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AR Chapter 383
🕑 Added 2025-05-08 04:00:06 +0000 UTCThe Gran Verat has called, and we will answer! Efforts in colonizing the northern Akitla Peninsula will be resumed in earnest. If you’re interested in lending your strength to the militia that will be necessary to maintain control over the land we reclaim, speak with any one of the many colonization representatives found in the garrisons throughout the city. If you have family in one of the further reaches looking to advance their station, this is the perfect opportunity! Come one and all, come join the fight against the barbarians of the Wilds, and bring them to know of the perfection the Gran Verat offers!
–Recruitment notice given to the entirety of Viertaal preparatory to the 3rd Battle of Akitla
I’d spent basically the entirety of my new life working on my sonic magic. The first thing I ever did was deafen myself, and I’d like to think that, as the only creature I’d ever encountered with sonic magic, I’d made great strides since then. All the magics that I’d developed since were, with a single exception, focused on how to influence my voice or my words with sonic magic. [Destructive Wave] was far from that, but I’d allowed myself to just… accept that I’d learned all that I was going to learn about my magic.
That was stupid. Now, I dedicated at least an hour or so every day to just testing out what I could do with my magic. Most days, I felt nothing more than a little frustrated as I couldn’t figure anything out that would lead anywhere. There wasn’t any way I could think of that would allow me to strengthen my own body with the magic, so an analogue to [Spear of the Many] was out of the consideration. I’d tried some way to softly cushion falling things with my magic, but that only resulted in shattered wood and nearly blinding myself. That seemed like it could be promising, but I’d left those experiments alone for now.
Instead, my focus for the past weeks had been on dampening sound. I’d never thought about it specifically, but it was an interesting experiment that was beginning to bear fruit. Initially, my focus had been on negating individual sounds, such as when I stepped on a stick, then emitting a sonic frequency that muted the sound from carrying away. That was effective when I knew exactly what was making the sound, but I quickly found that to be impractical, as if I was sneaking around, I wouldn’t be deliberately trying to make sounds that I could have prevented. That was just… foolish. Instead, I needed to experiment further. As I’d found some measure of success in my experimentation, I found myself more and more trying it out, fiddling with different aspects of my magic until I got what was effectively an effective beginning point.
Instead of attempting to counteract specific sounds, I allowed my magic to leak out of me in every direction, and I controlled every sonic wave nearby to be dampened. With this, if it was working correctly, if I stepped on a stick and broke it, it would still crack and be audible, but it would sound as if it were a much smaller twig instead of a full branch. On things like that, the effect was obviously inferior to my initial plans, but I, again, wasn’t going to be using this potential [Skill] while deliberately making noise.
I’d moved on to testing the effects of my proto-[Skill] with other people now. Initially, I’d worked with Foire, but while his insight was impressive on how things could be seen or detected, his personal method of sensing things wasn’t at all based on what he could hear. Instead, Trai was happy to work with me for extended periods of time on different methods of hiding my passage. Since she was actively looking for me, I’d had little success in surprising her thus far, but that wasn’t the point. Instead, as she and I worked together, various methods were attempted, and now, a couple weeks later, I had what I thought was a winning combination.
After a deep, calming breath, I let my magic flow out of me. For a couple feet in every direction, my influence spread and calmed the sounds of skittering insects and chirping birds. Most fled in my presence, but that wasn’t my focus. Instead, I looked around and searched for a path to follow towards Trai that would keep me from being in her direct line of sight. With my height and size, it was nearly impossible to find any brush or tree that could completely cover my silhouette, but I only needed to cover the bulk of my body and break up the lines of a Keel in the forest.
There wasn’t anything stopping me as I slowly pushed through a prickly bush. The thorns scraped on my scales, but the sound was negligible and, as far as I could tell, impossible to distinguish from the usual sounds of the forest and wind. Each step I took was deliberate, placed where there would be minimal additional noise. I melted into a more hunched position, knowing that that made me stick out my tail to remain balanced. That was harder to hide, but there was enough brush around that I could keep myself mostly out of her immediate field of view.
For the first time, I lamented the color of my scales. As a striking silver, they broadcasted my presence to anything with eyes, especially when they caught the light. Though I didn’t think I’d ever really have to sneak around, having the skills to do so would be useful. I stepped forward but paused when the wind picked up and blew much of the brush away from in front of me. Even exposed, I kept myself still, and the gust slowed again.
Just as I poked my head around a tree trunk, I took the opportunity to peek at Trai. Her focus was precise, but also precisely off the mark. There was something that’d gone out in the other direction, and she was watching that. Maybe it was pure luck, but I took the opportunity to circumvent her attention and step around a tree. She was only a couple dozen paces off, and I stepped further around a fallen tree, I got into her blind spot. Even without any way for her to feel me nearby, though, I took my time until she seemed to somehow sense me. Before Trai could turn, I lunged forward and caught her body in a hug from behind.
With scales scraping on each other, she tried to fight free, but I laughed as, after a moment, she sagged in my arms. I didn’t take much care to drop her gently, but she landed on her feet without any issue.
“What did you do that time? Can you teach me?” Trai’s questions made me laugh, but I didn’t reply, because a notification from the [System] pulled me from answering.
[New Skill acquired. Status updated.]
