Chapter 43: Straight to the Heart

Viktor couldn’t do anything better than give him more details. It’d help the guy make better decisions, hopefully.

“It’s all well and good while the girl’s still young. They have energy and everything,” he explained. “When they get older, there’s less adventure, and they start to need to settle down. The stat ticks down until it hits zero, usually.”

“What happens when it hits zero?”

“Well—with the original Blessing, they just get depressed. That guy’s Blessing, though, the backlash is a lot more … unrestrained.”

He elected not to mention what the backlash actually was. Kalender already knew, though.

“Can I just stat change it away?” he asked.

“Normally, I’d be worried if you could. You already did it a few times, though, so … I’ll just have to trust you. What’s her Excitement at?”

“Uhh … 139—oh, it went up. 140.” I hope Jyn isn’t being merciless in training. Well, she’s excited, so it’s probably nothing bad.

“Just recent, huh? Alright, I can’t tell you a lot, o Master of Stat Change, but Excitement’s really easy to bring down. The issue’s what you’ll want to replace it with.”

Kalender waved off Viktor’s snarky comment. The replacement, though… It sounded oddly like they were casually plotting to switch out someone’s emotions like a DVD. “Is that alright?”

Sensing doubts, Viktor replied, “It’s a contract. The stat cannot change without the girl’s approval.”

“Huh? I don’t think anyone got asked if they wanted to do a stat change, though?”

Viktor was surprised for a moment. There wasn’t a precedent for a Cursed One to be able to do a stat change, so he’d assumed approval was still needed. Apparently, consent as a concept had been entirely ripped out of the original. “Another wonderful play by that guy…” Viktor sighed. “What kind of Blessing were you given, anyway?”

“Uh … Like Moths to a Flame.”

“Goord lord in Christ and Daniel’s Ass, how are you not charming everything in a 20-meter radius?”

Kalender showed the cuffs the Inquisition gave him. There were six of them.

“Ah.” Viktor showed a look of understanding. “So you bumped into the Inquisition, then? I was wondering how you even got here.”

“Wait, so, the stat change, it just feels…”

“What?”

“Wrong.”

It’s not the first time someone had that doubt. “I need you to understanding something clearly. The only thing the stat does is offer Companion Skills and introduce resistance to emotional change. The quantity of the stat doesn’t do anything to the amount of resistance, okay? It’s a fixed value. It doesn’t change the intensity of the emotion, either. The actual personality of the girl is all on her.” Mostly—though he elected not to get into the complications. Personality shift Skills were rare, after all.

At that last part, Kalender winced. “Uh… That might be a problem.”

Viktor raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“The Companion Skill we got for her … was something called No Inhibitions.”

Understanding dawned on Viktor. “T-that’s one of the rare ones… How’d you even—okay, I won’t ask.”

“Is it bad?”

“Talking about side effects? Generally, no, but we need to get into details if we’re talking about a stat change, just to make sure everything goes smoothly.”

“Figures. Why does it even exist?”

“Like I said, battle junkies. That entire stat is supposed to be for battle junkies. No Inhibitions is supposed to amplify their risk-taking behavior with the least amount of mind magic.”

“Mind magic? How does that—aren’t more people paranoid if mind magic exists?”

—Tell him it’s one of the most expensive things I can get from the shop.

“Daniel says it’s difficult.”

—Hey! How hard is it to use my words!

He doesn’t need to know weird details, shut it.

“Huh, even for a god?” Kalender asked.

“Apparently. I haven’t heard of people using mind magic, either. It’s more of a demon thing, I hear.”

“Demons, huh?” Worry tugged at him. “They a problem?”

“You’ll hear about it every other year. Minor cases of possession, really, but the Inquisition’s Scarlets handle it pretty well. You’re still more likely to get hit in the head from a loose shingle.”

“So … don’t think too hard about it, got it. What about No Inhibitions?”

“Your lady…friend’s not a battle junkie, is she?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Alright. The Skill’s mind magic is a sneaky process of rewiring of a couple of neural circuits, you see. It’s less of a direct rewiring, and more like stimulating the right hormones at the right timing. It just has to happen a few times, and the Skill is hands-free the rest of the way—ah, rather, the stat’s emotional resistance part keeps the changes in place.”

“T-that sounds scary. What’s it mean for me?”

“It means whatever effects you see will still be there after the stat change. If your…friend’s a battle junkie, it’s gonna be a messy mismatch of personality and whatever’s the new stat, but since she’s not, you’ll just end up with a girl with no filter, or however she is. Ah, but the best thing for you is Excitement won’t be there to resist rehab—if you want to call it that—so you can go from No Inhibitions to Some Inhibitions—see what I did there?”

This earned him a slight chuckle from Kalender. Still, in hindsight, they really just smacked Page with a bucket of mind magic, huh?

“Alright, that out of the way,” Viktor explained, “I’ve got a few suggestions for you for the stat change—”

Kalender raised a hand to stop him.

“Yes?” Viktor asked.

“It’s better if I just wing it.”

“Ha? There’s a bunch of stuff you have to consider, you know? Some of the stats are a lot better than others. What if you end up with Excitement 2.0 or something?”

Kalender turned away, waving his hand in rejection. “I can’t. I really can’t…” …treat our relationship as an optimization game.

He really did do wrong by Page. It wasn’t even about No Inhibitions. He just hasn’t been … proactive. That wasn’t the right way to act, not for someone he said he wanted to care for, truly, as his friend. “I think … I know what I want to do.”

“At least tell me,” Viktor said. “I’m not gonna sleep well at night if you end up making a noob move that I could’ve warned you off about.”

“Well, I think I’m taking her out on a date later,” Kalender said. “Then I’m gonna tell her what’s been troubling me.”

D-damn. Viktor had to admit that this guy had a pair of balls that were just built different; he, himself, wouldn’t resort to talking about his feelings as the first resort. Who did that for a first resort? This guy. This guy right here.

Quietly making small behavioral changes and seeing if the girl noticed it, hoping that they’d reciprocate the small changes in turn, leading to a smooth road of mutual adjustment until everyone’s happy? Nope. Subtlety’s a weak game for this man. Frontal emotional assault for every bloody inch of development it is.

“A-alright,” Viktor replied. “Doesn’t look like there’s a problem.”

Kalender thanked Viktor for his time, buying another cup of purple yam ice cream for Minimine before leaving.

“He’s got you beat, young man,” the old lady remarked. Viktor smirked, obliging her and her business with an order of two scoops: vanilla and purple yam. One was a comfortable, familiar flavor, and the other, something new, for once.

He raised a toast to Kalender’s trail. “I think I get how you do it,” he said—but as he tasted the purple yam, “At the same time, I don’t.”

***

At around the same time, a curious crowd placed bets on two people fighting it out in the Pit. It wasn’t the local knights’ field, no, but the Explorator Company’s very own Pit.

There simply were more youngsters who wanted to challenge the Monster Wall and signed up with the Explorators. The more sensible ones signed up with the militia or the knights, but sensible people were insensibly rare.

So, the Company—as the locals called it—had a proper field with a proper fighting pit—obviously! What company would skip on the chance to profit off selling tickets?

If they’d predicted today, they wouldn’t have opened the Pit for free.

Two ladies danced. Forwards and backwards they traveled the stage, and sing high and low did too their idiophone blades. Why clash and destroy the edge of a cared-for tool, when they could glide past each other and come close enough to kiss?

Lilia stabbed, throwing the force of her body behind the sword, straight into Jyn’s heart. Jyn tapped it aside, Lilia’s wrist suddenly pivoting askew along with the tip of her sword, and her own chest now exposed—towards which Jyn gambled a thrust of her own. Lilia stepped aside, letting the tip fly past her shoulder. Her sword having gone horizontal, she raised her guard, pushing up Jyn’s lingering steel, and with a twist of the body, the leadership of the foot, and pivot of the wrist, she cut down.

Cuts didn’t travel far. Jyn stepped back. The tip shaved the air an inch from her body.

Lilia wasn’t supposed to be this good. Luceria she may have been in a past life, it made no sense whatsoever for a 1-day-old to be this good at swordplay!

They weren’t even supposed to be here. Alas, the regular training field was filled to the brim with happy-go-lucky newbies and “paper pickers,” the townsfolk called them. None of them were seriously planned on venturing deep into the Monster Wall—just as well, or else the seniors of the Company would have left them half-dead as a warning before any monster could.

Among the seniors of the Company, there was one who watched the on-going duel between Jyn and Lilia with an almost scientific fascination.

This is not a duel, she thought, this is a conversation.

Neither Jyn nor Lilia moved at superhuman speeds. Really, even the average peasant could’ve followed their movements. Instead, what captivated the senior, and all the others who watched, were the smiles on both women's faces, and the confidence of their motion. They did not hesitate to hack and slash, but it was as if they knew exactly what the other was going to do; it was as if the torch of “leader” was simply switching between them in a tango where ribbons of wind were each cut a hundredfold.

Their swords did not spark, only slide and ring, like wine glasses—fine and delicate, its red liquor best left unspilled.

… For the less-discerning members of the audience, however, the Excitement of the spectacle was all to be understood.