“How many people are there?” I whispered to Sallia.
“Seven,” she said.
I took another look at the batch of silver-colored souls, and relaxed a little.
The Orukthyri had incredibly large, difficult to destroy ‘candles of life,’ which made killing them very difficult. Their resistance to magic amplified their already massive life force, which ultimately ant that I had to spend a huge amount of shaping essence just to kill one Orukthyri. This was the reason I could only kill one and a half Orukthyri with my entire pool of alteration essence. They were simply too resilient to damage compared to regular creatures with less absurd levels of life force.
However, the ‘candles of life’ I could see in front of were much weaker. I could probably extinguish the entire group on my own if I had enough ti. Even if I took into account the fact that mbers of the group would attack and distract , I had no doubt that I would at least be able to kill four or five mbers of the group if a fight broke out. Sallia would easily stomp two or three people if they got close to her. In other words, the other group of people wasn’t able to kill us, unless they had so sort of unique attunent similar to my ocean of souls abilities.
Of course, I had no intention of attacking them unless they attacked first. Unless they tried to hurt or my friends first, I was more than happy to get along with anyone we t. But if we didn’t have the ability to defend ourselves against them, I would opt against making contact with them. There was always a chance the other party would try to kill or rob us, and I didn’t want to make contact with a group that we couldn’t fight back against because I wanted to stay as safe as possible. However, since the other group was fightable, we could talk to them.
Sallia waited with as I watched the silver souls keep moving past us, as I hesitated. Was there a reason to make contact with them? I hesitated for a few more monts, before I decided it wasn’t a bad idea. They might have news that we would find useful if they had recently co from another city in the underdark, and they might also have so dicine we could give to the sick mbers of our group. So dicine in addition to my healing ability would give us the best results.
“Is there anything or anyone else nearby, besides that group? I think I want to talk to them and trade news and dicine, if they’re willing,” I said..
“I don’t see anything else in the area. We should be good to go,” said Sallia.
The two of us started creeping forward. I had to admit, I was a little curious to know what brought this group of people into the wastes. Was it a group of adventurers? Travelers? Soone fleeing for the destruction of their own city? I hoped it wasn’t another group of refugees: if it was, they might not have any dicine either.
“Hello?” I asked. I made my voice loud enough that it was easy for the other group to hear .
The seven silver-colored souls stopped moving.
“Hello?” called out a different voice. It was a man who sounded a little on the older side: I estimated he was probably in his early eighties, the human equivalent of being forty or so. “Is soone there?”
“We’re over here,” I said, lowering my voice a little bit. “We won’t attack if you won’t.”
“May I know who I’m speaking to? You sound quite young,” said the man.
“I’m Miria. May I ask why you’re in the wastelands?”
“We’re adventurers. What about you?”
“We’re traveling from one city to another, since our city got invaded.” I paused. “Do you have any dicine?” I asked. “If so, we’d be willing to trade news and so food and water.” I wasn’t sure how much the other party would value whatever dicine they might be carrying, but there was no harm in at least trying to trade. If we got our sick people up and moving faster, that would save us a day or two of waiting, which would reduce the strain on our food reserves anyway. Or they might have a healing-related attunent, if there were any shapers in the group.
“We have sothing that could work. What specifically are you looking for dicine for?”
“Fevers and coughing. It seems to be mixed with black sun exposure, amplifying the effects of the illness.” I said. I also started reaching for my alteration essence, just in case the other party took this as an opportunity to attack us. Luckily, even after hearing we had sick people nearby, they didn’t seem intent on making any hostile moves towards us.
“Oof. That sounds rough. The black sun has been getting worse and worse for the past few years, and it’s especially bad this year. We should have sothing that can help with the symptoms you described. How much food and water are you willing to trade? And do you have anything else you can throw into the deal?”
I relaxed a little more. I didn’t completely let my guard down, but I had a good feeling about this group of people.
“We have a few extra day’s worth of food and water that we’d be willing to exchange, as well as a map of this area. I imagine you already have a map, but by comparing the two, you can get a clearer image of this area. It was created by my teacher, a forr adventurer, and so it should still have a good amount of useful information in it. We can also share so news about the underdark that might interest you, especially relating to the city we ca from.”
“Hmm…” the voice paused for a mont, considering my offer. “I’ll admit, I’m not too keen on adventuring past this point, which would be the biggest reason I would be interested in your map. We’re planning on heading back to our city and retiring. We already know the route back ho, so I doubt the map will be of much value to us. I wouldn’t mind an update on the underdark, though. You ntioned fleeing from your city? I doubt it’s anything too relevant to us, but there’s no harm in checking. How about one and a half day’s worth of decently-sized als for the seven of us, and a similar amount of water? I’d also like the information about the underdark. In exchange, we’ll use our healing item on the sick people? If you have any precious tals, we’d prefer to exchange for that, but we are running low on supplies.”
I thought about it, and then nodded. “We don’t have any precious tals with us, but the food and water sound reasonable.” If anything, the other side was undercharging us. Since they had ntioned a healing ‘item,’ rather than dicine, I suspected that they were offering use of sothing magical. Which was probably why they were offering us use for such a low price: it wouldn’t damage the magic item any. Magic items in this world seed firmly built to repair themselves no matter what happened to them.
“All right. We’re heading over to you. Don’t attack us,” said the man, and the seven silver souls started making their way towards us. I kept my alteration essence ready, but I was pretty sure that the adventurers weren’t going to attack us at this point. They seed to be trading in good faith.
About a minute later, I saw five n and two won erge from the underbrush. They were all in their thirties or forties, and had a grizzled look to them. They also slled rather… ripe.
I suddenly realized it had been several days since I last had a bath, and tried not to think about what I slled like.
“Well? Where are the supplies and sick people?”
“They’re back at the cave we’re taking shelter in,” I said.
“Then lead the way, kids,” said the oldest man in the group, who seed to be the leader of their party. I also noticed that the group of people was highly alert, scanning our surroundings at all tis, either for monsters or humans. I nodded to myself. They were keeping their guard up as well.
Sallia and I began moving back towards the cave. After we reached the area where everyone was located, I paused for a mont. “Ella! We found so guests. We’re trading dicine for so food, water, and information!” I called out.
I didn’t hear anything for a few seconds. Then, Ella nodded. “Okay!”
After that, I quickly led them inside the cave. Ella quickly listened to the trade deal I had hashed out, before she nodded. “That’s fine with too. How about we exchange news, then you use the dicine, and then we give you the water and food?”
The man paused. “Give us half the food and water upfront, then half later.”
Ella nodded. She quickly divided out about a day and a half of our rations, then gave half of the pile of supplies to the man.
“Now, for the news. Our ho city recently fell to an Orukthyri warband. There seem to have been around 200 of them, originally, and about thirty warriors seem to have broken through the front lines before we fled. Our spellcasters were either out of mana, or unable to use high enough circle spells to damage them, and these orukthyri were highly magic resistant…” Ella began describing the battle, and our narrow loss against the creatures. The adventurers took Ella’s words in stride, thinking over it, before they nodded.
“That’s quite close to our ho city. The information you provided us was quite valuable. Thank you.” Then, he pulled sothing out of his backpack.
When I saw it, I froze.
I… recognized the feeling from the item he had pulled out.
It was clearly a magic item. It looked like a cube. However, I could feel that within the cube, there was sothing very familiar to .
It felt like it was related to the ocean of souls. It wasn’t exactly the sa as the ‘concept’ of the ocean of souls my attunent was based on. However, it was very, very close.
Most importantly, it was clearly derived from the ocean of souls.
This was shocking to .
Soone else from this dinsion had made contact with the ocean of souls?
Was it another transmigrator? Had one of the natives of this world sohow made contact with the ocean of souls on their own? If so, how?
Truthfully, while I knew that we were sohow connected to the ocean of souls, I didn’t really understand how dinsions worked on a macro scale. I knew that the laws of reality could change so from one dinsion to the next, and they were all connected to the ocean of souls, but I wasn’t really sure how everything worked together. So if one of the natives had made contact with the ocean of souls, it would potentially an that we could find important information about how the multiverse as a whole worked if we could track down the source of the cube.
Questions swirled around in my mind, and I found myself staring at the cube in fascination.
As I stared at the cube, the man took a small patch of white paint from the backpack. There didn’t seem to be anything special about the paint, but the man quickly used general shaping to transfer the white color from the paint to the cube.
The cube rippled, and I felt sothing about the concept of the ocean of souls within the cube change.
Then, the man quickly pressed the cube against the chest of Anise’s father.
I could see the little black tint in his skin start to weaken, and then little globs of black goop started to push out of his body. At the sa ti, his complexion started to improve. The sweating and coughing he had been suffering from since this morning started to weaken. A few minutes later, instead of looking incredibly ill, Anise’s father just looked like he had recovered from a mild cold. He blearily opened his eyes and frowned.
“My head hurts,” he mumbled, absently rubbing at his head.
“Other than that, are you okay?” I asked him.
“Yeah. I don’t think I’m in great shape for moving, but I just feel a little exhausted now.”
I could certainly see the improvent in his body, so I relaxed. With the effectiveness of the magic cube verified, I stopped concentrating on Anise’s father and turned back towards the Cube. I didn’t want to miss a second of its use.
Sothing from the ocean of souls had been used to heal. In addition to the questions swirling around my thoughts, I was now also thinking about sothing else: perhaps I could derive inspiration from this to make a better healing-related ability. My current healing ability was incredibly lackluster. But since the cube had the sa origin as my attunent, I could probably learn sothing from it if I paid attention.
Monts later, the man pressed the white cube against Anise’s mother. And then Anise, and finally Felix. All while I watched, trying to figure out everything I could about what was happening, and how to copy it.
The way the cube worked was fundantally different from what I had been doing to heal so far, but it felt more… right. However, frustratingly enough, I couldn’t figure out the core of what was happening. I didn’t have a good enough thod to observe the cube and figure out how its healing worked. I had a couple of random guesses and ideas, but I wasn’t sure if any of them were correct.
I frowned. I decided to experint more once we got to Silver City. I felt like I had seen sothing familiar to . I just couldn’t quite put my finger on what. If I tried experinting so, I felt like I could still improve or completely replace my current healing ability.
Anise, Felix, and Anise’s parents no longer looked like they were sick at all, just a little weak. I didn’t even throw any healing at them: there was just no point. They were clearly healthy. Ella finished the transaction with the adventurer, and the other party quickly left afterwards.
Anise, Felix, and her parents were still a bit tired out from their recovery, so we decided to wait until tomorrow before we got moving again. I sat down to think about what I had seen.
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