A Relatively Powerful Mage

Sylvi felt positively wealthy as the proceeds were distributed for parts of the Umbral Tiger. Much of the monster had been put to good use, the hide of the creature was being tanned, the claws and teeth were being used to make weapons, the meat long since eaten, and even some of the other parts were used in Caroline’s potions. This included the eyes and heart for her heritage rank-up elixir, which Caroline proclaimed finished. This didn’t leave much of the creature to sell, but the guts, other organs, and bones had sold for just over 5,000 credits. While not everyone who had contributed was there to agree to the arrangement, it was time-sensitive as the carcass had begun to rot, despite their best efforts to preserve it.

“I don’t need the money, my share was the materials for my alchemy,” Caroline insisted when Sylvi tried to transfer her portion of the proceeds.

“Most of which went into the elixir you made for me,” Sylvi pointed out.

“It’s fine, it’s not like I need the money for anything,” Caroline said, shaking her head.

“I beg to differ,” Christoph interrupted, joining their conversation. He had his tent set up right next to the nexus and a crudely constructed table as his office.

“And why is that?” Caroline asked.

“We’re trying to establish an economy and some simple supply chains. One of those supply chains will be your alchemy. Someone will need to gather your ingredients, be they herbs or monster parts. Thus far, everyone has done so knowing they needed to contribute for the group to survive. Eventually, we won’t just be surviving, and those who gathered your materials will not do so for free.”

“I suppose all that’s true, but wouldn’t that mean I should pay for the Umbral Tiger materials I used?” Caroline pointed out.

“You're right, your share should go to the potions,” Sylvi said with a grin. “Now, how much does the system say this elixir is worth?”

“That’s not important, we’re not selling it so I never bothered to have it appraised,” Caroline said defensively, catching on to Sylvi’s ploy. Unfortunately for Caroline, she had already handed the finished product over, and she desperately tried to stop Sylvi before she could reach the nexus with it.

As it turned out, the solution was worth a boatload of credits, almost 30,000 to be more precise. Sylvi whistled, and Caroline looked bashful as her girlfriend glared at her.

“Here I was, thinking I had made it big with a few hundred credits to my name. Apparently, I’m well short of being able to afford it,” Sylvi said, relishing teasing her modest girlfriend.

“Are you sure you won’t reconsider selling?” Christoph asked, instantly receiving glares from both Sylvi and Caroline. He put his hands up in surrender, “I had to ask.”

“You helped me get most of the materials for it, and I never paid you for any of that,” Caroline pointed out as they promptly ignored Christoph.

“Fair enough, that should entitle me to a discount,” Sylvi said, tapping her finger against her forehead as she pretended to do some calculations. “How about I owe you 15,000 credits for it?” She asked. Caroline looked like she was about to argue, but must have known she wouldn’t win this argument.

“Am I ever going to win an argument against you?” Caroline asked as Sylvi grinned at her.

“When I let you win,” Sylvi said with a mischievous grin, eliciting a sigh from Caroline. With that done Sylvi examined the contents of the vial. The liquid inside did not look pleasant to drink, as the various ingredients had turned it brackish. Motes of unnatural darkness flitted about as if moving through the liquid with a will of its own.

“It’s not going to be pleasant to drink,” Caroline said, stating the obvious. “There are quite a few powerful ingredients packed in. The base liquid is water from the healing spring, it used the two E-grade cores to infuse it with the heart and eyes of the Umbral Tiger and finished with several medicinal herbs. One of my skills told me this is called an E-grade Umbral Heritage elixir, and it recommends the recipient be at least level 10 with a constitution of 125. According to Thrisk, heritage rank-ups aren’t trivial to undergo, even moderately impactful ones are temporarily debilitating. More powerful ones, like the one I made, are even more dangerous, potentially even lethal if your body can’t handle it.”

Sylvi held the vial with uncertainty. On the one hand, she didn’t want to give up potential advantage, and if this heritage was as potent as Caroline seemed to think it was, she couldn’t afford to wait. On the other hand, potentially being sidelined like Zhaire was something they equally couldn’t afford. Currently, her constitution is lower than the recommended level, sitting at 114.

“If I’m higher than the recommended level, does that lessen the constitution requirement?” Sylvi asked. Caroline nodded. “Then I’m not going to wait, I need to get stronger.”

“There is one sensible precaution we could take. You take the elixir near the hot spring, that way you can use it to recover from the worst of the negative effects. Though we won’t be able to use it during the rank-up itself, doing so would interfere with the improvements to your body, potentially even crippling you,” Caroline explained.

“Let's go then,” Sylvi said, setting off before Caroline could even consider changing her mind. The slight alchemist had to rush after Sylvi to catch up.

The spring wasn’t far from the edge of the plateau, but they had a decent hike to reach the switchback. Near midday, they passed a group headed towards the nexus. It was the main contingent of their settlement, completing the final leg of their journey. Zhaire was near the rear of the procession, looking to be almost fully healed, a large scar across his abdomen the only obvious sign of his near-death experience. The spring, which he had visited early in the day, had worked miraculously. When Sylvi explained their plan, a few interested parties asked if they could watch the process, Zhaire among them. They intended to camp near the spring, and there wasn’t much space, so most were refused with the exceptions of Emelia, Zhaire, and Dr. Thompson, who might be able to help in a dire situation. Everyone else just wanted to gawk, but too much needed to be done, so they were ushered onwards to the settlement.

They arrived at the spring near the end of the day, the hike taking the better part of a day. Not wanting to waste more time, Sylvi uncorked the vial and poured the liquid down her throat as quickly as physically possible. Despite the appearance, the brackish liquid didn’t taste nearly as bad as it looked, almost having a medical quality. Unfortunately, that was where the pleasant surprises ended. The elixir burned as it went down her throat and into her stomach. She could feel it as it traversed her entire body, having been absorbed into her bloodstream and spreading to every extremity. Despite this, the burning sensation only intensified as it spread. It had originally felt like an IV run wide open, not pleasant by any means, but entirely bearable. It quickly intensified from there, becoming so agonizing that the pain far exceeded the worst injury she had experienced, feeling like fire was burning her from the inside out. She felt her pulse quicken and intensify, pounding in her chest.

This was only the prelude, the spreading of the elixir throughout her body. The first localized effect was to her eyes, an intense sharp pain erupting from them as it felt like an invisible force was trying to gouge them out. She shut her eyes and endured it, though she was distantly aware that she had started screaming. Next, her entire muscular-skeletal system changed. Nearly every muscle in her body was pulled apart and reformed like rubber bands being pulled free and replaced with a better version. Fortunately, the change to her skeleton was more subtle, though only slightly less painful, as her bones were reinforced, made to withstand the greater stresses of an E-grade being.

Sylvi wasn’t sure how long the process took. It felt like days as she was unable to adjust to the pain constantly shifting throughout her body. Eventually, the pain subsided and then stopped completely. She lay on the rocks for several minutes, not finding it uncomfortable in the slightest. She would have laid there for a while if someone hadn’t come over and helped her up. Hesitantly, she opened her eyes.

Her vision was blurry, but it quickly came into focus, though something about her eyes seemed different, as if she was seeing things through a different filter. That’s when she realized it was dark, yet she was able to see everything as if she had a pair of night vision goggles on. She inspected herself, noting that she was covered in all manner of bodily fluids, a vile mixture of sweat, pus, and oil having been excreted from her pores and not in small quantities. Her clothes were utterly soaked and ruined from the sheer amount of the stuff.

She took a tentative step, her entire body protesting from the minute motion as if she were an elderly woman after surgery. Caroline, who had helped her up, provided an arm for her to lean on, not caring that her clothes were becoming filthy as well.

“Help me out of these clothes,” Sylvi said as she tried and failed to take her shirt off.

“Turn around,” Caroline shouted to the gawking men before doing as Sylvi asked. It took a couple of minutes to get her undressed, Emelia also helping when it became apparent that Caroline was struggling. Sylvi resisted the urge to plunge right into the healing spring, however the thought of contaminating the pristine water with bodily fluids was sacrilege. Instead, she insisted that Caroline wipe off as much of the offending fluids as she could with a towel and then a sponge.

When that was done, she was helped into the spring. Despite the healing quality, the experience wasn’t entirely pleasant as her body rapidly healed. As the agony and stiffness subsided, she could immediately tell she had undergone some major improvements.

Heritage Human (1F) has ranked up to Human (1E)

Human (1E)

Primary Stats / Level Improvement

Strength .15% +.1%

Agility .25% +.15%

Constitution .15% +.1%

Intelligence .1% +.05%

Willpower .1% +.05%

Charisma .1% +.05%

Secondary Stats / Level

HP .3% +.2%

FP .15% +.05%

MP .15% +.05%

HP Regen Rate .3% +.3%

FP Regen Rate .25% +.25%

MP Regen Rate .1% +.1%

Base Strength improved from 104 to 106

Base Agility improved from 127 to 130

Base Constitution improved from 110 to 112

Base Intelligence improved from 104 to 105

Base Willpower improved from 123 to 124

Base Charisma improved from 98 to 99

Primary Stats Gained New Value

+4 Strength 111

+6 Agility 140

+4 Constitution 118

+2 Intelligence 107

+2 Willpower 127

+1 Charisma 100

Secondary Stats Gained

+13 HP 139

+16 FP 176

+5 MP 137

+18 Attack Efficiency 203

+5 Mana Efficiency 161

Trait Gained Tier/Rank Description

Umbral Eyes 1F See through all forms of darkness, including umbral darkness. Improves overall visual acuity by 5%.

Umbral Affinity 1F Gain innate magic to manipulate and create the umbral element. Mana efficiency for umbral element improved by 2.5%.

Spell Gained

Umbral Shroud 1F Create a shroud of intangible darkness. Mana cost/second varies by the volume of the shroud, distance from the caster to the furthest point in the shroud, and luminosity.

Umbral Shaping 1F Manipulate the form of the umbra, allowing it to be moved or shaped. Mana cost/second varies by the volume of umbra being manipulated, speed of manipulation, and distance from caster to target.

Sylvi gaped at the improvements. She had been jealous of Imri’s rapid improvement in reaching tier 2 in his profession, but this exceeded even that. Unlike class and profession improvements, the improvements from heritage were visible for all to see. Her body, already toned and fit, had been improved, her muscles slightly more efficient and lithe, while any trace of fat had been removed, accentuating her form. Not only had this improved her base attributes, it had permanently increased her cap on her base attribute. If her maximum agility, the limit she could have achieved by focusing her training and dedicating herself, had been 150, it was now closer to 160. This far exceeded the immediate base attribute she had gained, meaning there was now more room to improve as she trained her new body.

Sylvi desperately wanted to try her new magic, something that caused mana efficiency to be a new line item on her character sheet. Unfortunately, her mana, along with the other two resource pools, had been nearly completely depleted. Only HP had seen a significant recovery, thanks to the hot spring she was soaking in.

As she stepped out of the spring, her naked form silhouetted against the moonlight, Caroline ogled her. Even Zhaire and Dr. Thompson gaped until Emelia elbowed them in the ribs.

“Like what you see?” Sylvi whispered suggestively into Caroline’s ear as she accepted a towel.

“You were sexy as hell before this, now it's not even fair. The eyes will take some getting used to.”

“The eyes?” Sylvi asked.

“Yeah, your eyes aren’t human anymore. They're not bad, just different.”

“Different how?”

Instead of answering her, Caroline handed Sylvi a small mirror. Her eyes were indeed different, resembling a cat’s with slitted pupils, reflecting light in such a way that they almost seemed to glow.

Zhaire approached the moment Sylvi was dressed. He glanced at Sylvi but then shifted his attention to Caroline.

“Can you make more of those and make them with other monster parts?” He asked bluntly.

“I don’t see why not, though I wouldn’t be able to tell you if a monster would work until I can inspect them. Also, this wouldn’t be something I can mass produce, not at this quality anyway. This elixir took a lot of work to prepare and no small amount of mana. While the next one likely wouldn’t take as long, it's no rush job,” Caroline explained.

“I’ll see that you have whatever you need,” Zhaire said, nodding curtly.

“One more thing. In addition to the materials, I expect payment for this,” Caroline said, looking somewhat sheepish for demanding she be paid for her work.

“Payment?” Zhaire asked.

“Imri and the merchant named Christoph are establishing an economy. There’s a system-run store that provides credits in exchange for items. I was told I shouldn’t work for free, to help establish some sort of normalcy back,” Caroline explained.

“That shouldn’t be an issue,” Zhaire said, though he clearly didn’t fully understand the concept.

Sylvi let the details of their conversation fade into background noise as she reminded herself that her girlfriend was more than capable of handling her own negotiations. She excused herself and went to the tent they set up for the night. She practically collapsed upon reaching it, falling asleep instantly from exhaustion more profound than anything she had experienced.