Chapter 134: Overcharged Psychic

“How’d she get here?” Arthur asked. “I thought Itela was days away.”

“She was. But that’s not important,” Mizu said.

“And I’m sorry I scared you,” Arthur said. “I didn’t mean to get sick.”

“You should have told me if you weren’t feeling well, and I’m mad about that,” Mizu said as she began to pull back from Arthur. “But that’s also not the important thing here.”

“Huh? What is?”

Mizu sighed. “Arthur, did you really go find my mother and yell at her?”

Before Arthur could answer, Mizu’s mother’s voice sounded. “He did. I already told you.” From around the door, as smooth and restrained as water poured from a high-quality teapot, came Maar. “And before I could stop him to correct his misunderstandings, he collapsed onto the street like a dead beast.”

“The misunderstandings aren’t really his fault, mother,” Mizu said, physically shielding Arthur in a small way. “Everyone misunderstood you. Including me.”

“Well.” Maar looked slightly embarrassed, at that. “I was never very good at talking.”

“You two seem… better.” Arthur could feel that he was lacking some context for what was going on. “I’m happy to see you two like this.”

“Yes. It turns out mother was not mad that I tried something new,” Mizu said.

“I was angry, Arthur, because this one did not tell me that she was trying something new. I could have helped,” Maar said. “Otherwise. I’m still a little upset she thought I would disapprove.”

“Mom, I’ve apologized.”

“You have. And I have.” Mizu’s mother shook her head. “I’m sorry. It was a much bigger problem than it should have been. Neither of us have ever talked much.”

“That’s what Arthur is for.” Mizu patted his hand affectionately. “He’s my talker. That’s why I hired him.”

“And to save you from an insect poison that you also didn’t tell me about,” Maar said, flushing a new shade of blue.

“Mom! I said I was sorry. I didn’t want you to worry,” Mizu said.

Maar crossed the room to Arthur, kneeling next to the bed and looking him straight in his suddenly terrified eyes.

“You were brave to yell at me. Please don’t do it again. But I’m glad it was for her.” Maar reached over and stroked the back of Mizu’s head once, affectionately. “And thank you for my daughter’s life.” Arthur stumbled over a thousand words as Maar stood and smoothed out her skirt. “I was worried when I realized my daughter was experiencing romance. With an offworlder. Who I had not met. And who then bled all over my lodgings.”

“Mom.” Mizu’s voice carried a pinch of warning that Maar completely ignored.

Maar smiled a very small but clearly amused grin. “I’m not worried anymore, Arthur. Please proceed.”

“Mom!”

Maar’s stride didn’t change much as she left the room, except for giving out the distinct impression that she was almost skipping.

“Arrgh.” Mizu made a frustrated noise into the sheets by Arthur’s leg. “She never talks. And then she meets you twice and she’s now like this.”

—

After a few hours of being forced to drink impossibly high-quality water by what he considered to be an impossibly beautiful woman, Arthur subjected himself to another examination by Itela before being given permission to get up, move around, and go on with his life.

“Let me take you to the well,” Mizu said. “Itela said you can’t work today, so I’ll show you everything me and mother have done.”

“Both of you?” Arthur said. “That’s interesting.”

“Oh, it has been. Arthur, she knows so much. I never realized how much because she only worked on her own rune stack, and the changes she’d make to that were all so small.”

Mizu took Arthur down into the well-room, which had been expanded from the size of a small-alcove to a small room. Once there, Mizu pressed the wall and lit up the beginnings of her new rune stack with her majicka.

“It’s bigger now,” Arthur commented on the rune, which was about twice the size as previous runes.

“Yes. We tested out several sizes, this one is much more efficient. See here?” She traced Arthur’s finger over a corner of it. “When it was smaller, it leaked majicka to other runes. And…”

She proceeded to walk him through a thorough, completely indecipherable description of every small change, their effects, and how they’d change the end-product water the well produced. Arthur understood hardly any of it, but loved every second of watching Mizu talk about her work.

“You didn’t understand any of that.” Mizu smiled up at him. “I can tell.”

“Not much of it, no. Sorry,” Arthur admitted.

“It’s okay. I didn’t really bring you down here just to show you the runes, anyway.”

Suddenly, Arthur felt his arms fill up with a Mizu, and for the next few minutes the well became a silent, conversation-free zone.

“I saw them go down there,” Lily said. “And I didn’t see them come up. But it’s quiet, so I don’t know.”

“Oh, they are probably still down there,” Onna’s voice boomed. “Probably kissing.”

Arthur choked a bit when he heard that, then set his mind loose on trying to think of something else they could have plausibly been doing down in the dark. Mizu had the opposite reaction, and was faster.

“We were!” Mizu shouted up through the hole. “It was really nice!”

“Well, stop!” Lily said. “He’s my Arthur too, and he just woke up. You can’t hog him.”

As soon as Arthur crested the staircase, Lily hit him like a cannonball. He felt a sudden surge of majicka roll through him, topping off his already mostly full reserves.

“Lily, that was a waste,” Arthur said. “Save your majicka for someone who needs it.”

“Shh, you.” Lily flicked his forehead. “I’m not going to let you pass out again.”

“I think his problem was too much majicka, actually.” Mizu mused a bit. “I don’t think your powers would do the same thing, though.”

“Is that what it was?” Onna said. “I’ve heard of that. Someone gets sick after a move. But I thought it just took a pill to fix.”

“It is,” Mizu said. “For the first six months or so. Arthur thought he had allergies.”

“The children’s disease?” Lily asked. “Arthur, you’re not eight years old.”

“I know! I know that now!” Arthur shook Lily in his arms, freeing some giggles in the process. “Let’s go get lunch. I’m starving.”

Arthur really was. He assumed Itela had forced some nutrition into him in some way or another over the last few days, but it was clearly nothing like the normal amount of food he took down over the same period of time. He felt slightly thinner, and like he could eat an entire cow.

Cow was, by virtue of not existing in the demon world, not on the menu. Fish was, however. The cook across the way from Arthur’s shop laughed when he ordered two entire fish on a loaf of bread with sauce and vegetables, then stopped laughing as he realized that Arthur was entirely serious about it. A few minutes later, he set his sandwich down just long enough to make everyone a very conventional, non-majicka enhanced tea, leaving many parts of the process to Lily’s eager helping hands. And then, very seriously, he got down to eating the largest non-breakfast meal he had ever consumed.

“That was sort of impressive,” Lily said. “I bet Mizu that you couldn’t do it when you said you were going to try.”

“It was a mistake.” Arthur held his stomach, which was stretched to bursting. “I see that now. I was arrogant.”

“Want to walk it off?” Lily asked.

“In a minute. I need to recover,” Arthur said. “Now’s as good of a time as any to see what’s going on with my status screen, anyway. It’s been blinking at me for a while.”

Arthur brought up his screen, then nodded in satisfaction at the growth he saw. It had been a busy year, and it showed.

Level 24 Teamaster

Stats:

STR 8

VIT 10

DEX 10

PER 24

WIS 32

INT 5

Primary Skills: Teashop Brewmaster (Level 18), Food Scientist (Level 16), Medicinal Brewer (Level 17), Empathetic Host (Level 18), Comfort Baking (Level 8)

Achievements: Shop Owner, Mass Prep, Buffer Against the wave, Whole-Body Health, I Ate the Works

Sighing at the realization that Empathetic Host had leveled a few times while he was unconscious, Arthur was still able to appreciate the general growth he had gone through. Comfort baking was not that much higher than it had been, but he was fine with that skill leveling as slow as it wanted to. Everything else had made big jumps, bigger than Eito had predicted even in his most optimistic guesses.

Arthur had long since gone full goose-sage on the subject of trying to level, but had never quite mastered the trick of not actually caring that he had leveled. He was fine with that, and contented himself with the fact that he’d probably never be a world-shaking genius. He didn’t even know what he’d do with himself if he was, honestly. People enjoyed his tea now, and it wasn’t like he wanted to charge more for it or anything.

But as great as a newly-stocked stat count and skill list were, they also weren’t the only thing the system was trying to alert him to. The first came in the form of his newest achievement, which said about what he expected it to.

Overcharged Psychic

For a time, you could peer dimly into the inner thoughts and feelings of others. That was not the intended use-case for your normal abilities. They were a sanitized version that’s firmly directed towards tea-making and took pains to make sure you get information that helps you do your job better without invading the privacy of others.

You didn’t do it deliberately, but your recent illness let you burst through several system-imposed barriers that limit the power of your empathic ability. For a while, you could hear any inner emotional state, except those from people who experience their feelings in a way radically different from how you do.

As a whole, this is something the system would like to sincerely request you avoid in the future.

To reward you for both the outlier experience and your near-miss with death, you retain a bare speck of the power your sickness granted you. From your perspective, this will manifest as a slight enhancement to your natural, non-system ability to sense the emotions of others, as well as occasional bursts of insight that go beyond that normal level.