Inside-Outside-In

Shay

Last night had been the final one Shay would be spending in the village. It had been three months of studying, chores and labor, practicing magic, and struggling to not be miserable.

He wouldn’t call his time here pleasant, but the only thing that could actually be described as bad was the dysphoria. The people were nice, the food was good, and the technology was surprisingly modern in some ways, like having a washing machine, except that it was powered by mana rather than electricity.

It was boring, though. There wasn’t a whole lot to do for entertainment. And he didn’t have connections with anyone other than Leanor. He had met plenty of others, but the old woman was the only one he had spoken to a lot. The dullness of the village still couldn’t compare to moving boxes back and forth or retail hell, though.

The looks from the villagers had been another annoying thing to tolerate, though. They weren’t hostile, but pitying.

He could stay longer and continue to learn and practice, but felt that he would do better elsewhere. Both his Tiirve and knowledge of the world had already passed the bare minimum, and he decided it was time to get moving. Victoria was still out there, after all.

Shay lifted his pack and hung it over one shoulder, bending down to give Leanor a hug. She was a tiny woman, but she had beat the absolute shit out of him these past few months.

He said, “Thank you so much, Leanor. You’ve been a massive help.”

The old woman replied, “Of course, Shay. Now, you be careful out there. I can still beat you up with hardly any effort.”

She squeezed him to prove her point.

Groaning slightly, he replied, “Yeah, I got it. Leveling up is one of my goals, anyway.”

“If only there were stronger monsters here for that purpose…” she muttered, shaking her head.

Monsters in this world were essentially just animals that were much more inclined to fight rather than flee. And they would fight with magic. And a lot of raw strength.

They also varied quite a bit, even among the same species. They might be much larger or smaller, have horns or scales, and they would have a Skill of their own. It was practically endless.

The monsters around the village were generally pretty weak. To prepare himself for the outside world, Shay had gone into the forest with a hunter to kill one. It had been a rabbit with claws and a lot of rage.

Shay hadn’t been the one fighting, but had been the one to finish it off. He intended to be a mercenary, so he wasn’t going to hide from this. Killing monsters was something pretty much everyone did at one point or another anyway, even if it was only weak ones.

The sheer variety of monsters was also what made him ask about people. He had assumed that there were all sorts of nonhuman species of people around, but everyone was considered human.

Every single person actually started out as a mundane human, and their bodies might change in some way upon gaining a Skill. Unfortunately, the first Skill people gained wasn’t one they could choose, nor could any changes created by the Skill be reshaped away.

Few people had any problems with changes their bodies underwent as a result of gaining a Skill, however. First Skills seemed to follow a pattern of giving the people something related to whatever they happened to be doing at the time, but also that they might want or need. In Shay’s case, he needed to adapt to a lot of things, and fast.

All of that meant that there weren’t actually any elves and beastkin and dwarves and all that. It was just humans who looked different.

With a final goodbye to Leanor, Shay left for the carriage sitting in the center of the village. It was still trading with people until the last minute.

He paid the fee and boarded. In his pack, he had clothes, travel food and camping supplies. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to last the trip.

Most important was his single remaining possession from Earth; his keychain. The keys to his apartment, mailbox and car had been on the key ring along with it, as well as his car’s remote starter, but he didn’t care about any of those so much. He had them sitting in a tiny little pouch at the bottom of his bag.

The final item on the ring, the keychain, he had turned into a necklace. The space rift had bent it a bit, but she was able to bend it back into shape.

It had been a gift from Victoria. It was a sigil from a magical girl anime she liked, but made of plain metal and not overtly feminine. He wouldn’t have particularly cared if it was super girly, but their parents and some hicks in town would’ve.

It wasn’t like it had been specifically for him in the first place, either. Victoria had gotten a dozen of them in a little package, and shipped them out to several of her long-distance friends. Shay’s was just an extra leftover one.

He closed a hand around the sigil. It had served as a source of comfort and a reminder of what he needed to accomplish going forward.

The carriage’s two escorts arrived, and the peddler stowed his few remaining goods and urged the soewans forward. Soewans were tall, fuzzy, lizard-like things generally used for pulling carriages.

Shay wasn’t sure how quickly a horse-drawn carriage could move, but the soewans seemed to be making good time. And in place of suspension, some kind of pneumatic metal tubes filled with wind magic kept the ride relatively smooth.

Shay asked the peddler if he was the one supplying the wind magic, but it turned out that he used processed wind magic crystals as the power source, having bought them from a mining town.

Unfortunately, Shay couldn’t get a wind adaptation from the crystals, and no one on the carriage had wind magic, either.

He also did his best to describe cars with his still-limited Tiirve, and learned that people had been trying for a long time to invent something like that, but so many enchantments that complex and all next to each other made the whole thing fail.

Besides the peddler and two escorts, the peddler had an assistant, and there was also one villager coming with.

 

———

 

Probably the most surprising thing that happened during the trip was when Shay saw one of the escorts intentionally burning his hand with a small flame.

When asked what he was doing, he explained that it’s possible to improve resistances by using your own magic on yourself. The escorts were already aware of Shay’s origins—it was pretty much impossible to hide—so they explained it to him without wondering why he didn’t know something common.

It was a fact that had been overlooked in his brief education in the village. It had been made even more confusing when Shay said he didn’t have any resistances. After a brief conversation, he learned that they were actually the passive parts of his sub-skills.

With that revelation, Shay spent what time he could using his space magic on his own body. He could still only move small objects around a bit, so he used it on his fingers.

He also got a little fighting experience against a weak monster that approached. It was another rabbit like the first one he had killed, except this one also had spines and a long tail. The escorts knew he wanted to be a mercenary, so they let him take this one.

He had to dodge and jump around a lot, and got some nasty scratches on his legs and left arm. None of his magic abilities were powerful enough to attack with, so he used his [Mental] and [Pain] adaptations to fight better.

With a lucky kick, he managed to knock it sideways onto the ground, then he rushed over and snapped its neck before something else could happen.

When it was over, the helpful escort from before commented, “About as well as you could’ve done with your level, I suppose. Next time, stomp on it, though. Your neck was less than a meter from those claws, and if it hadn’t been disoriented, it could’ve been deadly.”

Shay froze. “A-Ah… Yeah, that’s a really good point.”

“You said there was no magic back in your world? What were monsters like there?”

He wrapped his wounds in gauze, applying his healing sub-skill to them as he did so. In its current state, it hardly did anything. There wasn’t a resistance skill against healing magic, so he hadn’t known at first if it was even possible to improve his sub-skill by using it on himself when he wasn’t injured. As he tested it, he found that it did still increase, though at an even slower rate than his space sub-skill.

“There wasn’t any magic, no. As for monsters… Well, I guess you could call animals monsters, but without magic, they were much weaker and usually didn’t attack humans. I guess there were some exceptions, but they were rare.”

“Huh. Well, you’ve obviously had some kind of combat training, but it seems… How should I put it? Docile, perhaps?”

“Without the threat of being killed by someone or something in our daily lives, combat training of any kind was unnecessary. What I learned was purely recreational.”

The mercenary escort shook their head in bewilderment. “So strange… Well, where you’re going, you’ll unlearn that quick.”

Shay nodded. “That’s the plan, yes.”

Shay watched as they carved up the rabbit for dinner, but let the experts do their job without interfering. When that was done, he sat down to check his gains.

He had been avoiding looking at his Status all the time, because seeing the numbers crawl up so slowly was painful, but now was a good opportunity to see what the past three weeks had done for him.

—

With great effort, you have increased your base Flow stat by 1, raising it up to 5.

Shay Bryant Williams

Level: 13

 

Points: 4

Body: 27
Dexterity: 21
Flow: 27

Health: 43 / 75
Stamina: 40 / 69
Mana: 19 / 78

 

Skills:
[Adaptation]

 

[Adaptation] Sub-skills:
[Earth]: 0.2%
[Fire]: 1.4%
[Healing]: 1.5%
[Mental]: 53.7% (Selected, change available.)
[Pain]: 2.3%
[Poison]: 1.1%
[Space]: 4.6%
[Water]: 2.7%

—

Shay smiled at the progress.

That’s pretty good, I think? The free Flow point is good, too. Speaking of, all my points will go there again.

He put his 4 free points into Flow to increase it once again.

—

Flow: 31

Mana: 19 / 86

—

Nice.

He was feeling a sort of internal fatigue from all the mana expenditure, making him once again appreciate just how much effort Elna had put into creating his body. Even if Shay’s mana dropped to zero, it still wouldn’t affect him like that. Hers had dropped all the way to zero, and then started eating away at her health and stamina, too, because she had continued using magic beyond her limit. It was kind of scary to think about.

His stats looking quite low right now would have also been scary had he not been aware of the fact that they don’t automatically fill up all the way upon leveling up. Essentially, the size of his container increased, but it hadn’t been filled to full for him.

Looking at his [Mental] sub-skill again, he sighed.

While it’s true that it’s increasing at double the rate of my other sub-skill—because that’s just how my Skill works—the fact that it has to constantly increase to offset the dysphoria is disheartening.

Come to think of it, I haven’t been bothered as much by my body recently. It still really fucking sucks, but it’s been some time now since I last cried over it.

It’s fucked up to admit, but my mind is adapting to it, thanks to the Skill. It’s helpful, but I never gave permission to anyone to alter my mind like this.

Shay knew that, realistically, even if he had been offered to take a Skill other than [Adaptation], he still would’ve chosen it. The dysphoria had been so immensely debilitating, and the Skill just suited him in general. But he hadn’t chosen it was the issue. He didn’t want to be comfortable in this body, he wanted to be in his actual body.

There’s nothing I can do about it, though…

Well, now that I’m thinking about it, I can tell my perception of my body is changing. It’s gradually like… How would Vicky put it? Like my gender identity isn’t as prevalent? Something like that?

He decided to focus on healing his wounds rather than whatever was going on in his head. His pants had been torn by the claws, and they, along with his shirt, had blood all over them.

They were cheap, anyway. I’ll just have to be careful with my remaining clothes until I can get more.

Luckily, they were only a couple more days out from his destination. They had made a couple stops as they traveled so the peddler could do his thing, but the end of the trip was just ahead.

The city he was heading for, Marlonn, was a trading hub of the Arvace Kingdom. There was a sort of training center there that taught prospective new mercenaries.

There, he would learn real combat rather than recreational martial arts. He would also learn about monsters, plants, materials and such.

Leanor’s daggers were nasty, but I knew she wasn’t trying to seriously injure me. She only really got me that one time. Even if she’s absurdly strong and fast, she’s pretty predictable.

It’s unbelievable that I just fought to the death with a rabbit, though. I’m aware that it was, in fact, a deadly monster, but going from facing human opponents to fighting a rabbit just feels wrong.

Well, I’ll be there soon. I’m making progress.

Shay smiled again at the positive feeling. Whatever life had in store for him here, he would face it head-on.