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[NR] Grab The Shadows And Toss It Out - Chapter 766
🕑 Added 2025-12-24 11:58:48 +0000 UTCThe night passes quietly enough. In fact, it passes too quietly. For the first time in a while, the creature didn’t show up. The town doesn’t see this as too odd. It seems to be a bit shy of showing itself around strangers. And the no-show continues over the rest of that day, which finds the party doing mostly what they figured. Not entirely, though.
There are a bunch of odd jobs they ended up doing that do not fit the expected jobs. Jason shrugs at this, “A bit to be expected. This is a magical world and we’re in a place that doesn’t have that many who can handle some of what will crop up because of it. They’re limited to literal hedge witches.
“Nothing against a proper hedge witch, mind you! They’re like a traditional midwife. They might not always be school-learned, but they hold a community together. Cultivators will have a similar thing and the same goes for local religious figures. Though these tend to be trained by a central authority. Not always, of course, but a proper religion will try to keep a hand on their recognized figures.”
Courtney stood up and stretched her back, “Yeah, so what’s this about?”
Jason laughs, “Well, shadows are a bit esoteric?”
Courtney sighs, “It was just a corner where shadow-attuned Mana was stagnating. The corner only a little darker than it should be.”
Rosha nods, “True. Not much, but it wasn’t causing any trouble, so why bother something they’re not good at? Untrained poking could cause a minor problem to go wild.”
Courtney, “Well, you do have a point. Not that I’m particularly trained for this.”
Rosha, “What training did you need? Since you already handle shadow Mana, all you had to do was grab it and toss it out into the light. Cleared the mess right up!”
Jason, “Yep, someone that doesn’t handle the stuff would need proper techniques to clear the mess up. Well, I guess they could have used light magic if that was something they could handle? Much easier though to let someone who can literally grab the issue and toss it to the curb.”
Courtney, “Not like I’m the only one having to handle these issues.”
Jason laughed, “Their faces when they found out I handled Energy and not Qi! They thought they got lucky.”
Rosha raises an eyebrow, “You still took care of the problem, though?”
Jason shrugs, “Well, yeah. Energy is honestly the best problem-solving power. It can handle itself and the other two. After all, Mana and Qi both love to glom onto the stuff.”
Rosha, “Yeah, but that wasn’t what you did. What did you do?”
Jason, “Eh, there was a Qi imbalance around that house. Which is odd since Qi in NeoRealm doesn’t really do anything without a life. Though I guess this had to do the conceptual life of the land. Which is why I used my very surface level and likely highly incorrect understanding of something similar to Feng Shui.”
Rosha, “But all you did was dig in a few places? You didn’t even leave the holes. After digging them up, you went and filled the holes back in.”
Jason nods, “Yep, though there is more to it than that. I dug up some rocks and moved them, as well as loosened the soil. Basically, the layout of the area wasn’t wrong, per se. However, over the years the earth was compacted and threw the flows of power off on a small scale.”
Rosha frowns, “Isn’t Feng Sui about the placement of furniture and buildings?”
Jason, “Ehhh, I don’t. I am not into explaining such culturally significant practices when I don’t have the understanding. I simply connect what I know and the term because it is the closest analog. Though I will say, it tends to be about the flow of natural energies.
“Anyway, the foundation of a building is just as important as the building itself and my practices take it further. While most powers flow freely through the land and sky. You know, since they aren’t actually physical.
“That doesn’t mean the land doesn’t affect things. Power flowing through the ground takes on an attunement to the ground. Which while I’m not certain, I believe is part of what was going on here.
“The well-packed earth and the stones weren’t blocking the flows. Rather, not fighting the attunement and in the case of that giant boulder, redirecting some of it. So I mixed in some air and adjusted the rocks. All to make it so that one building didn’t constantly have the subtle feeling that something is pressing down on you.”
Courtney points at him, “You could have fixed the shadow Mana as well.”
Jason shrugs, “Well duh, Rosha could have as well. Even the villagers could have. But it would have required something the villagers weren’t willing to pay. Parts of the structure. I would have cut a window into the wall or for a quick fix, opened up a hole in the ceiling. Then the light will naturally cleanse the darkness over a week or so.
“Of course, since I didn’t remove the snag it might have come back. With you grabbing the Mana and tossing it out? The problem is gone and if it reoccurs, it will be a new problem and not the old problem flaring up again.”
Courtney frowns, “Why would it not reoccur? Isn’t the condition the same as it was? The corner is still dark after all.”
Jason laughs, “And so are the corners of a bunch of these houses! Yet it only happened in this one house. For such a knot to occur in the power field? There had to be an inciting incident. My guess is that the room had something stacked up in the corner that had a bit of shadow Mana to begin with, which acted like a seed crystal.
“It didn’t even have to be worth anything. Maybe it was a stack of wood being kept out of the rain and there was a shadow aligned fungus. No way to really tell at this point. What with you having removed the snarl.”
