“No use,” I said.
In the end, whether that faint feeling had been aether or just my imagination, I couldn’t tell.
Impatience served no purpose, but I didn’t have the luxury of time. I had much to do. For the time being, while searching for a safe place to stash my belongings, I surveyed my surroundings, picked some more blackberries, and breathed in repeatedly, trying to visualize absorbing as much mana as possible.
Still, I couldn’t sense my aether. Perhaps I needed to change my approach, I thought. It was hard to feel, say, the moisture in the air, but rain was a different story. So perhaps it would’ve been easier for me to sense my own aether if someone directed a large amount of it at me, but considering I was avoiding people, that wasn’t practical.
I hid myself in a gap between some rocks I found a little upstream of a creek. As I ate the berries, which I’d washed in the creek, I went over other, non-magical options in my head. I could use the knife, probably. The woman was a sorceress, but she also had Dagger Mastery, a skill for handling small bladed weapons.
I’d been putting off going over skills, and now was an appropriate time for it.
Skills were nothing to write home about—human abilities, little else. That woman had thought them to be a special gift, a cheat code of some sort, but reality wasn’t so simple, much to her usual self-righteous indignation. That said, to be clear, there did seem to be something called a “gift,” bestowed upon people by spirits. That was different from skills, though.
Her master had called skills the “imprinting” of general abilities. When one consciously repeated an action, the aether within one’s body seemed to react, causing the action to be “imprinted” upon the soul. So “skill,” in this world, was a simplified way of putting this phenomenon into words.
Of course, one could perform those same actions without having the related skill. All imprinting did was make the action less likely to fail and impossible to forget.
For instance, it was said that taking a single day off from swordplay practice meant you’d need three days to catch back up. But for someone who’d acquired the relevant skill, there was no decay, so practice was more effective, making the art even faster to learn. Even when one was in poor health or anxious, actions that would’ve otherwise required conscious performance could now be done unconsciously, making things much easier in any field. However, skills weren’t easily acquired, and even more training was necessary in order to raise one’s skill level.
Skills had stages depending on one’s proficiency and technique. Since there existed technology to measure and describe them, they were called “skill levels”—numerical representations of a skill’s progression.
Increasing a skill’s level was no easy feat; just learning the skill itself was often difficult. It wasn’t as simple as memorizing the basics and slapping a Level 1 label on it. One couldn’t acquire a skill until one could perform the same action flawlessly, over and over.
It’d taken that woman three years to achieve Level 1 in Dagger Mastery due to her unwillingness to practice. Fire Mastery, on the other hand, had only taken her months. This wasn’t necessarily due to talent, however; it could’ve been a simple matter of preference.
She was a Rank 2 sorceress, which meant her relevant combat skills were all at Level 2. Her skills were Level 2 Fire Mastery, Level 2 Water Mastery, and Level 1 Dagger Mastery, I think? She had other skills, I was pretty sure, but they were general skills, so my memory of them was vague.
Having a Level 1 skill made one a beginner but not an amateur. Apparently, it was commonly agreed upon in this world that one was fully competent at any given skill at Level 2. A level of 3 made one a specialist in that field, and qualified to find employment with nobles and such. Meanwhile, nobles and governments would actively attempt to recruit people who attained Level 4. Finally, at Level 5, one was revered as an expert, commonly referred to as a “master.”
It was possible to go even higher, however. At Level 6, one transcended human limits, able to serve as the chief court sorcerer of an empire, or a “sword saint”—the leader of an order of knights.
Though there was no concrete evidence of this, it was believed skills could go up to Level 10, at which point one became a demigod, no longer human. This was only seen in legends and fairy tales, however.
That woman had been disappointed that skills weren’t special blessings from the gods or whatever it was she’d been expecting, but personally, I was happy that they weren’t simple handouts. Otherwise, it’d have meant there was some sort of divine entity pulling strings the whole time, right?
I had no interest in an easy “gift” that could be taken away just as easily on the whims of whoever had bestowed it. I’d just have lived in fear that way. For the same reason, I wasn’t interested in, say, a one-of-a-kind, powerful weapon. Strength that could be lost or taken away wasn’t what I considered true strength.
My surroundings had grown darker as I pondered this. Thanks to the berries I’d been eating, I wasn’t too hungry, but the water in my canteen was running low. Though the berries had supplemented my hydration, it wasn’t enough. If I couldn’t learn Practical Magic, I’d have to drink water from the creek, dangerous though it might be. It wasn’t something I could learn on the spot either way, so I decided to save my thoughts on my aether for after dark. Until then, I’d get some knife practice in.
To start, I gripped the hilt based on my knowledge of that woman’s Dagger Mastery skill. Apparently, my grip had been correct from the moment I’d stabbed her. Then, taking on a half-crouching stance to reduce my exposure to attack, I thrust out the knife with one hand.
Too slow. Too clumsy, even for a first attempt. Instead of trying various techniques, I decided to stick with practicing this thrust for now.
After many repetitions, I exhaled. I must’ve been very focused, because I’d failed to notice the sun had set and my surroundings had grown quite dark, too dark to see well. The only sound reaching my ears was the gentle flow of the nearby creek. Maybe I’ll practice sensing my aether for a bit, then go to sleep, I thought.
A distant, flickering scarlet light pierced through the darkness and caught my eye. Was someone at the campsite? I’d wanted to avoid people for a while longer, but if this was a bandit or something, it’d be prudent for me to leave this place immediately.
Careful not to make any sounds, I peeked out from the bushes to check the campsite. A man was sitting there, with his wide back to me, roasting meat on a skewer by a fire. As I stared intently at his unusually broad shoulders, the man suddenly raised his voice.
“Who’s there?! Show yourself!”