Chapter 42: Duty

“And she has potions? Clerics?” Ella frowned. “And it’s still… close? Who said that?”

“Itela.”

“Then it’s close. She knows her business.” Ella drummed her fingers on the countertop. “Which makes this next part hard, Arthur. I don’t know how it was where you came from, but here, we give sick people almost everything they need. Particularly, the young. And even the… not town favorites. Actually, I take that back. Even if she was disliked, she’d get what she needed. But that girl? She’s sweet. She already has everything that can help her, Arthur.”

“Not everything. I have this.” Arthur tapped his tea kettle, which was just now coming to a boil. “I got tested before. My tea-making skill works outside of alchemy. Completely outside of it. No interactions, no destroying of pre-existing buffs, no… nothing. But it’s not very strong.”

Ella shot a look of concern in Arthur’s directions, the feathers on her face scrunching slightly.

“Yet.”

Arthur nodded.

“Yet.” He took the water off the heat, pouring it into the strongest, most herbal tea he had been able to buy. As the water started to pull color from the leaves, he focused on infusing as much majicka as he possibly could, envisioning the insect poison getting pushed out of a wound. As an added bonus, he imagined any remnant poisons that couldn’t be expelled would get neutralized by some unknown chemical reaction.

Come on. Come on.

It didn’t work. There was no update to his status, no draw on his majicka, no notifications. No nothing.

“Dammit.” Arthur violently dumped the tea out in the sink, put new leaves in the cup, and reached for his kettle. Just as his hand made it to the wooden grip, He felt a feathery hand close over his.

“Arthur.”

“Ella, I have to do this.”

“No, you actually don’t. And I don’t think anyone has explained this to you yet. Not well. So sit. I can’t actually stop you from doing anything, and I’m not going to try. But my word to the ears of the gods, I’m not going to let you do this without knowing what your obligations are.”

“I don’t have time for this, Ella.”

“You do. She’s sleeping. And the job you’re trying to do won’t get done in one night. Now sit down.” The last three words were said in a tone that left Arthur little room to argue. He sat.

“Now, you might have noticed that people treat it like an odd thing that you’ve helped Milo so much. Or Rhodia. Or… anyone you know, really. You insist on paying for things people would give you for free. Why?”

“I’m just trying to be nice.”

“And you’re succeeding. And everyone likes it. And you. So why do they treat it like it’s weird? Have you ever stopped to think about that?”

“No. Not really.” And he hadn’t. He had noticed what Ella was talking about a couple of times, but just barely. He attributed it to a kind of politeness he hadn’t quite figure out yet.

“It took me a week to figure it out, too. From the other side. I asked myself, ‘Why, does this boy keep helping? When people don’t ask, and when he has no obligation?’ And that’s when I realized you hardly ever talk about duty. I don’t think I’ve heard you say it once.”

“You all talk about it an awful lot.”

“That’s because it’s foundational to our society, Arthur. A long time ago, someone decided it wasn’t enough to leave niceness up to chance and goodwill. So we turned to obligations. To duty. Everyone knows what they are supposed to do for other people in a variety of situations. They don’t usually have to, but it’s expected.”

“Nobody is ever nice just because they want to be? Is me living here just… because you have to?”

“No, not at all. There’s only so much room to compel people to be kind. I’m sure that people in your world sometimes do nice things out of duty. It’s the same here, just flipped.”

Arthur chewed on that for a moment.

“So what does that mean?”

“It means you need to know what your obligations are. You and that girl are involved?”

“Yes. Unless I’ve misread things.”

“You haven’t. I saw you two.”

“Right.”

“That obligates you to not be involved with anyone else, until things between you and her are over. And I suppose telling her when things are over if they end. And that’s it. That’s your duty.”

“No dates? No flowers? No… I don’t know, nice notes about how I feel?”

“Very nice to do, but not an obligation.” She smiled. “That falls into the ‘nobody’s business but yours’ category of things. And it really isn’t part of your duty. Everyone’s a bit different, and so is every couple. If you’re both happy without notes, then duty doesn’t care.”

“Okay. Good, actually.” Arthur felt like he was getting the talk, only a nicer, less awkward version. “But I still don’t see what this has to do with what’s going on.”

“It has to do with you because it means that nobody, not even Mizu, expects you to do all this. Did she say why she called you down?”

“She said she wanted me there. She was scared.”

“And that was, I promise you, what she said it was. It was what she wanted. What she expected. What she did not expect, Arthur, was for you to kill yourself doing every single thing you could possibly do to help, especially when it was to your own detriment. To stop developing your shop, even for a moment. To do things that are bad for you just because they are good for her.”

“But…”

“Just listen for a bit longer. Nobody expects all that of you, Arthur. She has doctors. Medicine. Spells. There are probably a few commanders in range of her all day, giving her what little they can in buffs. And that’s a lot, Arthur. What can you add to that?”

“Not much. But something.”

“True. But I needed you to understand that this, all the effort I can tell you’re planning on expending, might not make a difference. People are nice, Arthur. The world isn’t, at least not always. And nobody, not me, not Mizu, would blame you if you did just what you have already been doing. Being there for her. Helping her with fear. Encouraging her.”

Arthur let all that sink in. He was aware that he had only been in this world a few weeks, and had only been involved with Mizu for a few days. She’d probably understand if he didn’t do much more to help. “Being there for her” was a real option, and he could just do that. It would still be hard, especially if Mizu got much worse. But he understood what Ella was saying.

“What if…” he said, looking Ella dead in the eye. “What if I just need to do this? I know we haven’t been together long, and I probably shouldn’t feel like I do, but what if this is just the most important thing to me right now?”

“More than the shop? Leveling? Just being young?”

“Yeah. More important than those.”

“Then we get to work.” Ella stood up and put his water back on the heating element.

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. If it’s important to you, it’s important to me. And I doubt I could stop you, anyway. I have a lot of points in perception, and I know when someone’s pretending. She’s really that important to you? This soon?”

“I couldn’t tell you why. But yeah, she is.”

“Let's get started, then. The water’s almost boiling.”

Arthur shook his head. “Actually, just dump that out. By accident or not, I slowed down long enough to think, and I don’t think I’m starting at the right part of the project.”

Arthur moved to grab a couple of things, then towards the door.

“Well, I’m glad to see you have a new idea. Where are you headed?”

“To find Spiky. I need a librarian.”

—

A quick trip to the library closest to him allowed Arthur to find the location of the library that Spiky actually worked at, inconveniently located almost exactly as far away from Ella’s place as it was possible to be while still staying inside the city limits. He sprinted across the city, only pausing his mental help-Mizu-process for a moment to marvel about how fast he could move now that he had so much invested in his dexterity.

“Arthur? What brings you here?” Spiky said, looking up from a cartload of what appeared to be unsorted romance novels. “The library by your house is actually better, you know. More selection.”

“I need your help.” Arthur leaned on the handle of the cart, catching his breath. “Not a duty thing. Just me asking. I could owe you. It’s for Mizu.”

“If it’s for Mizu and you, then shut up about owing me. I owe you for letting me explain majicka to you, and even if it wasn’t for that, we’re friends. What do you need?”

“Books,” Arthur said. “Dozens of them.”

An hour later, Spiky was reading to Arthur out of an alchemy book. It turned out that was much faster, and something Spiky’s class specialized in. It was a sort of reference librarian thing, a skill that let them identify the tidbits of information someone actually needed to know much faster than if they read the books themselves.

Both Arthur and Spiky were working under the assumption that what Arthur needed was the gist of how other classes worked. He wasn’t an alchemist, after all, so the exact details of how they did their work would be lost on him. But knowing a bit about the ingredients they used to achieve certain effects would help on top of anything he could gather about their class mechanics.

“So it’s any ingredient for any pill? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Not quite. The part you’re talking about is majicka intent. It can see what they want, and it tries to help them do it.”

“I have that too, sort of.”

“Most crafting classes do. A high enough level alchemist can theoretically make healing potions, real ones, out of dirt. But using the right ingredients helps. Nobody can do their best work with materials that aren’t meant for the job.”

Which partially explained why Arthur was failing at making an anti-venom tea, at least so far. He had a low level and none of the ingredients he was using made Food Scientist buzz at all. Which brought him to the next reason he was here.

Level 16 Teamaster

Stats:

STR 5

VIT 8

DEX 10

PER 17

WIS 19

INT 5

Primary Skills: Teashop Brewmaster (Level 9) Food Scientist (Level 10) Medicinal Brewer (Level 5)

Achievements: Shop Owner, Mass Prep, Buffer Against the Wave

For a while now, Food Scientist had been more or less stalled compared to his other skills. And while he only dimly understood how it worked, it seemed to like him that learning, experimenting, and observing were how it leveled. While Spiky worked his way through the alchemy books, Arthur was reading recipe books, books written about the proper use of various ingredients, and tea-prep manuals as fast as he could get through them.

“I’m surprised there are so many,” Arthur said.

“Why?”

“I dunno. There’s a system, it guides you, and makes you better at things. Something made me think the manuals would be redundant.”

“No, no. Not at all. People use them for the same reason you are. It gives them an edge. Or at least some people. Not everyone is the studying type.”

A few more hours passed, and Arthur finally got a bump of a single level to his food scientist class. But better yet, he had ideas.

“Spiky. I have to go. Can you…”

“Study for you? Absolutely. I’ll throw together some notes, and bring them by tomorrow. What about you?”

“I’m going to the alchemists. And then, if I can, I’m going to find Karbo.”