The Way Ahead

Chapter 83a: Focus is Key

Other than a spear, the man appeared to be unarmed, and he wasn’t wearing any armor, just dirty farmer’s clothing. The bandit’s eyes were fixed on Edwin, and he was shifting slightly, adjusting the spear to keep the tip pointed at him.

He idly Identified the figure, seeing if…

Lirasian Reaper

Well, that Class name was only mildly terrifying, even if it didn’t seem to match with the dirty-looking man in front of him.

“Are you dumb? I said, give me your money!”

Perhaps his judgement was massively out of tune, but Edwin didn’t really feel like he was in that much danger from the bandit, “Why should I do that?”

“Because I’ll skewer you if you don’t! You got no guards, I’ll gut you! I will! You won’t be the first!” he paused, “And if you wanna think about fighting, don’t! I got twenty more men in the woods, they’ll swarm you the moment you make a bad move!”

“You’re a terrible liar.” Edwin muttered, then reconsidered, “Or an absolute idiot. Maybe both.

“Look, I don’t really have any aggression to burn off at the moment- you would have needed to show up about two weeks ago for that- so I’m not really in the mood to fight at the moment. What about we make a deal? You turn around and go back to whatever hole you crawled from, and I’ll just carry on my way. How does that sound?”

“You won’t get away that easily! I’ll stab you! I will!”

He was drawing closer to Edwin, the spearpoint getting just a touch close for comfort, and Edwin backed up to regain some distance, “Inion? Any help with this?”

His friend’s vaguely sleepy voice sounded from atop the carriage, startling the Reaper, “You got it!” Edwin looked over to see her propping herself up on her elbows, looking down at the two of them.

Edwin sighed as the bandit jumped at Inion’s voice and he swung to aim his spear at the fey, “Look, last chance to back out,” he offered, “There’s nothing wrong with admitting you were wrong.”

That seemed to be the wrong answer, as in response, the man just swung his spear around to aim at Edwin.

He mentally shrugged. Well, it might be fun to stretch his combat muscles. Intimidating class or no, he didn’t get the sense that the bandit was all that good with his weapon or that experienced. He did have the bigger weapon though, so he still needed to be careful.

If Edwin were just using his stick, he would be in serious trouble. The bandit’s spear was easily twice as long and had a pointy bit on the end, meaning melee combat was not an option. Doubly so, given that Edwin belatedly realized that his walking stick was currently sitting in the driver’s seat of his carriage, as his hands had been occupied with his Apparatus experiments.

Fortunately, Edwin was an alchemist, and what sort of alchemist would ever do something so crude as beat up people with a stick?

No, he had much more dignified weapons. Like a box of marbles.

Edwin dropped the chain he’d been working on and reached into one of his pouches, withdrawing a crystal box filled with tiny, marble-sized Apparatus spheres. He threw the container at the bandit’s feet, who jumped back and off the ground to try and avoid it. It ended up being the exact wrong reaction, though, as the box broke against the ground, shattering into motes of Skill magic and covered the road with hundreds of the blue-crystal marbles.

The man landed directly atop the marbles, the tiny spheres jetting out every which-way as the crystals refused to bear the bandit’s weight. As he started to fall, the Reaper’s frantically windmilling arms failed to keep him upright, forcing him to a foot down on the ground behind him. Instead of rolling off the hazard, though, the foot managed to break the marbles where it landed, giving the bandit the opportunity needed to retrieve his balance. Edwin narrowed his eyes. There had been a Skill involved in that action, he was sure, and flipping Skillful Assessment on confirmed his suspicions as faint brown motes of light dissipated from around the man’s foot.

“Surrender now and I’ll let you live!” the bandit seemed to have gotten a bit of confidence, “Don’t make me call out my men!”

Edwin tsked annoyedly as the remaining marbles rolled off the road. He’d need to make his next batch more resistant to being crushed, and idly wondered how strong they were. Something to test later, he supposed.

“You’re still an awful liar,” he responded, floating a few inches above the ground as he watched the rest of the marbles roll off the edge of the road. Hmm. He really ought to-

A flash of reddish Skill light appeared around the bandit, and pain suddenly blossomed in Edwin’s side as the man somehow closed the distance between them in the blink of an eye, burying his spear into Edwin’s torso.

“You stabbed me?” Edwin asked, more disbelieving than anything.

“He stabbed you?” Inion suddenly seemed to be paying a lot more attention to the fight. She didn’t move yet, though.

“I warned you. But you didn’t listen. Now look at what you’ve made me do! Now,” the bandit kept talking, but Edwin wasn’t listening, instead focusing on where he felt the spearhead buried in his muscle.

Fey’s Caress.

The wound hadn’t been too terribly deep- Health must have helped- but it was still deep enough to be lodged inside, and if it was yanked out or shoved in deeper, he’d potentially be in trouble. Before the bandit could do either, though, the area around the wound turned to steel.

It succeeded for a few seconds, as the triumphant grin on the Reaper’s face turned to confusion, and Edwin felt some tugging on the transformed area as he realized his weapon was stuck. Edwin reached up to try and grasp the spearhaft, trying to burn it to cinders before…

He was too slow, as the bandit yanked on the spear, dragging Edwin forward. Flight ensured he wasn’t pulled off balance, but that was little compensation as the bandit raised his foot, pushed it against Edwin’s torso, and activated the same Skill he’d used to crush Edwin’s apparatus marbles. Edwin suddenly found himself shoved away, the part of his chest that he’d bonded to the spearhead ripped out.

Edwin gasped in pain, his mind blanking when he tried to focus on literally anything else. He desperately clutched his stomach, trying in some vain attempt to keep his insides where they were supposed to. The shock and burn also broke his concentration on Flight and sent him dropping to the ground. The bandit looked at the haphazard chunk of metal surrounding the spearhead as the Skill faded. As it returned to blood and meat, the bandit’s casual interest turned to disgust, and he flicked the section of Edwin’s torso away, where it splattered with a wet squelch against the ground.

Trying to accomplish anything through the pain and fumbling at his belt, Edwin’s fingers closed around what he was looking for- a hexagonal prism with smooth sides. He drew the healing potion, the milky-white liquid swirling around in its vial, and tossed the entire thing into his mouth, dismissing the Apparatus construction holding it as he did so.

It was his most nonspecific healing potion, little more than a coagulant made from talsanenris, molai, and a tiny drop of sinbalyne, but it should keep him from bleeding out before he could more properly tend to his wounds later on. For good measure, he activated Fey’s Caress again, this time binding the wound to the cloth near it. Fabric couldn’t bleed, after all.

No longer in mortal danger, Edwin began feeling for the next vial he would need. Triangular with bumps… aha! His fingers deftly extracted the tiny vial from his belt, the faintly lavender-colored liquid barely even visible, and was in the midst of getting it ready when Skillful Assessment warned Edwin of danger.

The bandit began using a Skill, a faintly red light building from around his feet and swirling up around his body and to his spear. It was the same Skill he’d used to dash forward and impale Edwin before, and given where he was looking….

Edwin tensed, ready to spring to the side as soon as… there!

The skill reached a critical mass, and began to explode towards Edwin. As he was ready for it, he was able to just barely bend out of the way, avoiding the attack and sending the bandit stumbling as he overextended on his strike, giving Edwin just enough room to grab the spearhaft, his other hand grabbing the bandit’s arm, squishing the vial against his sleeve.

While he may not have been stronger than the Lirasian Reaper, who immediately started pulling away, Edwin was strong enough to just lift the bandit wholly into the air like a misbehaving child. It wasn’t even hard, at least until the bandit activated a brownish Skill and became really, really heavy. His feet were pulled to the ground like a powerful magnet, overpowering even Edwin’s insane Packing level.

Once planted, the man became utterly immovable, and began trying to pull Edwin’s hand out from its grip around the spear. He let it go, and the brown Skill light around the bandit’s feet flared, keeping the man balanced.

It was enough, though, and Edwin freed his left hand to smash the Apparatus vial against the bandit’s face, causing Sinbalyne gas to spill into the bandit’s face. Edwin disengaged entirely, pushing on Longstrider to carry him away from the man and to the carriage while he let the drug begin to work.

It didn’t take long. By the time Edwin had grabbed his stick, the man had already begun to sway unsteadily as the potion induced lightheadedness. Edwin swooped in, the man’s reactions slowed so much that Edwin was able to entirely circumvent the clumsy attempt to hold him at bay, twisting around the spearpoint and swinging his club at the Reaper’s head.

It connected with a crack, and the bandit staggered back. Edwin grinned and twirled his stick in his hand, going in for another attack. Ignoring the gaping wound in his stomach, this was…

His thoughts were aborted as the spear came around, with two red Skills intertwined around its length, aimed directly at Edwin’s head, looking to spear him right between his eyes. Edwin’s mind turned in on itself, a cacophony of ideas bouncing around as he tried to figure out if he could dodge- he couldn’t, and ohshoothereitwas. The next idea presented automatically won his internal debate, and Edwin slammed as much into his Skill as possible.

Overcharge.

The air turned crystal clear. The spear slowed enough to give Edwin reaction time, and his every muscle thrummed with power. Even with his newfound reaction time, there still wasn’t much time to think, and he acted on instinct, turning to avoid the spear and swinging his stick as hard as he could.

The spearpoint didn’t even miss entirely, cutting slightly into the back of his skull and letting blood cascade from the wound.

Edwin’s retaliation was much more accurate, and Edwin turned his Perception away from tactile feedback as the shudder of his stick impacting the side of the bandit’s skull traveled up the length of his weapon, and the crunch and squish from the impact as the man’s skull tried and failed to protect his brain.

The darkness that set in as his overworked body rebounded to and below the level of function it ought to have been at was a relief, as it meant he didn’t have to see in perfect clarity as the bandit’s bloody corpse sank to the ground. The details he could see were bad enough, and Edwin grimaced.

His body ached, burning with the strain of using Overcharge, and Anatomy helpfully informed him that while his intestines weren’t punctured, it was a near thing, and that while bloody, the cut on his head wasn’t life-threatening, thanks in large part to the anti-bleed potion he already had in his system.

Trying to use Flight resulted in a curious burning sensation in his chest, and Edwin decided not to push it. Instead, he put up with his protesting legs while he staggered over to the carriage. Bill had stopped walking when Edwin had, and as he sank onto the wooden driver’s seat, Inion floated down next to him.

“What have we learned today?”

“That you’re an awful guardian,” Edwin mumbled, “Like, come on. ‘You got this’? I feel offended.”

“Mmm… not quite.”

“I need to work on my marbles.”

“Edwin…”

He groaned, “Fine. That I need to take better care of myself. Look, are you going to give me a hand with this or not? I’m going to need your help patching myself up, assuming my medicines are even up to the task.”

Inion sighed as she ran her fingers through his bloody, matted hair, “Of course I will. Now, make up your mind if you’ll hold still or help me while I get all this stuff off you.”

Overcharge didn’t completely knock Edwin out when used, but he almost wished it would. The persistent pain which wracked his body was a constant annoyance, and his every limb felt like he’d Caressed lead. He flatly couldn’t use any magical Skills, even Infusing Firestarting, so to boil water he needed to actually use his firevine oil for the first time.

He’d remembered to get clean cloths while in Vinstead, so he had bandages, and even tossed some healing potion ingredients into the boiling cauldron. With Inion’s help, Edwin gingerly cleaned out his wound. He didn’t have any stitches- not for lack of trying, he just fundamentally did not trust any of the linen threads available in Vinstead for anatomical work, to say nothing of the incredible lack of steadiness in his leaden arms. So instead, he applied touches of Fey’s Caress to some wet clay he’d brought from Obairlann, made his skin nice and pliable, and stuck the two sides together, then let the Skill fade.

It didn’t work perfectly, naturally. Beyond the distinct lack of precision he was able to accomplish with his shaking hands, when the Skill went away, skin did as it was wont to and pulled away, trying to return to its original state. However, just enough skin stuck that it created a sort of patchwork rough texture flesh-and-blood construct. A few more rounds of flesh-sculpting later, Edwin had something that should hold for the few days it would take for the primary wound to heal. Magic was great.

From there, he applied a poultice of crushed talsanenris berries, molai flowers, and a drop of firevine sap. The latter of the ingredients would help keep the wound sterilized while it healed over the next few days, with the alchemical fire functioning much like normal fire to creatures unfortunate enough to find themselves submerged in it.

The talsanenris would increase the heat, but thanks to the molai it wouldn’t burn him. Instead, it would heat the area and further help combat infection, like the infection was swelling. Once the mixture was applied to the wound, he bandaged his stomach with his sterilized and medicinal bandages.

Edwin’s head got a similar treatment, though without playing sculptor with his own skin. He just bandaged the wound after Inion washed out the wound and ensured no hair got into the cut.

One more downed general-purpose healing potion later, Edwin felt pretty decent about his odds about getting back into fighting shape within a decent amount of time. Before he tugged on Sleeping and First Aid to try and refresh him, though, he glanced at his notifications.

Level Up!josei

Skill Points 522→535

Overcharge Level 3→8

Fey’s Caress Level 35→36

Anatomy Level 26→28

Adaptive Defense Level 25→26

Skillful Assessment Level 30→31

Arcadian Elixir Level 11→14

Not too bad. Fighting, or high-pressure situations in general, did a fantastic job of helping him level. He idly wondered which exactly it was, but it wasn’t the primary thought in his mind as his tortured limbs were finally allowed to rest.

For the first time in quite a while, Edwin slept dreamlessly and with no awareness of the surrounding world- for the first half of the night, at least. Then he woke up to Watchful Rest helpfully informing him of his aching arms. He tried for a few minutes to get back to sleep naturally before triggering his healing rest Skill combination and falling back into pseudo-unconsciousness.

By the time he woke up again, the sun had already risen, and it was to the steady trot-trot-trot of Bill’s hooves on the road. Despite some momentary panic about what was going on, Edwin swiftly adjusted and peered over the edge of the roof, seeing Inion in the driver’s seat idly braiding her hair.

“Good morning?” he tried.

“Ah, you’re awake! Good to see! How are you feeling?”

“Good,” Edwin yawned, stretching to get the few kinks in his back out, “I think. I’ve got some phantom soreness, but that’s about it.” He peeked underneath his bandages, “Pretty much better, too.” He noted. Other than a bit of a messy scab around his bellybutton, and a raised ridge on the back of his hand, there was no sign of the messy wounds he’d gotten the day before. Magic was great.

He floated down to sit beside his friend, “I’m surprised you got the day’s travel started already.”

She shrugged, “Well, someone had to do it, and you were lazy this morning.” She teased, and Edwin rolled his eyes.

“What did you do with the body?” he asked. He wasn’t complaining that he wouldn’t have to deal with corpse removal, but he wouldn’t have minded looking over it, see if it had anything of note on it. You always searched the body, after all.

“Tossed it into the woods,” she nonchalantly replied, “It was just attracting flies.”

Fair enough, “I don’t suppose you picked up any of my marbles?” he sighed when she shook her head. There was a few hours of work ahead of him, though maybe he could use this as a chance to experiment a bit. Perhaps he could stick caltrops inside of them, or make them multi-layered, so if the outside was broken, the entire thing wouldn’t dissipate?