Ellis stared at the large numbers for a long time, soaking in his own cowardice. Her numbers were high, yes, and her being a child of Evosa made him think there must have been some kind of mistake on the goddess’s part.
But the single stat that made him pause was her mana. Everything else was only a little above average, ignoring the ‘skills’ hovering beneath her levels, something he’d never seen before, and the gear she had on. Her constitution was 8 for god's sake! He could kill her right now. Put a knife through her eye socket, and half of his vengeance would be complete.
“What are you looking at?” a voice asked, interrupting his thoughts.
He looked down at her now, her knuckles white from her grip on the knife, the sharpening stone she was using on it frozen mid strike as she stared right back at him. Ten seconds ago, he would have looked down. Ten seconds ago, he would not have dared provoke her.
Now? Now things were different.
He reached for the knife at his belt. She stood and squared her shoulders towards him. “What are you looking at, boy?”
Ellis paid no mind to her words. He remembered his mother when he gripped the knife, teaching him how to cook. The soft feeling of her hands on his as she guided the knife down the stomach of a rabbit, the ease with which the blade parted the flesh. She had stolen that softness. He would never feel the touch of his mother’s hand again because of her.
Why not show her what he was taught?
Loud footsteps echoed down the street, the soft tap tap of it almost inaudible. But Ellis would recognize that awful hum anywhere.
He was snapped out of the moment and let go of the knife, his hands falling to his side. While Ameena wasn’t nearly the threat he thought she was, that didn’t mean he could act on this yet. His father had hammered patience into him as a boy, so he grit his teeth and tried to remember those lessons as he said, “I activated my mana.”
She didn’t back down for a moment, shifting her weight from one foot to the other like she was ready to bolt or attack at any moment. He copied her movements, in case his moment of treachery was too much for her to bear.
“Good. Let me test the ring’s damage reduction.”
The knife left her hand faster than Ellis could blink. He spun on his heel as it sailed past, missing his chest by inches. The knife continued spinning end over end through the air, clattering on the floor at the mouth of the alley.
“Are you crazy!?” He whirled back on her. “I didn’t activate the ring! You could have killed me!”
Hiding her hands behind her back, she raised her chin. “And what a shame that would have been. What did you activate?”
“My necklace! Ask me before you try and stab me please!” she narrowed her eyes at his scolding of her. He relented somewhat, offering up more information. “The necklace lets me see the truth of the world or whatever! Okay! I know that the wall next to you is 2.4 meters high and 7 meters long. I know the bodies in that hole are 33 hou—”
“Useful. Why were you staring at me?” she asked, her eyes flashing at Ellis’s description of his necklace.
She looked like she was gripping something behind her back as she started pacing back and forth before him. She was pretending to be disarmed, tempting him with her nervous glances over his shoulder, like all he had to do was cross the distance between them and shove the knife into her side.
But he didn’t. Because the dagger she hid behind her back was displaying a status screen a little to the left of her, where Ellis’s sight was not blocked, telling him the length of the weapon and when last it had been cleaned.
He considered her question, a dozen lies flying through his head fast enough that it concerned him. And he was taking a gamble, almost as large as when he had been about to stab her a moment ago, since he was going to tell her exactly what the necklace did. Giving away his advantage might prove to be his undoing, but gaining her trust while proving himself even more useful was worth the risk.
“I was staring at you because I could see your stats and I was a bit surprised… and now that I’m saying it out loud, I realize that’s a complete breach of your trust.” Ellis held out his hand. “Here, you can see mine if you want.”
Her eyebrows knitted. She didn’t try to kill him though, which he took as a yes.
She looked at him like he was from another dimension, her eyes never leaving his hands as she approached. Smacking his hand out the way, she reached her arm out as far she could, and placed a single fingertip against his forehead. “Show me. And reveal my numbers to no one, boy. Am I clear?”
“Clear as always. Status,” he said, suppressing the eye roll at her offended suspicion.
A child of Anwir:
*Ellis Marsh:
Strength: 4
Mana: 1
Dexterity: 6 (Trusty bow: +1)
Perception: 7
Endurance: 6
Constitution: 4 (Minor ring of protection: +1)
Total: 28 (+2)
Level: 2
2 Free stat points remaining
Ellis stared at the 2 next to his level like it was from another dimension.
“I leveled?” Ellis looked up at Ameena with wide eyes. “Does this always happen with mana?”
She took her eyes off him and narrowed them toward the humming that had entered the alley. “No. That’s because of… something else.”
Ellis felt a hand fall on his shoulder, spinning him around to see Michael standing over him. “You leveled? Must have been when you shot that guy. Have you seriously not checked your status since then? Actually, never mind that. Show it to me.”
It took several seconds for Ellis to obey, bringing up his status with a shaky wave of his hand. Michael looked over them with a careful eye, and for some reason would turn to the gear next to them every few seconds or so.
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“Don’t throw it into your weak stats, the gear will cover it. Throw it into perception, you’ll be more useful that way,” he said with finality, like it wasn’t Ellis’s stats to do with as he pleased.
“Ellis’s necklace makes him more useful than his perception right now, Michael. Let us at least try and keep him somewhat alive. I am still considering whether he should throw both stats into constitution. You saw how he handled his drink the other night.”
“Necklace?” Michael asked, ignoring everything else she had said.
He ripped it off Ellis’s neck with zero hesitation and examined it with greedy eyes. Ellis dared not snatch it back though, even if it was his last gift from Ada. All the status screens winked out of existence once the necklace left his neck. But Ellis was focused on a spot above Michael’s head, where his stats had displayed moments ago. He had seen a path, a way to get his revenge upon seeing Ameena’s stats.
That path had withered in front of his eyes upon seeing Michael’s.
“What does the necklace do?” he asked, shaking it a little like the thing was broken.
“As Ellis tells it, let’s him see the ‘truth of the world’. He can tell you the dimensions of the walls next to us and how long someone is dead, and probably a bit more that he hasn’t found out about yet. It’s bonded to him though, utterly useless in your hand,” Ameena said, stepping up to stand next to Ellis.
Through his daze, he noted that she did not tell Michael about seeing people’s status screens. He was almost grateful.
“You lucky bastard. Gotta get me one of those,” Michael said with a grunt, holding out the necklace toward Ellis, who snatched it away like a down on his luck merchant.
He dusted it off and fixed the knot Michael had broken before he slipped it back over his head. The status screens did not reappear.
Michael turned to Ameena with a raised eyebrow, “How can I bond a nice item to me, actually?”
“Wear an item everyday for at least a year,” she answered, looking down at her wand with pride.
Michael sighed. “Of course it has to be some bullshit.”
He walked past, slumped against the wall and fell asleep. His actual sleep this time, his chest remaining motionless the moment his head fell forward. Ameena and Ellis stood side by side, watching him. Ellis didn’t care about why Ameena was silent. He was thinking of where to put his stats.
Ellis had made the difficult jump. The impossible decision to be a mana user already. It might have brought him only an inch closer to killing these monsters, but he was still closer. And yet the words that left his mouth now were more painful than any lie he had ever told.
Like breathing out the notion had taken a piece of his soul along with it.
“I’m going to throw my stats into perception and mana.”
Ameena winced at his words, then gave him a sharp look. “That would ruin your life! You don’t need more mana, throw the other into strength.”
Funny. She sounded worried about him.
“My life’s already ruined. And I know one of those guard’s braces behind us will give me a plus 2 in strength anyway.”
She pursed her lips and looked away. And then she surprised him, by nodding in respect.
He wanted to smack her for respecting such a vile action. Mana, the worst affliction the gods had ever cursed upon humanity, and he was making more of it. But he played along, like usual, focusing back on his new stat points.
Nothing happened when he put one into mana, but the first one into perception made the sharp world even sharper. The sky became clearer, each cloud seemed almost closer now. The vendor’s shouts from the silk road felt like a street away, rather than half the city. A gentle sniff caused him to almost gag, the animal piss pungent as it ran throughout the city. But his face didn’t change. The smell only hurt him, after all.
After allocating his stats he picked through the gear. Ameena stopped watching Michael, stepped forward and started assisting him. She slapped the boots that grated a +4 in dexterity out of his hand.
“Only one item per stat,” she chastised, glancing at his bow before she returned to searching.
The +4 was so tempting he almost threw his bow away. But it was his father’s so unless it granted a +40 to every stat, he would make do without. He put the boots down and picked out the braces. Slipping them on caused every muscle to grow corded, tied together like strong ropes that would never snap as the strength flowed through his body. Ellis always thought gaining more strength and constitution would make him feel whole. A glance at the bodies at the end of the alley was all it took for his life long achievement to feel hollow.
Ameena picked out some items and set them aside for Michael, before she threw Ellis a pair of pants. He caught the pair, and picked out a dagger for himself. Not a thought crossed his mind of getting rid of his mother’s knife though. Not a single one.
He walked out of Ameena’s field of vision, stripped and put his new pair of pants on. Michael got one of the guards swords and one other item, since he didn’t need more. Ellis assumed the new weapons would have Ameena storming off towards the palace the moment they got them, but she said that these hardly counted.
Instead of that suicidal plan, she decided to run the risk of selling anything they discarded from Ellis’s old pants to Michael’s chipped sword at the festival, in the hopes they could get something better. He was almost surprised upon learning Michael’s sword was damaged, from how often the man threatened others with it.
He stopped focusing on Michael, and started focusing on his own stats. Bracing himself, he whispered status, and winced when the pop up appeared.
A child of Anwir:
*Ellis Marsh:
Strength: 4 (Guard’s braces: +2)
Mana: 2
Dexterity: 6 (Trusty bow: +1)
Perception: 8
Endurance: 6 (Runner's pants: +2)
Constitution: 4 (Minor ring of protection: +1)
Total: 30 (+6)
Level: 2
It should have taken years for Ellis to see a 2 next to his level. Instead, with barely sixteen summers under his belt, there it was. And the gear brought his total up to 36! Two weeks ago he would have killed to get this. But that was before he knew what killing another person felt like. And before Ameena had told him about how pathetic this gear ‘supposedly’ was.
She glanced at Michael out of the corner of her eye before interrupting the silence that hung between them. “If you saw my stats, it means you saw his. What were they?”
“You don’t know?” Ellis asked, knowing the answer and trying to puzzle out how to use it to his advantage.
Ameena paused, leveling a hard look at him while standing up straight. “I will after you tell me.”
Ellis no longer found her that threatening, no matter how much she tried to be. He had glimpsed Michael’s stats, and his mind had etched the status screen into his head like a permanent scar. Envy had coursed through him upon seeing the god of war’s name, but it was the numbers themselves which had made Ellis’s entire reason for being here feel hopeless.
A child of Dumiso:
*Michael:
Strength: 17 (Solid work boots: +2)
Mana: 2
Dexterity: 10 (Greaves of the quick: +6)
Perception: 6
endurance: 11 (Sailors ring: +1)
Constitution: 11 (A warrior's pants: +3)
Total stat points: 57 (+12)
Level 7
1 free stat point remaining
She had closed her eyes when Ellis mentioned his strength, and her face had fallen further when he kept listing the numbers. She kicked a helmet when he spoke of his base stat points, before she swore under her breath when he mentioned Michael’s total stats added up to 69.
Once her temper tantrum calmed down, she turned away from Ellis and muttered her breath, “Not enough.”
Not enough? Not enough! That's too much! He should only have 12 points from his levels! Is a man three times stronger than me not enough!? You mad witch! Why in the hell would you even need more!
