Just attack won’t cut it, by the way.” She ticked them over her fingers as she listed them off.

“First, offense, second, defense and protection skills, third mana regeneration, fourth, a hiding or stealth skill, fifth, a skill to obtain knowledge or building other skills, skills that can be managed to somehow promote economic value and a lifestyle should probably even be put in front of your offense and defense in some ways according to some people; and that’s just to start. I would even list a skill to obtain food or water, and take care of shelter and survival stuff.”

“A hiding or stealth skill? Do we really need something like that? So is that what this is about?” I asked.

“You may call this an intervention to save your life, and therefore mine in return from saving yours. We need your skills to grow the right way. Only doing entirely offensive skills will get you killed fast. Others have tried that, and I’ve seen in most cases it never works out for them very long, even in the most gifted geniuses. In some ways being a genius with a terribly offense skill gets you killed faster because it promotes the idea that you are invincible and to never use caution. Also I feel like while you have progressed significantly, you haven’t actually had much of your training come from me. I need to rectify that as your master. So we will have some one on one time sometimes,” she shot back.

“But intervention…that word is used when there’s a problem,” I said.

“Yeah, you have three goblin shamans at your door and you don’t even know it. They’re also trying to get in your keep tonight. Possibly even right now,” Fox said calmly.

I swore aloud.

“Also I didn’t really know there were magic skills for food, water, and shelter. Are they hard to get? I mean rangers have that but I didn’t think the skill tree I was involved in might get them,” I wondered.

She shrugged, “they aren’t that hard to get. Your tree might not get them or may…you do need to try though. This world if you can’t pay your bills and get hit with a tax the traditional escape route is giving up your women or children to be sold as slaves. Neither of us want that. So if anything I want you economically stronger than anything I can cope with to help you with on my own. But…right now I’m more worried about other things.” She paused cocking her head to one side.

“But I thought I would bring up something else that’s even more curious that I saw before we get started. Somehow I think you overlooked something important. I happened to notice it however while looking through my mirror while keeping an eye on things.”

“Such as?”

“The Summon equipment spell that you used. Did you notice it used stuff you picture in your mind? And did you notice those things all came from your world but many can’t be found here in this world, at least in the same shapes and sizes as you picture them in, and as they manifest?”

Wow.

She’s right.

“Yeah but why did that catch your interest?” I wondered.

She then waved her hand and each of us had teacup of hot cinnamon flavored apple cider. The flavor felt wonderful smelling and taking in the vapor, though it was still too hot to drink outright.

“Well for starters, have you ever wondered why you don’t have a fire spell, or something to do with water? Why don’t you have an element like earth such as the dwarves have?” Fox shrugged.

“Actually I was thinking about that. Can you tell me about your element again? Last time we talked about this you told me altering reality, but is that just a general sense of it or is there more? Do you have more than one element?” I asked.

Fox took a sip of her cup. “Altering reality in the traditional sense, but it’s a bit specialized. I do have a non-traditional element that’s almost hybrid in nature. Mages take on elements and most of their spells come from that element. They don’t just acquire other elements either. It’s a hard road to acquire skills that can gain you access to other trees. In my case, since my element is altering reality you could say my element is a bit of a combination of both time space and illusion mixing itself together. But I lean towards time space a bit more than illusion and my illusions are powerful enough they aren’t really illusions anymore. I know that sounds hard to grasp but it’s pretty much true. All of my skills come from these two areas and blend together well.”

“So you can’t make fire or water spells?” I frowned.

I kind of wanted a spell for breathing water earlier when we’d been trapped in the water tunnel.

“Nope and probably never will be able to though my own tree is somewhat unlimited in how far I can go in space time and illusion. Sorry to say, but I can’t. When I see people that do have those kinds of skills I can’t help but be a little bit jealous to be honest. I’m sure they are getting jealous of me however.”

“OK, that’s a downer. But I do remember you doing some kind of lightning bolt thing or lightning shooter thing,” I replied. The cider was still too hot, but I loved to smell the vapor.

“True, the lightning thing is one of my offensive capabilities. But because I pursued it outside of my normal element, to be honest I lost a lot of time developing it. In the same time I could have gotten probably three or four other skills with advanced status in them. So that’s how I know wasting your time outside your element has high costs. But I needed something to shoot squirrels with,” she frowned.

I’m sure she was also using squirrels to mean things that weren’t actually squirrels.

“But you still don’t have a traditional element? Is that normal? How rare is that?” I asked.

“Things like that can be worked out. There are as many different kinds of mages as there are stars in the sky, so I wouldn’t dwell on it too much. They are also as different from each other as rocks in a riverbed too. I generally win my mage duels by the way so don’t think having a traditional element is everything. Fire isn’t anything you can use as a mage anyway. Think about it, what if you are in the woods, or you live near a bunch of hay fields. How is that going to work out? Every time you use it, you risk burning down your village and getting lynched; which does happen by the way. If you don’t kill yourself with it, the village you live in surely will when you accidentally take away their livelihoods,” she said.

“You’ve been in mage duels?” I was really curious about that. But I had to ask carefully. Fox still was very mysterious. She didn’t like talking about anything related to her past. She seems a bit anxious to open up to me and keeps studying me intently…with narrow slits for eyes. It’s like she’s a cat toying with her mouse but holding back and looking amused while doing so.

But while sitting the creamy white skin of her slender leg pokes out from under one leg of her robe just above the knee. So there are signs that the pheromones do affect her significantly. She probably doesn’t realize what she just did.

“Yeah, but that’s for another time. Not now.”

“So if an enemy mage tries to burn you with fire what do you do? Does lacking fire mean I will lack defense for it?” I asked. “You have to have an offense right? And your lightning bolt has a cool time right?”

“I use gravity and anti-gravity a lot. Did you know there are spells to attack with gravity?” she asked.

“That’s intriguing,” I said.

“Also to answer your question, lacking an element doesn’t mean you can’t build up resistance skills to block it. Water mages come up with ways to block fire mages, and vice versa. In particular water mages can block better than most other elements because water absorbs things. So if you did have a choice of gaining something else then I’d push you in that direction over fire which can’t sustain itself. That kind of thing is common. It’s also not unusual for water mages and fire mages to not get along too,” she added.

“Oh, that’s interesting.” I felt relieved hearing that.

“But we’re still not aligned yet. Your skills are all new as well. I’m not entirely sure, but I don’t think we have the same element. But I’m thinking that your element isn’t totally solid yet. You have a few complex problems that have been causing stress in your mana core like the inability of your demon genes to mix with light magic well,” she said.

“We don’t? But…” I almost spilled my cider thinking about it. I wasn’t sure why, but for some reason that bothered me a lot. I’d wanted to learn skills from Fox.

There was an awkward silence for awhile.

“I can only create a sort of darkfire that isn’t real. When the person or persons that I burn with it go back to sleep, if they are still alive they will wake up with no burns and full health. It’s kind of annoying actually and that even occurs often with gravity attacks. So unless I can kill them it’s either kill or put to sleep in a way. If your enemies aren’t hurt they don’t run away scared,” she shrugged.

“So what does this have to do with what I wanted when I used the summon equipment spell?” I asked.

“I’m not entirely a hundred percent sure but I think your magic fuels off desire, or things in the body and things of the mind, rather than other things and that makes sense for a sex demon. Your summon equipment spell also seemed to suggest this, since a lot of a mage’s first spells generally suggest something about their elements. But the demon box has influenced some bits of time space as well. We thought that you were initially some kind of light magic user, but the changes either are changing that or you were using a desire element to simulate light magic like effects and it’s definitely messing with your mana core because I can feel it when I try to analyze your power,” she started to explain.

“So desire and light or spirit type?” I was having trouble wrapping my head around it.

“Think like, why does your summon equipment spell bring equipment from your world instead of element related material?” she said.

“You mean like if an earth mage casted summon equipment they’d get something earth related?” I guessed.

She nodded.

It can’t be helped that I’d be confused after thinking I was only light magic all this time too.

“That’s not what we talked about earlier. How do you know you aren’t wrong?” I growled.

She suddenly looked like she’d discovered something really interesting. “Yeah but that’s just it, what if you were a desire element type and then desired healing because of your sister? Then suddenly you are able to simulate it, because you ‘believe’ you are a light magic type in much the same way a bumblebee shouldn’t be able to fly but does? Scientists have proven before that bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly for some types but they still can,” she is smiling really big now.

I groaned. “This is a headache though,” I thought.

“Don’t you want to have your element worked out?” she asked.

“Yes but…I think its light,” I said.

She shook her head, “yeah but there are too many what ifs that can’t be solved with you being a light element totally. At best you might be hybrid light and something else, but that still doesn’t explain you picking up tons of skills. You really are turning into a monster in some ways,” she noted.

“And how would we be sure?” I asked.

“We’d have to test dumping different situations that would trigger stimuli from different areas associated with other trees at you and see how you respond,” she looked apologetic.

I sighed.

“It’s not an exact science. Most people are a hybrid and genuinely unique. You know this,” she said in a mentor like tone.

“Wish I wasn’t misled though. It’s annoying that people thought I was a paladin and so did I. Then it’s “Oh just kidding, you aren’t X, you are a Y, when you said light magic,” I spat being a bit annoyed. It was an old argument but I felt very frustrated by it.

She shrugged too, “it’s not that uncommon for certain types of demons to use desire and mind and body magic and they would overlap with some of those fields. Also I’m sorry too, its’ hard to figure out what type you are because people as mortals in the world are figuring out their identity any way. Having your own identity of yourself and what kind of person you are influences that. That’s the core of why magic mutates and isn’t just one thing. I would try to develop it further. You are still too weak for a mage right now even though you are growing pretty fast.”

“Yeah tell me about it. But what you said about it being based off people’s identities. I’ve never heard that before,” I countered dourly.

“That’s because a more solid person in their own mind would be able to branch out into various other branches of ‘success’ easier. Their identity of what their own mental image is, is much stronger and more based of what they think of themselves and less of what others think. That affects their mind being stronger and how their willpower and channels to and from the brain and mana core become much more connected,” she explained.

“So it’s like a strong athlete can cross train in another sport easier?” I said.

“Yes. Also, I’m not being critical, but just want to help you get past this stage. The more you know about you then the better the future can become. But if you look at the world and lose yourself from being overwhelmed by how big it is then you don’t get anywhere either and feel like an ant,” she coached.

“A mage’s first few spells usually spell out a lot about their true elements?” I asked again back to her after she’d said it. I was considering this possibility and thinking about its meaning.

She nodded back affirmatively. “Yes! Exactly so! So we should figure this out some more and spend time on it.”

“But I can learn fire or water stuff right?” I still didn’t want to give up on a good base in many areas of skills. It was a futile question even though I was asking it.

She shook her head negatively, which crushes me inside. “You might, but you are missing the point. I’m trying to get you used to the idea that no mage has all the skills. It will never work that way. Every skill can be special and unique too in how it mutates over time. Also you don’t have to have fire to be a powerful mage. I want you to instead think about how to be able to counter them and have a back door for the skills you lack. If you do that you’ll survive. But if you try to have every skill out there, you will lose in the end because you’ll lose ground trying to acquire things you can’t and then end up with slow growth.”

“OK…so how do you counter fire magic?” I asked.

She shook her head, “what I do won’t work for you. I can’t just download all my skills in you. It doesn’t work that way. That’s also why it’d do harm for you to try to copy me. You need to do it your own most natural reflex way.”

“Dang it, more riddles,” I tried to not be upset at her but it’s like she was turning everything upside down on me all the time.

“But I want to confirm it,” she said.

Very carefully she waved her hand and suddenly she was next to me. I was a bit surprised how forward she was when she grabbed my hand and twisted it palm up. Her fingers were slender and thin but long and nice looking with sharp nails that didn’t look at all human. It was still very pretty and dainty with very shiny and pure looking skin however.

She then murmured something softly and I felt a tinge of mana leaving her finger tips which were tracing symbols in my palm. The mana hit me like a cold ray and I could feel it twitching around inside me feeling me as the trail of mana stretched out in my body.

At length it stopped as she felt around.

“Hm, yes I can feel it now. You have no affinity for fire, sorry. You could spend like a hundred years trying to get fire and probably still end up with nothing,” she explained.

“Crap.” My stomach felt like awful suddenly. I had to admit fire did look just a little bit cool, even though it was a pain in the but to control supposedly.

“Also nothing for wind or earth also nothing, but there might be a possibility in the future to acquire some water affinity. Also the body is made up of mostly water so I wouldn’t think it’s impossible to break through into this type of affinity’s realm pretty quickly. Mostly though, you have an affinity for light, some time space, body and mind magic. Those are the types of spells you will be able to use,” she said finally.

But she was frowning, while I was aging prematurely from having my dreams and misconceptions popped one by one.

“Is that all?” I asked, trying not to sniff.

Her eyes widened. “Don’t feel bad. I know you feel down, but that’s actually a lot. Most people get only one affinity right off the bat and struggle for years to get another. You can’t immediately use those affinities but you can break into them probably within a short period of time. Look, just accept the fact that people who win battles aren’t usually a fire element or a water element even. Think about it as who has a stronger mind and mana connection. Your affinity in each of these is still a bit weak but you should be able to develop it further. Also, each of those categories is totally separate from each other. Mind magic alone is very dominating and worth dedicating into just by itself. I’m a bit jealous of you being able to access it. You could last several centuries alone just on investigating its addictive properties and how fun it is. A lot of foxkin like mind magic by the way.”

“I still have a long way to go like you say,” I admitted sighing.

“But we have to get you ready for the goblin shamans that are with the goblins at your dwarven friends’ keep. They are going to know there is a mage there. Three shamans and one of you is not a good situation to be in. Goblin shamans aren’t as weak as they sound. Some of them can be pretty terrible opponents,” she reminded me holding up a finger to warn me. The look in her eyes said extreme danger.

Was that…even just a bit of fear from her in regards to them? No way?!

“How did you know they were here?” I asked.

“Mana sensing, and anti-stealth skills,” she shrugged.

“Eh? There’s anti-stealth spells too?”

“Actually it’s its own specialization category and a lot of mages work in that field. It’s got good survivability and you can do a lot of bread and butter operations in it to support yourself working for towns or military groups for different countries like the dwarves for example. A lot of mages start out in it.”

Wow, this was getting interesting.

“You make it sound like there are a lot of mages around,” I said.

She shrugged, “Not everyone has it, but a good ten percent of the world’s population has magic, but not many can develop it further and build it very far. Some can, and some can’t. There’s a huge variety of degrees of strength. I’m not sure how else to put it other than that.”

“Eh? That’s a ton of people!” I exclaimed.

She sipped her drink. “It is what it is. So have you thought about what you want in the long run?”

I sighed, “I kind of like being able to do a lot of things, but still be able to be strong enough to face and win stuff in the long run.”

“That’s a tough order. I didn’t want to tell you this, but you will have to work hard to overcome your weak spots.”

“Eh? Weak spots? How?” I was shocked.

She had her hands on her hips. “You have too many general directions you can study from. In the end it can make you weak because you are dividing your attention into several areas instead of one area to get really strong like a fortress. You need to be really good in one or two areas to be able to survive other mages trying to steal your power, which was why I mentioned becoming strong like a fortress. Something like at least one of your elements ending up really powerful,” she elaborated. “If you don’t have that you will either be bullied or controlled by others, or be under someone else’s thumb, or become ingredients for some mages’ experiments to make magic weaponry.”

Shit…that sounds bad.

“And is that what you want me to do, being strong in one or two areas exclusively at the cost of other things?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Nope. I want you to be able to survive and choose for yourself and be happy with it. But be wary in dividing your strength against yourself by running in circles chasing butterflies. But I also understand you want to be happy too.”

She did sigh though and seemed to be considering saying something. I could tell it was important so I waited for her to get her courage up, “look I should tell you that I’ve had three other apprentices already. You are the fourth. All of them were hunted down and killed. That’s why I’m going to give you a spell now to help you survive. I also want you to know that so you can know how treacherous this world can be.”

“Hmm that sounds like a cool deal of a new skill…but being hunted doesn’t. Something that could blow stuff up would be nice. But I am sorry about your other apprentices,” I said seriously.

That got her smiling. She then tossed me an orb about the size of my thumb. It was actually a solid black marble from which no light would shine or reflect. It was like it would soak up light in any form. Staring at it seemed to even make me dizzy. But it wasn’t really a marble; it was some kind of solidified mana converted from energy.

It was an interesting find. If mana could be converted to matter, then couldn’t it also be converted back and into other forms? It had me thinking a lot from just a glance…

“What do you want me to do with this?” I asked.

“Pull the power out of it. And since I know you are going to ask later on…those don’t grow on trees and I can’t just hand them out all the time like candy. They cost a lot in a lot of ways,” she commanded.

I did as she instructed and suddenly felt something strange in my brain. It was a spell sequence, with visual, symbol, and intent gestures together in the form of a formula. But it was a bit different than the other spell formulas I’d seen.

This one…how bizarre? Was it…? Could it be…?

“You gave me a stealth spell?” I guessed aloud.

“Yeah it’s one of the better ones. It should be compatible with your other spells. I want you to use it for awhile, until you get stronger. It will help keep you alive. By the way you have no idea what that cost me to give that up for you,” she said; her face and body were sweating badly and looking quite pale as part of the reaction of transferring her power to me.

“Sorry.”

“It’s necessary. If you die, we live in hell and can’t die,” she said.

“So how does it work? Is it like invisibility?” I asked frowning.

“No, this isn’t invisibility. If you wear or use it, this spell will only make the echo of your magic faint enough that enemy mages won’t see or feel you close by. But you will still be visible to everyone around you physically by both mages and non-mages. This only masks the echo of magic from long range. It’s not infallible and it’s not the only anti-stealth hiding spell you’ll need so you better start using it pretty much now on and build it into something more. I just hope you have enough time,” she added biting her lip in worry.

“So it won’t really change my combat abilities at all will it?” I think I was trying to be grateful but somehow no change in my combat stats was a downer.

She nodded slowly. “It will take some time to use at first. But in thinking about my other apprentices…I should have taught them this spell first, rather than outright offense magic. I think if I’d been less naïve at the time at least one of them would still be alive. But then again they might not.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She frowned, “it’s my fault. I underestimated how calculating evil is and how it hunts people in this world. Demons and mages both prey on weaker mages for reagent ingredients. You must never forget that Shun,” she warned me again.

I didn’t want to ask her about reagent ingredients now but I’m sure it would be a horrifically interesting tale by itself. I doubted she’d be able to handle it though. She had looked pretty grief stricken mentioning her other former apprentices.

We went through it and she made me practice it once or twice with her. It turns out that it’s an energy heavy spell, but by small degrees. It used a pulse of however much energy your output was in the opposite direction. So if I cast a starry missile spell it would temporarily use that much energy to again mask that spell. If I cast a runic shielding spell, it used the same amount to counter the same amount of energy.

So it basically it almost doubled my energy cost for the benefit of hopefully not being hunted. It’s a hard bullet to swallow.

I barely have enough mana to do the things I need to do, and suddenly I’ve got to cut all my activities in half so I can use this thing that isn’t actually guaranteed to work. In fact Fox didn’t want me to believe it was infallible. She kept showing me how to check over my shoulder while travelling to make sure if I was being followed, and how to camouflage myself in certain types of terrain.

She’s definitely a tough boss. What’s even worse is that I found out the three apprentices she lost were all more powerful than I was at this point and the pick of the letter in terms of getting the best apprentices available. She’d fully expected to be able to turn them into strong mages for this era.

But now things were making more sense.

I’d always thought Fox was a bit grumpy before and a bit distant. If her apprentices had been killed in the past of course she might seem a bit dour if she was forced to be reminded of such things daily. In her own way, she had traumas not too dissimilar from Sunghee.

But suddenly I had an interesting idea. I did like the idea of utility magic but there was something else too. All the talk and jargon about being and becoming super powerful had almost made me overlook something really interesting.

“You know maybe it’s just that. Maybe what I need isn’t to pick and sacrifice a lot of abilities to have one strong ability but to go after instead survival magic. Maybe survival magic is itself a focus that I can reach after as a goal,” I said aloud voicing my thoughts.

Fox almost choked on her drink. “Actually that’s an interesting concept. Mages for ages have been so obsessed with putting each other in certain boxes that there isn’t a box per se that is set as solely ‘survival magic as a specialization’. Even rangers don’t classify their survival magic as survival magic, but instead as something like a combination of both Plant life energy and Pathfinding. I actually wish I’d thought of this idea myself. It could become pretty interesting.”

“So you think it could work?” I asked to confirm and to hear her opinion. Rather than being afraid of her input, I wanted as much critiquing from her as possible to look for weak spots to shore up. She was thinking hard on this.

“If you’d asked me that before I’d lost my other apprentices I would have said no. But I’m a different person now. I think it could work. But you have to consider survival’s focus isn’t to win every battle you get into. You’re point of view will often be controlling when you fight and avoiding and even losing fights you can’t win on purpose so that you can have a new tomorrow.”

“But those fights probably wouldn’t be winnable anyway if it’s time to flee right?” I suggested.

“Yeah that’s true too. But for this to work, you will have to absolutely end up with a mana pool larger and bigger than anyone else’s,” she hissed greedily. “Much of being able to flee or escape a mage battle has to do with being able to do more skills, and do more in a short amount of time and the really good spells tend to take a lot of power that they soak up easily. So in order to flee on someone who is powerful…you’d need a lot of power to always be getting out of his reach and blocking his ability to block your escape. You’ll have to think about how you’ll accomplish that,” Fox reasoned.

Crap, she’s right.

“So why did you give me the stealth spell instead of the lightning bolt thing you did?” I asked cheekily. It couldn’t hurt to try to ask about it right? It was devastatingly effective.

She nodded, “right now you aren’t up to a spell of that difficulty yet. But in time I’m hoping you’ll get there. The stealth spell really is the best thing for you right now. If you use it, it should keep you off the radar from enemy bosses a bit longer.”

I couldn’t help but notice she didn’t say keep me off the radar, but said ‘a bit longer’. So was she expecting that to happen soon?

So there’s going to probably be a face off with some goblin shamans?