Finding an inn wasn’t the easiest thing in the world. Plenty of refugees that had the sense to leave their villages were waiting for some sign from the army that it was safe to head home…or what was left of home. The horde apparently passed by Anik a few days ago, so that should be soon enough, but in the meantime I’d had to contend with other displaced bastards for a place to stay. I could’ve just gone to a nicer inn, apparently the eastern district was for the ritzy and I could probably afford a few days which was all I needed.

  The gate guards exchanged plenty of coins with me for the ears (I kept a few for the guild) and to reduce the burden of carrying so many coppers. I was so rich that I had a total of three gold to my name! Alongside an assortment of silver. That was more than enough to keep me happy and fed in a regular inn though, so why waste it and suffer the presence of insufferable cunts? Sounded like a lose-lose to me.

  So I kept searching and found a more desirable inn eventually, one that was in the vicinity of the hunters guild! How nice. I paid a gold in advance for three months, the proprietor scrambled to get a contract detailing the terms of my stay. I didn’t know why they did that, and didn’t know how to fucking read so it could've be a whole lot of jack shit for all I knew. Finding a library and asking for language primers was the first thing I did once I secured a place to stay. I was resolved to spend at least a few hours every day combing through them.

  It hurt, but so did everything these days. Might as well power through it. In the meantime I’d been trying to…reverse engineer my spell.

  I had tinkered with it on the road, but spells were something I didn't understand, and the chances that I knocked myself out or some shit was too high for my liking. I could just use strengthening until the next spell came along, but I didn’t really know if that was how my boon worked, and being able to make my own spells would put me in an infinitely better position than hoping for the best.

  But I’d fucked around enough to know that it was made up of multiple pieces, coming together to create the strengthening spell. I just needed to pick them apart and figure out what they did, and how I could manipulate them.

  It had been going meh.

  Each portion of the spell was a series of third dimensional sequences I didn’t understand, and it was long. I couldn’t tell when one piece ended and the other began, but I could tell it was made up of pieces. Like sentences and words and syllables. Its own little mystical language.

  I didn’t understand any of it.

  But I could read it, in the same way that an illiterate could behold words, so I could replicate it just as well right? Wrong.

  It wrote using my mana in a space that didn’t exist, creating formations that were so complex my brain would ache just thinking about them. Or maybe that was the pain of slowing down the activation of my spell. One or the other.

  Either way, I didn’t know what I was doing, but I had a safe place to practice for now. Hopefully I wouldn’t explode or some shit but surely whatever the orc gave me wouldn’t be so volatile? Surely.

  I was working on a lot of assumptions that could very well get me killed but…I didn’t really care. Life came with risks, and to avoid them was to avoid growth. I needed to grow, it wasn't a mere suggestion, it was a necessity.

  So I slowly tried to replicate a fraction of a fraction of the mystical bullshit marking my soul, and made a total of zero progress. They didn’t have the concept of zero here, just nothing. Made counting a pain in the ass but I had no plans on reforming a society that’d collapse with or without the brilliant mathematical theory resting in my memories. More likely I’d get burned at the stake but that didn’t matter because I wasn’t doing it!

  I got better at something though, which was slowing down the spell. Either through handling the pain or some genuine growth.

  Speaking of pain…I was meaning to try something, and safety killed any excuse I had at avoiding it. Once I was done with my current practice.

  That came far too quickly.

  I stared at the ceiling, keeping myself comfortable on the bed I’d paid for. It had been over a decade since I’d slept on a bed. It didn’t feel like it’d be an easy transition. Straw might’ve been uncomfortable but the body got used to being uncomfortable and didn’t deal well with change.

  And I was stalling, like a bitch.

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, focusing on my inner world, flowing with mana that was both liquid and not. Passageways that coiled on one another travelled through every part of my body, and my focus was on one in my right arm.

  I gripped a sizeable amount of mana in the channel, and squeezed it together. It started vibrating and pain overtook that part of my body. Like my arm was being crushed and stretched and torn and—

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  It hurt. Hurt so bad I had to exert real effort to hold in a scream. The channel of my arm started to crack slightly, barely noticeable to the eye if it were in the real but screaming in my mind.

  I kept going.

  The pressure mounted and mounted and didn’t stop—

  I let go, sweat matting my forehead and breath coming in ragged gasps. Arm aching alongside my soul. I looked inside myself, still not fully used to the process, and saw that the channel of my arm was…fine.

  Nothing changed, and the motes I held together? Well, I didn’t know where they were so I couldn’t tell if they’d changed at all either.

  Fuck.

  I didn’t push hard enough. I cursed my weakness, but didn't go to do it again. Tomorrow, I could do it tomorrow. Once a day I promised myself, that’s all I had to endure, just to see if it’d do anything. I opened my eyes, sweat matting my person, and felt a whisper of something that shouldn’t be there.

  Now, cities were a pain in the ass, and I could tell why elves would avoid them like my mother and Rio had implied. So many bodies and lives made for so much noise. Both literal and metaphysical. Parsing all of it became very impossible for one of my caliber, who barely learned to communicate with the world.

  It was one of the reasons I liked the inn, walls suppressed all the noise with their own. Sure it was still plenty louder than my village, but at least it was tolerable. Enough where I could recognize individual notes and whispers from something living that should not have been part of the chorus.

  I pushed mana through my soul, activating my spell instantly with as much power as I could manage, and jumped forward out of the bed in a grand front flip. I turned with sharp eyes ready to kill and witnessed a frozen girl who looked to have been reaching out where my coinpurse was just a moment before.

  She was carrying a knife.

  My sword laid between them on the wall.

  “Why hello there you little shit, mind explaining what the fuck you’re doing in my room?” I growled at the girl.

  She stared at me with both awe and fear...which, fair, I did jump much further then should be possible. She collected herself fast though, pointing the knife in my direction with little hesitation. “I don’t want to hurt you elf, just hand over the coins and everything’ll be peachy.”

  “Yeah, no.” I shook my head. “Fuck that and fuck you. Come take it if you want it so bad.”

  “I have a knife!” the girl practically whined.

  “I don’t give a shit!” I responded.

  The girl scrunched her brow in consternation. “Rich kids really are stupid,” she mumbled.

  “Firstly, I’m a village bitch. Only rich because I looted a shit ton from the villages run over by the horde. Which means I’ve survived far worse than you, come on. Test your luck.”

  A flicker of hesitation ran through her features but her gaze hardened and she stepped forward. Not turning to grab the sword? Smarter than I gave her credit for. I was still going to smash her face.

  The girl flicked her knife forward and slashed my arm, a flicker of surprise crossed her face at getting a hit so easy, but that didn't last long as I slammed my fist into the girl's sternum. Now, we were probably about the same age, but we weren’t playing on the same field.

  My strengthening skill vastly increased my muscular capabilities if I put enough mana into it, and didn’t fuck over the rest of my systems, which was interesting but not for contemplation right that second. I’d already gotten a good deal stronger than I should’ve been because of whatever the demon did with my soul, those two things combined meant that I punched much stronger than I should.

  The girl was sent sprawling to the floor, gasping for air and dropping the knife. I kicked the knife away and waited for her to control her breathing with crossed arms. One of which was bleeding. Annoying bitch. Eventually she got to her knees and stared at me with wide eyes.

  “Well,” I said. “Got anything to say for yourself?”

  “I-i’m sorry!” She stuttered.

  “And I have no shits to give, what’s your name?”

  “Are you going to take me to the vigil?” she panicked. “Please don’t, I-I know people, they could…help you out?”

  I gave her a flat look. “With what?”

  “I…don’t know?”

  I let out a long sigh and sat down on my bed. “What’s your name?” I asked again.

  “A-amy” she lied.

  “I’m an elf, ‘Amy’, tell the truth,” I couldn’t actually tell, I wasn’t that good. But why let the girl know that?

  The girl looked down and bit her lip, tears forming in her eyes. “Riri.”

  “Alright Riri,” I nodded. “How much does a week's worth of food cost in this city?”

  Riri blinked, then looked up at me. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Two silver pennies?” she answered as though it were a quiz.

  I nodded, and reached into my coin purse. Not the fucking sac under my bed, I wasn’t stupid. I pulled out a silver coin and snapped it in half, then tossed it to the girl. Riri caught it like a clumsy fool, but catch it she did.

  She looked at the half-coin, then back up at me. “What…?”

  “Get out of here dipshit, I’ll kick your ass if you even think of saying thank you.”

  The girl looked mighty confused before realization dawned on her features, she opened her mouth but shut it when I gave her a glare. She got up slowly, walking towards the very open window, and jumped out to the city below.

  The window. Great. I was going to have to get some kind of internal lock for that. I scowled. “Dumb bitch forgot her knife.”