Dungeon Life - Chapter 181

Rocky

The undead scion smiles as he walks with the large group of denizens. His day has been very good so far! First, Coach asked him if he wanted to help with the Southwood, which of course Rocky would. He didn’t just jump at the chance, though. He had been thinking about why Coach Thedeim hadn’t sent him earlier, and he decided Coach must want him to help if anything happens here.

Teemo said it was fine, though, so Rocky was happy to accept! He even gets to put on a new outfit, which he finds he enjoys more than he thought he would. He remembers back when he was first spawned and given his basic boxing gear. He was so confused, not understanding why there were so many rules for how he should dress and act!

It barely took a week before he felt the changes in his movement, and though he’s tried to teach some of the zombie denizens, he’s pretty sure they’ll never manage more than a hastened shuffle. Maybe if he gets the aranea to make some gloves and shorts for them, they might improve? Denizens grow much differently from scions.

What was he thinking about? Right, dressing up.

He also enjoyed putting on the show for Hullbreak and pretending to be a lich. He thinks he has a bad build for a lich, but if someone sees an undead with skin and fancy magic, they’re not going to notice or care if he has a bit more muscle than he should. He also learned a lot about how people see liches, or at least ones dressed like he was.

Sure, he likes to cut a powerful figure, but most people are pretty scared of liches. He thinks the new staff will help soften the fear, at least a little. Instead of some gnarled and blackened thing, it’s a fairly simple staff; polished and stained to bring out the natural wood color, with a large orange orb affixed to the top. Thing even was able to add a few simple enchantments to it before Rocky had to go. He’ll have to strengthen it with a lot of kinetic energy if he wants to whack anyone with it, but if anything gets that close, he’d rather just punch it.

Not that he expects much to get that close. There’s no false pride in his control over fire, ice, and kinetic affinities. He could probably fight with his arms folded, but that’s just not as fun. Of course, to keep his lich disguise, he might need to do exactly that.

Though speaking of his lich disguise, he has another addition that the Coach cooked up: a wide hat made of aranea silk. Teemo said he looks like Rocky the White, or maybe the Wight, and he and the Coach chuckled at what Rocky can only think was a pun. Coach has a lot of weird things in his mind, and Rocky is glad he only gets fleeting glimpses. He remembers Teemo having nose bleeds and headaches until he got used to what Coach knows, and Rocky is pretty sure his own rotten brain would have melted out his ears and then exploded.

He’s pretty sure the only reason it hasn’t done that anyway is that Rocky simply doesn’t understand a lot of what the Coach thinks, even if Teemo says he understands more than anyone besides himself. Rocky just understands what the Coach thinks about magic. He even understands that Coach doesn’t even think of it as magic, which was a weird thought to wrap his mind around.

He’s pretty sure it’s also why he has such an easy time expanding his affinities. He thinks everyone else is still thinking magic first. Maybe Rocky has such success with affinities is because he understands what can be done without magic.

Well, that’s probably overstating it. He’s pretty sure Coda understands that even more than he does, just in a different way. Coda knows how to apply it. Rocky can move thermal energy around, but if he understands what Coda showed him on some paper once, Coda can use that to do all sorts of weird things.

Not that Rocky is short on his own weird things. After sparring with Fluffles, he’s almost certain he could dip into sound and lightning affinities whenever he wants. He might be able to manage actual storm affinity, too, but he’ll leave that for later. He’s not quite sure what storm actually encompasses, so he wouldn’t want to have the wrong idea and have his magic picked apart by someone who knows what they’re doing. Like Rhonda.

He smiles wider and lets his focus drift to the theory for sound and lightning as he remembers her stealing away his control over thermal energy and earning her class. The faceplant wasn’t his most dignified moment, but her finally getting it was worth it. If he can get these two affinities under his belt, he’ll have some more tricks to show her, too.

He lets the butt of his staff hit any rocks on the way as he walks with the others and brings his kinetic affinity to bear. Stuff is made of stuff, even the air is some kind of stuff. Coach thinks of sound like the ocean, like how the waves move. It seems weird, but he can feel the air moving from the sound, but in a different way than how it moves for wind. Oh, he can probably get wind affinity, too. That should be a good set to bring back, if he can figure them out.

He lets his mind drift as he feels and listens, and likens the movement to how his other affinities behave. Ice and fire are moving without going anywhere, like ducking and weaving while keeping his feet planted in a stable stance. Kinetic is taking a step, actually moving. He can even do both, walking and weaving, and he fights himself to not actually slip into his boxing stance as he walks. Instead, he creates an orb of fire and of ice, and has them dance around the head of his staff as he feels out the sound and how to control it.

He’s pretty sure it’s closer to kinetic, but there’s something more. He even puts a smidgeon of kinetic energy into the next rock, and though it makes a louder sound, he knows it’s just because it had more energy behind it. So what’s the difference? Kinetic can move things. He could even move things and transfer kinetic energy without moving… mostly.

He’s punched a rock into another rock before, and gotten the new rock to move. He’s even done a chain of them, but that’s still not enough to give the secret to sonic affinity. Remember what Coach said: ocean.

Sonic is salty? Rocky snorts and shakes his head. No, probably not that. How does the ocean move? Kinda up and down and side to side? He’s seen boats bob on the waves, and even when anchored, they still move around a bit. He feels for that kind of movement as he smacks rocks with the butt of his staff, and starts to slowly feel something.

It feels a bit like the movement of the ocean, but more complicated. Well, when things are too complicated, narrow your focus. The big picture can be overwhelming, but take it in bits and you’ll get there eventually. He spends quite some time adjusting his sensing, looking at what he’s feeling from every angle, changing how much he looks at, spending hours trying to find the ocean in the sound.

There it is! If he flattens his perspective, the air moves like the waves of the ocean. Is that sound? He can feel he’s onto something, and he grins once more as he recognizes the feeling of being on the verge of a new affinity. He just needs to cement his understanding. To do that, he needs to look at the big picture again.

Now he knows how to find the ocean in the sound, it’s pretty simple to see why he was having troubles when he first tried. The ocean is mostly flat, but these waves even go up, instead of just out! More hours are spent recreating the weird wiggling ball that is sound in his mind.

He doesn’t manage to recreate it with his kinetic affinity the first time. He just manages to swirl some dirt and dust around. He wonders why that didn’t get him wind affinity, but quickly pushes that thought aside. He needs to focus on sonic first, then he can try to figure out wind.

After the dozenth failure, he at least comes to understand what might be his problem: hitting the different rocks makes slightly different sounds. He can feel the differences now, even if he still can’t mimic them yet. So he picks up a stone and hits that against his staff, letting him have the same sound each time.

The denizens give him confused looks, but none bother him. If the scion wants to hit a rock against a staff as they all head for the Southwood, why stop him? With a more consistent model to work with, Rocky feels more and more confident with his effort. As the sun starts to rise, the sound of a rock hitting a staff sounds once more, but this time, there was no contact.

Rocky smiles in satisfaction as the new affinity takes root, and he finally understands what Coach meant when he said fire and sound are inefficiencies from applying kinetic energy. He’s known why fire for a while, as the moving energy gets wasted by letting the stuff wiggle more. Now he understands sonic affinity, he can see more energy escaping without doing anything useful and just making noise.

Just making noise sounds fun, now that he has an affinity for that, and so that’s what he does. He starts mimicking sounds around him as he walks, just getting used to his new affinity. He’ll probably want to talk with Slash about it once he gets back. He might even be able to talk to him about lightning, too. His axe uses a lot of it, and that’s how he makes his music, along with using his earth affinity to make the very ground sound like drums.

As entertaining as the new affinity is, Rocky is eager to master it and learn to apply it in a fight. He can also feel something about sonic affinity that will help him with wind, but he’ll focus on that later. For now, he’s figured out how to mimic a fart, and he’s going to get as much enjoyment out of that as he can. If Coach asks, it’s an easy sound to make, so he can more easily practice his mastery with it. That he can make it sound like all the denizens ate a bunch of beans is just a happy coincidence.