Nano Mage 2, page 14
We were hours on the trails already, with Lita on point in her wolf form, sniffing for anything. She was followed by Fiona, Mika, and me. Mika suggested she take the end, but I shook my head and said I would be fine taking the position. I honestly wanted her near Fiona in case anything happened. This way, she was sandwiched between Mika and Lita. It was early since we left the cave at about seven in the morning after having a nice breakfast of hot bread and meats. We had cheese too, but I didn’t want to eat our entire supply of food before we headed out.
Thankfully, Lilintia had included in my supply purchases things such as flour, sugar, yeast, and other things in case we wanted to make our own food. Though, how to do that while traveling, I wasn’t sure. But I could always make something called Bannock. It was called travel bread here. Same concept. Simply mix flour with water, baking powder, salt, butter, or oil, which we also had. Honestly, the amount of gear in my spatial bag astounded me.
I was also mostly broke now. We had used up all my gold and silver. All I had left were coppers. And of those, I didn’t have many left. All that gear, weapons, and, oh, I forgot to mention, the armor was expensive. Thorp said if I wanted to sell any extra monster cores I got, he would be willing to help there. Though, now the question was, did I use them to level or increase the size of my purse again? I sighed and looked around to make sure we were safe.
I had leather armor on. Nothing fancy. I was wearing a chest piece with bracers and a leather helm. That was it. The girls had pretty much the same thing, except for Mika, who declined all that to allow her to move faster with her staff. But we had it in case she wanted to wear it. I had the room. Why not?
The sun was beating down on us, but it was cooler. The weather was changing, and Fiona figured it would be about two months before the snow fell. Sooner up north. But we weren’t heading north, thankfully. We were heading east, but right now, we were going southeast. The first village that we were going to check was two days from the village of Monshore.
The village we were heading towards was called Lidmore. It was smaller than Fiona’s home village, by probably a fifth, as far as her father figured, if the last census was correct. I was shocked they did that, but Mika reminded me that that was how her father knew how much to tax a village. Of course. Taxes.
We were to investigate the death of two men and scout the area to see if there were monsters. Thankfully we had a tool to help us: Lita with her nose in wolf form. She was able to smell like a hound dog, or even better. I wasn’t sure which could smell better, wolves, which technically was what she was in her current form, or dogs.
Mika asked from behind me. “Did you want to take out that sword and look at it? I can explain some things about its use while we are walking.”
I turned to her and nodded. I moved my hand to my bag and placed it inside, and with a thought, pulled out the long sword.
I held the long sword in my hand, its metal grip was cool to the touch. The blade was long and shiny, glinting in the light. I could feel the weight of the sword and knew that it would take skill to wield it effectively in battle.
The blade of a long sword was typically long and slender, tapering to a sharp point. It was made of steel, which gave it a strong and durable edge that could withstand the rigors of battle, or so Thorp had explained.
The blade had a groove running down the center of the blade, which reduced weight without compromising its strength. The blade also had a blunt ricasso, the unsharpened section near the guard, used for parrying and grappling. Thorp said not to use it as a shield since it could shatter, but I could use it to parry a hit. When I looked at him, amazed at his knowledge, he reminded me that he used to be a warrior who had worked for the Society of Monster Hunters. Right.
Looking closer at the blade, I saw that it was a weapon that was not just for cutting but also for thrusting, giving the sword versatility in battle.
“All right,” Mika started. “Your grip. Hold the sword with both hands, with your dominant hand near the pommel and your other hand near the guard. Your arms should be extended, but not fully locked out.”
“Next,” she continued. “Your stance. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, and your non-dominant foot slightly behind the dominant one. This will give you stability and balance while moving.”
“Movement. To move forward or backward, take small, shuffling steps while keeping your weight centered over your feet. To turn, pivot on the ball of your foot while keeping your feet in the same position. Because of your speed, that might be where you have an advantage.”
“I will?”
She nodded. “If those nanobots, as you call them, inside us are changing you, your movements will dictate who is stronger on the battlefield.”
I slowly nodded at her, looking up ahead to make sure I didn’t trip while learning from her. “Makes sense.”
“Now, there are two ways to use your sword. The first is slashing. To make a cutting motion, bring the sword back by lifting it with your dominant hand while pulling it towards your body with your other hand. Then, step forward with your dominant foot and use your whole body to swing the sword in a horizontal or vertical motion.”
“The next is thrusting. To thrust, keep the sword extended in front of you and step forward with your dominant foot while pushing the sword forward with both hands. Now here is where Thorp is correct about parrying and not to use your sword’s blade as a shield. To block an incoming attack, use the guard or ricasso of the sword to deflect the blow.”
Thank god I had learned what a ricasso was last night. Because otherwise, I would be staring at her blankly. Both Mika and Thorp had explained it was a section of the blade of a sword or dagger that is located near the guard and is not sharpened.
“So, what I want you to do is attach that scabbard that you also have to your hip, to get used to it there, but I want you to practice just moving it around. Start small and simple. Just thrust, slash, and pretend to parry in the air in front of you. Don’t bother with sides yet. That’s later.”
“Fucking hell. Should I have just gotten a dagger?” I asked her in dismay.
She laughed at me. “Trust me. A dagger takes even more skill to use it well enough to turn a sword or axe.”
I turned to her and looked at her as if she was pulling my leg, but she simply smiled.
And for the next couple of hours, I did exactly that. I pretended to be fighting imaginary enemies as if I was a kid with a cardboard tube from wrapping paper. I might or might not have tripped a couple of times in my wild swings. The girls were good, though. They only snickered now and then. However, after Mika told Fiona that once she learned the dagger, she would be in the same boat, Fiona pouted and stopped snickering. Mostly.
We stopped for lunch, but instead of eating the hot food, we made do with just simple bread and cheese, and water. Even though the girls pouted, I told them I wanted to keep the good stuff for when we really needed a pick-me-up. We were good with just normal fair. They weren’t happy, but they agreed that keeping it when we needed to bring up our spirits would be a good idea.
Once lunch was done, we continued on in the direction of Lidmore. I wished I had it on my map to make it easier, but we had the rough map that Thorp gave us, with the waypoints we wanted to follow to get to the locations he wanted us to check for monster activity. That was our first day, only stopping for the night in a small dell near a stream, not that we needed the water, but this allowed me to replenish the bags that were inside my spatial bag.
By then, my arms were killing me. I had been practicing with the sword for hours until it felt normal to be carrying it, not just in my hands but also in the sword’s scabbard. If I thought carrying it in my hand was awkward, walking around with it in my scabbard was an eye-opener. I wasn’t sure how I folks walked around with that weight there.
It almost tripped me multiple times, the scabbard getting somehow tangled into my legs. Mika said it got easier with time, as my body would get used to it being there, and I would almost unconsciously move it around without thinking. I didn’t believe her, but I trusted her, so I stopped complaining.
22
“Do you think we will be all right?” Fiona asked me softly, with her head on my chest.
I looked down at her. We had finished eating about an hour ago and were down for the night. Lita was on the first watch right now, and Mika was already asleep. For a princess, she sure fell asleep on the ground without any issues. I would have figured she would want a soft bed, but since traveling with her, I saw that she was one tough cookie. She would make one hell of a formidable monarch when she deposed her father.
“What do you mean?” I asked her just as softly as she had asked the question, not wanting to wake Mika up.
“Well, I know we have taken on a couple of monsters already and won, but they might be weak. There are some pretty powerful monsters behind the border. Maybe it’s only the weak ones that can pass through right now. If that border comes down, many Ethilians will be hurt.”
Right. Ethilians were what her people were called. I kept forgetting that. Being human, I’d not really thought of Mika, Fiona, or even her parents as another race. To me, they were just people. It was odd because, on other worlds in my realm, other races were very distinct. Not that Ethilians weren’t, being blue and with tapered ears like a folklore Elf.
But most bipedal races from my realm did not look like humans at all. An example would be the Tholorians. They had bodies like humans, but their faces were, hmm were, what nightmares were made of. I would never think of having sex with a Tholorian. Then there were the Taxlons. They looked like nothing more than a rock, since they were literally covered with stone. Something about their diet. Inside they were squishy, but outside, they were tough as rock.
But the Ethilians, to me, looked normal. Was that something that Algron had done to me? Like how when an Ethilians looked at me, their pupils dilated and acted normal? Was he doing something to me to make Ethilians women beautiful? Maybe they were ugly? I looked down at Fiona, frowning and thinking. Yeah no. She was definitely beautiful. Even the princess was with her chopped air.
“You think we will have to fight more powerful foes?”
She nodded against my chest.
“Then, I guess we will need to get stronger. Right now, magic is still new to all of us, so we aren’t sure what we can accomplish. With Lita’s help, we will get stronger. Hell, I’m learning swordplay from Mika.”
Fiona giggled against my chest. “Are you still sore?”
I scowled. “Yeah. But Lita said that my nanobots will help with the healing of my muscles.”
“I think Mika is shocked at just how fast you’re learning it.”
“I think that’s partly the nanobots. Lita said that the nanobots are helping with what we call memory muscle. It’s what allows someone to learn something by doing it over and over until it’s natural.”
“That’s what she was explaining to me as well, about learning daggers.”
“How is that coming? I know it’s only been a day,” I asked her, curious.
“Good,” she mumbled, and I could tell she was half asleep. “But I’ve handled a dagger before. Unlike you and a sword.”
“Yeah. Where I’m from, we used phasers and laser weapons,” I explained with a chuckle. “There’s an expression. Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. So, I never really used one. We have emergency knives, but that’s not the same. Most of those are made of,” I started to explain, but Fiona giggled again, causing me to stop.
“You’re doing it again. Explaining things that make no sense to me from your realm.”
It was my turn to chuckle at her. “Right. Sorry. I keep forgetting.”
“It’s all right. I love to hear about your home. I still find it hard that your race had no world of their own,” she said with a sad sigh.
“And thanks to Lita, I now know that we used to have one,” I told her. “But that life is gone. Now, my life is here, with you.”
I bent down and kissed the top of her head.
Fiona snuggled in deeper on me and sighed with a happy sound. “I love you, Zach.”
“And I love you, Fiona,” I told her softly, wrapping my arm tighter around her and pushing her against me. “Good night.”
“Good night,” she mumbled, and I could tell she was already half asleep.
Before nodding off, I brought up my status page, and looked at my current spell list and stats. I needed to figure out new spells to battle whatever is to come our way.
Name: Zach Riley
Race: Human.
Class: MageLevel: 3
Mana : 2100/2200 (100 locked for Soulbound item)
Hit Points : 300/300
Special abilities.
(1) Core Assimilation.
Known spells.
Fireball (F/A)
Stone Spear (E)
Heat (F)
Flash Flame (F)
Freeze (W)
Fire (F)
Earth Vines (E)
Air Scout’s Knowledge (A)
Grave Digger (E)
Items:
Spatial bag:
Size: 25x25
Weight Reduction: 100%
Weight: 1 pound
Durability: 1000/1000
Behavior: This is a spatial storage bag that allows you to keep items inside it in their original form.
The bag has a 100% weight reduction since items are stored in a different spatial space. This bag
is Soulbound to you and can only be used by you.
Skills:
Weapons:
Long Swords. Level 1.
Whoa! What the fuck! Seeing the last line, I almost bolted upright, but Fiona’s weight on my chest stopped me.
Why did I not get a notification about my skills? Was it because it was still at level 1? Maybe once I hit level 2, I would see one? Damn! Did that mean if I started to learn daggers or even short swords and shields, I would learn new skills? Did skills give me upgrades, I wondered? Like how in a game the player would earn points for special moves?
“Calm down, Zach,” I thought with a chuckle. While Algron might have given me a status window, I doubted it would be exactly like a game. That would be cool, though, for my nanobots to learn a skill that, for me, would come automatically. I’d need to talk to Lita about that.
With that, I closed my eyes and tried to sleep since I had the last watch. Though, with the way Mika fell asleep, I should have had her take the last watch. Oh well.
I felt a shake on my shoulder, and I was instantly awake. I looked up, and it was Mika. She smiled down at Fiona and me.
“Your watch,” she said.
“Anything?” I asked her, slowly and carefully extricating myself from Fiona without waking her.
I guessed I was tired enough that I never felt her get up for her own shift or when she lay back down with me.
“Nothing. It’s pretty quiet.”
I nodded at her and smiled. “You go ahead back to bed. I’ll wake up everyone in the morning. I’ll have breakfast ready.”
“Sounds good,” she said thankfully, and within a minute, she was in her own bedroll, thanks to the supplies we bought, and was already snoring.
I chuckled at her. Yup, she was for sure not soft.
Once I had gotten up, I made sure to cover Fiona back up with our combined bedrolls and moved away from the fire. I passed Lita, who was in her wolf form, sleeping with a very much gnawed bone next to her.
Once I was a good ten feet away from the camp, with the fire behind me, I sat down and listened to the night sounds. The night wasn’t quiet. There were sounds of insects making their racket, which I knew meant things were not lurking out there. I knew from experience that if bugs and small animals got quiet, something bigger was out there. Tonight though, it sounded good.
I wondered if there was a spell I could create to somehow keep a ward up? Or something to give us advance notice of something out there? I didn’t even have a clue what element I would use for that. I had two hours before I needed to wake the others. Since I was going to make breakfast, I figured I had about an hour to think of it.
“Let’s see,” I thought. What would be a good element to use for this magic? Earth or Air? I already had the spell Air Scout’s Knowledge, which used Air magic, but I needed to be awake for that in order to hear something. And using it out here in this setting was harder, since it didn’t pinpoint a sound like it did when we were in a cave. The sounds were all around.
Earth? I thought that Earth would work. I could have it so that there was a line, like a line in the sand, and if broken, it would alert me? Ok, how would I do that? Not like the elements talked to me. Wait, but my nanobots do!
Excited about my line of reasoning, I thought about it some more. What if I created a line using Earth magic, and if somehow it was broken, my nanobots would alert me with buzzing in my head or even zapping me? Not that I wanted to be zapped, I thought with a frown on that one. What about an alarm? I knew that using magic was all about my intent, but it was my nanobots that were technically doing it and converting the energy in the air for me to use.
So, I would try that. I closed my eyes and imagined in my head a circle, an unbroken circle of Earth energy that if something or someone was to walk across, it would somehow break that energy. How big did I want it? I wanted it to be a good size, right? Something that would give us time to get ready.
No use creating something that was ten feet. I looked back at the fire, and I calculated that I was about ten feet or so, more like fifteen if I was honest, from the fire and our sleeping forms. So, if I extended that 100 feet in a circle. Even if something was running toward us, that would give us time. Right?
So, a circle of Earth energy around me, extending 100 feet around me. No, not around me, but from where I cast it. Fuck, this was not as easy as I thought. Because if I did it from where I cast it, I could be ten feet from the fire. So, I decided on 100 feet from my target area. Yeah, that worked better.
