Tyler Kimball - Lessgently
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Pallesia: Chapter 112 - Busy.
🕑 Added 2024-02-21 18:11:31 +0000 UTCLee was going to be exceedingly busy in the following two weeks. He would have to juggle his time between enchanting, teaching, spellcraft, and healing as he got his plan underway. There would be an extremely tough and busy few months ahead for him, but the longer he waited, the harder it would be.
First, if he wanted to spread his healing throughout Thexis, he needed to have enough healers around so that the Healer’s Sanctum lost its hold on its monopoly. They would act; he knew they would act. It was just a matter of how soon they caught wind of him and how fast they were to devise a plan.
Since day one of learning about how the healers in Thexis went about their business, Lee knew he wouldn’t be welcome. He didn’t expect there to be some organization with all the healers in it, but he honestly should have seen this coming.
While Lee wasn’t the most knowledgeable about many things, nor would he claim to be, he did go to college to learn about business. Though he never actually finished, he still learned a lot about how economics worked. Honestly, even without any college education, it was easy to understand how things would play out.
Even going by simple supply and demand, everything made sense.
Currently, a small subset of healers are in very high demand. There is a war going on, and a lot of people need healing, but there aren’t enough healers to go around. This creates a scenario where the healers charge exorbitant prices so that their workload is lessened, and they can earn more because of their exclusivity. Even without bringing up a host of other factors like their respect and semi-nobility, this was already a disaster.
Typically, the easiest solution to a problem like this is for someone to break into the market and become competitive against the price. Each one wanted the business of the other, effectively lowering the price of healing down as they both battled for business.
The problem is… There would need to be a lot of new healers to satisfy the demand, and you cannot create competition in this scenario unless you’re Lee. Also, the ones who want to lower the price and accessibility of healing are Lee and non-healers.
The Healer’s Sanctum is more than happy to keep its millennia-old monopoly. So, Lee needs to act quickly and stay under their radar before they catch wind and try to squeeze their iron grip down upon him.
Luckily for him, the demand for healers is so significant that he can easily persuade others to join his side. He wanted two leading organizations on his side: the Adventurer’s Guild and the military. Both are combat-oriented and in dire need of healers, providing Lee with defense and offense if he and the sanctum ever come to blows.
The Adventurer’s Guild wanted healers to heal their wounded after slaying monsters, and the military needed healers for their ongoing war. Lee would be shocked if either of them sided with the Healer’s Sanctum when his offering was too good to pass up.
Healers of their own, for minimal to no cost.
For the military, he was planning on teaching them in Felispar. But adventurers were around, and more were coming.
Immediately, Lee sought out every single spellcaster with the Earth and Light affinities and offered to teach them healing magic once they learned the Life affinity. Most were obviously skeptical, but showing off Em casting healing magic and revealing his second title did him some favors.
While he waited for those who could learn Life to gain the affinity, Lee worked on both his own magic and enchanting.
His own magic was easier, as he basically cheated with Arcane Synthesis…
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Lee sat frustrated in the small forest clearing he usually ‘trained’ in with both Em and Jeremy. Em’s presence was fine, but Jeremy had been becoming a bother.
“You know… you won’t actually see anything happening, Jeremy. You’d need mana sense to see anything, I think.” Lee said, trying his best to subtle shoo him away.
“He is correct, Jeremy. You don’t need to be here for this, but I do. I need to be able to see what I will steal later on down the line.” Em said regally, without a single hint of shame.
Lee slowly cocked his head up to blankly stare at Em. The sheer audacity of that statement never ceased to amaze him.
Jeremy finished pacing and crossed his arms. “It’s my duty and responsibility to watch over you, incase you run into trouble.”
Lee transferred his blank stare to Jeremy, also uncomprehending the audacity of that statement. “Jeremy, I could wipe you off the face of this planet in less than two seconds. You’re not protecting me. I’m protecting you.”
Too tired to care, Lee gave in. “Anyways, just stand there and watch, I guess.”
Lee plopped down onto the grass and sat crosslegged in the small clearing. Using Arcane Synthesis, Lee focused on using Earth and Darkness together to create a new affinity.
Firm Earth mana surged down his right arm, and inescapable Dark flowed down his left. Holding out his hands and cupping them together, they met in his palms, creating a sickening black and green swirl of…
Lee let the mana subside and gave Em a thumbs up. “I was right. It’s death.”
Em squealed like a little girl, slamming her legs into the earth and tearing up chunks in her excitement. She stilled once she remembered Jeremy was around and stuck her nose up into the air, sniffing haughtily and speaking down to him. “It is done, and it is now stolen.”
Lee pushed himself off the ground as he spoke. “It’s not stealing if I’m letting you know about it.”
Jeremy just looked around, confused, unaware that anything had happened. Lee thought it was weird how nobody ever mentioned his silvery life mana not being present when he healed with his ability, Healer’s Touch, but it all made sense when he realized that most people couldn’t even see his mana to begin with.
While yes, they could obviously see a towering white-tipped water wall or large block of ice, they couldn’t see the mana that created it. Healing was in the body, which hid the effect of his spells.
“Well, incase I was right—which I was, I had a little spell already thought out.” Lee said as he made a finger gun, aiming toward a distance tree.
Focusing on the sickly feeling Death mana, he pooled a small amount of it into the tip of his index finger. He condensed the pooling mana into a small marble and, once finished, launched it forward. From his finger, the small marble of Death mana shot out like a bullet, leaving a black and dark green trail of mana in its wake. Once the bullet hit the tree, it didn’t puncture it or cause any physical harm. Instead, the bark rapidly shifted from a healthy brown to a malnourished gray, into a rotten black.
\Spell Created!
Spell Name: Death Bolt.
Spell Description: Shoot forth a condensed orb of Death mana, which will decay living matter. When hitting non-organic matter, this spell has unique effects. When hitting organic matter, said matter will decompose, losing life.
The lower level the target, the more damaging the effects. In some cases, causing instant death.
Cost: 7 MP
Em hurried up to the now-blackened three-foot section of the tree, watching carefully as blackened bits fell free toward the ground, decaying the grass underneath. She scrapped her metallic hand against the blackened bark and hissed at the touch.
Lee rushed forward and smacked her hand away, causing her arm to move less than two inches and letting Lee experience what it feels like to smack near immovable metal… hard.
As he shook his hand and winced, regretting his decision to smack her hand way, he spoke. “Let’s not touch untested Death mana with our bodies…”
Em squinted at the tree, ignoring his remark. “I suggest a continuous beam. Much more effective in my opinion. I don’t want that measly orb—Oh! Do a giant orb of it. Let it spool out in a wave on landing. That’ll do some damage.”
Jeremy interrupted. “Let’s not create some death mana environment in the middle of the forest.”
Lee observed the still decaying bark, watching it slowly spread along the towering tree. “Yeah, I agree. Maybe later. C’mon Em.”
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After a quick trip into the village, Lee returned and sat next to the evergrowing pile of failed enchantments by his furs. Kendri ruefully shook his head as he cut up vegetables to throw into a pot for dinner.
Lee glared his way as he withdrew his new purchases from his Hidden Cache: knives, daggers, arrows, and even some small cloth bags.
Kendri was opening his mouth to say something, but Lee raised a hand to cut him off. “I’m close. I’ll get it this time.”
Kendri shrugged and slowly moved his leaning spear back toward his tent.
Glancing toward his failed experiments, Lee’s mood soured. The past few days had been… expensive. After hundreds of attempts at enchanting a single piece of working equipment, he hadn’t succeeded once. He felt like he was close. There was a step he was missing, but for his life, he couldn’t figure out what it was.
He had cleaned up the glyphs, perfected his handwriting, thoroughly infused the mana-filled glyphs into the object, condensed said glyph lines, and thickened it with as much mana as he could… but everything failed.
He immediately got to work on some of the arrows he had bought, hoping that the sheer number of them could at least warm him up, or give him some insight as he worked his way through the quiver.
Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. Onward and onwards, he continued failing. Before moving on to the daggers and knives, Lee glanced at Kendri’s spear. Kendri noticed, narrowed his eyes, and slid before his view. “Not a chance.”
Lee tsk’d before grabbing a knife. He glared into its dull metallic blade and saw his glowing blue eyes in its reflection as he tossed it around in his hands. It was only for a moment, but Lee began to wonder why being blessed caused your eyes to glow when an idea came to mind.
He looked down at the mana-infused fur he sat on and focused intently on looking at the mana held within. With Mana Sense, he couldn’t really see any difference between it and another, different fur. Grabbing the hem of his robe, which was an enchanted item, he also couldn’t see a difference between it and a normal robe. It simply looked like a robe. Only by using Identify could Lee actually tell it was enchanted.
With a spark of inspiration, Lee used Mana Infusion on the dagger in his hands, filling it with non-attuned mana—or base mana. It took around sixty MP before he finished, but once the dagger was fully-fused, he began his enchanting session—still trying for Sharpness.
While using the enchanting wand and hook, Lee immediately noticed a difference in difficulty. Writing out the sharpness glyph was much more complex, and hooking and infusing the glyph into the dagger was more strenuous. The mana inside the infused dagger didn’t want to budge or make way for the mana making up the glyph. After ten minutes of struggling, he finally finished. It was definitely not his best-written glyph, but he had a tugging of hope.
Lee held in a bated breath as he used Identify.
Sharp Dagger - (Rare): A simple iron dagger enchanted by The Genesis of Healing. Sharpness.
Comments
Winterharmony
Thanks for the Chapter
Tyler Kimball
Hmm. I am unsure about the start of this chapter. I might swap it to something else.
