Chapter Thirty-One - Operation: Long Week

The next couple of hours should have been boring, but they passed surprisingly fast.

Dharit checked up on Erde, and his injuries amounted to a small bruise to the chest and a large bruise to the ego. She smacked some healing on him, and I got to watch as purple-blue skin turned bluish-green then back to beige over the course of two hours. Not instant by any means, but like... still kind of very impressive.

Dharti took the rest of the time we had teaching me some magic. Or rather, re-teaching me what I'd learned already, but correctly this time.

There were a few plants to practice Leafshed on, and I had one more magic-rich drink I was allowed to take. Combined with the high ambient magic in the portal, and I was in just about the best place to learn.

The older Nature mage flagged Eldur down once I proved that I could make the Leafshed cantrip work, and he seemed pretty impressed by my progress.

Then he absolutely demolished my confidence by pointing out the many, many things I was doing wrong.

Dharti had a very fine-tuned sense for the emotions used in magic. Eldur, as an Earth mage, somehow had an exceptional ability to sense the movement and flow of magic, even in someone's core, as long as he was touching them.

A bit intrusive, but I allowed it because it only took a couple of minutes for him to start coaching me.

I was doing a lot wrong. First, the emotion for this spell wasn't a 'thoughtful' sort of grief, it was 'sadness' which wasn't the same, somehow. That reduced my efficiency by a bit, and I had to have Dharti coach me through the 'feeling' for the spell.

Then my path. It was good. They both said so. But it wasn't perfect.

The issue with not-perfect was that imperfections reduced efficiency, and magic was apparently all about efficiency. Eeking out a 1-2% increase in effective casting was the kind of thing that D-rankers with some experience apparently worked hard to do. I didn't quite get it, but I bowed to their knowledge.

Then there was my big goof.

Eldur couldn't cast Leafshed at all. Wrong kind of magic. But he could pull out a table with the same information (and a lot more) than the database I had access to.

As it turned out, the little numbers on the three-dimensional pathing diagram had meaning. They referred to things such as magical consistency (basically the thickness of it) and speed. As I cast the spell, I needed the right emotion, moving through the right channels, at the right consistency, and at the right speed, speed which wasn't the same in each section.

Magic was complicated.

Still, I had two experienced teachers working me through a very basic spell one small step at a time. By the end of those two hours, the lessons I'd learned were probably worth more than twenty hours of self-practice in various time-loops.

I'd burned through my reserves of magic, but I could reliably cast the spell! The pathway from my core was solid and not wobbling so much, and would probably remain that way, and the spell worked with only minimal efficiency-loss according to Eldur. Not as well as if someone more experienced cast it, but I wasn't even a week into being a D-rank, so it was good progress.

I was the unfoliager! All plants must fear my de-leafing touch!

I decided that I was going to pick up something more interesting for my next cantrip. Seeing as how Dharti mistakenly thought I was an outer-elementalist who used Pensiveness as my core emotion, she suggested a cantrip called Soothe Minor Pain.

It did what it said. The spell could be cast on self or on others with a very limited range, and when she cast it on me as an example, I got to feel it at work. It... numbed, slightly. It was like my mouth an hour after a dentist appointment, but all over. Very slightly tingly, but not painful.

The spell was a cantrip, so there wasn't a high expectation of usefulness, but it was, according to Dharti, a good first step towards self-improvement spellwork.

I wanted that so bad.

Sure, because of my core being attuned to Remorse, I'd probably never get to fling Fireballs around, or many flashy spells, but Pensive magic was all about self-buffs, mostly of the self-curing and healing variety.

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I could be an unstoppable, self-healing monster one day, and I was all for it.

Eventually, the E-rankers reached us, and started to pack up the boss for the long haul back. Once we received the notice that they were out via the entrance, we turned to the exit portal and lined up for it. I was going to be last, as a sort of 'gift' from the others. Tradition said that the last out had the biggest boost, and the Squad seemed willing to share that with me.

It was a kind gesture.

I watched the others hop out, then glanced around before following.

Back in the real world, I found the area around the portal turned into a familiar temporary jobsite. Meat was being packaged into freezer vans and materials were shipping off already. We hurried to our own van, and Eldur had me place my hand in the testing device.

"This is to set your baseline," he said. "Basically, some people grow at different rates than others. We do baseline tests like these once a year or so. The deeper into a rank you are, the slower the growth from non-novel portals."

Made sense to me. I placed my hand in, then read the results along with him.

158 - D-02

"Well done!" Eldur said. "Two points. And a point in your ranking as well."

"Early progress," Sol said with a nod.

"Thanks, for the training today. And the portal run. That was surprisingly fun," I said sincerely.

Terry snorted. "Now do it one hundred more times!"

I smiled, that was a fair point. I supposed that anything could grow dull after too many repetitions. I'd know.

It wasn't long before we were back at the HQ where I was accosted by HR. I was worried for a moment, but they just needed banking information, and I soon received my first pay. $900 for three days of work, salaried. Plus a nice $100 bonus for 'combat pay' for the day's dungeon.

Damn. My job as an E-ranker for Luna Corp had started at $20 an hour. I was going to make more working less as a D-ranker. It was almost unfair.

I'd take it, though.

Rushing back home, I splurged on a taxi, then stepped into my apartment and set a new Save.

"Alright," I said to no one but Mister Couchtop. Then I removed my pants. If things went according to plan, I wouldn't be wearing pants for another week.

It was time for Operation: Long Week.

The goal was simple. I was going to stay in my apartment for the next nine days. From today--Friday--to next Sunday evening. No leaving. I'd be calling in sick, eating everything in the fridge and ordering out.

The week would be all about information gathering. So, the first thing I did was order a new laptop online and paid a fortune for it to be express-delivered in the morning. Then I pulled out a notebook and started plotting.

The idea was to gain passing knowledge of as many events that transpired over the course of the week as possible. Any major events in the city, new portals opening, things that could be opportunities for making cash, making a rep, or getting gear that could help.

It would all go down in a notebook, then I'd do my best to shorthand it and memorize the entire thing.

Then I'd Reload and live through the week more or less normally, using Saves wherever appropriate to get ahead.

Ideally, I wanted to tackle another portal solo and find a way to increase Deadline's rep. More gear would be nice as well.

I'd be researching in that time too, but it was a secondary priority to getting stronger for this week. There was no point in knowing who to point the finger at if I couldn't stab them with that finger too.

Also, I ordered a pizza. Then ice cream. Then some cat treats for Mister Coughtop.

Screw it. The calories weren't going to stay and neither were the consequences. Speaking of which... I ordered some of those magic-heavy drinks as well. $35 each! It was a good thing I wasn't paying for them at work.

If I had a week to waste, I might as well learn a couple more cantrips while I was at it. Or at least get the theory down for later.

It was going to be a long week but hopefully it would count as a good break as well.

***