Luke Everhart
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Chapter 137 - Affinity Assessment (Part 1)
🕑 Added 2024-12-18 11:31:01 +0000 UTCAfter lunch, which was another feast and celebration of the marvels of the outside world, and which saw them introduced to a dish called stew with mash, bread rolls, colorful things called fruits and many more glasses of water all around, the party now found themselves seated in a much smaller room, with individual tables and chairs, and waiting for their turn on the affinity assessment, which was being conducted on a room a few doors down that same corridor.
“Kur’s party?” a short, completely bald and neon green man asked from the door. There wasn’t a speck of any other color on him other than the brown and black in his uniform. His sleek air was a different shade of neon green. His eyes were entirely green and even the quick smile he flashed them with showed nothing but green teeth. He seemed to be a more slender and taller version of a lengos.
A green lengos? Nar thought, trying not to stare.
“Here?” Kur said, raising his hand.
“Follow me, please.”
The eight of them scrambled to follow after the green man as he disappeared without waiting for them. They found him just a few feet down the corridor, waiting in front of another door, this one a closed one.
“So,” he started, as they approached him. “We’re about to get you all tested for your affinities. This simply means that we want to know what flavor, or type, is your aura, so to speak, as this will greatly impact your paths and training. The assessment is not painful and you don’t really need to do anything. However, I need to ask you whether you all want to take the assessment together, as a party, or separately,” he said, looking from one to another. “This is because your affinity, or the process of unlocking it, is, in essence, the process of discovering yourselves. And that can be something that you are not comfortable having exposed as simply as that. For example, earlier today, we had someone come in with an affinity for lying.”
“Crystal…” Kur breathed. “That’s a possible affinity?”
“An affinity can be anything, really,” the man explained. “And lying is not an inherently evil affinity, of course. At the end of the day, an affinity is what you choose to do with it, but things did get a little awkward with his party…”
“And what happens if one of us gets such an affinity?” Gad asked.
“Nothing. Like I said, it’s up to you how you use your affinities. Inherently “evil” affinities are extremely rare, as are purely “good” affinities, as you might consider them. And in response to your probable follow up question, you will need to tell your party about your affinity eventually, even if you choose to go in alone now. However, going alone does spare everyone the… Potentially unpleasant experience of such affinities unlocking.”
“Unpleasant?” Viy whispered.
“And can you change your affinity?” Cen asked, with a slight tremor in her voice. “What if you don’t… What if you don’t like what you get?”
The man considered the caster for a moment.
“Well, it depends…”
“On what?” Gad asked, for all of them.
He shrugged.
“On many things,” he said. “It depends on your aura, your history, your mental state, everything… And of course, it depends on what affinity it is, and how deeply entrenched it is within you. True affinities cannot be changed, while others are just masking or blocking the real affinity from being revealed. But it truly is a complicated topic, and it's best reserved for discussing it with your instructors afterwards. That is, in case you don’t like your affinity of course.”
“I see…” Gad said.
“The assessor will explain more, but I still need to know if you would rather take the test together or alone.”
Kur’s eyebrows rose, and he considered his party.
“I don’t mind,” Gad said.
“Yup, whatever’s good,” Tuk said.
Nar shrugged in reply. He had nothing to hide. At least, he didn’t think he did. However, as for the other four, Mul, Cen, Jul and Viy, they seemed a bit more reluctant.
“If you guys prefer, we can do it alone, there’s no pressure,” Kur said, speaking softly in the quiet corridor. “But know this: whatever your affinity turns out to be, there will be no judgment, and we’ll make it work, just like we’ve always done, okay? So don’t worry about it.”
Cen sighed and looked up at the party leader. “I… I don’t want to have anything to hide. After that time, I… I’ve been honest and straight about everything. And I want to continue doing it. I don’t want any secrets between me and you guys.”
“I-I think the same!” Jul said. “I also don’t want to have any secrets. And to be b-braver!”
Nar smiled and nodded at her, and she smiled shyly back.
“As for me, you all know I’ve got a temper,” Mul said, looking up but not at anyone’s face. “So, whatever comes, it’ll probably not be a surprise...”
“Yeah, definitely not,” Tuk said, chuckling. “But that’s alright. We like you just the way you are.”
“Whatever…” Mul muttered, looking back down at his feet.
And with that, there was only person one left.
“Viy?” Gad asked. “Do you want to go in alone?”
The spear woman shook her head. “I don’t want to be alone.”
Cen reached up and grabbed her hand, and squeezed it.
“You aren’t, and you won’t be,” she told Viy.
“We’re all with you,” Gad added.
Kur looked at Viy, and eventually, she nodded at him.
“Alright, follow me then,” the man said, and the door opened to let him enter.
The party filtered in after him, and Nar followed behind Jul, the last in the line.
Within, Nar paused to examine the room they found themselves in.
Instead of the red brown metal that seemed to be what the ship had been majorly built off, this room was covered in differently sized, dark gray metal, square plates. At its center, stood a pedestal of some kind, with a sphere atop it.
Within it, shifted a gray smokiness that shimmered of its own accord.
“All together,” the man said, to the woman that was on all fours at the base of the pedestal.
She had a pair of long, sharp pliers in one hand, and she was tinkering away at something inside the base of the pedestal.
The room wasn’t very bright, and despite it not being very big either, Nar wasn’t able to tell what lay within the strange device.
“Thank you, Gharuhkl,” she said, not looking up from her work. “Okay, my name’s Lut, and I’ll be your affinity accessor this afternoon. So, come on closer guys, around me. And don’t worry, it doesn’t bite.”
They stepped forward, cautiously, despite her words, and formed a circle around Lut and the pedestal.
“Alright, this is going to be simple,” she said. “One by one, you’re going to be touching the orb up top of this machine. If your affinity is ready to be unlocked, the gray substance inside the orb will change to reflect it. Now, in order for that to happen, you yourselves must already have an in-depth understanding of yourselves, your goals and dreams, wants and dislikes and basically, of who you are as a person. If you don’t know this yet, the affinity assessor should at least give us some clues towards the most likely affinities… Ah! Gotcha!”
She blew into the hole in the device, forcibly, twice, and then closed the panel on whatever she had been working on. Finally, she stood up.
She was about Jul’s height, with short silver hair and dark lilac skin. Her eyes were fully composed of concentric, shimmering dark blue lines and inky blackness, and instead of eyebrows, she had a darker pigmentation over her eyes. Her lower lip was larger than the top one, and it came out a little, overtaking the top lip.
“So, affinities are very important,” she explained, putting away her tools into presumably her own inventory. “While you are what you do defines your attribute and skill gains, your affinities are the specification of the path, so to say, and what opens up the floor to infinite variation amongst combat classes. For instance, the lengos there has red irises, and that usually means a path of anger. However, that can manifest in many different ways, and will be dependent on your affinity.”
The last part she delivered straight to Mul, and when he didn’t say anything, she arched a fleshy eyebrow at him, which to Nar, was an all too familiar and at the same time somehow unfamiliar sight.
“What? No protests? No denials?” she asked, looking down at Mul.
“I know myself,” Mul said with a shrug. “I don’t need to deny it or hide it.”
Lut let out a low whistle. “Confident. I like that. Why don’t you go first then?”
Mul shrugged again. “Sure.”
Lut pulled out a metal cylinder from her inventory, and extended it into the same type of screen that Nar had seen the healer use. As she tapped on it, Nar wondered if it was the same thing.
Probably is, he thought, watching the pedestal lowering into the floor, to get the orb at a more comfortable height for Mul.
“Just grab on to it,” she said. “You don’t have to do anything at all. Oh, you might feel something. And it might be painful. But that’s it.”
“Got it,” Mul said, and placed his hands around the orb without hesitation.
“Alright, and…Start!” she said, with a final tap on her screen.
Almost immediately, the gray substance burst into light, causing them all to shield their eyes.
“What in the pile is that?” Mul asked loudly, looking away from the orb.
“Just wait,” Lut said.
Nar peaked in between his fingers, and saw that the light had dimmed to a more bearable level. He lowered his hands and leaned forward to get a better look.
Within the orb, the bright gray light slowly changed color, adopting an ever-shifting bright orange and yellow color. The two of them competed to dominate the sphere, and then, when that seemed to prove impossible, they fought to separate from one another, and materialize independently.
Nar, standing directly opposite Mul, lifted his eyes from the light show to look at the brawler. Mul stared at the display of light and color in between his hands with a transfixed look, his mouth dropped slightly ajar, his eyes reflecting not its usual red color, but that of the bright orange and yellow before him.
It was as if, at that moment, there was nothing else but that little orb in his hands, drawing upon…
What? Nar wondered, raising a hand to his chest without realizing it. It felt as though a dull ache echoed dimly from deep within.
A gap.
A hunger.
A need.
Just what is aura?
Nurse Kit had mentioned something about channels being like veins, but for his soul, but he had been too wrecked to properly consider the implications of what that meant.
Does this mean that aura comes from the soul, then? He wondered, staring transfixed at the light. But what does that even mean?
Even after using it as extensively as he had, he still didn’t know what it was.
Was it a part of him? Yes. Undeniably so. But what exactly was it? And where did this new affinity now fit in? And how did it measure up against aether, the pursuit of which he had finally resolved to abandon but still yearned to understand.
Whatever aura or affinity was, whatever they would teach and reveal to him, Nar understood at least one thing. He craved this moment that Mul was having. He craved to know. To understand just what it was that defined him.
To truly know oneself… It was a thought as exhilarating as it was terrifying.
Thinking back on it now, Cen, Viy and Jul were not the only ones who had or still harbored secrets. He himself had carried weighty and unspoken thoughts.
The fact that he had been an Unclean did not weigh him anymore, but the fact that he had long considered abandoning his party did. Even if in the name of saving his dad, had Jul not intervened to stop his madness at the very end…
I don’t even want to think about it, Nar thought, feeling his aura quaking with the grief of what he had almost done. He swallowed dryly and shook his head. In the end, he had done the right thing. But would he ever forget? Could he? Should he?
“It's getting warmer,” Jul whispered, drawing Nar away from the dark pit around which he had been slowly drifting, tethering ever so slowly into it.
Yanking his eyes from the orb, where the lights were even now solidifying into shapes, Nar noticed the warm glow now basking him from in-between Mul’s hands. His face glowed with an undeniable heat that reached deep through his skin, to warm his very bones with a sensation that was both lulling and comforting.
Then the orb blazed once more, and they all cried in surprise and pain.
The hand Nar raised to cover his face burned under an intense heat that sought to sear through his skin, flesh and bones. A heat that hungered to devour him. To blast him to smithereens. To let go. To unleash its anger and rage upon all those who had done nothing but deny him the peace of mind he had always sought!
Had it truly been that much to ask, to not be compared to his sister his entire life? To simply be left alone at least? Must they punish him too? Must they take away his food and drink, and leave him out to…
“And… That’s enough,” a voice cut through the onslaught of emotion.
The heat was gone so quickly it was as though it had never even been there in the first place.
Nar grit his jaw and clenched his fists. His heart both ached and raged, echoing the emotions and thoughts that had assailed him.
“Everyone, let’s take a deep breath,” the same voice said again. Lut, Nar realized. “They aren’t your emotions. They’re Mul’s.”
Nar blinked, dazed, and took a shaky breath. Besides him, Jul reached out to his arm to stabilize herself, and he held on to her for mutual support.
“What the fuck was that?” Tuk whispered, leaning on Gad’s shoulder. “I was ready to kill someone!”
“Well, that’s definitely a rage path,” Lut said, seemingly unfazed as she tapped on her screen. “And with an affinity as explosive as fire, no less.”
“F-Fire?” Mul asked, his voice hoarse. “You mean… Like magic?”
Magic! Nar thought, almost leaping in place.
However, Lut shook her head and wiggled her fingers in the air. “Fire. Hot. Burning. Hungry and consuming and explosive, yes. But not magic. Affinity. And the poster example for a rage path too.”
“The what?” Kur asked, speaking for all of them.
However, before Lut could explain, Cen leaped forward and held onto Mul.
“Oh Mul…” she cried into his ear. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”
Mul closed his arms around his sister. He still looked dazed, as though his eyes still saw the orb and not the room or the people around him, but a small smile adorned his lips.
“Sorry for what, you silly?” he asked Cen. “You’ve never done anything wrong, and you always stood up for me. I remember they punished you too for it, a few times.”
“I should’ve done something! I should’ve…”
Mul snorted gently. “Done what? There was nothing we could’ve done. It was not our life. They were not our choices. So, don’t worry about it, okay? It’s all in the past.”
Lut cleared her throat. “Perhaps you two would like to talk by the corner there. Not meaning to be rude, but I'll be in trouble if I don’t stick to the schedule…”
Mul looked up to the affinity assessor and Nar, and the entire party. Nar grimaced, waiting for the brawler to blow up at her.
Instead, he just gave her a firm nod and, taking Cen by the hand, took her to the side.
He really isn’t unreasonable, Nar thought, watching them go.
It was a much different Mul that now walked with them, compared to the one that had first exited the cubeplant and had nearly gotten them all killed at the end of the tutorial.
And I trust him. Just as much as everyone in the party, Nar thought, smiling as the twins embraced each other. And considering the stuff I just felt, maybe we all need to cut the man some slack…
Comments
Jordan Whitton
These are people who lived such traumatized and emotionally secluded lives, they're going through a process of self discovery. You'd be a blubbering mess too if you were experiencing your younger brother or sisters emotional trauma first hand. If your parents starved them, beat them, and always told them they were not enough. I appreciate the emotional insight. It fleshes the characters out and gives insight into them. Cen has her own demons and even though she looked out for her brother, she never truly understood the depths of what he went through. Here she finally got to experience his rage, how he internalized the abuse and trauma. These people are also under educated and likely lack proper responses to emotional situations. Their society in the plans was much more primitive and practically based. I'd like to know what about this makes you so deeply uncomfortable? It feels like more of a personal thing than a poor writing thing.
Lucas Onderwater
Hey there, thanks for the comment! And I'm sorry to hear that! 😔 The party interactions and the whole side and aspect of human emotion is something that is very key to the story. But I'll be doing a big edit of the books soon, and I'll keep what you said in mind to see if there's any improvements that can be made!
Neo
Really liking the story but this constant crying and cringey dialogue between the party is really getting on my nerves tbh
Lucas Onderwater
Thank you! Glad you like it! 😊
Gabriel Victor
The web of relationships within the party is a beautiful thing to see, good job man!
Lucas Onderwater
Hey, I'm really happy to hear that!! And the gains are coming soon. And there should be some good/interesting stuff in there!
Lucas Onderwater
Hey! Thank you so much! I'll message you later today!
Bacon Macleod
This shit absolutely slaps, giving you a shout out on RR with my fic tomorrow
Cursed artichoke
Don’t worry about it I love the story so far I’m just excited to see what he’s gonna get
Lucas Onderwater
Fair point! I guess it really depends on what's going on at the moment... If there's a quiet downtime right after the gains, then he'll look into them straight away. I guess in this case, he just woke up in sickbay and still tired from the Ceremony he went straight to bed... Then day 1 has just been non-stop stuff coming at him since he woke up. But once he gets a quiet spot, he'll look into it!
Tessellae
Nar has never been that interested in his interface gains, he always waits a handful of chapters. I've assumed it's a deliberate choice
Bookworm bibliophile
Right now I am more excited to see the affinity
Lucas Onderwater
I'm really sorry! I now realize that those gains should have come up sooner! It's just that when I was writing these chapters, it made sense at the time to deal with all the stuff that was going on first, and I didn't find a proper place for the gains to get the attention they deserved. And it became fully integrated in the story like that, so it can't be changed without a massive edit. I've merged one of the chapters, and the gains will come on Sunday. And it will be a full chapter dedicated to the gains, so I really hope it's worth the wait! Again, I really apologize for the delay! T-T
Cursed artichoke
Damn when are we gonna see the rewards from the ceremony
