Arcane Apocalypse

16 – Silver Lining?

Mia spent the next hour nursing her channels back to some measure of ‘healthy’. Her right hand was usable now, but her left one was still a painful clump of internal bruises that didn’t go away even when Lara took a look at it.

The bunny woman came and went quickly, checking in on the two girls to make sure neither of them got hurt too badly before rushing back to take care of her more pressing patients.

Lina had been moved over to the couch since, which left Mia sitting on an ungainly wooden chair.

I should have just left. Mia thought, staring at the snoring blonde. Jeff said she could, there was now another pair on anti-air duty and someone else would have come to make sure Lina was alright. Alas, Mia felt the least she could do was watch over her partner. It wasn’t like she had anything planned for the day, especially now that her channels were due for at least half a day of rest.

Don’t I have channels in the rest of my body though? The thought struck her and Mia focused inward. She ran a trickle of mana through her body, mapping out the bends and twists of the mystical pathways before letting out a sigh.

Sure, she had dozens of channels, but aside from the ones in her fingertips, none of the rest had an ending. Even the ones in her feet just twisted around without even touching her skin, making it impossible to cast magic from there.

Why do I have them then? Mia frowned, rubbing her face in annoyance. It could be for body enhancement spells — which she couldn’t use as an Arcane Mage — or maybe she was just too much of a beginner at this whole mage thing. It was entirely possible that later on she would be able to cast from anywhere in her body.

Or not and it's down to luck and genetics how many open channel endings you have. That would suck.

Channel ‘endings’ as Mia was calling them were alike to nozzles at the end of watering hoses while the channels were the hoses themselves. Without an open nozzle to spray mana from, she couldn’t actually cast magic. If I don’t want to activate it under my skin and blow my foot off. That would suck even more … but I guess losing a foot could beat becoming a chewtoy to a village of goblins.

Mia didn’t like it, but she filed that thought away for when it was needed. With magic being a thing, losing a limb was far less permanent than it used to be just days ago. It would cost a fortune according to the elements book, but it was possible to regrow limbs. Furthermore, it was Life Magic — Lara’s element — which was capable of it.

A soft groan caught her attention, snapping Mia out of her ruminations. Lina’s greyish eyes fluttered open, looking around in a haze as the blonde propped herself up. They landed on Mia and flew wide.

“Shit, the-” she jumped to her feet and scampered over to the window.

“It’s fine,” Mia said, not getting up from her chair. “Jeff got another team to watch over them.”

“The old man is fine?” Lina asked in wonder, probably staring a hole into the elderly earth shaper. “How- I saw the bird falling- What?”

“The old man is far less helpless than both of us thought I guess,” Mia said. “He swatted the falling bird aside like a mosquito. The resulting smear of blood is still visible on the wall to the right.”

“Huh,” Lina said smartly, staring out the window. “And they got another group to protect them now?”

“That is what I said, yes.” Mia shrugged, getting up from her chair and stretching out her cranky joints. “Now that you’re up and about, I’m off.”

“Oh, okay,” Lina said, sounding a bit lost. “Uhm, can we do this tomorrow? If you don't mind pairing up with me again?”

Mia turned around and caught the blonde fidgeting a bit. Nervous? Why? I guess we almost fucked up back there because she passed out … and because I can’t aim for shit.

“Sure I guess. Come find me tomorrow. I live in 105.” Mia shrugged. That was the 10th floor’s fifth apartment. “But I’d much rather just snipe some goblins running around on the street.”

“Goblins?” Lina asked, raising an eyebrow. “Why?”

“They die quicker,” Mia answered, reaching for the door. She gave a glance back at the troubled blonde as she continued. “And nobody dies when I miss a shot.”

With that, Mia turned and left, but she only got a few steps in before Lina caught up with her.

“What?” Lina asked, seeing Mia’s dubious look.

Mia just shrugged, though inwardly she was more confused than anything. If she had to simplify her general experiences interacting with the German-speaking people since she moved here, she’d say most of them took bluntness and acting introverted to be a social virtue.

Lina seemed to be the exact opposite. Or she was just incapable of reading social cues. Like the fact that Mia was effectively saying goodbye and was not asking the blonde to tail her.

She doesn’t sound like she isn’t a native speaker. Mia mused, making sure to pay attention to her surroundings as she stepped into the stairwell. Maybe she’s just weird.

It was midday, and despite whatever magical fuckery was going on with the weather since the Awakening, it was still mid July. That is to say, no one in their right mind wanted to be all that far away from an AC.

Now that those were non-operational, Mia suspected most of the people in the building found themselves a nice shady corner and were busying themselves by fanning each other.

Or the monsters ate more people than I thought. That was a worrying thought, but she’d rather assume the heat was why the two of them didn’t come across another soul on their lengthy trek up to the tenth floor instead of the alternative.

“Damn, you climb all these stairs every day?” Lina huffed, clutching onto the railing for dear life.

“Come on, there's only one set of stairs left,” Mia said, though she also felt a bit winded. “Also, there is a lift.”

“Really?” The blonde asked, taking a single step up to the first stair like she’d just ran a marathon.

“Yes,” Mia said, the edge of her lips curling in amusement. “Did you live on the ground floor or something?”

“First,” Lina said. “But I got banished up to an empty second floor apartment, with my flat getting turned into a hospital room.”

“Oh,” Mia paused, frowning. “That sucks.”

“It does.” Lina nodded enthusiastically. “I hate stairs.”

“They do wonders to your legs though,” Mia mused.

“Urgh.”

Soon enough, and accompanied by Lina’s tortured groans, the duo made their way up to the tenth floor and to Mia’s flat.

Mia knocked loudly, as she always did, then went in after a moment. Motioning for Lina to follow when the blonde stayed put in the door.

“Nice … place you got here,” Lina said, looking between the mangled table and carpet.

“Make yourself comfortable I guess?” Mia said. “Uhhhhh. Want some water? I think we have a bit of soda left too.”

“Oh, no I’m fine,” Lina said, carefully settling in on the couch. “I don’t want to drink up your allotment of water.”

“Okay,” Mia said, shrugging as she fished out some cereal bars from the depths of the cupboard. She threw one to her guest, then got to nibbling her own as she settled down next to her on the sofa.

“Thanks,” Lina said, her eyes still wandering around the room even as she chewed on the bar. “You live here alone?”

“No, I have a roommate,” Mia said. “Why?”

“Well, I’d have expected your handwriting to be … nicer.”

Mia followed Lina’s gaze, which landed on the small makeshift coffee table at the centre of the room.

The fact that Mia instinctively thought of the thing as a ‘coffee table’ and not as an upturned cardboard box worried her a bit. Though, she supposed living together with Mark for a few years would do that to most people, not just her.

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“That’s Mark’s,” she said, recognising his scribbles at a glance which covered a dozen haphazardly spread slips of paper.

“Your roommate?” Lina asked, reaching for a paper before pausing. “Can I?”

“Sure,” Mia shrugged. “He shouldn’t have left them laying around if he didn’t want people to read them.”

While Lina visibly struggled to decipher the chaotic script of Mark’s notes, Mia focused on her hearing for a bit. She heard Lina’s breathing and subdued heartbeat clearly enough, but with some effort she even caught the snores coming from Mark’s room.

Okay, that wasn’t much of a challenge with how loud he was, but Mia still felt like she had just done some superhuman level stuff. She could track heartbeats for goodness’ sake, that was crazy.

Could I tell whether someone is lying based on their heartbeat? I think there was a comic book superhero who had super hearing and could do just that.

“Hey,” Lina said. “Uhhh, could you help me decipher these? I think this might be … interesting.”

“What?” Mia asked, her brain taking a moment to process the question. “Oh, yeah. Sure. What is it?”

Mia took the piece of paper, a torn out page from some old notebook and ran her gaze over it.

Reading Mark’s handwriting was only a little less difficult than comprehending the arcane script of her spell circles, but Mia had years upon years of experience deciphering the prior — having had to do so for four years in college —, so she managed.

“I think he’s separating Attributes into groups?” Lina said with some uncertainty. “Though it didn’t seem like he was talking about arbitrary groups he came up with, but some inherent System thing.”

Stats? Mia read through the thing with a frown. He looked into what I told him? But where the hell did he get that information?

After a moment of thought, feeling slightly annoyed that he found something she hadn’t, again, Mia shrugged and got to reading.

The first, and arguably most important part was, where Mark separated stats into three types: base stats, gained stats and bonus stats.

***

Base Stats

• It has a set maximum value. 10 by default and modified by Traits (and maybe Titles and perhaps even other things like rituals??)

• Base Stats determine the value of their associated stats. 1 point of Base Stats is worth 10% of actual stat value.

• If you have 1 Base Strength, every point of Strength gained from whatever source will only be worth a tenth of that.

• Meaning for someone with 20 Base Strength, every single point of strength will count as two stat points. So, the real value of every stat point is a tenth of what is written when calculeted with every Base Stat being at 1. From there, each new Base Stat increases the initial value by a flat 100%.

• Way to increase: Training. Attribute Points don’t count towards Base Stat increase.

Gained Stats

• Gained from levelling up while having a Class of Common or higher quality. Also, from magical meals and by consuming natural treasures. (WTF are those? Look into it later!)

• Can only gain up to 10 points per level. Meaning, a level 10 person can have up to 100 gained stats. (Can’t get instantly OP by eating magical grass. Bummer. Still, 10 points are 10 points. Must max.)

Bonus Attributes

• Given by some Traits / Titles. Mostly by the ones associated with classes.

• These don’t count as either of the previous types.

***

Mia quickly pulled up her Interface, went to the Attributes tab and focused. She knew already that this dumb interface was almost entirely intention driven and was absolutely miserly about giving out any information she didn’t directly ask for.

Sure enough, her simple table of attributes fizzled for a moment before separating into three separate columns.

***

[Attributes]

[Free Attribute Points: 8]

[Body: 5]

• Agility: 6 (Base) + 0 (Gained) + 0 (Bonus)

• Strength: 2 + 1 + 0

• Flexibility: 6 + 0 + 0

[Mind: 4 + 1 (Bonus)]

• Cognity: 5 + 0 + 0

• Memory: 6 + 0 + 0

• Will: 2 + 1 + 0

[Spirit: 5 + 1 (Bonus)]

• Control: 4 + 0 + 0

• Sensitivity: 9 + 0 + 0

• Manifestation: 4 + 0 + 0

***

So, right now my Agility is ... what? (6 x 0.6) and my Strength is (3 x 0.2)? Why doesn't the System just write out the real value instead of gaslighting me with these higher fake numbers? Mia thought, groaning as she stared at the System Window with far too many numbers. Then, before she could do anything the window shifted before her eyes, numbers rewriting themselves.

***

[Attributes]

[Free Attribute Points: 8]

[Body: 5]

• Agility: 3.6

• Strength: DEFAULT 1

• Flexibility: 3.6

[Mind: 4 + 1 (Bonus)]

• Cognity: 2.5

• Memory: 3.6

• Will: DEFAULT 1

[Spirit: 5 + 1 (Bonus)]

• Control: 1.6

• Sensitivity: 8.1

• Manifestation: 1.6

***

I take it back! Damn, that's ... just please give me back my original window? Pretty please? Those numbers are making me depressed. Mia sighed in relief, slumping back as the System obliged her rather frantic mental request and went back to being as it initially was. Still, it gave her good info. For example that the stats that should have had a value below one, instead defaulted out at one . Is that the unenhanced, nonmagical baseline? Just ones everywhere?

“What is it?” Lina asked, leaning over Mia’s shoulder to give another go at reading Mark’s note.

Mia jumped a little, the fact that she wasn’t alone escaping her in her excitement. Hell, if Lina wasn’t there, she might have already started trying to figure out which of her stat points to put where since apparently, her initial assumption had been wrong.

“You were right,” Mia said, taking a moment to calm her racing heart. “Apparently, there are three types or Attributes we can get, with each having their own methods for increasing them, along with their own distinct restrictions.”

“Uhuh, I see.” Lina nodded. “Actually, I don’t. Explain to me like I’m an idiot, pretty please?”

“Sure.” Mia shrugged, putting away her interface with a wave of her hand. “Soo, you know we have three main stats with each having three sub-stats of their own, right?”

“Yes, of course.” Lina nodded. “Stats? That’s what you call them?”

“Attributes, stats, whatever.” Mia waved her off. “Same thing. Anyways, apparently you can get stat points from three separate sources. From training the sub-stats, you get Base Attributes which cap out at one point. From levelling up you get Gained Attributes, which you have a maximum limit of depending on your level and finally there are Bonus Attributes that you get from Class-given Traits.”

“Oooookay,” Lina said, squinting at Mia in thought. “Soooo, that means I can just ignore them. I mean, I’m going to get those Base Attributes anyway just by existing and it’s not like I can choose which type I want my free stat points to be. Right?”

“No,” Mia said, glancing back down at the note to make sure she didn’t miss anything like that being mentioned. “Nope. Those are always going to be Gained Stats.”

“Great.” Lina huffed, leaning back into the soft pillows as she relaxed. “So I can ignore them.”

“Yeah,” Mia said, shrugging. She wasn’t entirely agreeing with the girl though, since she was putting off assigning her free stat points. Now though, knowing that she wasn’t giving up those freely gained Base Stats by doing so, she could now go ahead and do so. “Still. Base Stats apparently determine how much each point in your sub-attributes is worth.”

“Urgh,” Lina groaned. “Sooo, if I get those up, every point I put into Strength for example be … what? Count as two points? Ten? One and a half?”

“Well, if Mark is right you’ll be at 1:1 when you have all of your base stats at 10. Every point above that gives you an extra 10% … and every point under that a minus 10%”

“I don’t even have 10 points in anything even though I dumped like five of them into Control.” Lina massaged her temples in apparent frustration. “This is going to be a pain. How do you even train for something like Control?”

“By shaping your mana into shapes?” Mia asked, raising an eyebrow at Lina. Did blacking out put half of her brain cells into hibernation or what? That’s obvious, even to me.

“And Sensitivity? Or Manifestation?” Lina continued, staring up at the ceiling. “Is my magic going to suck forever?”

“It doesn’t suck at all,” Mia said, attempting to sound gentle and sincere. It probably helped somewhat that she really did think what she was saying was the truth. “You’re just more focused on CC than pure damage, which is sort of a given with Air Magic I think … it’s air magic you use, right?”

“Yeah.” Lina said, blinking slowly.

It was easy to tell she wasn’t that hung up about her magic or didn’t even worry about it sucking all that much. Still, Mia felt for the girl.

“You have a … runic-model Subskill or an Elemental Manipulation one?” Mia asked, wincing at the question that was doubtlessly a huge breach of propriety in any world that had the System for any length of time.

“What’s a runic-model?” Lina asked confusedly, then shook her head slightly. “I have Major Air Manipulation.”

“That makes you an Elementalist, then,” Mia said, pulling up what she learned from the book on Classes. “While Mages like me use spells and have to fiddle with spell circles and runes and stuff and Sorcerers have to keep their bonded Spirits happy to use their magic, you can ignore all that as an Elementalist and directly manipulate your element. It’s … much more self-taught, and supposedly easier to get into than the other two types.”

“I’d take powerful over easy any day of the week,” Lina mumbled.

“It doesn’t make you any less powerful than an Air Mage would be, not if you practise and train,” Mia said in what she’d hoped was a consoling tone. She gently squeezed the blonde’s shoulder before pulling back. “Plus, you’ll be able to fly. That’s kinda awesome.”

There were some other, more esoteric advantages to being an Elementalist, like being much more in tune with your element and such, but since Mia didn’t really understand what that meant or how that was helpful, she didn’t mention it.

“Yeah,” Lina said, releasing a long breath. “Sorry. We barely even know each other and I followed you into your home to whine.”

“It’s fine,” Mia said, fighting the urge to cringe. Damn, she was so bad at this. This was what growing up with a clingy brother and without any close female friends did to a girl. Near complete lack of in-depth social skills and the know-how to console someone when they felt down. What would mom say? She’s good at this stuff.

Mia fell into thought, trying to come up with something fitting to say. Lina wasn’t the type of person she usually liked hanging out with, the girl was far too outgoing and lacking in the terms of personal space for her to ever feel comfortable being around her for too long, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want her to feel happy. Honestly, with how surprised the blonde had been about Mia having a roomie, she probably lived alone, cut off from her family and friends in this building and having to make do relying only on herself.

Mia would have been terrified, scared out of her mind and probably trembling under a bed maybe sipping on lukewarm beer if she had only herself to depend on with all the shit that had been going down lately. Hell, she’d be dead. The bird would have killed her.

“So anyways,” Lina started, tilting her head curiously at the zoned-out Mia and apparently over whatever emotional hole she’d fallen into just seconds ago. “Your accent sounds a bit weird. You’re not a native speaker right? Or maybe Belgian? I have no idea what Belgian accents sound like so … maybe? Hmmm?”

“Eh?” Mia blinked dumbly at Lina, searching her face for a moment. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but the girl seemed nothing but curious. She flip-flopped between emotional extremes faster than I can switch the lights on and off. Okay, I guess. Strange. “I’m from Pennsylvania, USA. Why? Do I sound weird?”

“Oh, no,” Lina shook her head hurriedly at Mia’s frown. “You sound … I don’t know, just different, I guess? But not in a bad way. It’s mostly in the way you roll your ‘r’-s I think. It sounds slightly like a slurred Russian accent.”

Mia groaned. She should have kept going to that Speech Therapist for a few more years. Did everyone think she sounded like a drunk Russian for the last decade? No. That couldn’t be. The … people she went to high school with certainly wouldn’t have held back on shoving her face in the fact she couldn’t speak German perfectly.

“I mean, it’s sort of exotic, so it’s all good, right?” Lina said. “Right. It goes well with that elfin look you have going on now. It all fits together pretty well, I think. You just need a pretty pink dress and you’d be perfec-”

“No,” Mia cut in, having heard something going a few steps over the line. “I’d rather go out and dance around with the goblins in a fursuit than wear a stupid princess dress.”

“It wouldn’t have to be a princess dress though,” Lina mused, squinting her eyes at Mia speculatively as she hummed. “That wouldn’t work with the hair. It’s far too vibrant to match the subdued pink they use for those. You’d need something form fitting and a bit more sexy, I think. A slit dress maybe? Ohhh, you could make it silky to shimmer like your hair does.”

Mia found herself wondering, imagining herself in the dress. It’d probably look pretty nice. Though I still hate dresses, they are just such a pain to wear. Maybe for some special occasions, perhaps, though. Hmmm.

“Then you can get some fake sapphire or azurite jewellery to fit your eyes and the highlights of your hair,” Lina continued, starting to practically bounce on the sofa as she spoke. “It’d be awesome.”

“I guess,” Mia allowed, feeling some of Lina’s excitement rub off on her. “It would be pretty nice.”