Fork This Life!

Chapter 19: Cats have nine lives. So too, apparently, do forks.

(POV Gerald)

While Ferdinand is still lamenting unintentionally offending a woman – in his distress he still hasn’t realised that it’s hardly his fault, and the villagers also addressed her as a man – the villagers have started work on making the buildings liveable again.

Some of the buildings are far beyond the scope of a quick fix – case in point, the building we were in earlier, now nearly as holy as that woman – but others would likely be fine with a few boards nailed in various places.

Of course, it would hardly be a permanent solution, but with the state they’re in there’s no easy solution. The buildings in this village are built of wood, most of which has rotted. Although it’s not quite so severe that they will collapse within a day or two – at least, I think so. I’m no engineer, after all – but they will all have to be replaced eventually.

And that repair effork highlights yet another problem. That is, even the spare building supplies that were stocked in the village aren’t any good. Their next thought is cutting down a tree to obtain the wood for repairs.

…That doesn’t go so well, either.

The axes in the village are coated in rust, but a quick touch up with a whetstone fixes that right up. Unforktunately for them, the trees in and around the village have suffered the same fate as the processed wood.

Still, the villagers are hardly daunted as a team of them move out to find, fell and haul back an undamaged tree from a nearby thicket.

As all this was going on, the woman is circling through the village, gradually purifying the dark energy that has engulfed the village. The feeling I get from the place slowly changes from ‘ghost town’ to ‘old town’, a small yet marked difference.

And in a remote corner of the village, two of the villagers are looking suspiciously at a small cat that is loitering on top of a slightly crumbled rock wall.

“That thing gives me the creeps… Should we kill it?” Says the first man.

The second man replies, “No! It’s bad enough that we’re standing here talking near a black bat, who knows what sort of bad luck you’ll get if you kill it.”

Black bat? That doesn’t seem right… they must be talking about the cat.

Wait, why is a cat here, anyway? This village was full of undead just a short while ago…

I check back through my memories to see when it came in, and it was there since before we got here. The skeletons just seemed to ignore it. Now if that’s not suspicious, I’m not a fork.

I mean, technically I’m a living fork, but potayto potahto.

I do a quick telepathic link with Ferdinand. “I’m going out for a bit, be right back.”

“Sure.” He replies distractedly.

Nobody except Ferdinand had kept hanging out here, so I am clear for take-off. A careful application of telekinesis opens the top of the bag I’m in, and another has me floating through the air.

My psi is draining away like water from Henry’s bucket as it was, so I move quickly through the air towards the area of the village the cat is in.

I lower myself to a stop on the roof of a nearby house; being a fork, it isn’t difficult to find a place to balance myself.

Since I am going to kill a cat, a mostly defenceless small animal, I may as well train a bit while doing it.

I created a magic missile in the same needle form as earlier, and manually control it towards the cat, looping it over and behind to avoid detection. Then I send it speeding at the back of the cat’s neck.

Just as it’s about to hit, the cat bobs its head down to lick at its paws, and the needle goes speeding just overhead.

…Alright then, let’s try this again.

Looping it back around, I send it from the side, again at the neck. Again, the cat avoids it in the nick of time by falling sideways off the wall onto the ground.

Are you serious? I loop the missile back around AGAIN, and this time it hit home.

Lvl 2 Cat killed

Experience gained: 0.75

…It was just a cat, huh? But then why wasn’t it attacked?

Whatever, let’s just absorb the corpse, get a bit more experience.

I move quickly over to the corpse and absorb it.

Lvl 2 Cat absorbed

Experience gained: 15

Durability recovered: 3.8 (Exceeds maximum durability, reducing to 0)

Skill proficiency increased: Absorb 0.01%

Skills gained: Nine lives (Static)

Traits gained: none

Well doesn’t that sound interesting? Haven’t seen that ‘static’ before. Let’s take a look-see, shall we?

Nine lives (Static) (Passive) – You will avoid the next eight attacks that would be deadly to you, seemingly by accident. After avoiding eight attacks, this skill will disappear.

Charges remaining: 8

That’s actually awesome. No wonder the cat kept avoiding my attacks, it was this skill!

…Let’s hope I never need this skill.

Wait, what if it was my own attack that backfired? Would it activate then? AOEs? Poison? This really has a lot of potential loopholes. Still, not like I’m going to test it.

I flew back over to Ferdinand and reinserted myself into his pack. “Alright, done.” I say telepathically.

“Why did you feel the need to go kill a cat?” Ferdinand responds a second later, confused.

I explain the circumstances.

“That certainly is strange.” He agrees. “Still, it was just a cat.”

“It was…” I admit. “So, what now?”

Ferdinand pauses for a moment. “Same as before. The people here should be able to handle themselves, so it’s time we continue searching.”

And so, we head back on the road.

In a forgotten place, an obscure location not far from the edge between Empire territory and the vast wilderness, there lies a meadow, abundant with colourful flowers and roses.

If you find a map that includes this location, there will be no name marked upon it, nothing to indicate that it is anything special or unusual.

But it was not always so.

Before the Empire, before it was just scattered territories, and before the kingdom that those territories split from… Indeed, even before that.

Hundreds, thousands of years ago this very meadow was on the very border between two great civilisations.

However, their relationship was not a kind one. War after war was waged, battle upon battle was fought at this very place.

Tens of thousands, or perhaps even more than a hundred thousand people had perished on this battlefield alone, their corpses left lying on the ground with no comrades left to bring them home or bury them.

As is the way of the world, those battles, and the civilisations that fought them were forgotten, and the bones were laid to rest by nature itself, buried deep, deep within the soil.

And it is within this natural burial ground that a dreaded necromancer has made his gruesome lair.

It is the place where he trains, gathers strength, creates undead, plans…

The rooms and hallways have been dug by undead hands and left mostly as they are, the walls generally composed of dark earth with various bones jutting out here and there. Skulls are embedded in the ceiling at regular intervals, the ghostly white flames within them glowing through eye and nose cavities, as well as between the teeth and hanging jawbone in a particularly macabre method of illumination that somehow makes shadows seem even darker and more sinister than without them.

In one of the many rooms of widespread function, the walls are lined with mirrors, each of which has a neat line of text beneath them. The text describes a location, and it is a view from that location that can be seen within that respective mirror.

The locations range from large cities to small towns to rural villages to empty plains.

The necromancer has eyes in everywhere that matters, and some places that don’t.

One of the mirrors is dark, reflecting nothing but the light from the skull-lamps and the room around it.

The necromancer walks in, every part of his body – save for his hands, which are wrinkled and mottled with age – hidden within the folds of a long, dark cloak. This cloak does not look grand or impressive. In fact, it looks very old, with tattered edges. But this cloak had been taken from the sealed tomb of a lich who had died long ago and is imbued with enchantments most foul.

The staff he holds as he walks looked like burnt wood and seems more likely to collapse under any amount of weight than to be relied on as a staff. But it too is not as it seems.

There was once a tree on which no leaves grew, yet it did not die. Upon this tree once hung the diseased, the cursed and the scorned, left there to die in suffering. Their blood, their pain, their very hatred seeped into the soil, and the tree fed on it, becoming something strange, something twisted and dark.

Then, as if to prove that there could be no tree more evil in all the lands, it was scorched by lightning, and the necromancer fashioned his staff out of its cursed wood.

The necromancer sweeps the room with his gaze, briefly glancing at each and every mirror before finally coming to rest on that one dark mirror.

He taps its surface with one long fingernail, as if expecting that it will cause it to resume normal function.

It doesn’t.

Beneath the hood of his cloak, the necromancer’s eyelids slide shut as he focuses. Necromancers have a magical connection with their raised undead, through which they can give orders and, depending on the undead, sometimes more. The necromancer is searching for the skeletons which were in that village. After all, he has hundreds of undead; it can be difficult to find a particular undead unless their strength stands out, and it can be even more difficult to tell whether one has died.

After a while he opens his eyes.

“So, the skeletons there perished? It hardly matters, but I do wonder who did it?” He smiles coldly at his own words. “Adventurers, followers of one of the gods, wandering monsters, or perhaps even the villagers themselves… No use thinking about it. Still, my familiar was killed as well, even if it may have been just a coincidence. I’d best avoid that area for a time.”

He chuckles darkly, taking a long scroll from within a pouch at his waist and unfurling it on the table. Once completely unrolled, the scroll spans the entire length and width of the table, even with the table’s extensive size.

It is a detailed map of the entire empire, with roads, cities, villages and even dangerous areas marked upon it. There are twenty-three cities including the capitol, and over a hundred villages of varying sizes.

Almost half of them are circled.

“After all,” He says happily, “There are more than enough villages to go around…”

Taking out a piece of charcoal, he looks aside to check the exact village, and crosses out the village circled in that location. Then his hand idly wanders around the map as he thinks.

“This place should be fine.” He circles a village.

The very same village that Ferdinand had rescued from monsters, barely a few weeks ago.

(POV Gerald)

We rest for the night at Vercombe city, or more accurately, Ferdinand does.

I lie there in his bag, awake as always, witnessing the night and all the dark deeds that came with it. I think that anyone, if they saw this sort of thing every day and night, would try to do something to stop it.

Probably even some of the people who are doing them, or so I’d like to think. The average criminal couldn’t be so insane as to enjoy being unable to stop witnessing murders, theft, torture… Especially if, like me, they could see those very same people going calmly and happily about their daily lives beforehand, getting to know them more intimately than almost anyone else they know.

Unfortunately, many of the crimes in this city seem to be connected to the city lord himself, so unless I am able to stop them all myself, I won’t be able to do anything.

All I can do is hide myself in meditation, a state that I find unusually difficult to reach tonight. I force myself to leave that cocoon of false comfort frequently throughout the night to train in self form manipulation and glide around the room with telekinesis until my mana and psi drain back to zero.

Each time is another reminder of the many people in pain around me that I can do nothing about. At one point, I turn off mana sight, trying to shut it all out. It doesn’t help. It’s like… walking past an alleyway where you hear someone getting beat up. Even if you look away, even if you can’t hear it anymore, you are stuck with the knowledge that you didn’t do anything. Couldn’t do anything.

Somehow, not being able to do anything hurts more than choosing not to do anything.

But the night does pass eventually, and we leave for the next city in the morning. Because we need to get stronger, and quickly, I consult briefly with Ferdinand and having obtained his permission, attract monsters to us every now and again.

Sometimes they are killed by other travellers who happen to be near us at the time, but for the most part we defeat them ourselves. When there isn’t anyone in sight, I am able to come out and fight myself, but those occasions are rare.

There are always caravans transporting goods between towns, carriages transporting people, farmers with their carts, adventurers, travellers… Especially in the morning.

Still, we manage to kill quite the number, and I manage to absorb a few as well, getting enough experience to get me to level 30. Another decad down, another increase in difficulty levelling up. The stat points are obviously an even split between intelligence and wisdom.

And along with the exp comes a few skills and traits…

Power stab (Basic) (High Common, Active) 0.00% - Multiplies the speed and power of a stab by 1.1. Cooldown: 5 minutes

Got this one from a bicorn boar. My first skill with no cost, just a cooldown. Doesn’t do all that much right now, but even a 10% increase can do a lot if your stab is strong to begin with, and I can imagine that it will get much stronger at higher levels, and with a lower cooldown.

Mud bath (Basic) (Low Uncommon, Passive) 0.00% - Your injuries heal faster when they are covered with mud, by 1.2 times. Slightly lowered chance of contracting infection and parasites from this activity.

…However, as you are for most purposes an object, this skill does not affect you.

It’s… a completely useless one.

Climbing (Advanced) (Low Uncommon, Passive) 0.00% - You have a slightly increased ability to find handholds and footholds when climbing something, as well as a slightly increased ability to maintain grip on smaller handholds.

This one was from a bear. And it started at advanced. If I’m right, that means that the bear had the skill at one level above that - expert. Bear haz skillz.

Cat’s flexibility (Minor) – Base Dexterity is multiplied by 2. Range of movement of joints increased by 1.1 times.

Another stat increase trait for a stat I don’t use. I don’t suppose I could get ‘owl’s wisdom’ or something? But that was it for the traits and skills. The majority of them don’t have much use for me, but I see some potential in power stab, after training it. Speaking of…

I try to get Ferdinand to communicate to me with telepathy every now and again, but I can tell that his heart isn’t in it… literally. With his inexperience communicating with emotions instead of words, his lack of enthusiasm is laid bare for me to see, and I eventually stop reminding him. It’s his choice to make, after all.

Days pass, some spent out under the sky and some in an inn. Throughout it all, I am constantly improving my skills and getting stronger, but I can see that that isn’t the case for Ferdinand.

He is getting a bit stronger, but it’s mostly from the increase in stats after his two level ups. And it seems to me that getting and training skills is a much better way of getting stronger than levelling up is, at least right now.

Frustratingly, though, I haven’t the foggiest on how he can get skills. He is a fighter, after all. You can manipulate mana, but you can’t exactly manipulate your fist, can you? What am I supposed to get him to do, run around really quickly or swing his sword really hard?

As if. I’ll have to find him some sort of teacher. Problem is, though, the longer we take here, the harder it will be to pick up any clues on Richard. Then again, nothing we can do if we’re dead…

I suppose we’ll just see what happens when we get there. If we don’t find anything, then I’ll find him a teacher, and if we do find something… well, it depends on what we find.

Anyway, no point fretting over it right now. Let’s just go over what I’ve improved recently.

Firstly, I’ve gotten magic missile to advanced proficiency.

Magic missile (Advanced) (Low Uncommon, Active) 32.81% - Fires a projectile of mana. Power scales with mana consumption, unable to exceed 25 mana per shot. Maximum range = Intelligence*1.5/metres. If remotely controlling, there is an additional mana cost of 0.75 mana/sec, otherwise direction of travel is set at initial creation of shot.

Experimenting with manipulating the missiles into different forms and controlling their flight rather than having them fire in a straight line really paid dividends, with the proficiency really shooting up. And not only that, it netted me another skill:

Mana control (Basic) (Low Uncommon, Passive) 89.01% - Your practice with magic has led to an increased familiarity with handling mana. Maximum quantity of mana able to be controlled reliably: 25 mana. Minimum quantity of mana able to be controlled reliably: 0.5 mana.

Of course, just seeing that skill description made me realise that I’d been focusing too much on maximising power and not enough on precision. Obviously, a 0.5 mana magic missile isn’t going to do any damage, but surely having the ability to control minute amounts of mana is a useful one.

Next is telekinesis.

Telekinesis (Advanced) (Low Rare, Active) 0.07% - Through Psi, your mind pushes at the world around you, moving objects without the need for physical contact. More Psi is required to produce greater forces. Currently inefficient.

There is barely any change in the description, but I have noticed the decrease in psi consumption, which is always welcomed. My revelation in the mana department led me to try similar tactics with psi, with unfortunately little success.

And last but most definitely least, lip reading got to advanced. Meh. Still, it has helped a bit.

I’ve still been trying to help out in every city we pass, but I’ve not had much success. At this point, I consider them being sceptical a positive response. Blunt refusals are the norm, and one even had guards search his entire building for me… unsuccessfully. And then there was one I couldn’t contact using telepathy at all, for whatever reason.

So… that’s that.

Anyway, about a week after reaching Vercombe city, we make it to Liensport city, the headquarters of the Empire’s navy.

The Empire? What, is old darth himself going to be sitting on the throne? Next thing you know, someone’s going to be saying, ‘that’s no moon’.

Not that I can see the moon. If there is one. Ya never know, it’s an alien planet. For all I know, the grass is purple and the water’s a bright red.

But back to the task at hand, Ferdinand busies himself going through that list he has, and I busy myself by watching random people talk.

By doing this, I get a pretty clear picture of the situation of the Empire over the last week. There is a lot to go through… rumours, idle conversation, people making reports, but I have had ample time to sort through it all.

The history of the Empire is simple. It was once a collection of small, independently governed territories, some containing a few cities and a few only containing one.

Wars and temporary alliances were common between these territories, and as a whole, the area was in a state of constant turmoil and decline for around half a century.

Then, some hundred and thirty years ago, a small territory rose up and used a small team of elite warriors and magicians to infiltrate and kidnap the influential figures of one city after another. They were subsequently forced to recognise the sovereignty of that state, which eventually came to be known as the Empire. The morality of their method of conquest is quietly questioned by some, but no historian refutes that it has led to a period of growth and prosperity for the region.

In more recent news, the current Emperor – whose name is neither Palpatine nor Sidious, happily – recently adopted a son and proclaimed him his heir. Naturally, this is the product of much consternation for those who want to ‘keep the bloodline pure’, but it is mostly accepted, as the Emperor only has a single child, who is female.

What is it with medieval culture and not seeing females as suitable rulers?

Although, I have heard of a place further abroad that is ruled by a queen…

But the cause of concern for most people in power is that the new prince isn’t some little-known bastard child of a lesser noble, or even some orphan picked off the streets. In fact, nobody seems to know where he’s from at all…

Somewhere in the impassably mountainous region between Port Acktown and Liensport…

The wind pushes itself between the mountains, shrieking angrily towards the treacherous valleys below. So tall and sheer are these mountains that snow can be seen glistening white upon their lofty peaks, and little more than a few hardy clumps of greenery decorate their walls.

About two thirds up a cliff side, a grimy man in worn clothing hangs by one hand from the rock, his sandals dangling precariously from his feet. The rock in his grasp shifts ominously, ready to come loose at the slightest provocation.

“The… fastest route… is to go in… a straight line…!” He puffs, heaving himself upward and reaching out his other arm to grab hold of another rock above him, even as his previous handhold breaks loose, smashing loudly as it rapidly vanishes into the abyss below. “And even… if it’s not the… fastest, it’s definitely… the most fun!”

He pulls himself up again, and with only a few more motions reached a miniscule outcropping. Turning himself about, he deftly plants his backside there, pausing to take a brief rest as his legs swing over empty air.

“You know, that was great.” He says to the wind. The wind continues to do its thing, irrespective of grimy old men speaking to it. “I haven’t been in jail for a long time either. I almost wish it had been for more than just the night, but then again, I didn’t technically do anything more than cause public unrest.”

“Speaking of, maybe I should stop laughing randomly in other people’s presence… Nah.”

The grimy old man stands on the outcropping with only the heels of his feet on ‘solid’ ground, and cackles loudly as a flock of monstrous birds swoop down to attack him.

Gerald: Level Up!

Ferdinand: Level UpX2!