Eritance - Chapter 13
“Power, all depends on how you use it you idiot. Besides, I wasn’t even finished explaining” Ross admonished me. “While it is true, you can’t break your capacity limits, you can do other things with the power” he told me. “At this I perked up a bit more again. “Like what?” I asked. “You can take the power you’ve absorbed and imbue it into different objects. You could give allies a temporary boost in strength or strengthen your equipment permanently. Of course, how much you can strengthen it depends on the quality of the equipment. However, once worn you will be able to use the imbued strength of the beasts and stack it with power that you are storing in your body”.
“Ah I see, so it was like this. Still, isn’t it kind of weak though? I mean, unless I wear a lot of equipment, I’ll never be able to match up against the truly strong” I countered. “Just listen you dolt. The benefits of the beast warrior relic are very good. Other relics only give you one explosive boost. However, this one allows for growth as long as you can achieve it. So, if you can increase your body’s ability to hold power, you can store more at a time”.
It was a very exciting piece of knowledge Ross just gave me. I could increase my body’s limits and I wouldn’t necessarily need to always use equipment to be strong. I could combine the two strengths of the relics and improve quickly. “There’s more though. The relic pulled part of my soul into itself to make communication with you easier. The relic itself isn’t dead. It is very much alive in a way. Now that you have a much better idea of your own strengths and the strengths of others. The relic is quite sensitive to power, and it will be able to tell you things about your body. Would you like to give it a try?” the Ross relic asked. “Sure?” I said, not really knowing what to expect.
Strength 2 Speed 1.3 Stamina 1.3 in a bleeding state. Life force stable.
I was really surprised. Information about me popped into my mind. However, I didn’t understand the point of reference, so I didn’t understand the rating it gave me. “Can I get these numbers by looking at anything?” I asked. “Yes, however the relic needs time to analyze the power. It would be best to observe the target first before charging in blindly. Although, it doesn’t take much time to analyze” Ross quickly responded.
The secondary power seemed like it could be quite useful. “Okay, analyze Ciara.” I told Ross.
Strength 1 Speed 1.1 Stamina 1.1 Life force stable.
Unsurprisingly her strength was much lower than mine, but I was somewhat shocked to see that her speed and stamina almost matched my own. “Ross how exactly are these qualities measured?” I asked him. “The basis is of the average of human. A normal human has one in each category. Your strength of two means that you are approximately as twice as strong as the average person. Also, if you can gain proficiency in the use of other energies, you will be able to analyze the quality of those energies too”.
My head was spinning, but I got the basic idea down rather quickly. The beast relic was turning out to be a relic with a lot of potential. Although I won’t get an explosive boost in strength, at least I can bide my time and continue to get stronger. Who knows what heights I can reach with a little bit of training?
With that, I ended my mental conversation with Ross and turned my attention back to Ciara. “What are we going to do?” she asked me. “We have no supplies, no food, and the knife I gave to you is gone now too”.
Her words brought me back down to reality. Although I had just realized this great power that was given to me, it might all turn out for naught if I couldn’t think of a way to survive. “We’ll have to try to make it back to Hallen” I said. “How do you expect to get there? We don’t even know where we are, we might as well be in a far-off land at this point.” Ciara retorted. “Hmm, well at the very least we can try to climb some trees or find a hill with a good vantage point. We may be able to find another small village or see the smoke from a traveler’s campfire. If we do, we can always ask for directions. At worst, we can go back to the river and drink the water and look for berries and other edible plants here in the forest” I said.
“I’m not going to eat random plants that we find out here. Who knows if they’re poisonous?” Ciara said with a horrified look on her face. “Well, that’s really up to you. If you want to starve be my guest” I said indifferently.
I was too busy making plans in my head. As long as a village could be found, I might even be able to ditch her there. Then I can focus on hunting beasts and absorbing their power. Once I have enough power I can hunt bigger animals that have valuable bodies and can be sold as materials to various shops. With the money that I could bring in if I play my cards right, I would finally be able to live out my dream of endless meat buffets and not relying on a lord for a meager amount to survive on. With that I decide that in these next few days I would dedicate myself to understanding the power I have and getting stronger.
“Let’s go!” I said quite cheerfully as I struck off deeper into the forest while looking for any particularly tall trees or hilltops that I could climb. “Hopefully we find something soon” I thought to myself.