Chapter 546: One month later

I’ve learned quite a few interesting things during our first month here in the valley.

One of them is that swimming for the first time is surprisingly difficult. Even though I can hold my breath for a really long time, it’s incredibly annoying to stay underwater. Water has a very specific density, and a normal human with normal strength can swim fairly easily. But that changes once your body starts growing heavier and more dense; you have to exert more effort just to stay afloat.

If your physical stats aren’t high enough, or if you don’t actually know how to swim, and if, because of your stubbornness, you refuse to use your skills or other abilities to get out, you might find yourself in an awkward situation. Like the time I cut off all telepathic communication, trying to figure out how to swim on my own, only to have a cute corgi pup dive into the lake and drag me out by my hair.

These things happen. Even to the best of us. Yup.

Being called “The Drowning One” by a literal catgirl might be one of the consequences of that kind of stubbornness. At least as much as hiring a pair of random twins with top-notch infiltration skills to swap out her luxurious catgirl shampoo for pink dye.

Stranger things have happened.

But I’d be lying if I said I haven’t enjoyed my time here so far. It’s not something I intend to dwell on, but I’m certain that some of the memories I’ve made here with the others will stick with me for the rest of my life.

Even though there’s a war raging outside and we still sense the aftershock from the occasional attack somewhere beyond our “territory,” we still feel safe. That might be because we know a certain person would absolutely destroy anyone who dared to break the deal she brokered. If I had to bet on her or one of the Absolutes, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second.

Yet alongside that feeling of safety, there’s also a sense of regret. Some of the more kind-hearted members of Group 4 feel bad for siphoning resources from the lumorans out there fighting for their lives. Even though they’re still just natives of the tutorial doomed to disappear once we leave this floor, but I’ve noticed that we’re starting to ask less and less from the lumoran Champion with the crystalline arm whenever she appears bearing gifts for Lissandra.

Everyone is busy with training and other projects, but we still spend at least two hours together every week. In those two hours, no one talks about training or uses mana, and no one mentions the tutorial or anything tied to it. Instead, we talk about ourselves: our pasts, our hopes, our dreams. We share stories about the silly things we’ve seen or experienced and the tragedies that have befallen us and the people around us.

We talk about our favorite foods and argue about which dishes are better. We complain about the endings of movies we otherwise liked. We joke, we fight, we smile, and sometimes we just sit there quietly.

Of course, not everything is perfect, and this isn’t some fairy tale. We still argue. Lily refuses to speak to Tess for a week after she takes a joke too far. Sophie starts insulting Myrra over the repeated interruptions to her training, even going so far as to use her

[Manipulation]

against her when Myrra pushes things too far. Only Min-Jae’s quick intervention prevented a bigger fight, though they still suffer a number of wounds from the conflict. Since then, Myrra and Sophie mostly avoid each other.

Another time, Maya accidentally injures Aaron during training, badly enough that Lily had to intervene and heal him. Although the twins said they understood it was an accident, I still caught them quietly bad mouthing Maya for being careless when they thought no one else could hear.

There have been a few more minor conflicts, all of which are already forgotten.

Some of us are worried about being under-leveled, but nobody is anywhere near 300. Reaching that level would be nearly impossible right now, given the situation outside. Most of us, however, are already above 250, so at least we’ve gained that body upgrade.

Lissandra, who comes and goes at her pleasure, once overheard their complaints and decided to give one of her rare lessons. She gave them hell for their “flawed thinking,” and called them all sorts of names, but she also emphasized the importance of skills, proper mastery, and a solid foundation. She ruthlessly pointed out about ten mistakes for each person. What they were doing wrong, where they were lacking, how suboptimal their training was, and so on.

She always seems to know an absurd amount, reminding me of the way she saw Whitey just once in my mind space and still understood so much about him. I can’t help but wonder if she has some kind of special sense we don’t know about. I’m sure she’s capable of perceiving things I can’t and she probably has little problem reading “low-level” individuals like an open book.

I asked her about it a few times, but her answer is always the same:

“If you’re curious, improve your abilities and find out how I’m doing it.”

Classic Sandra.

She barely teaches me anything directly, and most of that consists of updating my “evil orb” to make my training harder. I’m currently at version 3.0. I once thought I could make it even more challenging by changing the orbs’ shape to pyramids.

Nope.

At this point, the basic spherical shape is already too much to keep up with. Their constantly shifting frequencies and changing speed make them unpredictable, forcing me to remain on guard. And there are dozens of smaller orbs inside the main one, layer upon layer, that sense when I get comfortable and then activate just to show me how lacking I truly am.

To top it off, the Cockroach herself is perfectly capable of using dozens of these orbs at once to train, while I have trouble dealing with even a single one. Other than that, Lissandra mostly just observes my progress on preparing the Champion’s Heart, a process that, to my frustration, is going nowhere fast.

It’s been over a month since I started, and I still haven’t made the kind of progress I find satisfying. All three of my attempts have ended terribly.

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The first attempt failed before it really began. The seals I’d built over the base Lissandra left on the heart broke at the first touch of my mana, and the resulting backlash melted the top of the cliff, shifting the waterfall and the water flow along with it.

The second attempt ended similarly, though the explosion of heat was smaller at that time.

The third time, the constructs I prepared within my body connected to the heart and unleashed a terrible wave of backlash that tore through me, leaving me with an assortment of wounds that nearly killed me. It even caused a bit of damage to my Mana Heart. It was a pretty minor injury, but it still took a week of Lily’s help to mend everything.

It would seem that while Lily can heal her own Mana Heart when it gets damaged, it gets significantly more difficult when it comes to others. None of us truly know anything about Mana Hearts, so I’ve begun to see them as a major weakness. It’ll probably become even more pronounced the stronger someone gets, and the more “evolved” their heart becomes.

I know some bodily conditions can cause trouble for healers. For instance, Lily’s

[Disintegration]

can slow the healing of wounds or make it nearly impossible if she truly applies herself. Then there was Champion Feroy’s sickness, which made it hard for him to use mana without specialized tools. Apparently, even the strongest lumoran healers couldn’t fix him, and you’d think a Champion would be worth the investment.

Whitey is another example. Yes, he likely never found healers as powerful as those Champion Feroy had access to, but he still couldn’t get his heart or limbs restored in the tutorial or Beyond.

I won’t lie, I’m a bit disheartened. Hehe, dis-heart-ened. Heh. Okay, never mind. After all the preparations, theorizing, and experiments Lily and I have been working on since Lissandra promised to bring me the heart, every attempt feels like a dead end. Each time I find one solution, it reveals even more problems, adding to the cycle of repeated failures over the past few weeks.

It’s frustrating. It really is. So I do the one thing I was hoping to avoid: I scrap everything and start over. Alone, in my room, I put an end to all my usual training and pour the whole of my focus into this one task.

Two more weeks pass like that, and then it’s time for one of our weekly meetups again.

The entire group gathers on the terrace of the manor where we’re staying. And we can see the flashes of far off explosions against the backdrop of the night, the fighting is deep in lumoran territory now. Yellow and red bursts of light, arcs of lightning, mana constructs detonating in the air all alongside the activation of the Absolute’s web. Then there are the counterattacks, humming vibrations we can feel even here, and the echo of explosions rolling over us many seconds after they happen.

Yet we remain safe here.

As usual, the terrace is lit by a number of mundane items, no one uses mana, no one trains, and no one talks about the chaos we can all see ravaging far off battlefields. It all feels so distant.

But, like always, I push all my problems aside and try to appreciate these two routine hours we have.

It’s a nice compromise. I spend most of my time alone, doing whatever I want in the silence I oh so often enjoy. Then, for one night, I spend a few hours with the others, get my dose of socialization, and slink back into my cave, without leaving, unless of course, I feel like it.

“Nat, what’s the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you?” Tess asks.

I’m petting Biscuit, who’s curled up in my lap. “Look, Tess, I know some of the others shared their stories, and I’ll definitely use that information against them sometime in the future, but you can’t seriously think I’m going to tell you mine.”

“Glub glub glub!” Myrra prods, making drowning sounds from her seat at my right.

“That might actually be it,” I sigh. “Fuck you, Myrra.”

“Blub blub blub!”

“Motherfu…”

Tess waves to get my attention, smiling. “When I was around nine years old, I really wanted a group of friends like the Fellowship. So I wrote this ‘Friendship Contract’ with rules about loyalty, honesty, and even secret code words. I tried to make my classmates sign it during lunch one day.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

“Damn it, Tess. That's… kind of sad.”

She just smiles at me and turns to Aaron. “Your turn.”

He hesitates for a moment, then shrugs, smiling brightly. His brother next to him already starts giggling, probably knowing what’s coming. “When I was around ten, I went to the school bathroom, and the stall I tried was locked. You’d think, oh, that means someone’s inside, right? Well, not me. My first thought was: ‘How the hell do you lock a bathroom stall behind you?’ That shouldn’t be possible.”

Oh boy.

Aaron giggles. “So, obviously, I tried to crawl under the stall… and yes, someone was in there. I think a part of me died that day.”

Myrra asks what a bathroom stall is, and a few others laugh. Some are understandably baffled as to why he’d do that.

Then Min-Jae joins in, unprompted. “I once walked in on my older brother watching porn on his PC. He panicked, froze for about five seconds, and then shut off the monitor. Then he spent the next two hours taking his entire PC apart, muttering that something must be wrong with it. He’s a jerk, but to this day, I still cringe at that memory.”

The laughter this time is even louder.

But then Myrra innocently asks, “What’s porn?”

Everything goes silent, and Min-Jae blushes, looking around for help.

“Oh, that’s right,” Dennis says. “What is porn, Min-Jae?”

“Yeah, tell us what is porn?” Aaron joins in.

I mentally salute Min-Jae’s poor brother for the horrors he’s endured. That sort of thing can scar a person for life.

While they continue their conversation, I simply sit there, petting Biscuit until he drifts off to sleep.

Eventually, the evening comes to an end, and everyone goes their separate ways, mostly returning to training. Maya, Myrra, Lily, and Tess head to the stone circle we use for sparring outside. Sophie returns to her training with the twins and breaks that up by spending time working with Izzy and Noodle.

A few hours later, as I’m sitting on my bed, focusing on my own training, I get a notification.

Your skill [Bone Knitting] has evolved into [Knitting]

[Bone Knitting - lvl 39 > Knitting - lvl 24]

I reread the new name a few times, feeling utterly defeated, and then lie down and close my eyes.

Fuck.