Novaris: Adventure in the Shattered Fang Continent

Novaris. Trias (March). 905. AGC.

Nodel. Full Moon 🌕. Day 17.

Getting up from the ground, Tesilim looked over at Lili, who was carefully putting some drops of something into another beaker. The liquid then made a sizzling sound.

A few seconds later, when the sizzling stopped, she finally looked over at him questioningly.

“Done? Or did you give up?”’

“I am done. I got mana. I can feel the mana. It feels prickly all over my skin. I can’t see it yet, though. Is that something you can do? Can we see mana?” Tesilim replied with a bit of smugness in his tone and face.

“I don’t believe you,” Lili said, giving him a “you are full of shit look.” Then Tesilim saw her eyes glow a bit brighter and assumed she looked into his soul.

“Holy shit! You actually did it! That's pretty impressive.” Lili spoke with surprise, which was then followed by concern. “However, I have to ask, are you okay? You got some weird energy in there as well.”

“Hmm?” Tesilim responded, a bit lost, as chills went through his body. Lili quite literally staring into his soul. “Can you please stop staring at my soul? It's freaking me out!”

“My bad,” Lili responded as her eyes dimmed.

Tesilim, now no longer having someone staring at his soul, finally registered Lili’s question and answered.

“Uh, yeah. It’s just something called Chaos Mana, and it supposedly will make crazy shit happen. Do you know what it is? Should I be worried? I really don’t want to die in a random explosion.”

“Sorry, no, I don’t. I have never heard of such a thing. It seems very interesting, though. I think we should take you to the church of knowledge just to make sure.”

“Nope. Absolutely not. I know how this goes: some crazy researcher finds a dude from another world with some random energy, then kidnaps them and performs very painful experiments.” Tesilim quickly replied, shutting down the idea before continuing.

“Anyways, forget about my pretty mana. What’s next in my training?”

Tesilim didn’t like Lili’s evil smile in response.

“This sucks major donkey balls,” Tesilim said between deep breaths as he took a few seconds to rest. He had just done a lap around the entire city with Lili, and considering the city was fucking huge, it was a couple of hours of running. The most annoying thing was that Lili made it look good. She wore another short and pretty white summer dress that, if it weren’t for his current exhaustion, he would appreciate, at least carefully, so as not to piss off the beautiful dark-skinned elf. The dark-skinned elf who, after following alongside Tesilim, had a light coat of sweat, which made her skin shine just a bit.

“I feel like you are cheating, somehow. Are you using magic?” Tesilim asked after catching up with his pounding chest.

“What? No. If I was enhancing my body, I would barely sweat. This is just natural rank resiliency.”

“Damn! That's freaking crazy!” Tesilim blurted out.

“Yeah, it's pretty nice. Anyways, come on. Let's get to my shop so we can shower and finish your training for today.”

“Okay, yeah, that's a good idea,” Tesilim answered, chasing after her.

Tesilim was not going to enjoy this training if the first day was anything to go by. He had asked Lili why he had to muscle up and gain resiliency, and she replied that it would make it easier to refine his body and reduce the starting damage inflicted by the refinement process. She also pointed out the fact that enhancement magic worked best if you built a good foundation. It was always possible to use more mana to increase power, but if a soldier and a scholar had a body enhancement match using the same enhancement level of power, the soldier would win every time. The explanation made sense to Tesilim, and considering his own status was calling him out on it, he figured it was for the best.

With the sun setting in a couple of hours, Tesilim arrived at Lili’s to shower and eat. The rest of the afternoon was spent in the tavern with Lili as he began to meet some of her friends and acquaintances, whom there were a lot of.

Then, after heading to his inn for the night and right before he went to bed, he checked his ticking Chaos Mana bomb.

- Chaos Meter: 21/100.

Following the first day of hellish running were more days of hellish training that passed in a blur.

It started on the morning of the 18th, which wasn’t that bad.

- Chaos Meter: 27/100.

Meeting up with Lili, they went through their quick morning routine before Lili took him to meet a guy named Zakas, who was an average-looking human man with tan skin, something Tesilim was getting accustomed to seeing. The man was maybe in his mid-30s and was a blacksmith. Lili had commissioned two daggers at some point in their brief friendship and was going to teach Tesilim the way of knife fighting.

After the blacksmith, Tesilim met Freya, a dark-haired human woman a bit into her later years. Freya was a leather worker and had measured Tesilim to get him some basic leather armor courtesy of Lili. Apparently, it was best Tesilim got used to moving in armor from early on, and considering he was going to learn knife fighting, it was best to get leather armor for easier movement.

The rest of that first day was spent doing more running, with Lili showing him some basic dagger stances and basic agility exercises to prepare him for the boost in mobility he would receive when he fully ranked up.

The real work began on the 19th.

- Chaos Meter: 39/100.

As usual, he made his way to Lili’s house, where they had breakfast.

Then Lili did some basic sparring with him, slowly but smoothly going through some basic parrying techniques and foot stances for the best dagger stabbing. Some further warm-up exercises followed that up before they set out to the city.

First, they headed to a person's house whom Tesilim would probably never speak with again. There, he helped clean their house and cut some wood while Lili had a light snack and stared him down like she was passing judgment. Naturally, Tesilim complained, but Lili asked him if he wanted training or not. And Tesilim grumpily agreed and continued his task.

From there, the morning was spent lifting barrels, boxes, trunks, and whatever else needed moving from point a to point b. Tesilim, of course, also did more cleaning and wood cutting.

When noon arrived, they went back to the Rusty Boar for their midday meal. Once again, Tesilim found himself without any cash, and Lili once again paid for their meal. It was at that point that Tesilim realized that all the work he had done today was probably getting Lili some gold, and thus, he was paying her back. So, henceforth, he stopped complaining.

Following lunch, they went back to Lili’s shop, and they did some slow sparring as he practiced his stance and moves. After digesting his food with light sparring, he and Lili ran around the city. They ended the day of exercise with another sparring and an agility session.

Then, as always, they showered and went back to the Rusty Boar for some light drinks before heading to bed.

Day 20 was spent doing much of the same as day 19, though there was less cleaning and moving and more normal exercises and running along with the usual sparring.

As it was routine right before bed, Tesilim checked his mana.

- Chaos Meter: 57/100.

It was going up a bit too fast as far as Tesilim was concerned.

Day 22 was a day of change in their training.

- Chaos Meter: 75/100.

At that point, there wasn’t any more cleaning or hard labor, but Lili had focused on his physical training through more direct measures.

Tesilim got a sparring partner more on his level. The gal was a beastkin with greenish fur and feline features. At first, he was excited, as technically, she was a cat girl, but she was more on the furry side than he was comfortable with, and it didn’t help that she made him look like a welp.

The technically a cat girl was training to join the city's guard, which was also the army, since it was considered a city-state. Anyway, she used a sword and shield, which countered Tesilim really well. Now, normally, she would be wearing heavier armor, which might have given Tesilim a slight advantage, but without it, she was as agile as he was, and he ended the day with lots of bruises.

More annoying than the bruises was the fact that Lili refused to take him to be healed or even give him a healing potion. Apparently, healing did, in fact, cost gold, and she said he had to toughen up. He had indeed asked if the whole toughening up thing was part of the training, but she had told him that he already owed her about 100 gold, and she wouldn’t give him a potion and increase his debt.

So, he just had to suck it up. Luckily the next day, he was fully healed, as apparently, rankers had faster regeneration, which made total sense even if he was a noobie.

- Chaos Meter: 87/100.

The rest of the 23rd day was a blur of “training,” which was just Lili beating him up as she “taught” him how to fight.

Yeah, right, teaching his ass. He wasn’t even using mana yet.

Speaking of mana.

- Chaos Meter: 93/100.

He did not get much sleep that night as he watched the countdown or count up in that case.

So, on the morning of the 24th day, he hit the magic number, quite literally.

- Chaos Meter: 99/100.

- Chaos Meter: 100/100.

And that's when a pop-up appeared.

🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷

Warning! Chaos Meter has reached 100. If Chaos Mana is not spent within 24 Hours, it will be forcibly dispelled and cause a Chaos Event.

🔷

Clearly, this system was not joking around, and he wasn’t going to take chances, so he hurriedly booked it to Lili’s house.

At Lili’s house, he gave her a quick explanation of his mana and power. Of course, she didn’t believe him at first, but she could not deny the energy she could see had built up.

Of course, Tesilim didn’t know but Lili had been on edge the whole time. She wanted to taste this Chaos Mana but wasn’t sure if it would turn her into something or cause some other random crap to happen.

Either way, she eventually relented and told Tesilim that they would head outside the city tomorrow morning so that if something did happen, it wouldn’t be too widely known that it was due to him.

With Lili’s assurance, Tesilim felt better but was still jittery, so Lili did the one thing she knew that would take his mind off it and put him in extreme training mode.

Nodel. Waning Crescent 🌘. Day 25.

Early the next morning, Tesilim and Lili left Wildwood City. They walked for an hour or two and stopped to rest for an hour in order to be in top shape for whatever was going to happen. Then it happened.

🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷

Warning! Chaos Event Imminent, prepare yourself.

Unseen by Tesilim: Rolling d20. 20. Rolling 1d4. 2. Rolling 1d4. 1.

🔷