Frostbitten Wayfarer

“Weird? How weird?" Zoe asked Emma.

“I don’t know. It’s just…weird. I can see distance, or something? I feel like I could reach out and touch you, but also that no matter how far I reached I’d never get closer to you?” Emma looked a little confused as she reached around herself. At one point, she reached to her side and a glass on a nearby counter vanished to reappear in her hand.

Joe’s eyebrows raised. “That’s interesting. Can you do that as much as you want?"

“Do what?” Emma asked.

“What you just did, you teleported the glass to your hand?" Joe gestured at the glass in Emma’s hand.

“It teleported?" Emma tilted her head.

“Yeah, from the counter?" Zoe said.

“No but I just grabbed it? It was right there?” Emma’s eyes glazed over as she looked through her interface. “Woah! My mana was drained a lot though, maybe seven hundred? Was it really that far away? I thought I just grabbed it though?” Emma asked.

Joe and Zoe gave an awkward chuckle. “Yeah, it was on the counter and then teleported to your hand when you grabbed it.” Zoe said.

“Huh. This is going to take some getting used to, I think.” Emma said.

“Just take some deep breaths, and we can try to work it out. What does it look like for you?” Joe asked.

Emma followed his instructions and a minute later she answered. “It’s hard to describe, honestly. I’m not sure you could understand even if I could explain it. I just have this new understanding of space, I guess? Things are different, now. In ways I never could have imagined. Distance and space are a part of it, but it’s so much more.

“There’s this weirdness to it all. Like this thread that pulls everything together, but it’s not all the same place. Like it was cut and thrown around, but that’s just its normal together state? I know it sounds crazy, but that’s just how it is. And I get to see this thread, I guess? And if I follow it, then it takes me places far away. I can see your inn, Joe. It’s just right there.” Emma pointed to the wall behind her.

“Could you walk there, do you think?” Joe asked.

“Maybe? I can try. Should I try?” Emma asked.

Zoe shrugged. “Why not? Sounds fun.”

Emma shook her head for a moment then stood up and walked to the wall. She held her hand out and looked back at the others. “Okay, I’m going to just… walk to Joe’s inn.” Emma took another step forward and vanished.

She came back a moment later on the other side of the room with a giant smile on her face. “Wow! Okay, I just appeared in Joe’s inn.”

“How much mana?” Zoe asked.

“Mmm, about ten thousand. That’s pretty rough. Would be a lot quicker to just walk to Joe’s inn than to wait for the mana to regen, but that’s so damn cool. Aaaaaaa!” Emma squealed as she warped back to her chair and sat down.

“I have something similar for mana vision which can be pretty hard to see at times, but I can separate the two senses pretty easily somehow. Does whatever gives you this vision have something similar to that? Maybe you can still see normally, but see the threads of space as a sort of not too distracting overlay on top of it or something?” Zoe asked.

“Kind of, yeah. I think once I’m used to it, it’ll be fine. I can still see things, there’s just this weirdness on top of it all that makes it a little hard to see how far away they are. But also somehow way easier?" Emma answered.

“Is it a class effect or one of your skills?" Joe asked.

“It’s an effect. Spacial Vision.” Emma answered.

“Oh, speaking of. I’ve got a really cool class effect now too that I wanna show you two later. Lots of things I wanna share, but we can do that later.” Zoe said.

“Ah, right. Did you get the class you wanted?" Joe asked.

“I did. And it was better than I thought it would be, too. But I’ll tell you about it later.” Zoe said.

Joe nodded.

“Okay, so skills then.” Emma said, and went over her skill selection. There were two affinities — space and physical, both of which she intended to take. And then some of the skills actually seemed a little redundant for her. A cleaning skill of course, a returning arrows skill, and an improved storage skill. None of which she really needed, barring maybe the storage skill.

But there were four others that interested her a fair bit. There was a vision skill that would let her see farther, a spacial tracking skill, a spacial bow skill and lastly was a simple physical augmentation skill that would supposedly let her wreath herself in the fabric of space. Whatever that meant.

“Well first of all, is there a skill in your Magic Archer class you’d like more than one of those? Cause you could take the upgraded storage skill and replace the one in your other class.” Zoe asked.

“Mmm, not really. There was a burning arrow skill I was interested in, but if I’m gonna be all about space it doesn’t make a lot of sense now. Maybe I do replace it with the better class someday, honestly. It seems a little underwhelming somehow, now.” Emma answered.

“I don’t know how much my vote’s worth, but I’d say skip the vision skill and get the other three. They seem much more useful and you’ve already got good eyesight anyway.” Joe said.

“Nah, take the vision skill and see how it feels first.” Zoe said.

“Mm, yeah. Good point, but I don’t think you’ll like it anyway.” Joe agreed.

Emma’s eyes changed to a dark, almost blackish purple colour with shifting waves of white coursing through them as she pushed the system to give her the skill. A moment later, they shifted back to the familiar brown colour.

“No, no good.” Emma shook her head. “That's too much with the spacial vision on top of it. Alright, I think I’m going to just do what Joe said, that makes the most sense honestly.”

“No wait, take the storage skill too and see how good it is. It’s probably bad, but maybe there’s something extra to it.” Zoe suggested.

“Okay, I’ll try it out.” Emma said, and a moment later the glass she put on the table vanished then returned to her hand. “Just seems like normal storage. Doesn’t tell me how much capacity, but I don’t think it really matters honestly.”

“What if it’s a lot though?” Zoe asked.

“When’s the last time you filled up the storage items you already have?" Joe asked Zoe.

“I mean they’re full right now, actually. But fair point, I could just buy another storage item and don’t really struggle with space ever.” Zoe said.

“Mhm. Doesn’t seem worth it. Maybe it’s infinite storage, but what’s the difference between more than I need and more than that?” Emma asked.

“I got it, I got it.” Zoe said, waving her hands in front of her in a defensive gesture. “Just take the other three skills. They seem fine to me too, honestly.”

Emma nodded, and then the three left Zoe’s cave to see what they did. The first was her spacial bow, which made both her returning arrow and the weapon storage skill she had in her Magic Archer class a little redundant. Space warped in her hand to form something resembling a bow to Zoe’s mana vision but invisible to her naked eye, and the arrow that was fired off seemed to skip through the air as it flew towards its target and smashed through a nearby tree.

She decided to think about which skills she’d replace them with in her Magic Archer class later and turned to her Spacial Tracking skill, which Emma said would be impossible to describe but was quite pleased with. Something about the way the threads of space were affected by creatures passing through them, and when she focused on specific tracks she could even get glimpses of the area the animal ended up at.

And the final skill she decided to take was the most visually impressive, at least to Zoe with her mana vision. The wisps of light rushed in and covered Emma’s body in a dense haze of mana.

“Hit me.” Emma said. “But like, lightlyish? Not super hard. Just a tap, but enough to hurt. But not much. You know?"

Joe chuckled and slapped her on the back — or at least he tried, his hand was stopped about a centimetre away from her.

“Harder.” Emma said, and Joe obliged. His hand reaching a few millimetres closer.

“Wow, it didn’t say anything about defensive ability in the description but this is really cool.” Emma said.

“How’s the physical augmentation part of it though? Are you stronger?" Zoe asked.

“I feel a little faster maybe? Like when you first got Haste forever ago, maybe. About that. But, not really. I don’t see things moving slower, I just feel like I’m moving faster, I guess. It’s weird.” Emma waved her arms around at her side.

“Shoot me with one of your projectiles, maybe? See how far it gets? I’m curious.” Emma asked.

“I know I’m half your level, but my skills aren’t really normal. I think if I shot you it’d make it through and probably really hurt.” Zoe said.

“Just tone it down a bit then?" Emma asked.

“I’ve never really done that before, honestly. For fun or whatever, but never when it actually really mattered to not hurt somebody. I have no idea how much I’d have to pull back from it.” Zoe said.

“Okay, shoot me in the foot then. Worst case scenario I lose a foot and you heal me back. I wanna know how good this fabric of space is though.” Emma said.

“You sure?” Zoe asked.

Emma nodded. “Yeah, in the foot. I’d rather find out now than when it matters.”

Zoe shrugged and summoned a ball of ice next to her, then enchanted it with Archery and Dagger-fighting. “You’re really sure?” She asked.

Emma nodded again, with a nervous look on her face. “But the foot. You can aim that right? Like, to the foot? Just the foot, okay?”

“I can hit wherever I want, but you’re absolutely sure you want me to shoot you in the foot?" Zoe asked again.

“Yeah. It’s scary, honestly. But I need to know its limits. Remember when I broke your armour forever ago? Same thing, okay. I just need to know.” Emma said and held her foot out to the side as she leaned on Joe.

Zoe pushed mana into the ball of frost floating next to her and it rocketed off towards Emma’s foot. The projectile slowed as it slammed into the dense coating of mana around Emma’s foot, and then a moment later warped to the other side and continued on its path, embedding into a tree in the distance.

Emma’s eyes widened and her eyebrows raised. “Holy crap that took so much mana.”

“What happened?" Joe asked.

“It teleported. As soon as it reached my foot, it just teleported to the other side of my foot like nothing happened.” Emma explained. “But it took almost ten thousand mana. How close was that to your maximum power?” Emma asked.

“I dunno. A tenth? Maybe less, I guess? I’ve never really measured it before but I didn’t put a lot into that one anyway.” Zoe said.

“Wow, okay, after my mana recovers could you shoot my foot with more power? I wanna see if it scales to damage or if it’ll be the same cause it’s the same frost ball, you know?" Emma asked.

“Sure. We could do that.” Zoe said, and the three chatted for a few minutes about Foizo. A few more minutes passed, and Zoe started wondering how long it would take to recover ten thousand mana.

For Zoe, that was a matter of seconds, but for Emma even after ten minutes she was still just waiting patiently. “It’s no big deal, but how long does ten thousand mana take you to recover?"

“Mmm, I still had a bit from the walk to and from Joe’s inn too so about twelve thousand in total really. But twenty minutes, maybe?" Emma answered.

“Twenty minutes? For just ten thousand mana? What?” Zoe was shocked.

“That’s not bad for a physical class, really. Even for me it would have taken about five minutes before.” Joe chuckled a bit. “Now though, it might only take me two.”

“Well how long would it take you for ten thousand mana, Zoe?” Emma asked.

“I don’t know, with Meditation maybe like five, maybe ten seconds? I don’t really track it anymore.” Zoe answered.

Joe and Emma both stared at her for a moment in shock. “Seconds? Ten thousand mana in seconds?” Joe asked.

“Yeah. I guess that’s a lot, huh?” Zoe asked.

“That’s an insane amount for somebody with classes that aren’t dedicated to recovering mana. Like, my dad did a lot more than that when we last spoke a decade ago. But his whole shtick was making mana, of course he’d be better. You have skills and classes that aren’t specifically about making mana, that’s crazy.” Emma said.

“Well I’ve got a few feats for it, I guess. And a lot more stats than most people my level probably.” Zoe said.

“Okay, enough of that. My mana’s recovered, shoot my foot again. Half power, maybe?” Emma asked.

“Look I don’t really measure it like that. I have no idea what half power would be. I’ll just do more than I did, but less than I could do and go from there, okay?” Zoe said.

“Good enough.” Emma grinned.

Zoe enchanted another frost projectile, this time adding in a piercing focused Elemental Arsenal and pushing it with her Frost skill as it launched. The ball flew at Emma’s foot, and passed through without a scratch, digging itself into the ground just behind Emma.

“About ten thousand again. That’s awesome, wow. I’m immune to Zoe now! Muahahaha.” Emma cackled.

“Well, I don’t know about that.” Zoe said.

“Well as long as you don’t shoot me more than four times at once at least.” Emma said.

Zoe smiled. If she used Enchantment Amplifier, or even just enchanted it with Mana Storage and filled the well that was created, she’d probably smash through Emma’s defensive skill since it likely depended on how much mana was in the object. But she didn’t feel like watching her friend’s foot be shattered to pieces, if Zoe was even capable of that. And the skill was already expensive enough to be a last resort, anyway.