Misfit’s Journey

After all of the new things had been dealt with and Veraxia confessed the actions she took behind the scenes, the mood turned awkward and there was only silence. There was no way I would be able to endure the next hours of doing nothing without doing anything, so shamelessly abusing Veraxia’s guilt, I decided this would be a great opportunity to finally clear a few things up that I was curious about.

After talking about my own, I got curious, but what species are you part of?

Beside being certain that she was not a human, I had no clue what she was. For one because I did not knew other species capable of conversation, but also because I had yet to see her in person.

I didn’t know much about Veraxia, but she entrusted me her life and indirectly, my own life depended on her at the moment, so I figured we might as well get to know each other a bit more. It felt a little unfair that she knew a lot about me, while I only knew her name. Through our talks, I got a bit of an idea about her personality, but most of them were focusing on me and not her.

And it seemed that thanks to the situation, Veraxia was very willing to answer.

“I am a Fangga. We are forest spirits that, at a young age, bind themselves to a certain tree. From then on, we live and grow together with that tree until either of us dies. The trees themselves function as our homes and we create lairs inside to lure in prey that we can then devour.”

So she was not a hunter, but rather someone who waited for her prey to come of their own volition. To eat them once they… Wait a second.

Before I could form another thought, Veraxia’s voice cut in.

“No, I do not intent to eat you.”

I didn’t say anything.

“But you were thinking about it.”

Well, that was true, but she basically convinced me to stay in her lair and go in even deeper than I already was, so getting a little suspicious was—in my unbiased opinion— a completely sane reaction. But after all the help she provided me with, it really did seem unlikely that she planned to eat me.

On another note, did that mean she let the Exapoda in to eat them, but ended up getting the tables turned on her? Judging by the silence in my head, it seemed like I hit the nail on the hat. And as this realization sank in, I came to a concerning conclusion. Was I underestimating the Exapoda? Were they actually stronger than I had imagined?

“Okay, I am going to clarify this just once, but the Exapoda have not overpowered me, nor are they particularly strong. I have explained to you how me and the tree are connected. The Exapoda, after massacring the other creatures, began to eat away at my tree, which is essentially me, just without a lot of vitality, defense magic and other tricks. It cannot defend itself, but if it dies, I die with it, so I have to expend a lot of my powers to keep the Exapoda at bay at different locations.”

Having your life bound to an object sounded terribly inconvenient and in her case, it even meant her possible demise. It seemed kind of foolish, especially if defending the tree would make it impossible to actually repel the attackers, but there might be other reasons for doing such a thing.

Why would you bind yourself to a tree if you are strong? Isn’t it just holding you back and the reason for your current situation?

“You know, if one of my sisters heard that, they might have grated you into dust on their trunks, but since my life depends on you right now, I will refrain from doing so.”

An unexpected chill ran down my spine as I unconsciously straightened my back, sending a small wave of pain through me.

“But knowing your background, I can forgive a little ignorance. You see, trees are symbols of nature, products of the Great Mother’s creation. In binding us to one, we strengthen the connection between us and the Mother, which in turn gives us many benefits.”

I had no clue who or what the “great mother” was, but she sounded important. Also, it seemed like the bond with the tree actually gave her strength, so it was not as useless as I thought. Still, it seemed like an annoying price to pay for power. I, for one, definitely wouldn’t want to be bound to protect something that would hinder me. Not that I would say or think that out loud again after seeing Veraxia’s reaction.

“Now, I revealed quite a lot about my kin—more than I probably should have. Now it is my turn, tell me, how come a fledgling in life such as you has a body covered in scars and injuries? And how did you stumble upon my lair?”

Given the sudden change in her mood and tone of voice, I decided against protesting that matter. Instead, I complied and decided to tell her about my past, the clan, meeting Seth and his human group and how I through some bizarre happenings ended up in the forest. At first, I hesitated to share the less glorious parts of my life, but in the end Veraxia and I would spent a lot of time together, so why not?

As I begun my tale, I found it almost impossible to stop. It was as if I was unable to stop myself from pouring out my frustration and anger, because it just felt so… refreshing. And I realized that it was actually the first time I really sat down and talked to someone about this kind of thing.

As time passed, I was totally engrossed in our conversation. At some point, I looked down at myself and noticed that I was no longer bleeding or about to lose some organs. The absence of pain was another indicator that I was fully healed, although Pain Tolerance certainly did its part, too.

However, all that lying around had left me quite stiff and since I pumped all my mana into Regeneration, my body felt quite heavy and sluggish. Ignoring these things, I pushed myself up into a sitting position and examined my body.

All of my wounds were gone, and even my pale foot had regained its color. Which was strange, because before I couldn’t heal it completely. Beside that, my injuries had left behind no scars, even though they were graver than some of the injuries whose scars still remained on my body. My fingers also regrew without a problem.

Looking at my palms and feet, the wounds left behind by the nails were also gone and even though it was hard to make out in the mess, the scar left behind by the stab wound on my stomach was also gone. So leaving the gross and dirty state of my body aside, it was in a better shape than expected, but I was still curious.

Why did they heal suddenly?

“I think I can answer that for you. According to your story, you got your regeneration skill only recently right?”

Yes, I affirmed with a nod.

“You see, there is actually a difference between skills of regenerative and healing basis. Regeneration skills reinforce natural healing processes. On the other hand, healing is not restricted by your body and is capable of healing what your body normally wouldn’t be able to heal.

“Normally, regeneration can remove scars or regrow limbs, as you have seen, but only because you mess with the already ongoing healing process. In case of older scars, they are no longer recognized as abnormalities by your body and it gave up on healing them.”

So unless I get a healing skill, I my skin will remain as fucked up as it is?

The rules of regeneration and healing skills seemed very vague, but I definitely understood that I would be unable to restore my body to a state before the torture happened. That in itself, did not bother me. While I appreciated my looks, it wasn’t like I cared much about these scars because they were blemishes on my skin. No, I loathed them, because they were proof of the clan’s atrocities.

Before I could fall into a deep rage, a gentle voice rung in my head.

“You could also just find someone with a healing skill, although convincing them to heal you will be another thing. That being said, you could always just evolve and wish the scars away.”

Wait, what’s an evolution?

“Once an individual, irrespective of species, reaches Species level 100 they unlock the ability to evolve into a better version of themselves. Most of the times, it only involves more stat bonuses, better aptitudes or skills, but it can also alter an individuals outer appearance to some degree as long as the wish is reasonable—for example the removal of a scar.”

Wait, so once someone reaches level 100, they get even stronger? If that was true, the difference between me and Malik just spiked up quite a bit again. Damnit, as if classes weren’t enough.

Just out of curiosity, but what do humans evolve into?

“In most cases, just into a better human. They are so similar that they don’t even have a different name. They are literally just called humans. Although there are different human races that specialize in different aspects or are adapted to certain environments.”

So Malik was likely still a human. This meant he still had a time limit to his life. As for my own evolution? Considering I didn’t even know what I was right now, it seemed useless to think about what I would turn into.

Well, either way, thinking about these things now would just waste my time. I was far from confronting him and should rather focus on what is in front of me. In other words, it was finally time to test my new skills.

Unfortunately, given my current mana situation, I did not have the leeway to freely spent my mana. At the moment, I was a little about a hundred, which was by no means a lot and actually caused me to me nauseous and tired.

Luckily, my new Unique Skill functioned without mana, so I could test it out while waiting for my mana to recover. It might have been better to just rest, but frankly, I was getting bored after all this lazing around and the curiosity for my new skills was killing me.

Looking to my left, the corpse of the Exapoda Drone was still lying beside me and for the first time, I noticed that I was sitting in a half-dried puddle of blue blood. Slowly getting on my feet, I wobbled away from the insect corps a little. Looking down at myself, my body was still a blue mess, even if my injuries were gone. Old specks of my dried blood were still here and there and there were more blue spots on my skin than there was actual skin. Admittedly, the blue in my hair looked kind of cool, but unfortunately it was also tangled, sticky and simply disgusting. I tried to untangle it at least a little bit, but it quickly became clear that without water, I wouldn’t be getting anywhere.

Ignoring my hair for now, I came to a halt a decent distance away from the corpse, hunched over and panted heavily. I drew a deep breath to calm myself and get my breathing under control, straightened my back and exhaled deeply.

I did not remember my exhaustion to be this severe with a tenth of my mana, but there was nothing I could do about it. Once I had calmed my rapid heart, I focused on activating my new skill.

Before long, black mist erupted from my arms. Another, thinner, layer of golden mist wrapped around it and slowly spread all over my body. Visually, it looked like shadows hulled my body, darkening all around me. The was transparent, yet the colors were bizarrely strong and vivid.

When moving my arms around, the mist stuck to my body, following along with my movement, however, unlike with my mana, my aura did not feel like it was actually there. Its presence was far more abstract than that of my mana. It was a bit of a letdown, to be honest.

Basically, the skill just coated me in mist, at least that was all I got from this test. Also, considering I would probably be able to produce similar effects using my mana only furthered my disappointment.

“Auras are very complex, if not as complex as mana itself. They are more accessible, but they also need more time to cultivate. In its early stages, it does nothing more than reinforce your presence a little, which for now, is rather detrimental.”

Why?

“Because it makes your presence clearer, more obvious and thus, easier to detect you. Species whose physical senses are limited or who are unintelligent tend to develop a sensitivity to the supernatural and metaphysical.”

So you mean to say that they might notice my aura if I kept the skill active?

“Pretty much, yes. If you were stronger, it would function as deterrence, but since your aura is weak, they will recognize you as prey and hunt you down.”

Without a second thought, I deactivated my aura and watched as the black and golden mist dissipated. We were just talking in theory, but better be safe than sorry. Although I would have preferred if Veraxia had told me beforehand that this skill was potentially attracting more enemies.

If auras can scare of those weaker than you, why did you not use it to drive out the Exapoda?

She told me about her fancy tree bond, but maybe I had overestimated the kind of power she got from that?

“Auras reinforce presences, but I couldn’t actually do much against them and they quickly understood that I was bluffing. Instead, I hid my presence and hid myself, so that I would only need to worry about one of my bodies.”

Like I said, this bond of hers just wasn’t convenient. Because she was now forced to hide from a weaker opponent. If it weren’t for me, her death would have been unavoidable and even now it was still possible that I would die in my attempt to help her.

Naturally, I kept this opinion to myself as much as possible and assured Veraxia that I had no intent to argue about it. We couldn’t change this anyway, so I had to go rescue her either way.

With that said, some time passed and my mana looked much better than before. My exhaustion was mostly gone and I judged that it was finally time to give my other skills a shot. And then, things were going to get serious.