But for a Slime

Chapter One Hundred Fourteen

Joe woke with bleary eyes, exhausted and overwhelmed while vibrating with manic energy and a sense of doom. Anxiety gnawed through his exhaustion and refused to allow him his rest, and he soon gave up trying to return to sleep. He had slept it, by quite a bit it would seem, as the sun was burnishing the horizon with a dim glow. Floundering on the bed for a half an hour got him nothing and the quietness of the villa let him know no one else was awake.

Waking with an empty bed was a relief, and he sat up on it and leaned against the wall, turning his bed into a pseudo sofa. He rested there for a time, his mind shutting off as he stared at the wall on the other side, and it was almost with relief that he laid back down. Sleep! But even as he laid back down, his exhaustion fled him once again and he stared up at the ceiling.

With a sigh, he turned towards his practice. His work with mana and mana points now almost reflex. He worked with both, expressing his mana, then as usual, turned to pushing his personal mana, shoving it out of his system and into the air. He did this for two cycles before pausing, and realizing he was being a bit dumb. Kinda wasting all this mana… so…

He then swapped out jobs and put in his best healing job before asking the system to bring up his 'practice magic' display. It had refined a bit, as ideas came into play and he asked for changes. It was now a full three dimensional cube displayed before him with a very intuitive interface where he could simply spin it and move it by grabbing it with a hand. His expected 'mana paint,' for the lack of a better term, was placed on the three dimensional canvas in a transparent off white to show where his mana should be going.

Linked with the first display was a second display that showed the completed design. The reason he had a second display was because he'd learned that spray and pray really wasn't quite the answer. There were nuances Joe still wasn't able to grasp at all. Somehow, just placing mana on the spot indicated was not exactly right. His efforts were still inadequate compared to what the system could do with the automatic button press in his mind, or soul. He wasn't certain if there were different mana types, a possibility given the many different magical jobs, or if it was using the mana in some specific or unusual way. Maybe some kind of magnetic or wood like attribute… lay it down in the same grain? Along the same 'path' or something? Or even weirder? This is just…

But he couldn't grasp what he was missing at all, only knowing he was missing something. So, having a completed example at his side linked with his personal efforts was, he hoped, a path to some kind of insight. Spinning one spun both, and allowed him to keep them synchronized. But, for the most part, he'd begun to simply focus on the one. All these changes were the low hanging fruit, ideas that had come to him quickly. He hoped any new ideas would possibly add clarity, but for now, despite these ideas, he still felt much like a monkey with a paint by numbers set struggling to even figure out the system being used to help, let alone actually beginning to create something beautiful. Monkey would do much better than this… downright insulting to the poor guy. Joe huffed and refocused. So tired…

He began to instead express his mana with a purpose, pushing it to create the best healing spell he currently had. He also tried to empty his system mana first, before pushing his personal mana into the spell. The first few efforts were utter failures, but he did learn a lot of interesting things, and by the end of his third try, he found he was able to at least put his 'mana pointer' down on the right spot intuitively. So annoying… donno where I'm pointing in the first place! And with that, things seemed to get a lot easier, his mana 'painting' the correct region before bouncing to the next one. He went through each section and by the end, was struggling to squeeze out enough mana to actually finish the spell.

Right before it was to engage, he slashed a pretty deep slice on his arm and groaned. No!!! Hold it together! The pain almost gutted his concentration, but he pushed on through and finally engaged the spell. Glad the system is smart enough to wait on HP… lets me practice this… heh. Unfortunately, it seemed like his measly ten or so personal HP didn't actually take his healing into consideration, and valiantly attacked the wound, healing all of about a percent of the damage. Huh… so that's still active, even if I still have system HP. Interesting… Joe chuckled to see the efforts, then found his grin falling a bit when his personal HP, obviously having run out, regained something and ticked again, healing once more. Joe's eyes widened with some awe but then his thoughts calmed before they started zipping down fantasy and superhero ramifications. Amputations… not going to heal… body will heal over before my HP can finish the job… but… if I get enough.

Joe's eyebrows fluctuated with consternation as he considered the ramifications before he suddenly cursed and turned back to the completed healing spell waiting for his release. He cursed his distraction and felt the healing spell slap down on his arm and do a remarkable job of returning it to health. The wound closed about three quarters of the way, and Joe realized he'd been a bit too ambitious with his wound. He sighed and relaxed, allowing his system HP to take over, and it was healed up. Took a good chunk of the HP, too. That… heal is pretty strong then? Maybe?

Joe began doing exactly that, practicing his heal with his personal mana whenever he saw his system MP beginning to regrow, although it seemed that each rest took longer and longer as he pushed his mana organ. He was able to cast the heal spell four or five times but then found himself too exhausted to continue. It wasn't his focus or skill, that was more than enough, but it was his personal mana that seemed to be exhausted. Joe found it frustrating, but it did make sense. Spent all my life focused on studying and learning… and practicing my martial arts… not gonna have a problem with mental or physical stamina… but this mana thing…

His core felt like he'd just pushed himself to do a million sit ups, crunches, and hour long planks all at once. But it wasn't actually his body that was complaining. When he stood or even did a couple sit ups, he found his body reacting with ease. It was something else that was cramping and he felt it deep within. Despite that, only maybe a half hour or hour later, the cramping pain had shifted to the deep burn of recovery that he was used to and he actually found himself smiling. Another thing to grow… ha!

He'd accomplished something similar in simply expressing his mana, but it really wasn't quite the same. Somehow, he wasn't able to push quite as far with simply expressing mana. That said, it was rather exhilarating for Joe and he grinned. He turned back to see his system MP back to full and frowned, then shrugged. Still need to figure out how to do this heal anyway, so… Joe turned back to practicing his heal spell, burning through his system mana a good dozen or so times before emptying it out. He never really actually engaged or acted out the spell. Maybe cast? Probably the right word, right? Cast the spell… didn't cast it… He just had the spell prepped and formed as the system was teaching him before he allowed it all to collapse or destabilize then do it all again, focusing on his skill to actually make the spell.

When his system MP was emptied, he then would pushed to express his personal mana which was never that much as he would almost immediately begin cramping and struggling. It was the tiniest amounts and not something he could create an actual heal with, or any other spell he'd seen. It was too little mana. And he never pushed so far as to cross over into pain, not wishing to cause himself harm.

Once he began feeling twinges of pain, he backed off until full system MP and repeat the whole process. Throughout all this, he spent the time poking his arms in a variety of places to give his personal HP a chance to grow, if that were possible. He quickly fell into a rather simple rhythm, knowing exactly when to poke. He started high up on one forearm before poking down his arm about a centimeter apart in a row before going to the next row and continuing the whole way down till the back of his hands and even onto his fingers before he shifted arms and did it all over again.

That was his plan, at least, but he only made it till about half way down his forearm before he felt his time run out and shifted to focusing on his physical development as well. Equal time… but luckily more time each day, heh… but… yeah… Joe sat up and began going through his katas, exercises, and stretches. Half way through it, he realized that he was still able to do some of his exercises, and further realized it was likely even a good idea. Gonna need to cast that heal spell in the middle of a fight… so should probably!

He began attempting to do the heal while performing his katas or punching holes in his arm while doing his stretches or exercises when hand positioning wasn't as crucial. He did this until the sun was well above the horizon and finally came to a rest. His forearms felt like they were burning for a bit, and Joe grew concerned, but the burn disappeared within moments and Joe felt more comfortable about the exercise.

With a comfortable burn in his physical body and a deeper much more painful burn within his mana being, Joe took a moment to cool down, walking the room a bit and leaving all mana alone. He paused as he walked, then considered his cool down which still uses his body slightly and decided he might want something similar for his mana burn. Slow relaxed… how do I do that? He returned to his cool down and pondered how he would do a mana cool down before deciding a simply mana expression as slow and relaxed as possible might be a good idea. He marched around the room. Breath in… breath out… breath in… breath out… He'd always used the breathing exercise to calm himself and paused at that. Might work? He began doing the same with his mana, allowing a slow relaxed expulsion of mana before he calmed and halted the expulsion, then return to allowing it out.

He soon began timing it to his own breathing and felt the mana burn settle even faster. Nice… His thoughts quickly drifted as they often did when he was lost in exercising, and his mana and breathing began to coincide. Breath in… breath out… breath in… breath out… His breath came in rather deep, then sighed out with relief and increased relaxation. So, too, did his mana flow outward, then pause in the inhalation, and flow outward in a slow steady beat that brought comfort and relieved his being.

After another couple minutes of this, Joe smiled and headed out to the common area to take a more comfortable seat than was in the suite. Nice… makes it easy… just kinda combine that… breath with my mana and that should help a lot! Time to look at my gains… I guess.

There weren't many from yesterday, or he should say, there were a lot yesterday, as he'd gained a lot from the dungeon, but he'd already explored them carefully while in the dungeon. Since the last floor, there had really been no change except with what had happened with Zilnek when he'd met him once more. He popped up his available jobs and searched it, but really found nothing else new. Justicar of Mercy showed up under the priest line of jobs, down at the bottom as a loose singular job. He wasn't sure what to think of it and he had no other data but the name, never having actually leveled it. As for the 'holy' line of priest jobs, he didn't notice anything new at all. He frowned then his eyes widened with some surprise. Wait? He narrowed his eyes and pondered. Is it new?

The color for the priest line of jobs was a bit odd, and he'd never really thought much of it. But something had changed and when he went back over his memories, he realized that the list of priestly jobs had been rather monotone in color. There had been a change recently, but Joe hadn't thought much of it until today when he now saw the list of the priestly jobs highlighted in gold and concluded in a dark grey. Was the grey always there? I don't… really remember…

His eyebrows knitted a bit but he couldn't quite remember, but what he was absolutely certain of was the brilliant gold that now highlighted the beginning of each priestly job section. He stared at it for a bit, then looked back over the dialog box which offered him a new line of jobs. He chewed his lips in thought. Holy line of priesthood… just more jobs, but… He sighed and turned from his thoughts on to other things. Don't wanna deal with this right now, but… ooh… I'll need to do two jobs for this… again… cause if this is anything like the regular priest jobs… gonna have to get the priest line up till it's like… monk? Or something? Then I'll be able to change jobs again… well… that sucks… although… could burn through the jobs fast… but, no time today… time to move!

Joe dismissed the job and in that dismissal found himself considering his next job. He only really had one slot. Still gotta keep the job change skill… so gotta keep one priest job… still. Got main job change up above one, but the other three jobs are sub jobs… and I don't have the 'char:' or time or… job slots. Can't lose transporter… not sure how dropping the job will affect my inventory space… really gotta test that. I can do that at the village. Lots more time there. And I can't drop theorist… unless I can…

Joe stared at his job choices, lost in thought, finger hovering over his status.

* * *

Gwenvair woke with a sigh, then a grumble. Where is he? She looked around and lounged back in her bed. The early rising that Joe and his apprentices had adhered to was something she found to be unpleasant, bordering on abusive. She took the pleasure to lounge in the bed a bit longer before forcing herself to rise. Today would be a very busy day, and timing would be crucial. And we need the shower… don't want to arouse suspicions too quickly…

Worry ate at her thoughts, anxiety rising as while she understood Joe's plan, she wondered at how he could protect them. Gwenvair took a deep breath and pushed aside such fears and turned to her day. She didn't bother to dress much, already planning to bathe in preparation for the day.

She exited the room and came into the common area and found Joe sitting, frozen. Nothing shone before him, but obviously he was considering his status. Why he'd hidden it, she was uncertain, but she stayed by his side and waited with consideration. A bell passed and she grew concerned. It wasn't so much how he sat as the fact that he remained unmoving and frozen. If she couldn't see his chest move or feel the air escaping his mouth and nose, she would have taken him for a painted statue for how still he was. It was unnatural, and concerning. Can base do this? Or is this a form of meditation? His eyes were closed, which was interesting but looked more like he was simply caught in mid blink. The oddity came from the fact that his hand was raised and finger pointed, as if ready to press an acceptance from the system or some such, and it remained frozen exactly like that. There was no tremble in the arm nor any soft movement at all, except for the soft breathing.

* * *

Gunlan, Patriarch of the Galgandar clan and thus leader of the city of Coushar roused too early in the morning with some anger. A light had begun to glow in his eyes and he did not know when it began, but it must have been some time ago to disrupt his rest. He knew what it was and attempted to ignore it or dismiss it in some way, but it was insistent.

Gunlan rolled over and cursed, "That fool eccentric! Why must he be so insistent… so often!"

Gunlan roused enough to look at the dialog box and carefully made sure to deny the request. He did not know what it was, but there was only ever a single kind of system request that came from a slave, and it was always to be denied. He'd enjoyed the eccentric's despair at first, but he'd come to deeply hate the man's insistence. Asking again and again… daily… even several times a day for weeks! My sleep is being interrupted by the petty fool! Now, he was rather certain the eccentric only asked out of spite, the request coming at all times of the day and night. When I find the man again, when he is under my thumb once more, he will find me no forgiving master! He must be put in his place, and firmly! Growling, he turned away and snuggled back into the bed, chasing after his sleep.

He did not know the request specifics nor could he ever read the system message, but if he had the capabilities of the eccentric, he would have found the squirming letters of the system to be quiet decipherable; easily understood and comprehended. Sadly, however, he could not understand what the system attempted to reveal. The blue box faded away quickly but his sleep did not return.