What Will Be | Book 2 | Chapter 30

Author's Note: Once again, thank you all for your continued support. It means the world to me. This chapters puts us at ~75k words for Book 2. Book 1 clocked in at about 150k and I would say we are tentatively at the half-way point of Book 2 but I expect it to be a bit longer given my plans for the final stuff.

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Eulogies were painfully inadequate. I knew because, in my first life, I’d had the honour of writing one. How could one possibly capture the essence of a person’s life in the span of a minute or two? It is an impossible task to decide what parts of a life warrant attention. Loved ones are reduced to a string of highlights, and in doing so… Well, it simply wasn't adequate, but such was the way of things. 

With my fifteenth birthday behind me, I couldn’t help but wonder how my first few years with The Slayers would be remembered if one were to sift through them in some hopefully distant future. Most days I simply followed my routine, pushing the limits of my Skills and broadening my knowledge base. More than once I’d had to commission new equipment as I outgrew it, especially so in the last year when my growth spurt hit. Tulos’ genetics were generous in that regard; there was something distinctly satisfying about being able to look Cruz in the eye when I pressed him for information. Granted, I was likely looking forward to a future of ducking beneath low doorways, but in the grand scheme of things it was barely worth mentioning. 

The growth spurt did not hit on its own, unfortunately. Puberty was in full swing and it was an insidious bastard. Recovery was of no help, since there was nothing to fix unless I wanted to stop the process in its tracks. My body needed to figure out what its new normal would be, and my emotional state was apparently acceptable collateral. Hormones did their thing, I felt feelings, and it often wasn’t until after a bout of angst or something equally embarrassing that I could reflect on the behaviour. It left me feeling like a first time werewolf, waking up naked in a field, elbow deep in a sheep carcass, and wondering what the fuck happened the night before.

What Recovery did help with was some of the more physical side effects, sparing me from acne and its less reputable cousins like back-ne or ass-ne. That hardly felt like a notable highlight, though. When it came to my Skills and bodily condition, there were better candidates.   

When I was thirteen, I tried to fly. I’d used Perseverance to escape the need to breathe, so who was to say that I couldn’t use it to soar through the air? In hindsight, that was probably the day I became infected with the invincibility of youth. You know, the self-perceived kind that inspires young people to perform acts of wild stupidity. As it was, the day I tried to fly was also the day I broke my arm and got to meet a local doctor, of sorts, who got mad when I insisted they merely set the bone so that I might try to speed up the healing with Recovery. 

That marked the first of several visits to Doctor Lou, since attempting to use Perseverance push through the injury and stick to my usual routine inevitably exacerbated the injury. Eventually I promised to take a few weeks off to heal properly in exchange for lessons on utilizing Recovery to help other people. The hefty fee I paid for the lessons - or rather, that I had The Slayers pay for the lessons - probably helped as well. The techniques would be largely impractical until Recovery Advanced, with one notable exception. Fudge. Thank you, Tamer Bond. 

Armed with a reliable way to help tend to Fudge’s minor injuries, we started working on Durability. It was… not fun. I was determined to make sure Fudge didn’t suffer alone, so every piece of punishment he took I took right along with him. We crawled through briar patches; we threw ourselves at slabs of wood; we even let Cruz peg us with stones at one point. I had reservations about that last one, but by then Fudge seemed to understand, through some possibly instinctual awareness of The System, that the activities were helping him grow stronger. 

I suspect it was that same growing awareness that led to our breakthrough when I finally risked borrowing Quantum Manipulation. Taking the mana from that Skill into myself was like trying to swallow the concept of a fractal. My nose bled. I fainted. It was a whole thing. I could only hypothesise as to why it didn’t affect Fudge, but I suspected it had something to do with the biological-adjacent changes that accompanied his first Advancement. If I had tried to take the Skill myself, would I have received a warning akin to when I went through my Core Skill selection all those years ago? I had no way of knowing.            

Fudge refused to share the Skill with me, after that, but he did learn to recognise the asking as a cue to use the Skill himself. Treats were, as always, a powerful motivator and Fudge was particularly fond of my variation of three-card monte. I’d randomly hide the treat under one of three cups but always prevent Fudge from getting to the third one. After a while, he became adept at choosing the realities in which I hid it under one of the first two cups. 

I practiced my bushcraft. I studied the bestiaries. Blanca schooled me on history and etiquette, noting the influential families who bought their sons and daughters places at the Crown Academy so that they might build connections. I eventually grew competent enough with my dagger to start sparring with the Dorbe guards, earning a reputation as a glutton for punishment when I’d insist on continuing no matter how many times I took a blow or was knocked to the ground. 

They taught me their tackles and holds, and ways to defend myself when I was otherwise unarmed. My free hand could throw sand and pull hair, there was no honour when a life was potentially on the line, be it subduing someone - or something - dangerous. It was during those bouts that I came to develop the seeds of a style all my own, one that would hopefully leverage my Skills to their fullest. 

I joined Cruz on an execution at least once a month. To call them hunts would have been dishonest, since their primary purpose was to get me accustomed to culling dangerous creatures without hesitation. The Beasts were almost always half dead from blood loss when we got to them, courtesy of Cruz’s traps. Even so, the day I grew complacent a bralo bit out a small chunk of my forearm, and if not for Recovery I’d have boasted a nasty scar for my trouble. 

Officially, the practical portion of my apprenticeship would begin when I was done with the Crown Academy. I had other plans, however, and recently convinced Engel to arrange an exception for me after reading him off my Skills.  

Perseverance Level 19/20

Taming [Fudge] Level 10/10

Recovery Level 10/10 

Perseverance Level 19/20

Current Proficiency Points: 1899/1900 

There was more to life than numbers going up on a screen, though. An honest attempt at reviewing my recent years would also mean considering the lives I crossed paths with.   

Alicia remained in Dorbe with Blanca, only leaving for brief visits home from time to time. Evidently she would be joining me at the Crown Academy, and she’d started participating in my lessons with Blanca more actively so that we might strategise. To say I was grateful for the arrangement would be an understatement. I was dreading having to get immersed in the politics of it all but there would be benefits to forming connections with the right people. Alicia’s lessons had paid dividends in that she was much better at holding her tongue than when she was younger. She wasn’t perfect, but I was content to let her take the lead when it came to organizing the various social events we’d need to take part in outside of lesson hours. 

Eva no longer looked at me like she was trying to kill me. One day she asked me why I worked so hard, a question I couldn’t give an honest answer to, but pointing at my System window and saying ‘so the numbers go up’ was not well received. Even so, she made a point of checking in with me here and there and I soon started to reciprocate. When we revisited our interrupted spar on less aggressive terms she thoroughly enjoyed sweeping my legs and we’d been on generally positive terms ever since. 

Cruz remained generally vulgar, but our excursions into The Forest often occurred outside of our scheduled ‘mentor days’ so I took his increased responsibility as a plus. It wasn’t the apprenticeship I’d been expecting, but on some level I valued that I was forced to seek out multiple teachers to do Cruz’s job for him. It certainly made for plenty of variation. Wynn still terrified him and remained helpfully pleasant with me, sparring that one time I took my breakfast tray to the kitchen before she could get to it. She smiled when she asked me not to do that again, but it didn’t reach her eyes. 

Isa had grown distant with me over recent years, but I could never figure out why. I still visited, from time to time. Rio had an obvious crush on Alicia who was close to five years his senior; no one teased him for it, though. Alicia would be returning to The Capital soon enough so there was no need to hurt the kid’s feelings unnecessarily. 

Perhaps most incredible were the lives that continued on outside of my influence. Jusep was back to a semblance of normalcy. Just like that. The way my mother put it, he was found awkwardly propped up in the kitchen some years back, struggling to prep ingredients for a stew but seemingly finding peace in the act of it all. Despite all the pressure I’d put on myself to fix things, life beat me to it. It was a humbling experience. 

Stranger still, Tina had taken Jusep on as an apprentice. I still had no idea what chain of events led to the arrangement, but apparently Tina had trained what was essentially a support dog for him to help with mobility. His Core Skill, Cooking [Stews] could be used to prepare food for dogs so all things considered it seemed like a good fit. Tina never went into great detail about how well Jusep was exactly, but apparently he was getting better. He also got along well with Marco, which was a plus. 

There were countless other small incidents. The missing bucket, the movie reference, the green thing on the wall… there were too many to list, enough to fill countless books but such was life. It was endlessly complex and impossible to summarize without feeling inadequate. My life as Will grew increasingly intricate with every passing day, and it was getting harder to stomach having to discard it one day. When I caught sight of my reflection, I didn’t see Will. I saw me. 

It is an impossible task to decide what parts of a life warrant attention.