I wake up screaming. The gaze of the monkey, his promise to eat me continues to haunt my night.

I start to meditate, sensing the magic in me, waiting for the sunrise. Last evening was magical, I gain a level and the general skill storytelling 3. It was just crazy. 

If I didn’t appear in the forest but inside the blessed valley I would have thought that I was dead. This is clearly a Paradis, with a lot of happy children, art everywhere, unlimited food, perfect weather, kind people. Where the main activity is cooking, playing, and storytelling. What can I ask for more? 

Well, there is an absolute lack of technology and the nonexistence of science, but they don’t need it. No one can read or write but all the teaching is done by storytelling. I hope it’s not because all the curious ones die exploring the forest.

The morning passes and we appreciate a delicious breakfast cooked by Choco. Clementine arrives a bit later clearly tired by the pregnancy.

He offers to follow him, cutting wood and looking around. I decline, not because I am traumatized by the monkeys, nop. Today I want to learn magic!

I cross the village greeting everyone. Smelling the name of people is very useful when you meet someone for the first time, or you forget his name. As I pass by the well, ignoring it, a teen tries to stop me but went away at the last second.

Inside the healer's home six blessed are meditating together. Noticing me Bardane silently invite me to the next room, smaller and more intimate.

“Litchi happy to see you this morning. Your performance yesterday was marvelous, I hope that you will continue tonight.”

“Thank you, but I did not create this story and Rocko does this way better than me.”

She serves me tea. “Nonsense, the village needs new stories. You will see that everybody is a story addict here. They will not let you stop. And Cinnamon already sells you on your private Harry Potter session at night. People will need their fix. Do it as a favor to me, it’s really exhausting to stop a spoiler bickering.”

I try to say something but she interrupts me “The deed is done; you will have to share this Harry potter story with everyone.”

So, they are all medieval Netflix addict. Perfect, they will make me queen at the end of the week. Or maybe not, Bardane is clearly used to be the boss. She is the “I don’t take no as an answer” type.

The conversation continues and she explains to me what people are doing, and how the village works. She describes me who is crafting the pot, creating the games, teaching and telling the stories, help boost the plants. There is a lot of people enjoying painting and carving. 

“So, what do you think, what you want to become in the village?”

“I am a spear beginner but I like to learn magic. I want to learn to heal and contribute to the valley.” I say eagerly. 

“Healing! This is perfect the village could always need another healer!” Exclaims Bardane, a bit shocked. Maybe she does no know that healing power is the way to be badass, it’s the way to survive, and maybe one day explore beyond the safe zone.

Her smile disappears and she becomes serious. “Outsiders always want to level combat or a traveling class to exit the blessed valley and go back to their family, and often do not integer well with us. Lucky for you, there is no way to go back to your world, so you will not die stupidly in the jungle. And I will not have to look for your skeleton to bring back your items” 

She pauses and stares at me, dead serious. Without realizing I nod under the pressure and her smile comes back.

“Good. So, let me explain to you how magic and skills work. In the Blessed Valley obviously, everybody has the blessing of the living treasure and with it we start to learn the basics. 

The trick is to connect with the blessing and expand its power. Each blessing can be slightly different and it’s to be an adult to discover by himself all its facets. The basics as you already discovered are self-cleaning, regeneration, understanding of the gluttonous language, class gift, beauty, and fertility”

Congratulation, you discovered an aspect of your blessing: Extreme fertility.

Congratulation, you discovered an aspect of your blessing: Enhance beauty. 

“Yes of course…” This explains the kids absolutely everywhere, the abundance of food. I should ask if they have a mirror later. And this means she is pregnant too, I think. I say. “And I discovered Major poison and disease resistance and Major savor and smell enhancement. Also, who gives us this blessing?” 

“Yes of course.” She replies sarcastically. “Less obvious but equally important is the fast growth during childhood.” 

Congratulation, you discovered an aspect of your blessing: fast growth (Childhood). 

“We teach every child how to connect with their blessing and to extend it around them. So, when you share your blessing regeneration with an object you can repair it and learn the repair magic skill. Extending your cleaning blessing gives a magic cleaning skill. Fertility and fast growth can give us many skills helpings us to have the best vegetable possible. And how a cook can be respected without a flavor enhancement skill?

Every blessed can do it with training and you are not considered an adult without them.”  

“And what needs to be done to learn to heal?”

“Any magic can be learned with a good affinity and blending your imagination with mana. Healing can be hard to learn, as any magic that is farther away from the blessing. So, you will need to first master the basics. The principle is to extend the regeneration blessing to another in a controlled way. It needs a good magical manipulation because without it you will only cause unnecessary pain. And worst you could level up flesh, bone or blood manipulation and only distorts your patient without healing anything.”  

Silence. “Let me guess… you already have flesh manipulation?” What? How did she guess?

 

“Well, it easy you twitched when I say flesh. And it's me that heal you your disgusting flesh blob sealing your arm. 

You should be careful and not use your flesh manipulation on someone or even on you for healing. By healing, you can sense the magical framework of the body. You feed it your mana so that the body will complete itself. With manipulating flesh, you can do whatever you want and, in most cases, going again the framework. Do not mix healing and flesh manipulation.”

I nod back. “It’s a bit of a letdown, but as always we first need to master the basics. You can trust me.”     

She raises an eyebrow and sights “Yes, so why have you the same expression of a way too curious child? We will train the basics but healing will need to come soon. I cannot let you with this skill and not teaches you how to put back your flesh in the correct place. I have the feeling that you will try to create wings or something and only become an abomination. Or worse, eyes on the back of your head. Please don’t do that.”

I don’t know if I should be amazed or insulted, really this is confusing. “Bardane, can you tell me how the system works. Where the class, skills, and the blessing came from?”   

“No, let’s stop talking, you can ask this to some else. We need to train you, take my hand and try to sense what I am doing. You can close your eyes, it can help.”

I do as she says and concentered on her hand. Long minutes pass and nothing happens, then I start to sense something strange like she was pushing and then pulling the inside of my arm, my mana. 

“I am sensing you pulling and pushing my mana in my arm.”

“Good, visualize a tread going from your arm to mine and try to resist the pull and push.”

The exercise is hard but at the time pass a succeed in having stronger mental “hands” around the cord. 

We change often of exercise; she asks me to visualize something and I need to go again her. Like visualizing a door between our hands that I need to open but she will maintain it closed or a turning wheel that I need to slow down.

After maybe one hour she gave me a dirty spoon. “Litchi the exercise that we have just done is creating mana shapes and controlling them. It’s better to do it with someone so you can train to gain control over the shapes, but do it alone when you have time. Now to do magic it’s the same exercise in more complicated. You need to visualize the effect, then you put your will inside the shape to control it, finally, you need to fight back the will of the world.” 

She makes a pause and continues “Everything has a unique identity; you need to impose your will to modify this identity. By cleaning this spoon you need to change its identity from a dirty spoon to a clean spoon. The blessing imposes the meaning of cleaning on you. So, your identity, including your magical one is tinted by this meaning, so you have naturally a high affinity with cleaning mana.”

“It’s a bit hard to understand. What is mana?”

“I don’t know what is mana. Sorry if it’s vague but I can’t give you better than this. I think that mana is the weight of our identity in this world. The more you experience the world and can understand it the more you can build your meaning against the meaning of everything else. Trying to understand what mana is had given me many sleepless nights. But for you, it's one step at a time. I let you alone to try the exercise, I need to see the others.”                

I have the impression to be back in elementary school discovering the basics of mathematics. This makes no sense. Well like math, understanding will come with practice and patience. Let’s try this!

I focus on the spoon. I try to put push the “dirty spoon” aside and replace it with the “clean spoon”. I am clean and this spoon is an extension of me. I mentally push my clean mana. 

Minutes pass and nothing changes, I do lose mana so it should be a question of time before I succeed in unlocking cleaning magic.

Congratulation, Mana Manipulation is now level 16

Nothing wins against the sweet feeling of seeing a level going up. Best form of motivation. 

 

The morning pass and Bardane make some back and forth between the blessed and me. When my mana is too low, we do some mana shaping. She also cleans the spoon in front of me and a lot of different exercises with it between us. Maybe there is too much spoon.

The morning pass, I am exhausted and hungry. Bardane is as always full of vitality. “You did well Litchi. I don’t think it will make more than a few days to succeed. Let’s end here for today” 

Ding

Congratulation, Mana Manipulation is now level 18. 

I will never get tired of them.   

She guides me to the front door of the house but before leaving I say. “Bardane… I got flesh magic instead of healing. I am worried that I will not gain cleaning magic but… spoon magic.” 

She burst out laughing… and she is bent in half, clearly not stopping… all the village is looking at us. “Ah, Litchi I didn’t laugh like this in years, you are made to be the main storyteller.”

Ding 

Congratulation, Storytelling is now level 4

Maybe not.

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