Chapter 129: Chapter 117: Acrobatics

Thankfully, the feather fall enchantment slowed Cluma's impromptu skydive by enough that she hadn't dropped out of my [Mana Sight] range by the time I managed to jump out after her. I didn't want her getting lost in the forest without me.

Of course, having rarely jumped off high mountaintops before, I had no idea how to control my descent. I just about managed to twist head first and speed up a bit, at least letting me get into shouting range.

"What the hell?!" I yelled, the moment I was sure she could hear me.

She casually flipped over onto her back like it was the most natural manoeuvre in the world. "What? Did you want to climb down?"

Well, no, but that wasn't the point. "We should have at least jumped together. What if you got lost?"

"How was I going to get lost? I knew you were right behind me."

"But what if we landed in different parts of the forest?"

"But we both jumped from the same spot. How would we land in different places?"

"Wind, different horizontal speed when we jumped, different falling positions."

"Huh? How does any of that matter? We should still land close enough for you to pick me up with [Mana Perception]."

"[Mana Sight]," I corrected, having not yet informed her of my upgrade. "But that's not the point!" As soon as we get back, she's getting a physics lesson. It was a long fall. Our paths wouldn't have to deviate by much to land far from each other, although to be fair, we would have to try pretty hard to be far enough away to be out of range of [Mana Sight]. And even that wasn't the point. What sort of person randomly jumps off a mountain?!

I continued complaining in my head as I did my best to stick close to her, while she did somersaults, rolls and other acrobatic stunts, apparently enjoying her free-fall immensely. Between the tree leaping thing, the way she breezed her way up a vertical cliff and now seemed every bit as at home in mid-air as the harpies, I was getting suspicious here. Did she pick up yet another new trait while I wasn't looking? I took a peek with [Analysis], but there were still only four, of which I could only see [Hugger], thanks to her level ten [Privacy].

We dropped into the layer of mist that surrounded the forest, and I spread myself as wide as I could to slow my descent, crashing into the treetops seconds later. The slow fall meant that the impact wasn't dangerous, and I didn't break anything, but the branches I'd hit on the way down cost me fifteen points of health and another set of clothes.

ding
Skill [Enlarged Health Pool] advanced to level 3

Silver lining, silver lining, silver lining, I chanted to myself as I made my way to where Cluma had landed. Sitting on a branch, humming, legs swinging, with her clothes immaculate and not a scratch on her.

"Okay, I give up," I admitted. "How are you doing this?"

"Doing what?" she asked, looking genuinely confused.

"Being so... acrobatic."

"Am I? But your dexterity is similar to mine, isn't it? At least when you aren't using spells."

"Yes, that's my point. You were somersaulting through the air like some sort of professional skydiver, whereas I was struggling to do anything. And look how neatly you landed. You can't possibly have been practising."

"It was just... obvious. It's easy to move around in mid-air. It's not something you need to practise."

I stared, slack-jawed. Not something you need to practise? This isn't just the advantage of having a tail. Is this something that all beastkin share? It's not like I've seen her jump off mountains or scale cliffs before, so maybe she's always been capable of this? I know cats are supposed to always land on their feet, but this is ridiculous.

"Well, I certainly couldn't do it, so congratulations. Consider me impressed."

Her demeanour suddenly changed. "Really? You mean it? It's not something you can do?"

I'd even cast [Dexterity] in mid-air, and it made no difference at all. Skills might download knowledge into people's brains, but stats don't. High stats might give me the potential capability of doing whatever the hell it was she had just done, but that didn't translate into being able to do it by pure instinct.

"Yes, I mean it. Now, let's get back to the portal. And please remind me to change my clothes again before we leave the forest; I don't want to be seen in public in this state."

"But you're fine with me seeing it?"

"You caused it!"

Cluma laughed as we made our way back through the forest, following the directions from my inadequately named [Clock].

"I'm worried, you know," she said eventually, when we were halfway back. "At least a little."

"Worried? About what?"

"About if you really wanted to go delving with me. When I left the village, I was faster and stronger than you. You didn't come close to matching up to how much stamina I had. I beat you in every duel! You were the smart one, and I was the physical one. But then I came back, and everything had changed. I stood no hope in a spar against you. You were stronger and more dexterous than me. You even had more stamina! I have a rank three trait that doubles mine, and you still had more. It seemed like everything I could do, you could do better. Even my scouting skills are useless, given that you can see almost everything I can with your [Mana Perception]. Or [Mana Sight], now, apparently, so you've advanced even further. If we went delving together, I'd only hold you back, so I thought you were inviting me just to be nice."

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Could I get further on my own than I could with the two of us? Quite possibly, but that wasn't the point. It wasn't a race. I no longer needed to get as far as possible at any cost; I wanted to enjoy my life. It wasn't just to be nice; it was because I preferred it. But apparently I was causing her an inferiority complex. Cluma, the one who had single-handedly defeated every single newbie that tried to enter the guild in the past year, and could hold her own against most of the professionals, thought she wasn't good enough?

Nah, couldn't be. I knew her personality better than that. If she was worried about that sort of thing, she wouldn't sit there and stew; she'd try to do something about it. She'd come up with ways to make herself useful. "Is that why I haven't had a single hug this whole trip?"

"So it's nice to have one thing I can do that you can't," she continued, completely ignoring my question.

"One thing? What are you on about? On this trip alone, even before your feats of acrobatics you knocked on your dad's door, then befriended a bunch of harpies and demons."

"What has that got to do with anything?"

"You were looking for things you could do that I couldn't. I saw how nervous you looked before knocking at your dad's house, but you did it anyway. I don't think I could have, in your position. Then you befriended a whole room of people you'd never met before. There's no way I could have done that. I can't just walk up to random strangers and start talking, never mind asking them to let me feel their body-parts!"

"What? Of course you can. You just walk up and talk!"

"Nope, I'm afraid that's just you. Anyway, my point is that there's plenty you can do that I can't, but it doesn't matter even if there wasn't. I'm not trying to be nice. I want to join a party with you. You're fun to be around, even when you do insane things like throwing yourself off a mountain. Especially when you do insane things like throwing yourself off a mountain. I don't want to spend my life alone in a dungeon. Whether I could get further on my own is irrelevant; it would be boring."

Cluma came to an abrupt stop on the next branch, leaving me to desperately try to kill my momentum before I crashed into her. "You okay?" I asked, but there was no response. I'm pretty sure I didn't say anything that should result in her breaking... A quick scan with [Mana Sight] showed nothing out of the ordinary, but [Soul Perception] showed... I actually had no idea what I was looking at. "Hey, are you okay!" I tried again, this time with rather more volume and a side helping of alarm.

"Hmm? Oh, sorry, the System dinged at me."

I watched her soul settle back down, but it was brighter than it had been. [Analysis] showed no difference, which meant... "You just evolved a trait, didn't you?"

"Oi! How do you know? Damn you and your skills over level ten. I can't afford to buy [Secrecy]."

Phew. So, nothing harmful. I'd just been able to watch someone evolve a trait in live action. Not that I had any idea what I'd just seen. It looked like her soul sneezed. "Don't worry. I could only see that you evolved a trait, and nothing about which one, or what it changed into. So, are you going to tell me?"

"Nope. You know how this works," she said, resuming her leaping from branch to branch. "You want to know my traits, you need to tell me an embarrassing fact about yourself first."

"Like what?" I asked, jumping after her. "I still regret telling you about [Xenophilia]."

"Like... who have your parents been introducing you to?"

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"You know, potential wives."

I missed my next branch completely, slamming face first into a tree trunk and crushing my nose. "Ow," I muttered, wiping off a substantial amount of blood. Was it broken? I'd lost another five points of health from that!

"What's with that reaction?" asked Cluma, leaping back. "Were they really that bad?"

"What? No. I mean, why would my parents be... Just, what?"

"Huh? You're an adult already, so surely they've tried setting you up with a few girls by now? After everything you've done, I bet the parents of every eligible girl in Dawnhold would be fighting for the chance."

My brain was spinning so quickly that the pain in my nose was completely forgotten. What was I missing here? Parents arranged marriages for their children? Or at least candidates? But mum or dad had never said anything about it. Then again, they'd never given me the sex talk until I'd asked, either.

Would I even want them to? No way! I may be an adult in this world, but by Earth standards, I was still a kid. Even with the longer years here, I wasn't sure I'd even be over sixteen yet. But mentally I was far older. The thought of having to marry someone the same physical age as me made me feel ill. Someone the same physical age as my mental age wasn't any better, either. There was no way!

My parents would know that... That must be why they never brought the topic up. I suppose I should be thankful for that, but it would be nice if they had warned me. And now I had to explain that reasoning to Cluma... Well, that should count as being embarrassing enough to earn Cluma's latest trait change.

"It's an age problem," I admitted. "The gap between my physical and mental age makes things difficult."

"Ah," said Cluma. "I can see how that would make things weird. Fine then; [Dexterous] evolved to [Acrobatic]. No change to the dexterity bonus, but it says I get bonuses to movement and coordination."

Well, that explains her inexplicable stunts over the past week; it was a half-formed trait. And also, I was right. She was never insecure. She was simply searching for something she could do. I doubt it crossed her mind that there wouldn't be anything. She simply missed how much she could already do, because she considered it so easy that it didn't even count as an ability. Now, if only she'd stop smiling. My encounter with the tree wasn't that funny!

"Don't forget to change your clothes," she reminded me, as the treeline came into view in front of us.

I looked down at my torn clothing, that after my tree-splat and the rest of the forest travel was now barely hanging onto me, and was thankful for the reminder. I'd completely forgotten! After a quick scan of the area with [Mana Sight], I hid behind a tree to get changed. As interesting as this trip had been, it was time to go home.

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