CH1134 Delair’s Perspective

“So, I guess you’re wondering why I gathered you all here today,” Delair said, giving an air of importance in her home while her mother was out working their garden, the young girl walking around Mora and Dewdrop where they sat.

“You didn’t,” Mora told her. “Your mom’s looking after us while Ben and Thera work.”

“Not the point! How do I change Ben’s mind about helping me awaken my skills?”

She flopped down as she asked it, resting on Mora while she picked up Dewdrop, forcing the scrungle to wake up and participate in the conversation, much to the outsider’s displeasure.

“You don’t,” Mora said. “Ben thinks you can, so just do it yourself.”

“Ben’s overestimating me. I don’t want to spend years trying to awaken, just because he thinks it would be good for me. I want to have my skills awaken now, and I want to do it the easiest way possible. You both live with him; is there any way I can change his mind?”

“No. He’s only asking you to awaken one yourself before he helps you with the rest. It’s not a big deal.”

“Says you. You were born awakened,” she complained before perking up. “Wait, can you help me?”

She knew he was a soul spirit and, as such, had access to soul magic. The very same magic famous for its power across the world. Just because her teacher wouldn’t help her didn’t mean that she didn’t have a different friend at her side she could count on.

A friend who had no qualms about disappointing her either.

“No.”

“Aw, come on, why not?”

“Because Ben wants you awakening by yourself.”

“Uugh,” Delair groaned. “You’re supposed to be on my side here.”

“Ben’s on your side, and I trust him to be right about these things.”

An answer that could only disappoint her, showing that there was no path for her to exploit things. In the end, she could only sigh. “Fine then, help me a different way. What do you think I should try? What should I aim to awaken?”

She had her four ninth-level skills, being her crafting, enchanting, plant knowledge, and enchanting knowledge, but she had no clue how she’d awaken any of them. She knew she’d been leveling quickly, and she knew that was largely thanks to having such a good teacher. Pushing beyond any of those by herself, though? It felt like more than she could manage. What could she possibly do to surpass the limits of the skills she had?

“You’re thinking about this wrong,” Mora told her. “You weren’t trying to get Ben’s help awakening any of those skills, were you?”

“No, but awakening from the eighth level sounds even more impossible than awakening anything at the ninth.”

“Why? You said it before, Ben helped your mom and a lot of other people with it.”

“Yeah, and we already went over the fact that I’m not getting Ben's or your help,” she complained, reaching up to pinch his cheeks in frustration while she puffed out her own. “And even eighth level just leaves me with three magics and connect. I don’t have a lot of options.”

“Ben was able to help others do that by teaching them and giving them mana,” Mora said, pinching her cheeks back in revenge. “He’s probably taught you more than anyone else by this point, which means the only thing you’re missing is mana.”

“Yeah? Well, I still don’t know enough to materialize a seed by myself like anyone else in the village did, and I don’t have some easy way of getting more mana either.”

“Sure, if you’re aiming to awaken at the eighth level then you don’t, and plant magic isn’t going to work, but who says you have to do things that way? Ben’s going to keep teaching you, and you’re going to keep practicing. At the rate you’ve been going, you'll reach the ninth level of material user in a couple weeks. Less if you practice it and nothing else, and the level will mean you’ll need less mana to materialize with it. There’s no reason you won’t be able to awaken it soon, and once you do, Ben already said he’d help you with the rest.”

When Mora told her that, Delair paused, digesting everything he’d said and rolling it around in her mind before she jumped up and hugged him, shaking him as she did.

“Mora, you’re so smart!”

“No, I just gave it two seconds of thought.”

Ignoring the comment, Delair was already pulling him outside with her, Dewdrop thrown over her shoulder and about to go further, only to be stopped by her mother.

“Delair, just where do you think you’re taking them?”

“I don’t know! I was going to figure that bit out as I went!”

The response brought an immediate frown to Fontesh’s face. “Are you okay with that, Mora?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“And I take it Dewdrop is asleep?”

“Looks like it,” Delair said, swinging the outsider around and seeing it determined to keep resting despite that, leaving her mother to sigh.

“And you can’t just do something in the yard instead of running off?”

“... I mean, I guess I could, but-”

“Let me rephrase that. If you aren’t going anywhere specific, just play in the yard.”

“Mmh, okay, Mom.”

She supposed that she could admit that she hadn’t even really needed to leave the house and instead did what her mom asked, dragging the other two with her to the yard and stared across it triumphantly, beginning her path to pushing material user to the ninth level before turning to Mora beside her, seeing the curious look on his face as he wondered just what she was going to do.

“I have artist’s block. Do you have any suggestions?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“All I’ve been thinking about since I woke up today was talking Ben into helping me awaken and then figuring out how to make him change his mind. I need some inspiration,” she said, shaking him for dramatic effect. “Come on, you must have some ideas I can use.”

“I don’t know. Just make a statue or something.”

“A statue works,” Delair nodded before handing Dewdrop over. “Here. Hold this and pose.”

“I should have put more thought into my suggestion,” Mora sighed, nonetheless doing as she asked, striking a dramatic figure as he raised Dewdrop into the air while Delair got to work, taking the dirt from beneath her feet and began to give it shape.

Compared to the usual materials she got to work with, making anything with dirt was downright horrific. Before she could really do anything with it, she first had to condense all of the individual grains together to make a solid she could properly work with, but at the same time, that just added to her practice as she got to it, digging an ever-growing hole in the ground and using what she pulled away.

When she spent her mana, she felt the earth condense under her touch, and once condensed into a more usable form, she spent more to shape it like it was clay, starting at the feet and building up from there, taking her time as she did. Even if she was from an inherently magical race, and even if she had a mana enhancement for a while by that point, she was still young, and her pool was still relatively small as a result, leading to a few hours of work to make what she wanted.

Mora humoured her the entire time, making sure to hold his pose, even if he still chatted to keep from getting bored, and Dewdrop slept through it, but eventually, she was done. Mora put Dewdrop down and stepped back, looking at what she’d made.

“It turned out well,” he nodded, admiring how it matched him, the statue a one-to-one scale of himself, while Fontesh called over from the side.

“It looks good, but figure out where you’re going to put it and make sure you fill in the hole you dug with something so nobody twists an ankle!”

“Give me a minute, Mom! Suffering through my lack of mana!”

Constantly working her pool like that had been exhausting, and in its own way, it had brought different doubts. She might not have known just how much mana was needed to materialize something and awaken while at the eighth level, but would the cost really go down so much that she’d be able to do it at the ninth, or was she just going to end in failure, having devoted all of that time and practice to something that was a lost cause?

If mana was the limit, then all she could do was hope she’d have enough, but she couldn’t help but feel a small flicker of jealousy for the others in her life. She knew that Mora had practically endless mana, and she knew Dewdrop had more than her too, even if the scrungle never used it. Even her mom’s pool had grown by leaps and bounds in the last few years, a large part due to the help that she had received with her own awakening, but thinking about her mother gave her an idea, one that made her bolt up. Finally, she could see a path to awakening a skill that didn’t feel so impossible; she just needed one thing to make it work.

Which means I just need Ben back to talk him into it.𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂