by Jay Boyce
Kaylee sniffled, her arms going around Jade as she squeezed her tightly. “Okay. No crying. I’d better finish up the cleaning. You need to eat and get some rest. From what I hear, you’ve got a big day ahead of you tomorrow.”
Wincing slightly, Jade nodded as they let go. Kaylee sniffed again, smiling at her before gesturing to the food and heading back to the seat. “Hey, I’m just gonna take it to my room if that’s okay.” Kaylee nodded, smiling again as Jade swept the food into her ring, waving as she exited the kitchen.
She laughed softly as she noticed that Adam was cross-eyed, trying to stay perfectly still as Ramoth perched imperiously on his nose. Her laughter attracted their attention, and her babies fluttered towards her, Adam letting out a breath of relief that his face was fellacai free once more. “Hey Jade. Long night?” Evan asked from beside Adam, while Jackson was trying to conceal his giant grin from his other side.
Nodding as her babies fluttered around her, she replied, “Yeah, just a long day in general. How are you guys doing?”
Adam responded cheerfully, “We’re great, since we don’t have classes this week! Unlike you, we mostly get to relax, though a bunch of us still went to the obstacle course this morning to train.”
A startled laugh came out again, and she shook her head. “Of course you did.”
“Hey, we don’t want to get out of shape, and not all of us have your crazy fitness level,” Jackson quipped back good naturedly at her.
“Fine, fine. I get it. I’ll see you guys later, I’m gonna go crash for the night.” A chorus of good nights followed her up the stairs as she made her way to her room. She carefully took out her sapling of Christopher’s tree, setting it on her desk, where her babies immediately started to play among the branches. “I’ll be right back.” She informed them as she made her way to the bathroom with her pajamas.
She felt gross after the day, so she took a quick bath, enjoying the warm water as she went through her notifications, deciding what she wanted to siphon. Drying off with magic, she wryly realized she hadn’t used a towel since she came to this world. Magic was simply so much more convenient!
Back in her room, she fed her babies as she ate her second dinner. You’d think she’d have been full from the feast the royal family gave them, but no; it seemed her stomach truly was a bottomless pit. She didn’t understand it, but she was happy to eat the delicious food Kaylee provided. Laying down as her babies roosted in the glowing silver tree for the night, she made her mental clicks and twitched.
While it was painful, it wasn’t enough to knock her into oblivion anymore, and rather than sleeping, she was wide awake and itchy. “Well, that’s annoying,” she muttered under her breath. Thankfully the itchiness only lasted a few minutes while the first stage of siphoning occured, and as it died down, she was able to finally curl up and go to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Eight – Unstoppable
Day Thirteen
Groaning, Jade flipped over in bed, glaring at the dull sunshine that was starting to peek into her window. She felt like she’d barely gotten any sleep at all, thanks to her ability waking her up every hour with crazy itching for more than half the night. She’d even caught Jessica coming to check up on her in the middle of the night. She’d finally drifted off fitfully at the end, but it still wasn’t all that restful. She could practically feel the dark circles forming beneath her eyes as her thoughts raced with the different possibilities of today’s meet and greet. It was a good thing her con was so high these days. Otherwise, the inability to get much sleep last night would probably be hitting her a lot worse than it currently was.
With a sigh, she sat up, glancing out the window for a moment before plastering her face against the glass as she stared out in awe, annoyance forgotten. While the sun was cresting in the distance, the reason the light was so dull was because dark clouds were rolling above her, threatening rain. Gleefully awake now, she practically skipped to her closet, choosing warm clothes to bring to the bathroom while her babies slept peacefully in Christopher’s sapling.
Playing in the tub, she absently healed the dark circles she saw in the mirrored water and sang softly, “Rain, rain, come and play, and please come back another day!” Wide awake with the possibilities, she beamed at the realization that for the first time ever, she’d get to do more than listen to the storm. She could go out and jump in puddles and dance in the rain! Heck, she could even fly into the clouds! Excited to get going with her day, she pulled up her notifications first, noting happily that she had a new blinking green dot.
Congratulations! Because you have acquired a basic understanding of Acrobatics, Athletics, Climbing, Dodge, Flight, Perseverance, Riding, Running, Swimming, and Walking, your skills have combined. You will forevermore be known as Unstoppable.
That was a pleasant surprise, though it wasn’t exactly what she’d been expecting. Sure, she’d noticed she had a lot of movement skills before and even speculated that they might combine, but unstoppable? She had to wonder at the naming sense of whoever came up with this system. Also, why was perseverance in this set when there was something like dancing to choose from instead? All in all though, she was happy it combined, since she’d decided to put her theory to the test and siphon new or low leveled things from other people and leave the higher stuff for her to raise on her own.
With that in mind, she pulled up her profile to take a look at the new level of ridiculous for the day.
Name: Jade Winward
Age: 18
Strength: 26.58
Dexterity: 26.97
Constitution: 27.73
Intelligence: 27.76
Magic: 30.53
Charisma: 23.48
Luck: 23.72
Special Abilities: Adaptable², Instinctual Insight, Keen Senses, Siphon²
As far as stats were concerned, she’d focused less on charisma, luck, and magic, which only went up less than a point. Strength, dexterity, constitution, and intelligence went up around two points each. Her special abilities had no change, and she was expecting changes to her skill list because she’d siphoned several new things. Still, she went over them to make sure nothing was amiss.
Armorcraft, astronomy, cartography, cooking, dancing, leathercraft, lock picking, mimicry, skinning, spears, spiritual magic, unstoppable, warding, weaponcraft, weaving, and woodcraft. She hadn’t siphoned dancing, mimicry, or spiritual magic from anyone, so anything she got there was her own skill. She was pretty surprised spiritual magic was even on there. The only thing that might’ve changed was her near-encounter with Christopher’s spirit. Mimicry was probably from the time she disguised herself as Jessica, and warding...she wasn’t quite sure on. Sure, Duke Liam mentioned it when he saw through her illusion...that was probably it. It was most likely when she’d seen through Alanna’s illusion from her eyes. Wanting to confirm her theories, she scanned through her list again quickly.
Accessorycraft
Intermediate 4
85%
Animal Handling
Intermediate 7
87%
Archery
Intermediate 10
52%
Armorcraft
Beginner 5
19%
Assassination
Intermediate 2
52%
Astronomy
Beginner 3
34%
Aura Manipulation
Intermediate 4
63%
Bluff
Advanced 1
5%
Cartography
Beginner 1
80%
Cleaning
Intermediate 1
63%
Cold Resistance
Beginner 10
81%
Compulsion Magic
Intermediate 7
5%
Contractual Magic
Intermediate 10
84%
Cooking
Beginner 7
42%
Dan
cing
Beginner 10
9%
Danger Sense
Advanced 1
12%
Death Magic
Beginner 9
17%
Deception
Advanced 1
10%
Disguise
Intermediate 6
54%
Eating
Intermediate 10
88%
Elementalist
Advanced 9
74%
Engineering
Intermediate 5
76%
Excavation
Intermediate 1
2%
Firearms
Beginner 7
63%
Glasscraft
Beginner 8
75%
Gravity Magic
Intermediate 8
4%
Healing Magic
Advanced 4
36%
Heat Resistance
Intermediate 7
19%
Herbology
Intermediate 4
45%
Hunting
Intermediate 4
32%
Hypnotize
Intermediate 5
27%
Illusion Magic
Advanced 1
50%
Insight
Advanced 4
43%
Leathercraft
Beginner 3
87%
Life Magic
Intermediate 7
13%
Light Armor
Intermediate 5
20%
Lock Picking
Beginner 1
94%
Magic Resistance
Intermediate 6
50%
Mana Sense
Intermediate 9
35%
Mental Fortitude
Advanced 5
26%
Merchant
Advanced 10
53%
Mimicry
Beginner 8
56%
Modeling
Intermediate 6
96%
Navigation
Intermediate 10
7%
Pain Tolerance
Advanced 2
21%
Perception
Advanced 4
53%
Poison Resistance
Beginner 10
20%
Resilient
Intermediate 9
65%
Shock Resistance
Beginner 9
89%
Singing
Intermediate 2
77%
Skinning
Beginner 5
1%
Sleight of Hand
Advanced 2
19%
Small Blades
Intermediate 9
22%
Spatial Magic
Intermediate 10
50%
Spears
Beginner 5
97%
Spiritual Magic
Beginner 2
30%
Stealth
Intermediate 7
62%
Stun Resistance
Beginner 9
3%
Summoning Magic
Beginner 6
43%
Swords
Beginner 10
27%
Tailoring
Intermediate 3
30%
Thrown Weapons
Beginner 5
6%
Tracking
Intermediate 4
92%
Unarmed Combat
Intermediate 9
52%
Unstoppable
Advanced 10
4%
Warding
Beginner 3
63%
Weaponcraft
Beginner 6
37%
Weaving
Beginner 4
48%
Woodcraft
Beginner 7
83%
She almost wanted to cry a little when she looked at her sheet. Sure, it looked way more complicated once again now that she’d added so many new things, but most of her skills felt like they’d barely budged. Danger sense and Deception made the jump to advanced, but not a single beginner skill had risen to intermediate. Only aura manipulation, disguise, life magic, mana sense, and spatial magic had gone up a level, while death magic, glasscraft, gravity magic, light armor, navigation, and tailoring went up by two. That was it. Everything else was pennies on the dollar, mere percentages moving, if they moved at all.
Consoling herself that she gained fifteen new skills even if her old skills had barely progressed, she began to reconsider her idea of siphoning only new skills or things she couldn’t raise easily on her own, like summoning magic, which she still had no idea how to use. She wasn’t about to start experimenting with that one on her own, either. In almost every book ever, using summoning magic ignorantly ended up getting someone killed. She was extremely curious about who first discovered the magic and managed to live to tell the tale.
It was interesting, however, that she’d managed to siphon assassination, astronomy, cartography, and lock picking off of people last night. What was perhaps even more interesting was that she knew they were from four of the nobles she’d met at the funeral. Astronomy and cartography were at least respectable, but she’d be keeping a closer eye on the assassin and thief the next time she saw them around. Considering that the five skills she was shown were generally the highest skills they possessed, it said something about a person when you considered what was the most developed.
If she looked at her own five highest skills, they were merchant, unstoppable, elementalist, mental fortitude, and perception. If you discounted her three combined skills, it was mental fortitude, perception, insight, healing magic, and pain tolerance barely beating out sleight of hand. Granted, that wasn’t really fair because if her skills hadn’t combined, some of those that merged would’ve been higher, such as information gathering. She wasn’t sure what people would say about her if they could see her highest skills. Especially when they realized that she also had bluff, danger sense, deception, and illusion magic at advanced. Maybe she didn’t have room to judge someone with assassination or lock picking in their top five.
Thinking about it, she’d gotten assassination when fighting the mesmer and hunting. It was just as possible that the noble did the same thing. Maybe they were a sneaky fighter on the front lines. She couldn’t as easily justify the lock picking, however, despite the fact that she was determined to get it to intermediate herself.
She supposed the biggest difference was that she wanted to get everything to intermediate to see what would combine. Glancing back over her list, she realized that she could probably get cold resistance to intermediate by freezing the air around her for a bit. Cooking would be easy if she spent a little time in the kitchen, and she didn’t feel like she needed to worry about dancing, since she’d likely get plenty of practice in that at the ball. For death magic...she’d never actually used it. However, all she needed to do was work on a few auras and she’d probably get that down. For firearms, she needed to go play on a range at some point.
Mimicry would be easy enough to use as she made her way to the gates for the welcoming party. Poison resistance was another one she’d never used, and had no idea how to raise. Maybe she could drink a bunch of alcohol at one of the gatherings? For shock resistance, she’d have to find someone to zap her a bit...but maybe she’d prefer to ask Shara, just to ensure she didn’t fry her brain. Stun resistance… she sighed, putting away her list. She wanted to do too much. She needed to pick a few things at a time and go from there.
The crack of thunder made her jump, splashing water all over the bathroom. She’d half forgotten about the storm as she washed up and perused he
r completionist tendencies. She was no regular Joe, and she had time now. Although she wanted to be prepared for whatever the world threw at her next, she also didn’t want to miss the trees for the forest. Right now, trees insisted that she go dance in the rain for the first time ever! No longer did she have to stare morosely at windows and play ‘which raindrop will win the race?’ Now she could run and jump in puddles!
Excited, she quickly finished washing up, using her water magic to clean up the bathroom from her jump earlier and dry off. Frowning slightly, she pushed the water a little harder, scouring the floor and lifting up that layer of stubborn grime that lingered in the corners and edges. Satisfied that the bathroom was both cleaner and that Kaylee and Jessica would have less work, she quickly pulled some of the warmer clothes Camille gave her from her ring, realizing that she’d yet to transfer the collection to a closet. She shrugged, leaving them in there for now. It wasn’t like she was lacking room, given how zealously she’d been enlarging it at every given opportunity.
As she left the room, she heard the vague rustlings of people rising for the day, though it seemed like more than a few students were taking advantage of not having to be anywhere by sleeping in, if the faint snores were any indication. Entering her room, she grinned as her fellacai fluttered from the baby Christopher tree. She needed to find something else to call it. Maybe she’d call it a silverwood, considering the color of the bark. Simple and stupid, but it would work.
