“Have you taken time off shouting to check the settings?” Valanil asked with a chuckle. After hurriedly digging through his options, Forian cursed under his breath. It was a mess where his name should have been.
You (jointly with Valanil Revolt) are mentoring:
Tailyn Vlashich (human). Alchemist. Level 7. Age 12.
Valia Levor (resurrected noa). Mage. Level 1. Age 12.
“So let’s stay out of the way while they figure out their problem. Unification is incredibly powerful, and it explains a lot, too. I know how Tailyn won his battle with Ronan... The gibberish he was spouting about pathfinder never made sense, anyway.”
While Valanil was telling the lix and her man about the unification skill, the pair of kids with it sat facing each other, at a loss for what to do. Trying a dance, what the herbalist had recommended, or a training session the way they’d become a single whole weren’t options. They weren’t in the mood. Plus, they could tell it would have just come out forced. But Tailyn knew they had to do something even if it was completely absurd.
“Could you be supposed to come over to my area?”
“You want to dance in the smithy?” the girl shot back in annoyance.
“Why not? Valanil said we need to become one. United. But you don’t have your dance hall anymore—it’s not next to the smithy. We do have the mountains, though, so let’s work there. Together.”
“I tried,” Valia replied. “When I couldn’t get into my dance hall, I tried jumping over into your smithy, only it didn’t work. Nothing. It’s like I can’t get in. No, not that... It’s like I lost the way. Tailyn, I don’t even get how that’s possible. I’m a healer!”
“That’s it!” the boy exclaimed. “That’s the way! Hurry, give me your hand. And close your eyes!”
“Why?” Valia was shocked by the boy’s outburst, though she followed his lead.
“You might have actually lost the way. The other Valia could heal, the one who was human, but you might not be a healer. It could be that you can’t find the way because it doesn’t exist for you anymore rather than because you’re lost. But I can help!”
“How?”
“Just follow my voice. You remember how to do that, right? I’ll lead you!”
As he’d done before, Tailyn was able to pull some snow from the virtual world out into the real one. And then he did the reverse, dragging Valia out of the real world and into the virtual one. She followed meekly.
“Open your eyes!” Tailyn said, and Valia followed his instructions. The biting wind sweeping in from the mountaintops did its best to cut through the thick furs, but it couldn’t. The daughter of the north was back on her throne.
But not everything went smoothly. Suddenly, Valia was overwhelmed with a monumental heaviness and slumped to her knees. Her head felt like it was about to explode, unable to cope with the sudden onslaught of information—part of her consciousness remained in the real world. That asynchrony bore down on her like a slab of granite. Her ears pounded. Tailyn yelled something, but she couldn’t make out the words. And with that, both worlds disappeared, leaving Valia in a dark nothingness filled only with a monstrous sense of weakness. But that was when a miracle happened. Tailyn’s voice broke through.
Integration! Unlock integration! Use the crystal in your hand.
Would you like to unlock Integration?
Concentrating on the words with an enormous effort, what remained of the girl’s will agreed to the offer, her consciousness easing for a few seconds. But that was when an intense pain shot through both her heads—the one in reality as well as the one in the smithy with Tailyn.
Only it was hard to call the space they were in a smithy. Really, it almost seemed like the dance hall had meshed with Tailyn’s area, turning the whole thing into something pulled straight from the absurd. The irrational. Herself not knowing what she was doing, Valia began making the space her own. The walls were pushed back, an area appeared around the furnace, and the bellows flew off. Valia herself was going to be supplying the mana.
Tailyn was right next to her. Sitting on the ground, his head in his hands, he was staring sadly at his girl. He sighed when their eyes met.
“I’m an idiot. You really aren’t a healer anymore—you don’t have the ability. And for you to split your consciousness, you needed integration, otherwise you would have lost your mind. I have no idea why that didn’t occur to me... Are you okay?”
“My head hurts, but I’m fine,” Valia replied after taking a moment to take stock of herself. “Let’s see if this works. Want to try something?”
“I say we hurt Forian so we can give him resistance to fire.”
“No, I don’t want to hurt anyone. Can you show me how you enhance people?”
“Well...” Tailyn was taken aback. “When I’m healing someone, their statue is damaged—”
“I didn’t ask for a story. Show me! Make my statue.”
That took Tailyn just a moment. One mental order later, a steel girl had appeared next to the furnace. She was whole and intact without a single blemish.
“Your turn. Right next to me,” Valia continued. She’d even stood up and was giving herself a once-over, surprised by the precision of the lines and the level of detail. It was almost as if the status was about to come to life and go about whatever it was doing.
Tailyn frowned, not sure what the point of that was, but he did what he was told. His temples immediately began pounding from the strain.
“Okay, now the rest. Forian, Valanil, and the lix.”
That was much harder. While the lix showed up easily enough, Valanil and Forian refused to appear in his head. His thoughts jumbled as soon as he tried to picture them. But once the boy thought back to their old versions, the ones in their forties, the statues appeared. When Tailyn finished creating the last one, he found dark circles swimming in his vision. It took superhuman strength to keep the sculptures from melting down the way they wanted to.
“They’re not in tune with each other!” Valia said as she closed her eyes and reached for the mountains. For a few moments, nothing happened, but the girl was more stubborn than that. She insisted; the mountains relented. After receiving their solidity, their loftiness, their tranquility, Valia bestowed it immediately on the statues to quiet their inner structure. Then, she remembered Valanil’s request for protection from electricity and held her palms out to the sky in a gesture of entreaty. A bolt of lightning streaked out of the sky and smacked into her hand. But instead of frying her right where she stood, the girl was engulfed in electric charges like some kind of lervan. Thrusting both hands toward the statue, Valia cut the element loose, forcing it to burrow into the metal.
Meanwhile, Tailyn shook himself. His head still hurt, but it wasn’t nearly as bad after what Valia had pulled off. The statues were charged with electricity. Still, the sparks were chaotic, dancing around and incapable of staying put. And that told the boy what needed to happen—the lightning had to be stopped. It had to stand still. Forced to work within itself. Unable to think of anything else, Tailyn crawled over to the edge of the smithy and flashed a mental command at the girl.
“We have to freeze it. You structure it!”
A blizzard formed around the smithy. Burying one hand in it, Tailyn pointed the other at the statues, and an invisible stream of cold smacked into the motionless quintet. But the lightning just picked up speed. The more Tailyn poured on cold, the crazier the electricity got, the whole thing looking about ready to explode. And that was when a burst of fire hit the statues accompanied by a scream of pain from Valia.
The girl had immediately figured out what Tailyn had up his sleeve, though she could also tell it wasn’t working. The cold just wasn’t enough to rein in the crazed electricity. Looking around, she grabbed the closest thing she could find—coals glowing red from the mana inside them. She placed one hand on them and thrust the other in the direction of the statues, shrieking as she did from the intense pain that shot through her. Before bursting
out the other side, the fire had to make its way through the girl’s body.
Valia’s pain snapped Tailyn out of the trance he’d fallen into. Pulling his hand out of the swirling snow with an effort, the boy assumed that would be enough to break the stream of cold only to find it no longer needed a conductor. The invisible stream continued enveloping the statues in an attempt to ice them over, outdo the flames, and conquer the electricity. And finding the strength to rush over to the girl and shove her away from the furnace was too much for Tailyn. But just then, he remembered he was a healer, that realization also coming with the knowledge that if he didn’t something fast, Valia’s insides were about to be burned to a crisp. She was going to die. Again. Not about to let that happen, the boy reached out toward the girl. Something green and sparkling enshrouded Valia and began restoring her, soothing the flames and investing them with something more than what they’d started out with.
Tailyn didn’t know how long that lasted. All he could say was that he noticed at some point out of the corner of his eye that the lightning had stopped flashing, turning instead into an outer shell enclosed in an icy-red shirt. Something green shimmered on top of it. Out in reality, Tailyn decided to help and reached out a hand; the Tailyn in virtual reality took it. And as the two palms met, there was a thunderous clap that sent both Tailyn and Valia back out into the real world.
They were out of mana. Completely. Their personal shields were gone, too, spent protecting them from the elements. But the strangest thing was that the pair didn’t leave virtual reality alone. Instead, they were accompanied by a sculptural composition made up of five bodies woven oddly together. The crouching lix was prepared to attack the moment his master ordered it. Tailyn and Valia were embracing as they hid behind the lix. And the two majestic adults were towering over the trio with knowing smiles on their faces.
You created an Artifact!
Mentors and Students sculpture. Description: a unique entanglement of the five elements combined by masters, a sculpture that will become a treasure for its city. Every traveler who visits the city with this statue will receive the Diligence buff: all parameters are increased by 50% for 24 hours. Effective for everyone except Tailyn Vlashich and Valia Levor, the sculpture’s creators.
***
New mission: The Renaissance of Mean Truk. Description: you created Mentors and Students and linked it to the dead city. Restore Mean Truk’s former magnificence to receive a divine reward. Minimum criteria for completion: 2000 permanent residents, 1 temple, 1 palace, 10 trading stands.
***
Frankenstein attribute modified.
Frankenstein. Description: an attribute given by the god in rare cases where someone is able to throw off limitations and experiment on other living creatures’ bodies. For each 50 attribute levels, the number of upgrades you can give to another person increases by 1. Available upgrades: immunity to fire, electricity, cold. You can use it on yourself. Integrates with Enhancement.
***
Tailyn Vlashich and Valia Levor received a new status: Heads of Mean Truk.
Level +3 (10).
Crystal +3 (8).
“I told you the rules don’t apply to our students!” Valanil made no attempt to conceal the joy spreading across her face. Even the impossible mission both the pair of children and the adults had just received wasn’t enough to spoil her mood—the fact that the god had given it to them meant it knew they could handle it. Bring back an ancient city? Easy.
“An artifact...” Forian was still in a state of shock brought on by the statue that had appeared out of nowhere. “They created an artifact. From scratch. Without templates...”
“So? That’s not all unification can do. It’s not a myth, my friend, not a fairy tale they use to get little girls all in a tither. Get used to it—this is the kind of thing our students can pull off.”
“It doesn’t sound like this is the first time you’ve come across unification.”
“You know, Forian, we already died,” Valanil said suddenly before spinning around to face her man. “I don’t have vows of silence I have to worry about. All of that is gone, everything but my memory. So, yes, I know what I’m talking about. My mother and her husband had unification.”
Valanil flinched in anticipation of divine punishment for telling her secret, but there wasn't anything forthcoming. Looking up, she peered into the sky as if looking for something only she could see. Nothing happened. The god was in no hurry to exact revenge on the herbalist for breaking her oath, and that gave her a newfound boldness.
“I, Valanil Revolt, confess that until the age of thirteen, I was an active student of Patriarch Itir, head of the school at Crobar. After being trained by him and his best students, I was sent to the academy to identify students who were falling behind and recruit them for Crobar. If possible, I was supposed to kill the provost with an enchanted Crobar stiletto I was given for that purpose. With its help, I killed Keran Tisor, another Crobar agent assigned to Forian Tarn as an observer, and pinned it all on Tailyn, convincing everyone else not to say a word about what had happened. All I wanted was revenge for being kicked out of the academy. For Crobar dumping me in Culmart the moment they didn’t have a use for me anymore. But that’s all in the past. From now on, you are my family, and I’ll tear out the throat of anyone who tries to harm any one of you.”
Thunder didn’t split the heavens. Lightning failed to streak downward in Valanil’s direction. Suddenly, it was unnervingly quiet in Mean Truk as the four recipients of the herbalist’s monologue stood with gaping mouths. She’d just written her own death warrant several times over, in fact. Forian even sorted through his cards, his dark strike appearing in front of him. That should have been enough to kill the... Actually, what was she?
“But that’s not all.” The herbalist winked slyly at Forian—she knew exactly what was going through his mind. “I’m tired of all these secrets and half-truths. Let’s get it all out in the open. You know, dying does give you a new perspective on things, so... Valia, have you figured out why I do my best not to call you my girl? Of course, it slips out sometimes, but I try as hard as I can to avoid it because it’s not something you say to your own blood. Wouldn’t you agree, sister?”
Chapter 2
ONCE UPON A TIME, there lived a happy family of mages. They specialized in creating artifacts, and while they weren’t particularly good at it, they did have enough work to provide a steady income. With plenty to live on, the pair of lovebirds didn’t need anything else. They’d met back during their first year at the academy and fell for each other so completely that they were practically inseparable through the rest of their studies, to the point that they married the moment they turned eighteen. But it was their first night as a wedded couple that saw them receive something nobody had ever taken seriously. They had earned unification. Warmed by the glow of their new discovery, the pair so enjoyed spending time with each other that they decided to put off having children for a few years. They wanted to enjoy life on their own for a while. Plus, that was going to let them carve out their place in the world—they were looking to give their children the maximum 400 roll at initiation. And everything was going exactly according to plan until the young heir of the Carlian clan rode into the town the mages called home. The girl caught his eye, and he sent a servant to invite her to the duke’s quarters. Sure, he didn’t know who she was, but that didn’t matter. He wanted her.
But the servant returned empty-handed. The beautiful girl had refused to accompany him. Temporarily stymied, the duke decided to spend some time in the town, and he spent it working over the object of his affections the same way he always did—with gifts and attention. It even got to the point that he burst unceremoniously into her house to demand some respect. The mage exploded. Incensed at the duke’s behavior, he threw him out into the street.
That night, three men broke into the couple’s home. The mage died in his sleep without ever knowing what happened. His wife, on the other hand... The youn
g heir had gotten what he’d been looking for—the girl was his if only for one night. But with that, a scandal broke out, the academy mages demanding justice. Old Duke Carlian, however, pulled the right levers, paid off the right people, and brushed the whole thing under the rug, the academy leadership winning themselves highly preferential treatment in the deal. Still, exactly nine months after the young duke swore to forget about what happened and never repeat his folly, a girl was born. She was initiated a year later, the god granting her a mana bar and a family name from the Carlian clan. According to an ancient law, all women in the family were supposed to have a first name that began with “Val-” and a last name with “evo” somewhere in it. And that was the origin of Valanil Revolt, the illegitimate daughter of the future Duke Carlian. Her mother died three years later—that was the downside of unification. Two unified people couldn’t live long without their other half. But before the girl’s mother died, she wrote a letter telling her daughter what had happened. Valanil read it when she was only five years old, still young and stupid, and she immediately enrolled at Crobar, aided by mother finding the right people before she died. By the time she was seven, all Valanil cared about was taking vengeance on the mages who had betrayed her parents and left them to the tender mercies of the duke. She then joined the academy, was kicked out, and found herself resigned to a dreary life at the outskirts of the empire, forgotten and alone. The woman originally saw Tailyn as a way to get back at everyone who had treated her that way, though getting to know the boy pushed revenge down her list of priorities. Things had changed. Suddenly, there were only two categories of people she cared about: her family and everyone trying to harm it. The former had to live. The latter had to die.
Isr Kale's Journal (The Alchemist Book #4): LitRPG Series Page 2