Chapter 179: Chapter 177: Gear up

My resolve to get the stuff I didn’t earn myself waned as Ensign Trueglow assigned more and more gear to me. First, the ring, a spatial ring not so different from my current one at first glance. As far as I could tell, it was also made from brass, or bronze; it was definitely not gold. Anyway, whatever the metal was, the ring was much better quality than the one I got when I arrived in Castiana. Speaking of which, there was a small city crest embossed on the ring. A simple maze in the middle, two swords, one on each side, bird tail feathers sticking out at the bottom, and a wolf’s head with a crown above.

I’ve seen it in the city many times, especially here in the barracks, but I’ve always had more of my own problems to worry about than to dig for the meaning behind it. Of course, I was wondering. Trueglow didn’t seem like the kind of woman who’d appreciate it if I asked her, though.

Back to the ring. Eight cubic meters of storage. Seriously, what the hell was I supposed to do with all that space?

Until now, I’ve had to do with one cubic decimetre of space, and I did. Sure, it was packed to the brim, mostly thanks to the loot Pipsqueak entrusted me with, nuts stolen from Eusulmor squirrels, and was going to collapse within two months, but I’ve kind of gotten used to the shoddy ring. It was like me, wretched, poor as a church mouse.

At least I used to be. Now things were turning around for me, and as many changes took place in my life, the spatial ring too was the beginning of one such change.

To keep me from getting lost in Fallen’s Cry, I got my own thread, a magical tool for finding my way back if needed. Then there were three boxes, with ten vials in each. One was full of healing potions, one packed with mana potions, and the third stuffed with basic antidotes. Maybe not nearly enough to fill the ring’s storage, but I was still missing the most important thing of the necessities I was supposed to get assigned: the food.

If I wanted to get it, I had to go to the cooks. As it turned out, they didn’t have anything like canned, semi-finished, or powdered food here. And frankly, I was glad they didn’t.

No, it was the spatial ring that did the trick. In addition to being size adaptable, given my shifter disposition, it could store food without it going bad. Of course, I thought how amazing it would be if I could put a plate with a freshly finished portion of lasagna in there and take it out a week later, as fresh and warm as I put it in. Sadly, that was not the case, not with the ring I got.

“Did you crack your skull, or are you just that dumb?” Trueglow shot me a disbelieving look when I asked just that. I most definitely did not improve her opinion of me. “That would require temporal magic, a time mage. And Traian’s tits, I don’t know where you’d find one, let alone what you’d have to give up to get them to make rings.”

Well, it made sense. Kind of. Did spatial mages make the rings? Honestly, I had no clue how the tools were made. But I knew a thing or two about mages. From what I gathered so far, time mages were extremely rare, and the idea of one being engaged in the production of spatial rings seemed really ridiculous. 

Yet, despite her belief, I knew where to find one, or rather I knew someone who knew one; you know how it goes. Although it did leave me wondering why Janina even told me she knew one.

Moving on from the necessities, I’ve been assigned an outfit-spatial ring with a storage size of two cubic meters and the two dozen pins that went with that. Plus half a dozen pairs of plain shirts, shorts, and underwear, and an equal number of the same with adjustable sizing for shifters. On top of that, a pair of boots.

Boots!

My mind was blown away, and even Idleaf was starting to worry about me as I stared blankly at the footwear in my hands for a good minute. My first shoes here on Eleaden. They were no Chelsea’, simple army boots, yet they made my heart flutter with glee. No longer did I have to walk the streets of Castiana barefoot like a savage or a beast. 

So why the hell did the idea of covering my feet with something like that not sit well with me?!

Well, those thoughts, like the boots, I had to put aside as Trueglow went on regardless of my shock, muttering something about fucking idiots and beasts. The woman didn’t think much of me before, just another rookie bothering her; now, I managed to make myself look even worse in her eyes.

Then, just when I thought I couldn’t fall any lower, she pulled out armor for me. Leather shin guards, knee guards, thigh guards, hip guards, gloves, forearm guards, shoulder pads, and chest armor. All in the blue and white colors of the Castiana City Guards, new and shiny, with the city emblem engraved on each piece. I was speechless. It was all supposed to be mine, size-adjustable, and who knows what other enchantments were on it. I didn’t stare long before I took the armor from her. Definitely no longer than I stared at the boots, but it was long enough to make Trueglow scowl.

“No helmet. I don’t have anything that would fit your ears and the antlers...is that fucking moss you got there?”

I bit my lip so I wouldn’t say anything back that I’d regret. “That’s okay. I can do without one.” 

“Well, it looks like you’ve got nothing but sawdust in there, still...if I were you, I’d have one custom made to protect my head,” she grumbled, and her eyes fell on the armor still in my hands. “Either shove it in the ring or put it on...you know how, don’t you?”

If I said yes, I’d be lying. I may have seen hundreds of warriors in historical armor on TV or on the internet, but how to put it on was not a knowledge I possessed. All I knew was that it wasn’t as easy as it might have looked at first glance.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” the woman spat, my body language speaking for me once again. “Well, I don’t give a shit. That’s your problem, not mine. We’re done here.”

For a moment, I considered asking about weapons. After all, I’ve noticed racks of them in the warehouse, and at least a small forearm shield might be useful. That and some sort of sword or dagger, but then I put it out of my mind and followed Ensign Trueglow out. Asking further would only bother and piss her off more. Plus, just what I got made me feel bad and undeserving already. 

What were weapons suitable for me, anyway? 

I got some suggestions and recommendations. Were they still valid, though? A hell of a lot has changed since I met Razso and Nila Tenderfire. On the other hand, Deckard hasn’t really taught me anything yet, so...I left it for future Korra to sort out and with thanks, I bid Ensign Trueglow farewell and headed off to the lesson I was greatly overdue for.

 

***

 

For the first time, I found myself in the training hall before Aspen. She was usually already there waiting for me, ready for our lesson. Not today, though. The reason was simple. I was too early.

It couldn’t be helped. We got out of Fallen’s Cry earlier than I expected, as Deckard saw no reason to start with my training. The sale of rabbit raw materials went smoothly, and when I wanted to hang out at the library and catch up with Mr. Sandoval, I found the place locked. The equipment issuing may have been off schedule but didn’t take long either, as Trueglow wanted me out of her hair as soon as possible.

So here I was, trying to figure out how to put on my armor all on my own with a little bit of help from Idleaf.

“Wait, I’ll hold this, and you tie the strap,” I told her as I tried to put on my forearm guard for the umpteenth time. I managed to put on my leg guards, all of them. Even the chest armor, though that piece of leather, gave me a real hard time. But for forearm guards...one hand was simply not enough.

“Which ones?” Idleaf asked, confused by the number of straps.

“Isn’t it obvious? The short strap next to my wrist with the longer one across from it.” My explanations didn’t help much, but eventually, the spirit found the right two, slipped one through the buckle, and pulled.

“Shit...tss, stop Idleaf, that’s enough!” I cried out at her as she tightened straps so hard she literally strangled my hand, and the blood stopped running into my fingers.

“You said tighten it firmly,” Idleaf argued, an impish grin spreading across her face.

I was dying to smack her. “Yeah, to keep it from falling off during the fight, but that doesn’t mean my arm has to fall off instead.”

“You could just regrow it,” she suggested helpfully and dodged my hand when I actually tried to give her a slap. A playful giggle followed.

“What’s going on here?” Aspen’s voice drifted from the doorway. The Guardswoman, a former city guard, stood there, mouth agape, bafflement in her eyes.

“Hi, Aspen.” I chuckled awkwardly, glancing at myself and my half-dressed armor while I was struggling to loosen the strap. “I was assigned some gear and was trying to figure out how to put it on.”

“Yeah, I gathered. I see that didn’t go so well...” she said, paused, and added in a husky voice: “D-did you really try to hit the spirit of the World Tree?”

“She did,” Idleaf whined, feigning a look of hurt, while she wagged her tail, happy as ever.

“So you heard?” I said, ignoring her remark and the rascal having fun while I suffered.

“Heard? That you are a Guardian of a World Tree? Her Guardian? Yeah, the whole barracks is talking about you. Not hard to figure out it’s her, then.” Despite what Aspen said, she waited until I gave her a nod before bowing respectfully to the spirit. “Aspen Werley. It’s an honor to meet you.”

“I’m Idleaf,” the spirit beamed, striding up to the former city guard. Aspen did end up working for slavers, the scum of the city, but when the spirit offered her a hand, she hesitated. Her work among the master guards had taught her etiquette, and usually, it was enough to bow or lower one’s head to the nobles. They hardly ever wanted to come into physical contact with the common people.

 

Tail for the family,

Hands for the folk,

Claws for the enemy,

Curtsy for the gentlefolk.

 

That was a short rhyme that Ria, a little kitsune, and my local language teacher, taught me - in Eleaden Standard. Yeah, hard to believe, but I was making leaps and bounds when it came to speaking Standard. The reason for that I believed was my enhanced Intelligence and Wisdom. Well, and the need to actually speak the local language. Of course, Ria had the most credit for the speed at which I mastered it to the point where I was able to learn the rhyme.

It was a short rhyme for terran kids, but saying a lot.

The tail thing? It was a terran custom. Well, feline and canine terran thing, where they tangle their tails. Very personal, with family members expressing their love for each other. It was no wonder the little kitsune just told me about it and refused to show me. 

I also imagined that things could get even more intimate between lovers tangling their tails and...trying not to poison each other. In my case, at least. Doable, uncomfortable, annoying, and distracting, but essentially like holding in farts.

Not that I have a lover I’d go to such lengths for.

“So,” Aspen spoke, snapping me out of my thoughts. “I’m assuming this isn’t mage gear.”

I knew where she was going with that. If it wasn’t magic gear, there was no point in wearing it in magic lessons. “Sorry, I was here early. I got new gear and...”

“...had no idea how to put it on,” Aspen finished for me, a smirk plastered on her face while she adjusted the collar around her neck. I sympathized with her. It took me months to get used to the damn thing, if ever.

“Do you think you could talk me through it?”

“This was supposed to be a magic lesson, one you haven’t had in two days,” she remarked sharply yet came over to me, checking out my and Idleaf’s handiwork. 

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“I know Aspen, but...things happened.”

“As I said, I heard. Crazy shit. Glad I wasn’t there with you this time.” She paused and pointed to my armor. “Well, you got it on. But if you go into battle like this, you’ll regret it.”

“I’ll bite. Why?”

She smirked. “Well, because if you wear it like this, it is gonna bite YOU in the ass.”

She didn’t mean it literally. At least, I thought she didn’t. Nevertheless, the way I put the armor on would cause me a lot of abrasions; straps would dig into my skin, and so on. Aspen showed me how to do it properly, even the trick of putting on the forearm guards myself before she made me take it all off.

“I need you to focus on the magic, not the armor that bites you,” she insisted, and I couldn’t argue with that. Even with her tips, I didn’t feel much more comfortable in the new gear than when I put it on myself.

“Leave the armor dressing to Deckard. I’m sure he’ll be more helpful than I am in your case. I’m not a shifter....” she didn’t finish the sentence, but she didn’t have to. He was more experienced at drilling rookies of all shapes, genders, and classes than she was. Instead, she turned her focus to the reason she was here in the first place. “What changed? Can you still use mana?”

“Yes, I can,” I said as I was putting the armor piece by piece into the outfit-spatial ring. It was a thing of wonder. Just a thought, and the shin guard was gone. “I don’t think it’s harder or easier for me to use it,” I continued under Aspen’s gaze. She scanned my runes; most of them faded, some still glowing faintly. “My mana has changed, though.”

The Guardswoman raised her eyebrows. “Explain.”

And I did. I told her about my connection to Idleaf, how it changed the nature of my mana to be in sync with hers, and the possibility of me learning a little faster as a result.

“So you have the same mana as the World Tree?”

“No,” Idleaf sang, giggling at the silliness. “Korra’leigh is Korra’leigh, my Guardian, not me.”

“Oh, so it’s like the species’ nuance. Okay,” she said and passed it off as if it made sense to her. Me? I needed a little more explanation because it sounded to me like my species had changed in terms of mana.

“Wait, I know you said mana is like a fingerprint...”

“How the fuck did you come up with that?”

“Well, personal mana is unique to everyone, right? Just like fingerprints, eyes, ear shape.”

“No, they aren’t. With those, you are born and die, unchanged. The imprint of mana, its nature, changes with you as you grow. Human mana has its shared nuances as does that of terrans. You will find differences between male and female mana, or between a childs' mana and the mana of adults’. Even class has an impact on mana nature. Healers share the same nuances in mana, so do sword wielders or mages. It doesn’t compare with fingerprints, Korra.”

I shifted my weight, flapped my wings, wagged my tail, lost in thought. “It’s more like a record, a story, so to speak, then.”

“Yes, you could say that,” she nodded while a broad smile crossed Idleaf’s face. The spirit saw that I understood there was more to it than just a plethora of nuances forming a mana imprint. Mana basically told the story of life, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a connection to the strength behind the names and the stories they told.

“Okay, I’ve heard enough. Show me how you fare. Any progress?”

When Aspen asked that, I dropped my ears. “No, not really.” While I was more determined than ever to learn to control mana in order to use magic in combat, my mana training had stagnated during the two days I hadn’t seen her.

“I would have thought the Guardian of the World Tree would be more diligent,” she remarked, throwing a glance at Idleaf. “Maybe you chose the wrong one.” 

Blatant teases, but the spirit took it seriously. She sidled up behind me and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “I did not, Aspen Werley. Korra’leigh is Korra’leight! I chose her because of who she is.”

“My bad,” she apologized and added in one breath: “Damn. If I offered the right mage the chance to teach you instead of me, I bet they’d be willing to pay whatever it takes to get me out of this,” she tugged on the collar for a demonstration.

“Would you?” I wouldn’t blame her. The slave collar was a nasty piece of work.

“Nah, Rayden wouldn’t let me, and I wouldn’t anyway. I may have made some stupid decisions in my life, but I’m not dumb enough to give up teaching you. Magic Heart, Guardian of a World Tree? Once those old farts in the Magic Association find out about you, they’re gonna burst with envy.”

“Do people do that?” Idleaf wondered at the strange thought.

Reasonably a fair question. Yet, I explained to her that it was just another figure of speech while telling Aspen that the young World Tree was learning the ways of men. To the former city guard’s credit, she simply took Idleaf as yet another quirk of mine and passed over it. Instead, her gaze hardened.

“Speaking of learning...your mana control. Get your ass on the ground and show me how bad off it is.” 

Not exactly encouraging words, but I did as she said, and not long after I calmed my heart while trying to ignore the cold floor, a layer of mana coated my palm.

“Covering only the hand, misty. No change at all,” she observed, sitting down across from me. “Not surprising, considering what happened. Still, I’m disappointed, Korra.”

“I said...”

“I know. It’s just...guess my expectations were too high. In just a few days, you’ve made progress comparable to the most talented mages. It’s easy to forget you’re not one.”

“My skills helped.” I pointed out. Talent and I never got on well together. At least that’s how I felt. Whatever it was, the others were more talented at it.

“Skills, your heart, and most likely even some of the stuff that makes you up. Don’t beat yourself up about it, don’t feel bad about it. Instead, seize it. Anyway, you’re too forceful. You’re pushing the mana too hard.”

“How else do I get it out of my body?”

“You find the balance. It’s like dealing with people; when you’re trying to calm the crowd, making them step back. Push them too hard, and they’ll throw themselves at you. You go too soft on them, and you’ll never get your way. You just have to learn to walk that line.”

I growled. “That’s easier said than done.” Sure enough, just by activating [Mantle of Magic], a thin layer of mana, paper-thin and smooth as glass, enveloped my entire forearm. However, the skill was doing it so quickly and effortlessly that I found it difficult to glean much from that. Just bits and pieces each time.

“I never said it would be easy. Learning magic never is.”

“I could help you, Korra’leigh,” Idleaf, snuggled on the floor next to Aspen and me, butted in. “I could guide you, show you how to do it.”

That sounded sweet to my ears. “Could you really?”

“I’m afraid it’s not that easy,” Aspen objected, knowing what kind of guidance Idleaf was talking about. “Only in very, very rare cases are mages able to guide the mana of another. The trouble is that their mana must be very similar to each other. Most often, that happens in mage families where mother and daughter or father and son gravitate towards the same form and school of magic...and have the same...class...you are as different as can be...tree and beast-human hybrid,” Aspen said slowly, her words trailing in the flow of her thoughts while her eyes darted between Idleaf and me. She sounded as though she wanted to reassure herself more than us of the impossibility that the spirit suggested.

“She is my Guardian, Aspen Werley.”

True, I was. Reminded of that, Guardswoman deflated and gave up her efforts to find a valid reason as to why it shouldn’t be possible. “Go ahead.”

Idleaf squealed with delight, moved over to me, put her hand on my back and...took control of my mana. “Calm down, don’t fight back; feel what I’m doing,” she whispered, her voice devoid of the usual playfulness. And I did as she said: sensed my mana under her command while I watched it form a layer around my forearm the way it would if I used [Mantle of Magic]. This time it was different; slower as Idleaf did her best to make sure I got the most out of it.

“You know you two don’t make sense, right?” Aspen shook her head in disbelief and with resignation in her voice while she watched us in stunned amazement.

“I told you my mana has changed,” I pointed out between heavy breaths and wiped the sweat from my forehead. The whole guiding process wasn’t as smooth as I’d hoped, and it was taking its toll on my body.

“Sure, you did. Still...” Aspen didn’t finish the sentence and beamed instead, already re-thinking my lessons. “Since Idleaf can guide your mana...that changes everything...” her smile turned to laugh too close to the villainous laugh I knew from movies for my taste. Then, when she looked at me and a shiver ran down my spine, I knew I was fucked.

By the end of the several-hour lesson, I was drenched in sweat and as exhausted as I was after a night of fighting the young mossbear. But most of all, I was ecstatic! [Heart of Magic] tiered-up. After all the time I had the skill stuck at level 9, it jumped a level just as I created a layer of mana, thin as paper and smooth-ish as glass, around my forearm for the first time on my own.

“Fuck yeah!” I couldn’t stop myself from letting out a triumphant roar before I rushed to check the system notifications.

• [Mantle of Magic] reaches lvl 4

...

..

.

• [Mantle of Magic] reaches lvl 8

 

• [Heart of Magic] reaches lvl 10
• [Heart of Magic] reaches TIER II

 

Heart of Magic

Passive II (Deviant - 30%) [Call of Nature]

You are a magical creature, and as such, mana is an integral part of you, flowing through your body like blood through your veins. You can’t survive without it, but you can enjoy increased [Intelligence] and [Wisdom] by 97%(75%) → 143%(110%).

Tier II - Mana manipulation is a fundamental skill for any magical creature such as yourself to prove the right to live. Hard to achieve, but once you do, you’ll find mana manipulation much easier to grasp and magic to use.

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