Chapter 75: 2.25-Campfire talk

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Thus suspended in his thoughts, Avan didn't realize until almost far too late, and his sphere of influence had somehow faded out, that he almost ran into Jen.

She was standing in front of him with her head tilted, her hands clasped behind her back and her upper body slightly bent forward, looking at him questioningly.

"Aorus to Avan, are you there?" Came the question, apparently because Avan had not heard the first time she had addressed him, as he had been busy with his thoughts.

I should probably be careful not to turn off my senses, even when I'm deep in thought....

With a sigh, he ran his fingers over his silvery hair and then nodded at Jen. "Sorry, I was thinking... What did you ask me before?"

Jen looked at him curiously in the same pose for a few more moments, then stood up straight again and smoothed out her imaginary wrinkles in the healer's robe.

"Ah, we were just talking about how we were going to want to find a place to camp soon, and we got caught up in battle tactics. You know, who has what skills, and how can everyone complement each other without stepping on each other's toes." She giggled as she cast an amused glance behind her, naturally at Dani, who pouted and looked off to the side as if she urgently needed to quickly observe something in the surrounding forest.

Jen's gaze wandered back to him and raised her eyebrows. "So, have you gone into the depths of your mind again?" She waved her hand in front of his face, ignoring the confusion Avan showed.

"Ahm, no? I'm just waiting for the question, to be honest?"

She giggled again. "Just kidding! I'm just pulling your leg. So, campsite. Okay with that? Then we can exchange in more detail what everyone can do."

"And maybe I'll even learn something new!" came another shot, with an overly broad grin on her face, as she turned around again and marched forward to her two friends, while Linob watched expressionlessly at the side of the road, without comment.

"Um, okay." Avan stared into the back of the joyfully telling happy bomb of a young woman and simply didn't know what to make of such a bundle of positive energy.

I'm barely a few weeks or months into this world, and I've already seen enough shit. So how can she be so overjoyed? he asked himself the obvious question and furrowed his eyebrows.

Either she grew up EXTREMELY sheltered, or she experienced something really morbid and the residual crack in her psyche is trying to deal with it that way. There can be no more possibilities!

"So be it..." He muttered to himself and put one foot in front of the other to catch up with the three people of his team who were chatting with each other.

"I think I saw a small clearing not fifty meters behind us on the side of the trail between the trees further into the forest. How about that?" Dani asked, casting an equally questioning glance over at Avan.

Jen and Patris just nodded, and Avan gladly joined the group, which also ended in a silent nod.

A short time later, with Avan's dungeon richer by SOME herbs, ores, and entire small landscapes, the group reached a small, idyllic clearing in the middle of the forest, surrounded by numerous fir trees growing close together. How exactly Dani would have seen this clearing from the road, Avan could not understand with the best will in the world, but simply assumed that it was due to her class and her abilities.

"I'm going to look around for a ride and scout out the area while I kill us some small game. You guys go ahead and take care of the camp and food preparations, okay?" came one last instruction from the ranger, before she disappeared with quick and almost jumping steps between the trees.

A chuckle and a laugh came first from Patris, and then from Jen, whereupon Avan looked questioningly at the two and turned his head in their direction.

"She's always like that. Barely in the wilderness and nature, her inner scout comes out, and she immediately has to frolic in the forest! Hahahaha!" Dani's friend explained with a loud laugh as he held his stomach, and even Jen laughed happily to herself.

Avan himself grinned as well, the joy of the others just too contagious, no matter what turmoil was going on inside him, and watched Dani effortlessly through his sphere of influence as she had just pulled herself up a tree and was happily jumping from branch to branch. The branches she had probably instinctively chosen held her weight perfectly, and Avan had a certain respect for jumping through the trees so freely and without much effort, while he thought back to his childhood and how difficult it would have been for him.

"Let's see then..." he whispered more to himself than to the others, but apparently loud enough to get the other two thinking otherwise.

"Patris, will you gather stones for the campfire and prepare the sleeping places, while I gather dry branches with Avan? Hold it like you always do." Jen looked briefly at Patris and received a thumbs-up from him, while he was already setting his and Dani's backpacks on the ground, which she had handed to him shortly before her exploration tour.

"Neat! On, we need a lot of dry wood." Without further comment and without asking for permission, the young healer grabbed Avan's hand and dragged him to the edge of the forest, where she blithely explained to him what to look for, that the wood should not be green or damp because of too strong smoke development, and simply bombarded him with information he actually already knew. To be polite, Avan simply listened and nodded at the appropriate moment, while he simply enjoyed the cheerful atmosphere.

Half an hour later, under the continued watchful gaze of Linob, Avan had a really large amount of sticks and small woods on his arms, while Jen also brought some dry branches under both arms.

Both gratefully deposited their booty next to the campfire site, around which Patris had in the meantime already placed dry stones as thick as fists. Around the campfire, he had cleared the grassy ground of individual sticks and stones, where the sleeping rolls could later be rolled out.

Without comment, and under the gaze of a slightly blushing healer, Avan placed the logs in an upright position in the center of the campfire area, and dry bark underneath in the center where the tinder belonged. Jen only now realized that Avan was already very familiar with life in the forest, and pouted with red cheeks and a slightly angry look at Linob, as her explanations about collecting sticks came back to her. Linob, as Avan sensed it, only looked at the young woman with a shrug, and Avan could have sworn he saw a brief twitch of the corners of his mouth through his sphere of influence, but wasn't sure about the stoic man.

Avan, who just smirked again, wondered how he was supposed to ignite the tinder when Jen pointed past his seated figure, and an instant later a small spark jumped from her index finger directly to the tinder, igniting it effortlessly.

"Oh, what was that?" He turned his head to the side and looked at her with interest.

It took a brief moment, and Jen looked sideways at the floor with what seemed to Avan an odd look, before looking at him. "Spark. A simple household spell that every normal person knows to light candles or the fire in the fireplace in winter. Would you like me to teach it to you?" She kneaded her hands nervously, not quite sure where to put her hands suddenly.

What the heck? Why is she suddenly acting like a girl in love? Did I do something? I am confused... With a glance around, he saw that Linob was busy with his own backpack, and Patris was preparing his and Dani's sleeping places.

"Jen, are you okay?" No sooner had he asked her the question, more whispered than spoken aloud, than she turned even redder.

With a loud sigh, she plopped down on the floor and, visibly embarrassed, held her hands in front of her face while she mumbled something. "No, no... Sorry!"

She peeked out from between her fingers, and immediately hid behind her hands again. "Ahhhh..."

Avan, just still confused, tilted his head and looked at her questioningly.

The campfire to the side behind him was already crackling happily, and grateful for the distraction of this odd situation, he turned and piled up some more branches while breaking other longer ones in two.

Another minute passed, and the first two of the five logs landed on the now blazing flames, until a soft clearing of a throat snapped him out of the trance of dancing flames.

"Sorry... I - am odd, I know. I don't know what just got into me." She lightly fiddled with her robe, twirling it between her fingers.

"So, spark. Want me to teach you?"

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Avan, again tilting his head and briefly wondering if he would soon get a stiff neck if he kept this up, looked at her thoughtfully. "Hmm... I already have three out of eight active skills, isn't it counterproductive if I fill one of the active slots with something so unimportant?"

"And sorry for the perhaps obviously stupid question, but where I come from, this wasn't common knowledge and actually it's all self-taught..."

Jen's eyes widened a bit when she heard that, and then she shook her head gently. "Self-taught and then such a high level? You must either be extraordinarily talented, or a true monster... Phew..." she expelled the held breath all at once. "Anyway, maybe some other time! So, about the skills; that you have a whole eight active slots is already more than most other inhabitants on Eos, or all of Aorus, will ever have! Not unique, but quite rare. Most start with two or three, and these increase by another one or two over the course of their lives. Only really rarely, or very talented ones, start with six, seven, or even eight slots."

She looked at Avan thoughtfully again, and sat down in a more comfortable position, closer to the crackling campfire next to him, as she let her gaze wander to the blazing flames. "But your concern is still unfounded. When all your slots are full and you learn another skill, you can make one of the active skills inactive and put the new skill in the same place. The skill you lose will lose all levels, but you can always replace it with one of the other skills, which will also lose levels. But that was it. So you can learn spark now, and replace it later at any time. For example, for a real fire spell, which can also help you with such a task as lighting a campfire."

She continued to stare into the fire, and Avan joined the young woman, while even Patris joined in and listened as he poked the fire with a stick and placed another log on top.

"Or, you manage to shape and develop the skill. There are many recorded cases where spark became something else, depending on the person's use and what the person wanted to do with it in the end. A few mages who started with the skill were even able to evolve it directly into fireball, while others evolved it into some kind of flamethrower, or even flame blast or flame ray. Even the most useless skill can become something extremely powerful. That's exactly why my teacher taught me the skill, because I'm always expected to be able to do all that..." she whispered into the fire at the end, a sad and exhausted expression on her face. Although she whispered so softly, Avan was amazed that Linob had heard her, and felt the sympathetic expression on his face at the words of his ward.

Instinctively, and because Avan had just always been that way, his right hand wandered to Jen's shoulder and gave it one gentle squeeze. "Don't worry about it. And honestly? Your parents probably only want the best for you, don't they? I myself have no way of reaching my parents anymore.... Probably never again."

At his last words, her head slowly turned to him, looking at him in surprise. "Oh..." Escaped her a surprised laugh, and it remained at that as she stared back at the flames.

"Alright then, I'll be happy to learn spark from you if you don't mind. How exactly is this going?" He asked her the question, mostly to get her thinking otherwise.

Her facial expression brightened noticeably right away, and she slowly nodded once, more to herself.

"It's actually quite simple... The most talented and capable can, after study and long time and much knowledge, develop their own skills. Learning them, however, is simple, as long as you have the basic requirements. As a mage, like you, you must be able to see mana, or somehow feel it, in order to mimic the pattern of the spell and thus learn the skill."

"If you can only sense it, then you must place your hand on mine while my mana flows through my body in the appropriate pathways, and then form the pattern of spark..." She explained to him as she blushed slightly again, though Avan couldn't quite tell, or if it was perhaps from the rising heat of the campfire.

"Or you can see it, or feel it from the distance." To which Avan nodded, much to the young woman's obvious displeasure, which made him smile slightly.

"That is much more rarely represented... But somehow it doesn't really surprise me now... Then watch and follow the mana stream while I cast spark. We'll repeat this until you can mimic it yourself. Spark should only take a few hours for you to be able to cast it yourself."

And with those words, Avan sharpened his senses and focused on his immediate area of influence in close proximity while Jen cast the spell and muttered something, seemingly to guide spark's magic in the right direction, as she had learned to do by incantation.

Avan watched in amazement, because he had never seen it before, as the mana flowed out of Jen's inner self in a similar path to his own, through her arm, into her left outstretched hand, and there into a spark that flashed in the blink of an eye and then shot forward.

The whole thing happened so fast that not even half a second had passed, from the gathering of the mana in her soul core, to the complete shooting of the skill in the direction of the flames.

"Please, one more time..." He whispered intently, feeling more as he saw her nod and recite her incantation again.

This time, Avan tried to grasp more of what he had briefly perceived at the flash of the spark in a single moment, and his eyes widened in surprise as he saw what the mana was flowing into.

His own celestial abilities had never needed such a thing, or he had never paid attention to it and was almost oblivious to it, but what he had now seen in front of him in a split second blew his mind and revealed incredible possibilities.

"Again..."

"Once more, please..."

"Please..."

And so it went on, while Avan concentrated on the structure that hovered in front of Jen's fingertip, only to disappear again in a fraction of a second and shoot the spark off.

The young healer herself had already changed from joyful, to focused, and now to an increasingly exhausted expression, while Avan had asked for another demonstration time and time again.

What Avan now saw more and more clearly was an infinite possibility of which he had never been aware, and he was angry that he had never observed other wizards or skills performing it.

While Jen, Patris, and even Linob simply thought he needed a little longer, Avan saw an ever clearer image emerge before his mind's eye that, with Jen's final groan, finally floated clearly before his inner mind.

Much to the surprise of the three, and while they all stared at him not only in surprise but with widened eyes, they clearly heard the murmured words that Avan himself whispered in awe. Each of those present had so far instinctively and simply imitated the spells, and even if there were theories in magical faculties about it, nobody had expected this statement.

"Runes...! Interwoven runes!"

 

And before Avan's inner eyes, Jen's mana flowed through a web of various mini runes, all interwoven with magical lines, creating something as simple as a spark.

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