Book 3: Chapter 21: Altros's Voice and Months of Rolling
"You truly are strong," Rodorick commented as he led Lone away from the makeshift battlements that were being disassembled. "Did you really injure Prince Keining?"
'Something light to warm me up before we talk about his kid? Okay. I'm not impatient,' Lone thought as he nodded. "Less injure and more scratch, and it took the combined effort of several skills and weapon mastery additional effects, but yeah, I did."
"I'd met a few Golden Foxkin before they vanished. None could have ended such a large monster stampede so quickly and so effortlessly at B-rank. You must be their hidden prodigy sent to announce their return to the public-facing world, huh?" Rodorick said only half-seriously.
Lone chuckled. "Nah, I've never met another Golden Foxkin before. You can ask your daughter and she'll tell you I have no connection to whoever it was that represented my race before they disappeared, leaving the job to me."
"Little Rinrin..." Rodorick wore a complicated expression on his face. "She can't control it, you know? It's like it has a mind of its own, this power of hers. It used to be discreet but nowadays... It could clearly tell you heard her confirming your warning was true, so it saw no point in hiding its existence from you when you brought up your interest in it earlier."
"That's a very detached way of thinking about this power of hers. 'It'. I refer to the Primals in such a detached way too when referring to them since they have no discernible genders but that's not the way you're using that word. Is the ability godly in nature like they are?" Lone questioned.
'Relegated to being just an 'it'. Oh, woe is me! How will my fragile heart keep beating knowing this is how you view me?' Darkness fake-cried in Lone's mind, which he easily ignored.
Rodorick narrowed his eyes as if unsure what to say but he ultimately sighed and replied, "My wife and I don't know. Heck, even the elders of the clan, that being the Flint Wolfkin Clan, have no idea what this power is. I've been a merchant for over a century but ever since this 'talent' of Rinrin's made itself known, I've stayed on the road with my wife going from nation to nation, looking for information."
Lone frowned. "Why? It doesn't seem dangerous. Well, relatively speaking. I can see a future where the wrong person learns about her and kidnaps her for personal and political uses. Being able to determine if someone is telling the truth or not is a very expensive process usually, so I can see the appeal. Generally speaking though? Seems harmless."
Roderick shot Lone a hate-filled look. "Do not even entertain the idea. You would be a fool to think the only powerful items in my possession are these formation plates."
"I have no interest in that, dude. I was putting myself in the shoes of yourself and was trying to consider your perspective. I'm working on a skill of my own to tell lies from truths and if anyone wants to safeguard kids, it's me. That's the least I can do to make up for my... past mistakes. So calm down, yeah?" Lone requested.
At the same time, he thought, 'So they were formations. That's cool. How is it different from enchantments? Maybe it's a similar distinction to scripture magic versus contracting magic?'
Rodorick nodded sternly. "I believe you. Rinrin said you were only curious and nothing more. Had she not, I wouldn't have so much as spoken a word about her ability to you. It is a skill, by the way. A world skill."
"Oh, first time I'm seeing a world skill besides my own," Lone commented. 'It must be indirect for me to not have copied it immediately, which means I'd need Altros to give me the skill on its own. That's unlikely. Oh well. Can't win 'em all. Soph's Luck'll only rub off on me so far.'
Shock coloured the wolfkin's expression. "You possess a world skill?"
"Yup. Wanna see it?" Lone offered, keen to use Full Body Diagnostics on a new species since that might level it up.
Caution entered Rodorick's eyes. "What does it do? You can control it?"
"It lets me know the ins and outs of the target's physical condition, and yup, there's not a skill I own that I can't control. It's weirder that Little Rinrin is unable to," Lone replied.
"Oh... Okay then, go ahead," the merchant said.
Lone nodded and placed a hand on Rodorick's unflinching shoulder. "Full Body Diagnostics."
Information entered his head as the skill quickly processed everything there was to learn about the centuries-old man. "It's only intermediate level two-"
Congratulations! The host's world skill [Full Body Diagnostics] has levelled up! It is now Intermediate Level 3.
Lone chuckled and corrected, "Intermediate level three so it only gives me small details on the physical condition and minimal details on the magical condition of the target. You seem right as rain though you could use some more sleep."
"That's it? That's... that's a world skill like my little Rinrin's Altros's Voice? This seems so... underwhelming," Rodorick mumbled, immediately piquing Lone's interest.
"Altros's Voice? Now that's a powerful-sounding skill name. Does the planet speak through your daughter to give its wisdom on who is lying or not? If so, no wonder it's involuntary and why you call the skill an 'it' when she uses it," Lone commented.
Rodorick looked surprised. "You're right. That's what Fenlo and I suspect. The skill's description more or less confirms this too from what Rinrin has told us. We... we're worried about what you said, kidnappings, but we're also concerned the skill might be consuming her. She uses it more and more as the years pass. When she first learned how to speak she only used the skill maybe once a month, but now, as you've seen, it can activate several times a day."
"It's probably levelled up. Maybe it even hit intermediate rank. I'm a self-anointed skill scholar. Want me to see if I can teach her how to control it? I'd be happy to do that since I love studying new skills," Lone offered.
"Self-anointed?" Roderick asked.
Lone laughed lightly. "Well, I'm only 25 years old but I have 145 skills and plenty of additional effects which I've earned on my own. I'd have a nice even 146 if you hadn't forced me to stop trying to haggle with ya the other day. I study my own skills and new skills almost every waking moment. If it'll help you and your family while also satisfying my desire to learn about this world skill of Rinrin's, then I insist on letting me try to tutor her. If it helps, I have Teaching Mastery at advanced level nine."
"Why does Master Rodorick look so lifeless? His eyes tell me he's witnessed the impossible and refuses to believe it ever happened but can't quite accomplish that," the captain of the Downtrodden Dancers, Isley, asked Lone as she rode next to him.
He was jogging at a pace that matched the carriages but it didn't strain him to chuckle and reply, "I was perfectly honest to him about my capabilities."
"And your capabilities are so vast that he's been in that state for hours now?" the spear-wielding woman questioned as she patted her horse's neck affectionately.
Lone shrugged. "Who was it that killed all of those monsters this afternoon in a single moment?"
"Fair point. We've decided to set up camp a mile from here. There's a good clearing just off of the road. Once we're done, do you want to start the training you mentioned?" Isley asked.
Lone smiled at her. "Sure, I'd love that."
The woman nodded and rode ahead of him.
In Lone's mind, the day had been very interesting and productive. The only negatives thus far were Breena getting injured during her fight with the two F-ranked monsters picked out by Sophie and the fact his experiments with the fox-like monsters had been a wash.
For the first matter, he'd healed Breena almost immediately with Creation Magic but he saw how discouraged and disappointed in herself she was at taking injuries from the relatively controlled beasts. The girl's expectations were too high. It was normal for an adventurer to lose to a monster at the same rank as them but she'd defeated two such creatures and not even sustained conventionally permanent injuries in doing so.
Lone figured he, Soph, and Sophie, were terrible examples to try to emulate for a normal person like Breena.
As for the second matter, considering how docile and intelligent Kyuubi was, Lone had wanted to see if he could glean anything about her from the handful of fox-like monsters from the stampede. That was a complete failure. They were little more than ravenous beasts with nothing but instinct powering them.
He didn't kill them, however, instead letting Breena and Sophie fight them together with Sophie being restricted to only using her swords. The fight had helped Sophie level her Short Sword Mastery once, bringing it to beginner level ten, and Breena levelled her Needle Mastery twice, doubling it from beginner level two to beginner level four, which made losing out on the potential stats worth it to Lone.
Before too long, the group had stopped and set up camp. After letting Sophie know what he'd be doing for the evening, he found a relatively open area at the side of the clearing and waited for the Downtrodden Dancers to find him.
Ten minutes passed before the group of women, all sporting various builds and each equipped with a different weapon approached him.
Isley asked, "So how are we going to do this?"
"You all attack me at once, I won't move or resist. If you manage to cut my skin, you get one point. If you manage to crack my bones, you get two points. If you manage to break my bones, you get three points. If you do none of the above, you get zero points. You don't want zero points. The training will be harsher and more effective the fewer points you have, but I'll say it again, you really don't want to get zero points," Lone said with an eerie grin on his lips.
For some reason, the ladies of the Downtrodden Dancers all shivered and they began to wonder if this was perhaps a mistake.
The seventh king of all demonkin, Arch Aghaidh-choimheach Devil, public name Zel, true name Tidsear g, frowned in his office as all three of his Ancient Tempered Infernal Revealers rolled and presented straight ones to him.
"How? How do you exist, Lone? How has a mere half a year made you so much harder to kill than it would have for any other existence? How can you possess so many unique skills?" Zel was beyond vexed.
Lone had to die. He knew of Zel's true name and that gave him power over the devil. Not an immense amount of power as he had not learned the name from Zel himself, but enough power for it to be an eternal thorn in the Arch Devil's side and it would sever all possibilities of his ascension to the Emperor Devil realm. He also could not kill Sheelda until Lone was disposed of thanks to his pesky 'companion' clause in his unique contract with her.
"How can he possibly be able to not only survive death but kill me as a result? Do I need to get an Omni Devil involved?" he asked himself as he rolled the dice again.
He had spent the past several months doing nothing but using his most powerful artefact to peer into the karmic links between time, space, fate, and all of reality. Even when he used them with the notion of trading everything he owned for the assistance of an Emperor Devil, his plans still wouldn't succeed.
The dice stopped moving and revealed two threes and a single four, startling Zel. "That's the first time a die has landed on more than a two, and all three of them did at that... This is the right direction, but how could I possibly convince an Omni Devil to move, risking the stability of several planes of existence?"
He had nothing of value to such an unreachable existence except perhaps information. "Lone and the minor Luck deity's specialness... Would that be enough to convince such a being?"
Zel had much to do. First, he needed to cement his plans with his dice and that would take a considerable amount of time but at least now he had a path forward.
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