February 39 + epilogue!

“You. Aren’t. Allowed to die!” Grant came out of the darkness of unconsciousness to terrible pain. Suki’s fists were rhythmically beating on his now-unarmored chest, alternating with lightning surging directly into his heart, now that he had no resistance to the spell.

Skill gained: Lightning attunement (1/10). Power literally flows through you, becoming one with the person you show the world. Masters of this skill can empower natural lightning bolts to shatter mountaintops. Saints are the storm.

Tier one effect: Increases damage of all lightning-attuned spells by 10%.

<Oh, good. Hey, I figured out what you needed in order to get the skill for lightning spells. Gotta run lightning directly though your heart. There were, ah, complications. Better stop her from hitting you. She and I were turning your heart on, then off, back and forth pretty bad.>

“I’m back.” Each word was soft, and blood streamed out of his mouth each time his lips parted. “Stop…”

His health was below fifty, something he hadn’t seen since before he’d started increasing his Cultivation Achievement Level. No… since he had gotten crushed by an avalanche. He’d seen this far too recently. Suki stopped punching him, and it was only now that he could see tears sparkling down her cheeks. He closed his eyes and took a deep inhale. “Live by the Sword.”

In his mind, he was back fighting the minotaur. The bulk of the damage he had taken had been from this monster alone, so that wasn’t terribly surprising. The fight happened over and over, and he saw how he could have moved to avoid attacks. How he could have mitigated extra damage by moving his body with the blow. Over and over, until the skill moved on to show how he could have staunched his blood flow, though he felt this wasn’t as fair; he’d been unconscious.

Then as it turned out, Suki’s attempts to save him had nearly finished him off. He almost laughed when the skill-version of him didn’t try to dodge or ignore; instead, he saw himself giving her instructions on how to apply pressure firmly and calmly to circulate blood until the heart had gotten back into rhythm.

Health: 48/347 -> 153/347. Critical areas focused. Bones reset. Organs repaired. Soft tissue still severely damaged.

Grant opened his eyes and gazed into Suki’s. “Thank you. I’m all set.”

“You don’t look all set.” She wiped her eyes, then scanned the area. “Waylon’s getting fixed up by the locals, but I need you on your feet to help me fix this barrier. Two Wielders stabilizing it will have way more impact than just one.”

He stood gingerly and walked with her toward the sparking barrier. They passed the corpses of creatures large and small, and his feet squelched as they sank into bloody mud. “What happened here?”

“Waylon happened. He had a whole bunch of his Vassals with him when this started, and… I don’t think they made it.” Suki swallowed back the roughness in her voice. “His weapon allows him to gain temporary characteristics when he gets the last hit in on a creature, so by the time he got to these last chunky ones, he was able to stand against them practically toe-to-toe. The issue was that he got so beat-up getting to them that he wasn’t able to finish the job.”

“That’s what his Wielded Weapon does?” For three beats of his heart, Grant was upset that he hadn’t taken that power for himself. Then he recalled that Waylon was his friend that had suffered tremendously in order to save a town’s worth of people.

“Sure is.” Suki winced at the admission. “It’s one of the reasons his relationship with his father is so strained. Waylon got a Berserker’s weapon, but he’s a meticulous and thoughtful person. Combine that with the fact that there are a good half-dozen Wednesdays in the world that have a variation on that power, a better variant, and you can see why an heir apparent is instead an unnamed Wednesday, all but exiled from the House.”

“Wait… what?” Grant went very still at that declaration. “I thought they… unnamed? His name is Waylon.”

“The barrier to entry for skills is incredibly high. Almost all skills have terrifying prerequisites that have to be fulfilled to gain them.” Suki shrugged and waved at the barrier. “Can we please stabilize this now?”

“I thought that people that went by their skill names were the ones that were seen as branch family, or hopefuls at best. Are you telling me that losing your name is a badge of honor?” Grant was still frozen, but a crackling like a massive buildup of static lighting made him start moving to the shimmering barrier once more.

“Why would you think that?” Suki reared back and slammed both gauntlets directly into the barrier. It rang with a sound like a gong being struck, and the wavy curtain of energy took on a more rigid form. For a moment, Grant could see through the barrier; thousands of multicolored lights on beautiful houses shimmered, then vanished. “Don’t you remember me telling you that you could only call me Suki in private? If the Lady of the… that is… if even I think that way, imagine the Noble Houses.”

“I see. Question. Do I just… stab the barrier?” Grant was holding February Twenty Nine in one hand and applying pressure to his bruised abdomen with the other.

“Yes.”

Since he had no energy to shrug, Gran merely nodded and stabbed forward. Unlike when Suki had hit the barrier, when his sword hit the shifting energy wall… it screeched. Brown and pink swirled out of his sword and into the colorless, translucent wall, dyeing it as if he had touched oil to water.

The barrier didn’t just firm up. Instead, hexagons dozens of meters wide appeared along the shifting curtain as far as the eye could see, fitting together perfectly over and over. When Grant could pull his sword back, the barrier seemed practically reforged by plate armor. “That worked?”

“You have a gift for understatement.” Suki turned to him and grinned ruefully. “I like that you don’t do anything by half measures, but I had been hoping to join my people to District March in my lifetime.”

“Lady February!” A woman’s shrill cry echoed through the fog that had been creeping ever closer as day shifted toward night. “Sir Waylon’s taken a turn for the worse!”

A quick glance between the two cultivators was all that was required before they turned and ran to the area where the wounded were being kept. When they arrived, Grant was pleasantly surprised to find that only a small number of people had been wounded. He cheerfully remarked on that fact, only to earn a glare of pure rage from the man tending Waylon. “Yup. Only a few wounded. The monsters didn’t care to leave survivors.”

“Grant, we can bring them directly to Valentine. Aim for the site of the tournament; it’s directly adjacent to House Sunday.” Suki’s orders were crisp and direct, and in an instant, Grant had opened a hole in the air. He shuddered as he watched the fog being drawn in, as if the hole were a mouth in the sky sucking in pasta, and he started to get hungry. He shook himself, then yelped as a shock caused his arm to jerk.

<The mind goes to strange places when terrible things are happening, Grant. If you are terribly, terribly unlucky… you’ll get a skill that allows you to ignore the worst of it. Until then, try to keep your head on straight. Not only do you need to help people, you need to get yourself patched up.>

The young lord nodded sharply and hurried to get everyone through. All the wounded, and a few people that were brought along to move them gently, were followed by Suki, and lastly, Grant. Soon the previously empty arena floor was bustling with activity, and healers were attending to everyone that needed help.

Grant blinked as people swarmed them and mana was poured into various healing spells and Wielded Weapon abilities. His tired eyes closed, and when they reopened, the sun was hanging low in the sky. Somehow the night had passed in almost no time at all.

“Here, Grant.” Suki smiled sweetly at Grant as she handed over a thick tome. “I think this is something that you can use. Good morning. Everyone survived. We managed to save them all, and Heavyweight Wednesday reported late last night to inform us that all known mutated monster nests have been destroyed, and the barrier has been fully stabilized, as far as his scouts can find. It’s all thanks to you. District February thanks you and believes… I believe in you.”

Having just woken up, Grant wasn’t quite sure whether to thank her or run to find a latrine. He could also go for food. However it worked out, his mind was a little foggy. Deciding against making a fool out of himself, he simply took the tome and looked it over.

Elemental Spell: Thundering Step

Prerequisites: 65 Mind. Two feet. Metallic weapon.

Active Mode: Create a static field in a five foot radius around you that damages others when they move through the area. Does not move from the point it was set. Lasts five seconds.

Mana cost: 10 per use.

Damage(Self): 0% Mental cultivation.

Damage(Other): 100% Mental cultivation per second.

Training Mode: Increase movement speed by 50% while out of combat. Combat is considered ended when you have not dealt or taken damage from an opponent for five seconds.

Mana cost: 10% per second. Mana regen halted while active.

Grant couldn’t find any words to express how much he loved the new spell. He could use it while running to push himself faster, or leave a trap that would blast enemies to bits if they were chasing after him. As he wasn’t able to make his muscles twitch with his current spell when wearing armor—which meant no more bonus to mental cultivation speed—this couldn’t have come at a better time. “Are you sure? This seems… potent.”

“There’s no one in the District that we would both trust to use it, and who can use it,” Suki told him bluntly. “If you like it, it’s yours.”

He looked at the powerful woman that wanted to marry him at the end of the year, his friend that was recovering after not being expected to survive the night, and the Wielded Weapon that had given him power beyond his wildest dreams. “You know what today is?”

“Awesome?” Waylon called weakly from a cot nearby. “Look at that sunlight. Regent’s smile, that’s some beautiful grass. I really like what they did with that grass. So green.”

“Healer, lower the dose of whatever you have him on for the pain? Thanks,” Suki called while pointing at Waylon. “It’s the twenty-ninth. Why?”

Grant simply smiled at his friends as he touched the grimoire to February Twenty-Nine and replaced Spark Shield with Thundering Step.

“Best. Birthday. Ever.”

Epilogue

“There’s been an incident at the barrier.” A huge man that wouldn’t look out of place in District January suddenly appeared next to his golden-haired master.

The Wielder in question was watching a card game through one-way glass, his position allowing him to use the filtered panes, set in the eye-holes of his jester mask, to see all the marks on the cards that were in use.

“Which one?” came the bored reply, “The one that’s accidentally raising an army and recently stopped selling us food, or the one with all the refugees that never last the night?”

“The food one, Lord March.” The huge man’s voice, already high-pitched, suddenly took on a new tone. “T-that is-”

“What did you just call me, Cuddles?” The Lord of March’s words were a bare whisper. A baton appeared in his hand, and a light flashed deep within the brilliant diamond that sat atop it. “You know The Rules! I. Am. Dokeshi March!”

The huge man with a comically tiny head began to scream as bruises appeared all over his body, as though he were suffering a terrible beating at double the speed of real life. Dokeshi March tossed a Day into the air and muttered something, then looked at the coin as it landed in his palm. He grunted, and Cuddles collapsed to the ground as he lowered his baton. “You’ve won a stay of execution. Do not test me again.”

“Yes, Dokeshi!” Cuddles squealed as he bowed to the ruler, who turned his attention back to the game and pressed a button. As the next hand was dealt, a card in the dealer's hand shifted what was shown on its face and was passed out without the dealer batting an eye. Both players smiled at their hands, and a round of furious betting ensued.

“Tell me the problem,” Dokeshi March demanded without taking his eyes off the match below.

Cuddles shuddered and carefully wiped a line of blood from his mouth. It wouldn’t do to spray blood all over the Lord. The Dokeshi. Cuddles swallowed the iron tang and pressed forward. “The barrier shifted in configuration. House Thursday thinks that this may signify trade restarting, but the spies you dispatched from House Saturday warn that this may simply be a precursor to war. If the barriers do drop, as the alarmists warn, it could-”

“Enough; I’m bored already. District February can do anything they want, and it just won't matter.” Dokeshi March waved off the rest of the report, watching placidly as the man that had gained the altered card collapsed into despair. “After all…”

The crying man was surrounded by a handful of Peacekeepers, who led him away. Dokeshi March let his perfect teeth show as a warm smile oozed across his face.

“The House always wins.”