Illuminaria [LitRPG Fantasy Healer Adventure]

41 - Dodge Bag

Joe hummed as he prepared a breakfast for himself and Mojo. He wrapped the last apple slice with a meat that cooked like bacon but tasted more like bologna. These he browned quickly before putting them in a bowl to cool for Mojo. After cleaning the pan, he scrambled eggs for himself with a sharp, crumbly cheese and decent chive alternative. He would have made a second helping for Hah'roo, but when he went to check in on the rope-dancer, an expertly hurled pillow sent him back to his room alone.

Cooking in his new home was fun. Joe was used to gas stoves, so it took a bit to get used to the runic heating plate, which was probably more like an electric stove. The best part of the whole process, though, was how easy the cleanup was. Instead of scrubbing now, all he had to do was place the dishes in the sink and tap an aqua-colored crystal, and voila, clean pots and pans.

The utilities for the apartment were not electricity and/or gas, like back on Earth, but charms. The water, stove, sink, and toilet all had small crystals that needed to be re-enchanted or replaced occasionally, depending on use. This meant Joe did not have to use his personal charms for cleaning and mending around the house. Even so, Joe upgraded his charm bracelet to recharging charms instead of a number of charges when he went shopping the day before.

After breakfast, he flopped down on his couch, joined by the shug monkey who settled onto his thigh. It was time to look at all the changes he had made over the last few days and do some experimenting. Step one was reviewing his sheet.

Joe's eyes stopped at his experience when he noted it had made a decent jump up since returning from the western woods with Earcellwen. He had earned roughly the same amount of exp for driving off the Tusked Tarz as he had for killing the badboon boss. It was good to know that foiling enemies was as valid an option as killing them was.

His next focus was his skills. Joe had figured out that the first few levels of any skill were the easiest to rank through, often getting ranks from simply practicing. After rank 5, it took much more effort for a skill to advance, typically requiring it to be used in a situation with more significance or consequences. Playing around with his sheet, Joe found he could filter his skills. He could see just one attribute or his highest-ranked skills. In this case, he sorted it to those with the lowest ranks first. He had six skills under rank 5 that he could try to advance over that first threshold.

'Well, maybe not [Rattlebones] and [Mesmeric Command],' he thought. 'Let's work on non-hostile ones here at home.'

"Hey, Mo. Wanna throw stuff at me?" Joe asked the small critter sitting on him. The gleeful grin that immediately split the shug-monkey's muzzle let Joe know the little changeling understood the request and was happy to comply. "Ok, give me one second," he quickly interjected as Mojo picked up the closest object, which was Joe's juice glass from breakfast. "Not that. Put it down, bud."

Digging into his dimbag, Joe pulled out a half dozen little pouches he had bought to keep small loot in, like fangs and gems. From the kitchen cupboard, he grabbed two cloth bags, one of rice and the other of beans. He considered keeping the grains and legumes separate by making bags of each kind, but then realized he was not likely to use the seeds again after this exercise, so he made a 50/50 mix of rice and beans, turning the coin pouches into a set of six beanbags for his hairy, artillery-focused roommate.

Mojo was over the moon for this game. With near-gattling gun speed, the little changeling hurled the six projectiles at Joe and then dashed around the room, grabbing and chucking them again and again.

"Holy Crap!" Joe swore under the barrage of leather-bound bean bags. Getting [Sidestep] to rank 5 took just a few minutes, as the challenge rating of dodging Mojo missiles was way harder than Joe had expected. Not wanting to stop the fun, they kept going even after reaching the first rank plateau. It took over half an hour for them to get one more rank, at which point they stopped for a breather and to take a minute to reset all the overturned furniture.

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As Joe surveyed the now disheveled room, he was startled to see Mahq standing beside the flipped sofa. There was no way to know how long the boy had been there, as neither he nor Mojo had noticed the door opening or the young man standing amidst their play.

"Woah!" Joe exclaimed. "Hey, Mahq. Sorry. Were we being too loud?" The Catstaffs lived right below Joe: something he should have considered before running around his apartment for the better part of an hour with the overjoyed broodling.

"Gran and Gramp were surprised at first, but they were smiling when I asked to come see what you were doing."

"Ah. When was that?"

"It was just as Mojo knocked the painting off the wall."

"Oh shoot. That's right." Joe jogged over and picked up the frame, checking it for damage, which there was, a chipped corner. Joe quickly burned a mend charge and rehung the artwork. "Wait a minute. That was a long while ago. You were here in the middle of all that, and we missed you? How is that possible?"

"I went with something small," The young man stated before his body melted downward. In the blink of an eye, the youth went from a young teen into the form of a mouse and just as quickly back again. "I was on the mantle for most of the time. I was going to ask if I could play too, but you two never stopped long enough for me to ask."

Joe had seen a few shapechanges before, both from potions and skills, but he had never seen one as fluid as the rapid shifts Mahq had just performed.

"Hey, I know another savant. So, you are good with skills and builds, too?"

"No. Savants are good at something, but we are not all good at the same thing. I know about spirits," the young druid uttered. "Everything has a spirit. Most people don't see them right. Your friend is good with wind spirits."

"And for you, it's all spirits?" Joe asked, a bit awed by that possibility. "You hear every spirit the way Hah'roo hears the wind?" He received a slight nod, and for the first time since meeting the boy, Mahq fully met Joe's eyes without being asked to. "That's amazing!" Joe added.

Surprisingly, his enthusiastic exclamation won him a shy yet genuine smile from the young man.

"So? What spirits do you see in here?" he asked the young druid-savant.

The smile vanished. "There are endless numbers of spirits here, Joe. It would take forever to list them all. Some are old ones from yesteryears. Some are possible ones from tomorrow. There are the memories of Derba Lancsty, who lived here before you, and Henrow Four, who was here before her. The Storm Wardens pushed back the greater rain spirits, but there are plenty of little ones still waiting for the rest to get here. Of course, right now, the biggest spirits, besides mine, are the four spirits in you, Joe, and Mojo's yearning spirit."

"I have four spirits? What do you mean by four? How do I have four spirits?" At best, Joe could think of two: himself and the wildness. The other spirits were a mystery.

"You have a head-spirit, a world-spirit, a gut spirit, and a guardian spirit. All your spirits are very different. Some people have small extra spirits, especially those who can't let go of something from their past. And others have guardians, too. Your head and gut spirit are both big. Your world spirit," Mahq started pointing at Joe's right forearm, "is too hard for me to understand."

While Joe tried to parse his way through that jumble of information, the youth looked over Joe's left shoulder and added, "Your guardian spirit is grumpy."

"What does it look like?"

"Like sharp lines of flame. It has a duty that it needs to fulfill. Nothing else matters to it."

Confounded, Joe rolled his hand in a circular motion, prompting Mahq to elaborate further.

"It is someone who died while obligated to you. Your hiding-stuff-aura is messing up my ability to get its name. All I know is it's obsessed with rules and aligned with fire."

Joe's first thought was Sir Groven, but he could not see the knight becoming his guardian under any circumstances. The only other rules-stickler he could think of was Azbekt, but he had seen the dwarf's spirit ascend into the heavens. Why would it come back?

Too confused to follow that thread any further, Joe switched to Mahq's next mystery statement. "And what do you mean Mojo has a 'yearning spirit'?"

"He wants to become your true companion, but you have not accepted him fully yet. Until you do, he cannot access the experience he has earned and grow. He is trapped, neither a monster nor a companion."

"Oh shit! I'm sorry, bud," Joe blurted to the dog-like changeling sitting on the table next to him. "I had it in my head I was going to foster you, but I didn't realize that was holding you back. Now that I know you are pretty good at taking care of yourself and I'm not likely to just get you killed, let's make this official. What ya say? You want to stay with me?"

Mojo bound off the table, landing on Joe's chest. As the little guy wrapped his simian-esque arms around his neck, a warmth grew in Joe's chest. He could feel the wildness shuffling about in his torso, almost as the feral spirit scootched over a bit to make room for Mojo. Into that given space, a new small essence blossomed.

Joe was unsure what talent points were, but he quickly found he could access Mojo's sheet now.

While only Attributes were exactly the same, Mojo's sheet was not that different from his own. Abilities looked like the monster equivalent of Traits, while Talents should be their Skills. Joe sensed that Gristle and Health were almost exactly the same, but Grit and Guts felt different than Stamina and Mana.

As the connection between the two of them deepened, Joe could feel Mojo's happiness. It was not the wildness reading the creature's body language. It was much more visceral than that. He could sense the little guy's emotions. He was also certain that Mojo could sense Joe's growing feeling of wonderment.

During this empathic exchange, Joe also felt a pull on the skill he and Mojo had just been working on. He could sense that the skill was one that Mojo both wanted and was compatible with. Joe extended [Sidestep] to his companion, and sure enough, one of Mojo's unspent talent points vanished, and the skill appeared on his sheet.

"Whoa, I can share skills with him?"

"Not all of your skills, Joe: only skills that he is suited for. Your healing abilities are not something he would understand right now," Mahq intoned. "Maybe someday. If you two stay together long enough, his spirit may grow enough to learn how to heal like you do."

While he righted the couch and the end tables, Joe considered the traits he had been offered. [Skill Monkey] would give Mojo more versatility, but [Dogs of War] would be better for keeping the little man alive if they got into a bad situation together. Granted, [Casting Claw] would allow them to share health pools, or more specifically, Health and Gristle, but there were drawbacks to that tactic. One: the claws had to be in contact with Mojo, which was not great if they were surprised. Two: it also meant that Joe would lose the use of one of the claws if he dual-cast the spell. Clearly, if they were in a dangerous situation, that was an easy sacrifice to make, but a tougher Mojo could only be a good thing.

Then again, would defensive skills be better than a 10% boost to resources?

Joe was leaning towards [Dogs of War], but he held off pulling the trigger until he had a chance to run it by Kendell. He did not expect to go out monster-hunting over the next few days, so there was no rush. Also, if you had an expert for a friend, why not avail yourself of her specialty?

Besides, another reason to hang out with Kenda was never a bad thing.