Novaris: Adventure in the Shattered Fang Continent

Novaris. Trias (March). 905. AGC.

Nodel. Waning Crescent 🌘. Day 25.

Lili watched with anticipation as the mana within Tesilim’s soul evaporated.

For his part, Tesilim stared at the ground for a minute before a giant grin appeared on his face, and he turned to look at her. Immediately, she could tell that he was up to no good. She had seen the same face on many individuals right before they did something stupid, and Tesilim did not prove to be the exception.

“Hey Lili, I need you to punch me really hard, like as hard as you can, okay?” Tesilim asked as he calmly approached her.

“Why?” She replied, taking a step back.

“Trust me. It will be awesome. Come on, just do it.”

“No. If I punch you, I am going to end up killing you as my fist goes right through your chest! Are you okay? What happened? I saw the energy disappear from your soul.”

That seemed to get his attention for a second, and he paused as his eyes glazed over, a look Lili knew meant he was looking at his soul.

“Well, that's nice. Still sucks, though, cause it's gonna be back in like a week or so. Actually, maybe it isn’t that bad. I got something pretty awesome this time around.”

“What did you get?” Lili asked, intrigued.

“Something awesome! Come on, I need your help to test it. Just punch me!”

“No, I am not going to punch you or do anything until you tell me what’s going on!”

“Fine, be that way. I will test it on my own,” Tesilim replied as he walked away from her towards a tree.

“Where are you going!?” Lili yelled exasperatedly.

“I am going to climb a tree!” he yelled back.

So, Lili let him. She was indeed interested in learning about whatever had happened.

It took him a minute to reach the very top of the relatively large tree and the end of a particularly thick branch.

Then Lili watched with wide eyes as the idiot simply jumped off.

Lili saw in slow motion as Tesilim smacked his face against a couple of branches before finally hitting the ground with a large blast of dirt. Taking a second to process what just happened, she quickly enhanced her body and rushed towards Tesilim while also grabbing a healing potion from her pouch.

Arriving at Tesilim’s location, she found him with some scratches but otherwise completely fine and grinning like a maniac.

“See? What I tell ya. I am fine!”

His answer just pissed her off, as she had been genuinely worried about him, and she actually punched him in the chest.

“What is wrong with you!?”

The punch had some good force behind it, which she completely forgot about, and after hitting him, she hurriedly went to check his chest as he groaned. However, instead of finding broken ribs, she only saw the start of a bruise, which puzzled her.

Tesilim, on the other hand, just teased her.

“Awww, you were actually worried about me?”

“No! You just owe me a lot of gold, and you still haven’t paid me back.”

With that response, Tesilim gave her a flat stare before getting up and beginning his explanation.

“Okay, so basically…”

🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷

Due to a Chaos Event, you have gained the Partial Mortal Invincibility Boon for one day. The boon grants you the Partial Invincibility ability.

🔷

After seeing that Tesilim had gotten excited and had opened his new ability, he had just grinned after reading it four times.

Partial Invincibility: For one day, you gain the following: Immunity to Fall Damage*. Resistance to Bludgeoning or Telekinetic Attacks. Resistance against negative Mind-altering Magic. You cannot be poisoned or affected by any toxins or drugs of any kind. Finally, for the remainder of this ability’s duration, you do not need to breathe or eat, and all normal mortal processes like thirst or defecation no longer happen.

Tesilim prodded the little star next to fall damage, and he instantly knew that fall damage was a precarious thing. For example, if he fell into a pit full of impaling rocks, the ability would not save him, and he would die from impalement.

Anyways, after the whole tree scenario, Tesilim had just explained to Lili that something had indeed happened but that they had miscalculated. They both thought that whatever was going to happen was going to be bad, but it looked like that wasn’t the case.

After the explanation, Lili had encouraged him to go by the church of knowledge or magic and see if they could find something about his weird powers, but he had shut her down again.

Tesilim was thankful that the white-haired elf hadn’t just dragged him there herself, as she was powerful enough to do so.

Returning to the city, Tesilim once again began training.

According to Lili, he was starting to get in proper shape, and after another week or so of training, he should be ready to begin refining his body.

The following week of training continued with daily exercise and light sparring sessions. As she put it, Lili was trying to get him ready for the real work, which would begin as soon as he got his armor. The fact that his current workload wasn’t the actual workload really worried Tesilim.

It was on the 27th when he got his leather armor.

- Chaos Meter: 23/100.

Tesilim’s morning had been going rather fine until after breakfast. Usually, they did some light sparring and agility training before moving to run and other heavier exercises. However, that morning, they left and headed to see Freya. Arriving at the shop, Tesilim instantly knew his day was about to get much worse.

His armor was made of simple brown leather and wasn’t much of an armor set. He had a basic leather jacket for his chest, which went down his shoulders a bit. He also had two bracers for his arms and some thigh and shin guards. Besides that, he got some plain white and brown clothing padded in certain areas to help ease any rashes from constant annoying movement. Needless to say, the armor wasn’t much of anything.

Thankfully, the armor still had what Tesilim was told was the most basic and simple enchantment always found on armor: simple self-repair and cleaning. And that was very specific, as it was indeed simple. It would self-repair small scratches and, with some more time, some larger gashes. The self-cleaning would remove blood, dust, and other such things. However, it took longer, the thicker or more dense whatever it was cleaning was. Either way, Tesilim was thankful for his armor and quickly put it on with assistance from Lili.

Then he got beat up.

It turned out Lili had been holding back this whole time.

The beating began after their midday meal, and once they had rested for a bit.

He and Lili headed out to a park, and she taught him how to fight properly. Where before, she had been mentoring and slowly showing him the way. Now, she was showing him with the good old teacher that was pain.

If he made a mistake, he was met with pain. It made him wish he still had that partial invincibility ability.

Put your foot in the wrong place. Kick to the leg. Your face didn’t move out of the way fast enough; well hope you like tasting blood.

That first day was the real day of pain, at least, he hoped it would be. However, he couldn’t complain even after getting knocked out and coming to in his bed at the inn the following day. Lili had been right, and it would take a bit to get used to the leather armor. And that beating session had done wonders to loosen it up, or maybe he was the one who had adjusted.

The day he woke up in his bed, he was in a lot of pain, and it took him some time to get to Lili’s shop.

- Chaos Meter: 35/100.

Thankfully, Lili had mercy on him, and the day was spent resting. Sort of.

Under Lili’s watch, he slowly began releasing some of his pure arcane mana and mixing it up with his regular arcane mana. He had also asked if arcane mana was just ambient mana and if its purer form was just more powerful ambient mana, and Lili told him that it was exactly like that. And that the soul constantly pulls in mana, refines it, and slowly releases it. The answer made him question why not everyone was superhuman at that point.

Lili explained that though almost everyone had the mana cycle, it only went so far on its own. The resiliency gained was not noticeable for most because it happened as they grew up. Then, once most species reach adulthood, their bodies reached the natural limit of the basic mana cycle, and they stop growing in power. This was when taking control of the cycle came in, as you could increase its rate, which then increased your power in turn. Tesilim then wanted to ask about old people and the mana cycle but thought better of it and continued with his training.

As far as he could tell, he was bringing in slightly more mana, but other than that, he didn’t see any change. This slow rate of regular regeneration began getting on his nerves as his pure mana was taking forever to do anything, and he didn’t even feel pin-needle pricks. Eventually, he complained and got an answer to his problem.

“Shit! My bad, I forgot to tell you the important part. Now that you have control of your soul, you will have to put it to work. Make it bring in more mana, just will it to happen, then slowly push more and more mana into your soul’s outer ring. That will cause it to expand, allowing you to increase your storage capacity. It will also set a precedent, and your soul will automatically start bringing in a higher amount of mana. Though be careful not to overdo it.”

“Okay, then what? Just push more regular mana into my core, shove it in there, and pressure it into purifying before yanking it out again?” Tesilim said with a bit of sarcasm.

“Yeah, exactly! Look at you getting the hang of it. Though, again, don’t pull a lot of pure mana.” Lili answered before getting back to a book she had been reading.

“Well, I’ll be damnded.” Tesilim thought as he got to work.

The rest of the day was spent making his soul do what he wanted, and Tesilim slowly dispersed more and more pure mana through his body until he finally began to feel a slight tingle all over.

Then, once he felt that he just kept increasing the speed of everything until he finally felt like mosquitos were biting him all over. After feeling that, he just let the whole thing continue, even after getting to the inn.

On the morning of the 1st day of the month, as apparently months only had 28 days in this world, Tesilim walked to Lili’s shop with determination.

- Chaos Meter: 47/100.

He was damned if another day went by without him learning at least one spell. As much as he was worried about the Chaos Events, he had been itching to empower something with his chaotic mana, not to even mention the raw urge to throw around some magic.