Savior! Redemption in Another World! - Chapter 79

After the multitude of bombshells dropped on me by Zerath and Stephanie, I’m feeling tired even though it’s still morning.

Collecting myself and my hunting stuff, I tell the rest of camp that I’m going to take a walk to think and clear my head.

There’s a bit of protest, but no one really puts up any fight against it.

Dispelling the dome I had constructed and walking out of camp, there’s just so much to think about.

First and foremost, Gust. It’s obvious to me now why he felt the need to leave after making sure I was alright and telling me what happened and where he’s been. He’s scared. Scared I’m going to think of him as a monster and reject him as my dad.

Honestly, if I was a normal kid, I probably would. I mean, according to Zerath, Tiamats hate spirits and hunt them out of the pure pleasure and money they make off taking their magical bits. But after living with them, I can’t believe that at all.

I mean, I hunted with the hunters a good amount of the time, I saw where all of the food was stored, I even studied under Blaze and all of the guardsmen, and never once did I even hear a passing mention of anything Fae related.

Even if some Tiamats are capable of committing such atrocities, Gust and the rest of Taf are innocent. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be alive today.

That’s the second thing that’s a shock. I’m not human. I mean, Ego never promised me that I would be, but that doesn’t mean that I’m just completely fine mentally with that revelation.

I lived my whole last life and a majority of this one as one hundred percent full-blooded human, and now I’m not one. Even though I live in a world of fantasy and magical races and people, hell I use magic on a daily basis, the thought of not being a human anymore makes me feel strange.

Okay, that is a little racist I can admit. But it’s not untrue. At my core, deep down, I’m human.

I’m a human person with a human soul from a planet that is entirely human. I’ve always imagined and fantasized about being all different types of fantasy races, but to actually become one? It feels, wrong.

I think I’m thinking too much into this. What I came out here to do wasn’t have a breakdown thinking about the difference between being human and  begin  human, it was to do what I do best. Experiment.

I’m a Wind Spirit. That’s an undeniable fact that I’ve learned within the past few hours, but what does that mean?

I’ve seen the other wind spirits transform beyond the scope of normal transformation magic, gaining wings, insanely different forms, and even becoming something as ordinary as a rock yet still maintaining their abilities.

I can assume the wind spirit parts of my DNA have the same markers for those abilities, so there’s no way I don’t have the ability to perform them, as well as whatever else they may be able to naturally do.

I don’t want to make myself taller or even transform into a rock. There’s only one thing I want out of this, wings.

After walking a good distance out of camp, I sit down and take a meditative posture.

Crossing my legs and straightening my back, I do some deep breathing to calm down and close my eyes to focus.

Turning my gaze inward, it takes only a bit of focus to see the two ever-balanced forces within my body. There’s my mana, which I can see and feel as a deep blue color, that is akin to an ocean of cold water, only warm on its surface.

The second force within my body is the warm golden light of divinity. Its presence could be considered something like a blanket, perfectly wrapping all of my mana and keeping it contained within my body. Focusing primarily on my mana, I take a good chunk of it and slowly begin moving it all around my body.

It’s been years since I’ve done this, but I have an idea about how to draw out my wings.

Mana nodes. At every joint and important intersection of your body, there is a mana node within your mana network. If my wings are simply not grown in yet, then there will be mana nodes at their base.

If they’re fully formed yet for some reason invisible or inaccessible, there won’t be any mana nodes on my back aside from the ones at their normal positions.

Moving the mana slowly down my arms, I practice getting a feeling for my mana nodes and their exact positions once again. Casting has become so programmed for me that I’d nearly forgotten what it felt like to have my mana move freely, without the goal of exiting my body, only to explore it.

As the mana traveled back up my arm and into my shoulder, I sent it through the rest of my body as practice before finally bringing it to the bottom of my lumbar.

Slowly but sure, I forced the mana to make its way up my back, moving ever so slowly as to be able to detect even the slightest difference in my mana network. The mana was able to move up all the way through the middle of my back without any hiccups until it reached the space between my shoulder blades.

I nearly jumped and lost my focus, ruining my practice and forcing me to conjure a new mass of mana to move around, but I was able to salvage it.

Right there, in the section below the middle of my shoulder blades, connected to my spine, were two mana nodes.

Perfect.

Dispelling the mass of mana, I reconjured a much smaller force of it in my left palm, slowly moving it up into my elbow.

This was the next test I needed to do. Placing the small mass of mana on my mana node, I focused entirely on the node itself, almost as if I was attacking it with my own mana.

Thank god my reflexes are fast, as once I began to flood the node of my elbow with mana, it caused my elbow to contract, nearly punching myself in the face, but instead hitting myself in the chest.

Oh my god! I was actually  right! I had thought for a long time about why there would be nodes of mana at important sections of your body, it’s like asking to become both physically and magically crippled by an attack. But that’s the thing, my thinking is  wrong.

Physically and magically? That’s bullshit! This little test just proved that the only real difference between your physical body and magical network is how much mana you put in it. If a person was born without the ability to move their legs in this world, physical therapy would simply be training in the use of mana.

This discovery now leads me to another, more important question that I simply have to know.

What would happen if I tried to ‘flex’ my wings by stimulating their mana nodes?

Taking a deep breath to calm my anxious heart, I think I ought to wait a little bit before trying that one out.

Walking back to the campsite, the rest of the party and my family are happily chatting away, barely noticing my return and departure. It’s not as if I got anything of major importance from my stone hut, only my staff and a bit of food.

Once I had returned to my comfortable spot under the oak trees, I ate a snack of dried meat and bread before meditating once again.

Collecting a mass of mana even smaller than the one necessary to flew my elbow, I had it slowly make its way up my back before landing on top of the node that would control my left wing.

Without any further hesitation or doubt, I slammed the mass of mana into the mana node, in the exact way that made my elbow flex.

….

Absolutely nothing. I used the entirety of the mass of mana, and absolutely nothing happened.

So you guys wanna play hardball huh? I can play hardball. I’m not gonna lose to a pair of my own wings damn it!

Forgoing any particular sizes or amounts, I straightened my back and began to do what I do best with mana. Not fine control, not the precise movement, none of the sort.

I have a shit load of mana, so I’m just gonna flood those mana nodes until they do  something.

Flooding the mana nodes with my mana originally did nothing, yet slowly but surely, I could feel a bit of pain culminating in my back.

Stoping the flow of mana, stopped the pain entirely. Okay, a new fact I guess. Abusing a mana node with mana will cause that node to hurt. I probably should have figured that one, but hey everyone gets one.

Steeling my resolve, I once again began to flood those mana nodes with a bombardment of mana, not stopping until the pain felt akin to being stabbed.

Yet, cutting off the flow of mana didn’t seem to stop the pain, as it felt as if my back began to explode.

All I can do in this scenario is scream and hope it passes soon.