Another day passes Jason while he tries to focus on the runes. Three runes a spiral, an electronics diagram, and the mystery in his core. Practice continues on the first two but the third eludes him. If this section of forest had been any more active, he would have been in trouble. His distraction though goes unnoticed as whatever had caused the mossram to flee the deep forest wasn’t in the area.

After the group sets up camp Rosha sits down next to him and holds Lily. With a look of concern she asks him if everything is alright. This shakes Jason out of his daze, “I remember if I told you or now that I think about it Courtney but I was able to sell my punch skill to the System. Courtney had been complaining about how I don’t have any other attack skills and so I traded it for one. Far as I can tell I made out like a bandit on the deal because of some outside influences.”

“Well, that’s good”, Rosha chimes in, “you’re a decent fighter already so did you go for an attack with your feet or a ranged attack?”

Jason turns to her, “why would you assume I would take one of those two options?” She waves it off, “I have been around a few high level martial artists in the past. You already have a movement skill and something to do with your hands so your good on those fronts. With your fighting style a defensive skill isn’t likely, so it was easy enough to guess. A skill for kicking to deal with shorter enemies or something ranged as you have shown interest in that direction ala your knives.”

Jason sighs, “fair enough. You analyzed that decently though I considered some elbow or knee strikes. Anyway, I chose a stomp attack which uses runes. Not that I knew it used runes until after I chose it. Not personally interested in them no matter how much the world might try to drag me into the subject.”

Rosha nods, “I had noticed you tracing in the air. Couldn’t make heads or tails of it so left you alone but good to know you aren’t going crazy. Two runes isn’t that much to deal with either.” Jason throws his hands up, “if only it was just those two runes. The third rune is what is giving me trouble. Dang skill needs me to use my personal rune so I have to go through the effort of finding it.”

“Oh wow”, Rosha’s eyes go wide, “quite the restrictive skill. Though the fact you are qualified to even look for your core rune is amazing. Not much else you can besides hammer away at it. I know that dream learning has a limit though, will that be a problem?”

“That is one spot of luck for me. My trainer and the System put the lessons on pause until I find it. I think I might lose some sleep over this just to extract as much time as I can. Anyway, it is about time I get to bed, night.” With a yawn Jason slips into his bedroll and falls asleep.

It leaves Rosha on the log they had used as a seat. It takes a moment for her to digest everything she had just heard and in the end can’t keep it to herself. She heads over to where Courtney is perched on a rock and joins her. Courtney scooches over to let her on the blanket she was using to keep the chill off.

Rosha leans up against her. In a low voice, she drops bomb after bomb. “Just keep quiet till I finish because he has a lot of nonsense going on. Jason sold his punch skill for a stomp skill which uses runes.” Courtney quirks her eye and Rosha nods, “yes likely that one but don’t look down on him for the choice. I think he is learning the original one from its creator. Directly from the creator! Why do I think that? Because whatever version he is learning requires his core rune.”

“He didn’t say that directly but when I called it that he just accepted it. Apparently his trainer and the System agreed to pause his dream training until he learned it. I haven’t heard of anyone else in a position to sell the skill who could make any decisions with the System. Besides that he didn’t learn how to form his core from her. In fact, since nothing has changed drastically about him since we first met up he likely formed his right away.”

Courtney can’t help but interject at this point. “He doesn’t have any background though! The fact we even know about the core is purely because of your family. To form it so early on needs special training from an early age that he just couldn’t have!”

Rosha nods her head, “I know that. He must have had some lucky encounter but I think most must have come from his relationship with Shinefish village’s guild master. He was close to her and from what I heard she was a rare bird, err well turtle, who used Energy. We haven’t talked about it but Jason probably uses it as well.”

“I hadn’t wanted to ask as it is personal but that makes sense”, Courtney mutters. “His attack patterns didn’t really match what you would expect from a Qi user this early on and don’t get me started on Mana. Dang it, this means I have to research that now as well.”

Rosha squints at her, “don’t go shorting your sleep for this. Just hand it off to whoever father assigned as an assistant. Yes, we don’t trust them completely but this should look like a test assignment. After all, who would expect us to be hanging out with such a rarity? Plus you can always fact check what they give you. We don’t need to know everything. He is our teammate after all.”

Akhier

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