Chapter 594: Smoke, no mirrors

It took ages to get us all settled. We were going to have a reunion right now, no matter the conditions. It was just a little difficult to find a spot that could accommodate all of us, then we needed to run and let Raccoon and Titania know what was going on, and…

It took longer to dispose of the turtle’s body and work through the meeting logistics than it had to fight the monster in the first place! Iona made a small offering to her patron goddesses, kneeling down with the chunk of Arcanite she’d peeled off. The rest we dumped into the bay, the safest place to leave it for eight years. We had no way of easily separating the conjured material from the real. We didn’t have the Lantern of Truth, and while we could tell what was real and what was conjured - real Arcanite glowed when recharged with mana via a wizardry spell, conjured crystals were inert - separating them was practically impossible. The plan was to let the conjured material decay away, then sift through the remains to grab what was real. The five of us were huddled together near Fenrir’s old - he clearly wanted it to be his again - lair, the mighty wyvern keeping the weather off us with a flex of his skills. He was curled around us, providing another layer to help keep the wind off our backs.

Speaking of the turtle - no levels at all. None from Auri, none from a skill, nothing. It was pretty disappointing, but I supposed at the end of the day it was really Iona and Fenrir’s show. Auri hadn’t managed to burn anything substantial, I hadn’t needed to heal anyone in the fight and it wasn’t like I’d been casting gigantic spells all over the place. A little frustrating in many ways, but I got why.

Auri was in the middle, surrounded by hot water bottles that I kept [Teleporting] near her to warm up, then rotating them back to me. Iona glanced up at the sky before taking her helmet off, wiping the rain and sweat off her face.

Then there was Nina.

She was a frequent visitor, and I’d watched her grow up from a little kid to the woman she was now. If my eyes didn’t deceive me, she was physically older than Iona, which broke my heart a little. Hopefully she’d accept Immortality, and I wouldn’t need to start losing others, like so many other Immortals did.

People often spoke of the curse of Immortality, beyond the one White Dove bestowed. Not for Immortals born to it, but mortals who had managed to ride the System, who had reached out and seized it for themselves. Too often, it was whispered, they were damned to watch their loved ones grow older and die, generation after generation passing, mourning the whole way.

I was lucky enough to dodge that concern with my skill… but even without that, I felt it was a load of hogwash. It smacked of sour grapes.

We were all damned to watch the people we loved grow old and die. Either we went early, the first member of the group at the funeral, and had our lives cut short, or we went the distance, attended dozens of funerals, and had nearly nobody to attend our own.

It took an entire lifetime to get to the stage where people grieved and mourned. Mindset, energy, and the ability to meet new people depended on what I did, what circles I ran in, and more. While people weren’t replaceable by any means, it was possible to meet new people, make new friends, and an entire lifetime of fun and memories wasn’t outweighed by the grief at the end, at the passage of time and death.

No. People who claimed Immortality would suck were simply envious in my opinion, trying to find ways to tear down others. Immortality was great. It was even better that I could bring others with me on the journey.

Immortality was great, the collapse of civilization less so.

Focus.

I snapped back to the here and now, wanting to facepalm. [Luminary Mind] was great for multi-tasking and thinking about a dozen things at once when I remembered to use it! I was tired, I was excited, I was coming down off an adrenaline high.

All excuses, I didn’t have a good reason.

Everyone was warm, everyone looked cozy, Fenrir was keeping the storm off our backs. Iona’s companion was back, and Nina was alive, safe and sound. If this wasn’t a time to break out the good stuff, I didn’t know when was. A quick trip to my [Tower] found great food - when had I stashed almost an entire salted cow in here? - and excellent alcohol. Each one was arguably priceless at this point, but what was the point in storing them forever? They were for drinking and sharing.

Fruity wines for Auri and I, hard liquor for Nina and Fenrir, and a small cask of a chewy beer for Iona. Salted meat and dried berries, dripping honeycombs and the biggest, most dangerous prize of all - a loaf of Ilan bread. Impossibly, the elves had improved on the recipe over the millenia, and it was only the most special of occasions that I let myself have a nibble.

Auri started to roast - warm up, really - the beef, mugs and glasses were [Teleported] to various hands, and we settled down fast, all eyes on Nina. Iona was absent-mindedly stroking Fenrir’s leg, and I was cuddled up next to her.

Nina’s shoulders hunched in, able to read the room.

“I don’t want to talk about the last few months right now.” She said, and we could all feel the Story there, extra so as she started to tear into the food with barely any manners or ceremony. Nina was level 464, a solid 24 level jump from the last time we’d seen her. “Let’s do an after action analysis on the fight just now.” She said with her mouth full, catching the crumbs that fell out.

I could see Iona struggling to put a smile on her face, to crack a joke. She flicked a berry at Nina’s forehead, which the kitsune deftly snapped her snout at and ate.

“One where you come in smelling like roses, riding in at the last moment?” My wife teased Nina. She straightened up.

“Pretty much!” She brightly told Iona.

“Ignoring my healing - I’ve spent more than a century refining it - I was nearly useless that fight.” I said. “I don’t have great tools for handling strong Mirror defenses. Usually I can bypass the defenses by stabbing people in the soft parts, but the turtle didn’t have any soft parts I could stab.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I could feel Iona rolling her eyes next to me.

“The monster was focused hard on defense. I don’t think it’s exactly fair to compare one of our weak points against the turtle’s strong points. Of course it’s going to go poorly for us, but there’s nothing to learn there. ‘Don’t be countered’ isn’t useful analysis.” Ř�

“Alright. What is useful analysis is that I need more tools that can handle that sort of situation. Wish Arachne was around, she’d probably have something good. Oh! Wait, hang on, I’ve got it. I thought about poisoning the turtle, I’ve got the spells for it, but I didn’t have anything to bait it with. I should’ve gone flying around, keeping you in the area, caught something, poisoned it, and tried to feed it to the turtle.”

Auri and Fenrir shook their heads together.

“No food.” Fenrir growled. Auri continued shaking her beak a moment longer before pausing, and started to nod up and down in furious agreement.

“Fenrir just came back after a few months of trying to find enough to eat.” Iona pointed out, then tilted her head a hair towards Fenrir. He blinked once, slowly, in confirmation of what Iona said… I think. I didn’t quite have the same level of deep communication with him that Iona did.

I shivered as my water bottles cooled off, and [Teleported] a trio to Auri, grabbing the ones that had been warming next to her. I could hear some Ice slithering around in Fenrir’s cave. Nina pointed to the roast Auri was working on and back to me wordlessly.

“You idiot!” She eventually shouted. “You’re sitting on a whole fucking stockpile of food! What do you mean, no bait!?”

All eyes turned to me and I flushed in embarrassment. I don’t think I’d screwed up this badly since, uh… Ahem. Let the shame flow through me, this was a learning exercise.

“Well, this is exactly why we do these sorts of things!” I said with good grace. “Learn, adapt, grow. Get more ideas for next time, so we won’t make the same mistake again. I hadn’t been flexible enough with my thinking. To me, that was all earmarked to prevent starvation, not for a fight. Next time, I’ll think about it!”

‘Can’t think in a fight’ was nonsense. Half my training was all about keeping a cool head and thinking in a battle.

Iona immediately sprang to my rescue, throwing herself on her sword.

“I think it’s alright for Elaine to struggle against a particularly tough opponent in terms of penetrating defenses.” She said. “She’s got half a class, maybe a half and a quarter of a class, dedicated to fighting and harm. I’m triple classed in fighting, and I struggled to break through the turtle’s shell. It’s not the first time I’ve struggled against heavily armored opponents.”

“I mean, your style is focused more on outlasting, less on brutal blows. Your elements reflect that.” I pointed out. “I don’t think any of us were in any danger that fight, even if we ignored my healing. As you said a minute ago, we can’t compare our medium strengths against the enemy’s all-in method and expect to win.”

“I’m a triple combat class.” Iona pointed out as she ripped a hunk of beef apart with her teeth, then downed it with a swig. “I’m supposed to hit hard, hard enough to deal with those types of problems.”

“Yeah, but you’re balanced.” Nina said. “Built for endurance, a little bit of everything. You’re more flexible. Sorry if I’m saying something stupid because I came late, but was it the monster’s first time out of water? It was hyper specialized to not die, we can’t be upset that it did exactly what its class, skills, and build was for. It had just enough firepower to hunt fish and whatever other food it wanted, and spent everything else becoming tougher and harder to kill. The moment it left its environment, it died.”

“It was a tough nut to crack.” I joked to a chorus of groans.

“Brrpt.” Auri had some comments on her own performance. “Brrrpt, brrrppt… brrpt!”

They went on in detail, and Fenrir’s slithering Ice dropped a pipe into my hands, already packed with some smokeleaf.

“Warmth.” He quietly grumbled, and my mind split as I considered both Auri’s analysis, and the gift Fenrir had given me.

On the Auri side, she had a thousand criticisms of how she did, and it made my heart swell with pride. Gone was the vain and arrogant bird who was sure she had all the answers, here was a more humble phoenix, one who could look at her immediate actions and say the magic words:

‘I was wrong.’

She had a pair of ideas for the fight that she could’ve done and didn’t. The first was a smaller, stronger jet of solid Inferno, basically a plasma torch, carving into the side or under the plates, and could’ve ‘peeled’ the turtle’s shell away one layer at a time, if she couldn’t manage a direct strike with it. The second she waffled on more, but it boiled down to a meteor strike. Fly up high, conjure a dozen mid-sized meteors of Lava, fly down with them and ‘hammer’ the turtle with terminal velocity shaped rocks. Rods from gods. She’d come up with it at the moment, but thought the collateral might be too much at the time. We were fighting over our homes, killing the turtle but leaving it and the surrounding area a burnt-out husk was no good.

Fenrir’s initial impact had her reevaluating, and the five of us were trying to work out if the meteor strikes would’ve been too devastating, or just devastating enough.

On the other I was debating the pipe.

A large part of me was saying NO SMOKING! Smoking bad! Smoking kills! It sets a terrible example! The house will smell terrible!

That last one was the strongest one, honestly.

At the same time, Medical Manuscripts or no, there wasn’t exactly a smoking stigma.

Another part of me pointed out that I was utterly immune to any problems from smoking, and people who were in my presence when I smoked were likely to be healthier

than the average person, simply due to my healing. It was also a way to bond with Fenrir, and it would help me warm up in the freezing winter. Plus, Auri tended to put off a good amount of smoke herself when she wasn’t focusing, it wasn’t like clearing smoke out of our home was something new. I had eight different smoke and smell removing spells memorized already.

Plus, there was a part of me that reveled in the delicious irony of the Sentinel’s philosophy, a way to openly display it without saying anything.

Smoke and mirrors.

I needed to get myself a mirror.

Auri saw what I was doing and sent a spark my way. That settled it.

I puffed away merrily, and failed miserably to blow a smoke ring.

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General Skill [Smoking Kills]! Would you like to replace a skill with it? Y/N]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General Skill [Smoking Skills]! Would you like to replace a skill with it? Y/N]

I side-eyed the System’s skills, convinced by now that it had a warped sense of humor. In defiance, by some Ciriel-granted miracle, I managed to blow a smoke ring, then added my thoughts on Auri’s analysis.

“I’ve always been a fan of small, sharp, targeted attacks.” I said. “I think the meteor strike would be too big of a wind up, with too large an impact, and utterly useless for anything besides a stationary target. If you’re aiming to take down a city, we’re probably going to have Words before then and time to plan. If you’re aiming for a monster, I doubt we’ll ever encounter anything as slow as the turtle again. Focus on penetrating attacks. Perhaps try to melt through some rocks, working on flowing Lava out as you melt it or something.” I said.

Auri nodded at my sage wisdom, and I straightened up a bit, letting a sly smile cross my face as the pipe hung. I admitted it - I was a shameless slave to my vanity, and when the thought of a Look I could manage crossed my mind, I felt somewhat compelled to lean into it.

Hey Ciriel! I asked my goddess friend. How’s it all going? Anyone need a miracle?

I sent up some spare mana as an offering, feeling vaguely guilty that I could send up as much as tens of thousands of worshippers but just plain forgot half the time.

Elaine! Ciriel replied. No, everything’s all peachy here! How are you doing? How’s your wife and Auri?

We’re doing great! I answered back. Fenrir just came back with Nina, and…

I puffed along merrily as I chatted with Ciriel and my family at the same time, planning out how to best cultivate a fun image… or dozens of fun images and looks. I might need several homes… half of this was pure fantasy, but it was fun fantasy.

I planned it all out, surrounded by family.