Born a Monster

Chapter Type: Conflict, Social

“Fire Bolt!” she cast.

I bounced it off my shield. My wooden shield, which caught fire.

[Ability Boil, Boil Activated. After ability activation, you have taken no damage.]

“Argh! My hip!” a woman screamed.

“You fool!” Bei Lala shouted. “Use magic. Absorb the mana I put into my spells, if you can! You’ll never reach your potential if you keep relying on the mundane!”

[Absorb Spell. Prerequisite: Level 2 Magic/Divine Caster.]

Yeah, second level anything was a bit into the future.

.....

“Purple emotion of cowardice, come to my bidding, perform my will, it is I, Incinerator Bei. I summon you... What the crap?”

By this point, I had closed to melee range, and thrust the shield at her, but not into her. I let the flames ignite her robes before throwing it off to the side.

Such a waste. Twelve servings of wood fiber. Gone.

She shrieked, and started batting at her clothing. I drew a knife and...

The bad thing about trip attacks is if your opponent is also trained...

[You have scored a YELLOW result, your opponent a GREEN, trip attack has failed.]

[You have succeeded an Agility/Acrobatics/Balance/Resist Trip check.]

Ah, crap. She was better than I was. Hadn’t been expecting that.

“Touch of Sleep!” she called out.

“Bite of Anger.” I countered.

[You have resisted a strength three spell of compulsion.]

Wait. It was rating WHAT? How badly over-matched was I?

No wonder she overpowered my aura attack so easily.

She swung her fan, trying to bring her elbow into contact with my head. But no, it was a feint; as I drew back, she put her wooden clog onto my chest and pushed with her full body weight.

“Activation Circle Kick!”

That didn’t sound like...

[You have taken six points of blunt damage. After ability activation, three points of damage have been received. 14/80 health remain.]

... because it wasn’t a spell.

Dang it, with my health going down each day, and no hope of recovery. I held up my knife defensively, to hold her at bay for a while.

“Lightning wave!”

“Grounding Earth!”

[You cannot activate Grounding Earth. Spell not unlocked. Focus here...]

[You have taken eight points of Electrical damage. 6/80 health remain.]

I needed to hit her. Hard.

I only had my raw Might score, which could do up to twelve base damage.

“Pain touch!”

As she closed, I moved to strike her midsection.

[You have taken 12 points of Pain Stress. After ability activation, you have received no damage.]

When I struck her abdomen, she coughed up blood. “Impossible. That’s ... human maximum.”

“This training session is over.” she said, wiping the blood from her face with her sleeve.

[You have succeeded a Resolve/Willpower/Resist Emotion/Control Anger check.]

Yeah, System could call that whatever it wanted. I knew what that was. Discipline.

I panted, spat up blood of my own. It was the first time three things had happened.

It was the first time we’d gone more than a single exchange of spells.

It was the first time we’d exchanged physical blows, as well.

It was the first time she’d been injured during our training sessions.

Except for the red halo surrounded by black in my vision, and the fatigue that also came from being under ten percent of normal health, I felt ... normal. Not victorious, normal.

Which meant that I had lost.

Eleven health would take a week and a half to regain. And there was nothing...

Wait.

I slid my reticule over the remains of my shield.

Wood. Fiber. Fiber was biomass.

“I will see you back at the meditation room.” Bei Lala said, pulling herself to her full height and striding off.

I went off in a different direction, my steps feeling light.

Because I’d figured out that there were abandoned buildings. Made of wood. Made of biomass. I started with tools. Plates, buckets, cutlery. Anything and everything that I could break down to bite sized pieces. If I could fit it in my mouth, it could go into my Omnivore stomachs. Smaller pieces, I could actually swallow.

Ten servings per stomach slot, three nutrition per serving, four stomach slots. One hundred twenty nutrition. Once in the predawn, before work. Once in the evening, after work.

Provided I could be stealthy enough to not get caught at vandalism..

Because, big surprise, the penalty for that was death.

Oh, man. And I needed to avoid eating so much that I fell asleep anywhere other than my bed. It had been so long since my stomachs had been full of anything other than grass, and wood had never been quick to digest, even for me.

But an advantage to my System stomach slots was there was no physical bloating of the belly to give away what I was doing.

“You look like hell.” Tsi Ba said.

I could feel the side of my head, puffed up around where Incinerator Bei had kicked me. “Special training session.” I said.

“Tch. That’s three days in a row, Ping. Three days of injuries.”

“Yeah.” I said. “I’m running low on health.”

“Maybe you should stop antagonizing her.” Ja Reng said. Once, he had been plump. Now, his skin hung in loose wrinkled folds about him.

“How do I do that, when she asks such impossible things?” I asked.

“Because,” she said, entering the room, “respect and obedience are all I demand. That, and your best efforts at your work.”

A question occurred to me. “Why are we always converting Water mana?”

“We’re on an island, dumbass.” Ja Reng said.

“Very good, Ja Reng.” she crooned. “Perhaps he should have your ration of food today?”

I smacked my lips. Wood might provide biomass, but it tasted like, well, wood.

“That would be fair.” I said.

“Ping, walk with me atop the wall. I desire to feel the breeze on my face.”

And, I noted, it would be easy to push me to my death if I were insubordinate.

“Summoned, I come, honored teacher.” I said.

Once we were atop the wall, she said, “Appearances aside, Ping, you are not human.”

“An interesting theory, honored elder.” I said.

“It is more than a theory.” she said. “A number of mixed bloodlines could account for your eyes, but none could account for your raw physical strength. Not at your age, anyway.”

I looked over the inner lip of the wall. “Dauria is not a culture friendly to outsiders.”

“I notice that also, Ping. Tell me something, in these words: I can lie to you.”

How? So far as I knew... Hell.

“I am a Truthspeaker.” I said. “I literally cannot lie to you.”

.....

“I suspected as much.” she said. “Thank you for confirming it. And, I suspect, you have an abnormally high divisor? Somewhere in the range of six to eight?”

More like twelve.

“You seem to know much about me that I’m trying to keep hidden.”

“Ah, Ping. Now your reluctant development, your abrasive manner, now these things make sense.”

“Just yesterday, you seemed a different woman.”

“I am superior to any Daurian man.” she said. “I say and do many things to keep them in their place, to keep reminding them that I am as a goddess among them. It is not easy, to defend such a position constantly.”

“Are you saying, it is a mask?”

“Not a mask. I AM superior, and I deserve to be treated as such. And I am willing to do anything, anything at all, especially to any man, to maintain that position.”

I scratched my left temple. “And what, exactly, do you want from me?”

“What would any woman of power want from a magical beast? Come, what makes your breed special? You tell me what I want. Your blood? Pieces of your flesh? To rip your soul out in bite sized chunks?”

I sighed. Of course, the Dragon and the Alchemist.

“I can adapt the natural evolutions of creatures I eat. They have to be raw, and it’s never worked on magical abilities. It takes time and energy, specifically in the form of nutrition.”

“But if I could provide you with a particular species of spider, you could grow venom sacs?” she asked.

“In theory.” I said, pulling up a list of spider venoms I could already evolve. Most of them were rank one or two. Meh. I’d been intending to evolve one or two, I’d just always had better things to evolve.

“Would those be spider sized venom glands, or Ping sized spider glands?”

“Why do I get the sense this is about more than mystical experimentation?” I asked.

“There is a rare spider, difficult to keep alive. But its venom is more deadly than the arrow frog. It is much prized by our archers.”

“You would take hard earned coin from our archers?” I asked.

“No, you fool. But if I can provide them with poison, every person they kill is one I don’t have to. Plus, archers have enough range to kill enemy mages. And the supplier of that venom? I could become very well known for being able to do something nobody else can.”

“And,” she said, “I will keep your secret.”

A proverb about a dragon that sells itself, piece by piece, to an alchemist she loves.