Frostbitten Wayfarer

Zoe spent a few more days at Ren’s and finished charging up the black sphere. He brought out some more strange looking components for her to charge afterwards. These ones looked more like knick knacks rather than pieces of something larger.

There was a small golf ball covered in holes, a few knives of varying shapes and sizes, and a handful of small screwdriver looking things. Some of them had normal looking heads that she recognized, and others were quite strange to look at.

It was only another week of helping out before she had all the money that she wanted. Zoe smiled as she focused on her bracelet and saw she had four gold, thirteen silver and eighteen copper jingling around.

The bracelet was a life changer for her. It wasn’t a big deal having most of her stuff at Joe’s inn most of the time, but the freedom to just bring out one of her books and browse through it whenever she wanted or change her clothes while she was out was such a massive convenience. Not to mention no longer needing to worry about where she would store stuff that she purchased while she wandered around.

Her current setup for the segments were two cold bags, a warm bag and then one unmanaged bag. The cold storage seemed close to a fridge, maybe around two degrees celsius? And the warm bag was a far cry from hot but it kept whatever food she purchased at a comfortable temperature at least.

Zoe had taken to storing a bunch of sandwiches in one of her cold bags and bought a whole bunch of them not long after she got the bracelet. They lasted quite a while with the natural slowing effect of the rot paired with the cold storage, and she was able to move them over to the warm storage with a flick of her mana a few minutes before she wanted to eat.

She was blown away by how convenient it was. It wasn’t a perfect solution, by any means. But it was a heck of a lot better than having to lug around a big heavy bag everywhere she went. One day, she’d like to maybe figure out how to make her own. Would they require specific skills? Did somebody just have a storage skill they enchanted stuff with? Or would it require a custom image?

On that note, Zoe had taken to trying to enchant things without the guidance of a skill’s image. It had been successful, to an extent. The items did end up being enchanted, but at least thus far she wasn’t able to make them have any effect.

She tried to modify her Frost’s image — chopping off bits or adding in bits while she solidified the mana. But the most she could manage to do was control how cold something got. She had a suspicion that if she really spent some time looking through the skills or maybe doing some proper research with an established enchanter, she might be able to figure out some logic behind the images she used.

But if she were being honest, she just wanted to get out of Flester at this point. It had been years of wandering around the same town and she was finally able to leave. She could play around with enchanting anywhere, but Moaning Point wasn’t going to come to her.

Zoe made plans with Emma to go back out to the forest and mess around with her new skills a bit. It wasn’t a big hunting excursion like the last one, but she’d get a chance to really see what she could do finally and she was excited.

She stopped by Emma’s tower and said hello to Oliver as they left, and then made their way out the northern gate of town. They didn’t really have plans to hunt anything, Zoe just wanted to test her skills and see what they really did.

“So what’s the limit of Frozen Arsenal anyway? Can you make armour too?” Emma asked her.

Zoe focused on her skill and a thin sheet of translucent blue ice formed around her body. It didn’t restrict her movement, but there was a muffled creaking as she twisted around to look at herself and the ice strained.

“Yup.” Zoe said.

“That’s so cool. Can I punch you? Lemme punch you!” Emma jumped back and forth on her feet.

Zoe rolled her eyes. She didn’t really want to be punched, but it was better to learn how effective it was here than when she were fighting something that actually wanted to hurt her.

“Sure, lets do it.” Zoe said.

Emma laughed and started punching Zoe’s chest. At first she started with weak punches and the ice seemed to hold. Zoe felt the blunt impacts but her health didn’t drop and she didn’t feel any pain from them.

Emma kept hitting harder and harder, and besides the impacts seeming a little more intense Zoe didn’t notice a difference. Until one time Emma’s fist smashed through the ice and into Zoe’s chest behind it.

Zoe gasped and bent over, gripping her knees as she tried to regain her breath. It didn’t hurt, but it felt like her very essence was ripped out from her by the impact. She checked her vitals.

Health: 500/500

Stamina: 250/250

Mana: 377/750

“Oh my god are you okay!?” Emma shouted and kneeled down in front of Zoe.

“Yeah… Yeah, I’m okay.” Zoe took deep breaths and looked at Emma. “Just took a massive chunk of mana. Didn’t lose any health though.”

“Oh my god that scared me, I thought I hurt you.” Emma fell back on her butt and spread out on the ground.

Zoe laughed, “Yeah me too for a moment. Wow. Okay, so don’t let the armour break I guess.”

“Mhm. Not very useful armour then, huh?” Emma asked.

“Well it held up for a bit. Actually, I wonder if it was from the accumulated damage or from the big hit at the end. Gimme a few minutes to regenerate my mana and we’ll try again if you’re up for it?” Zoe asked.

“Mhm. You’re sure you’re okay though? I don’t wanna hurt you.” Emma said from the ground.

“Yeah, I’m fine. This is helping, thanks a bunch.” Zoe said.

“Okay then. I’m still gonna worry though.” Emma pouted.

Zoe laughed. “You’re the one who wanted to punch me!"

“That was before you keeled over in pain!” Emma said.

“It wasn’t pain it was… something else, I dunno. I’m fine though.” Zoe checked her mana again.

Mana: 643/750

“Okay, I’m good. Lets try again. Just give me one big hit like that last one that broke my armour, alright?" Zoe said.

Emma stood up and nodded. “You sure?”

Zoe nodded, and Emma almost perfectly matched the power of her previous punch. The armour held.

“Okay, again.” Zoe said.

Emma punched her again. “Okay, that's pretty good then. Do you think it’s like, a number of hits? Or an amount of damage absorbed?”

“Hmm. I dunno. Hit me a few more times like that and lets find out I guess.” Zoe said.

Emma nodded and started hitting Zoe with similar powered punches. It only took a few more before the armour shattered and Zoe found herself keeled over once more.

“Okay,” Zoe said between breaths. “It’s definitely not just a number of hits. Good to know.”

“What next then?" Emma asked.

“I wanna try restoration.” Zoe led Emma over to a bush of Klir leaves and picked off a few. “I’m just gonna eat some of this and then heal myself, I guess.”

“Is that poisonous? You sure you should eat it? We could go get a proper poison made instead and it’d be way safer. Or try with some people who are sparring or something?" Emma looked at the klir leaf with suspicion.

“It’s fine, I’ve eaten plenty of these.” Zoe swallowed some of the klir and dismissed the notification telling her she was poisoned and ate a few more as she watched her health drop.

Health: 354/500

“Lemme get a baseline first and then I’ll try healing.” Zoe said and started counting the seconds. And then minutes.

From her very rough counting, it seemed she was getting one health restored every two minutes. Pitiful, even with her Vampyric Regeneration and Seasoned Frost bonuses, if she was being honest. It did enough to get her by but it made almost no difference if she was actually losing health from something.

Zoe checked her mana before she started with her healing skill.

Mana: 563/750

She focused on her Restoration skill to undo the damage the poison had caused. She felt the effect immediately, a cold energy that ran through her stomach and throat. Her health started to climb far faster and she watched as it all filled up after just about a minute. Zoe checked her mana to see how much it had cost.

Mana: 388/750

One hundred seventy five mana to restore just under one hundred fifty health. For Zoe, this seemed like an excellent trade. If she could transform mana into health even at a worse ratio she’d take it. Mana just recovered that much faster than health did, at least for her.

Maybe there was a similar skill to Meditation but for health? Maybe even for stamina, now that she thought about it. It was strange in the first place that mana had a separate stat that affected its regeneration while the other two pools only had one related stat.

Or did the other stats actually have an impact on them too? Nobody told her such, and throughout her limited research she never seemed to find anything that would imply as much. But it still seemed strange to her.

“So? How good is it?" Emma poked at her.

“Oh, yeah. It’s really good actually. Got about a hundred fifty health back and it cost me a hundred seventy five mana. A lot better than nothing, at least.” Zoe said.

“That’s pretty good actually.” Emma grabbed one of the klir leaves from the bush Zoe had pulled hers from. “You’re sure this is mostly safe, right?"

“Yeah it’s not that bad. Why?” Zoe asked.

“Well we should probably see if you can heal me too, right?" Emma asked.

“Oh. Right. I guess, yeah. You don’t have to if you don’t wanna, though. We could find a safer way for you.” Zoe said.

Emma took a deep breath and then swallowed one of the leaves. “It’s so weird watching my health drain like that. Like I’m dying but I can’t even feel it. Poisons scary.”

Zoe nodded her head. “Yeah. It is. Poison resistance is good, I think. I could help you get it if you wanted, I guess? Would be good training for my skill if it works.”

Emma nodded. “That sounds like fun. But after we’re gonna play with your haste skill.”

Zoe laughed. “Want me to heal you now or wait a bit first?”

“Wait a bit, I wanna see you blast my health up a bunch at once.” Emma said and ate a few more of the leaves. “Okay, see if you can heal me.”

Zoe focused on her skill and tried to target Emma with it but nothing seemed to happen. She could feel the skill, she knew intuitively that it should work. But it wouldn’t. Zoe put her hand on Emma’s shoulder and tried to push the skill through her physical connection.

“Oh! Wow. That’s not bad. Maybe one health every second?” Emma said.

“And how much health do you have again?” Zoe asked.

“Three thousand.” Emma answered.

“Okay so not percentage based then cause I was getting about triple that, which is probably from my class boost I guess.” Zoe said.

“That’s so stupid.” Emma shook her head.

“Don’t you get doubled health from one of your classes?” Zoe asked.

Emma nodded her head. “Yeah but not triple to all of my pools! Just doubles my health.”

Zoe laughed. “Should’ve spent the first twenty years of your life gathering skills and feats then.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “Yeah yeah, whatever. Lets try out haste now.”

“I mean, we already know how that works don’t we?” Zoe smiled.

“Yeah but its fun! I wanna be fast.” Emma whined.

Zoe laughed and cast haste on Emma and then summoned a dagger of ice with her Frozen Arsenal skill. She wanted to see what effect the Frost skill would have on ice created by another skill.

The dagger was difficult to get control of, but with a few minutes of effort she managed to make it float around her. But as soon as she did, she felt another connection with it fade away. Her Frozen Arsenal, she assumed.

Whatever effect the skill had on her summoned weapons seemed to be lost when she took it over with Frost, though she wasn’t sure exactly what effect they had anyway. Were they sharper, maybe?

Zoe walked over to a nearby tree and tried slashing into its bark with a fresh dagger that she summoned. The dagger cut into the bark and left a thin layer of frost over the wound.

But when she tried to cut into the bark with the dagger controlled by her Frost skill instead, she noticed it seemed much harder. Even if she grabbed the dagger and tried to slash at the tree herself rather than with her magic, it didn’t seem to be nearly as sharp as when it was affected by her Frozen Arsenal skill.

Maintaining both skills at the same time on different objects was effortless, at least. But having them both affecting the same object seemed impossible, or at least very difficult. Maybe it was something she could work on in time, she hoped. Being able to use both of her skills as she whipped daggers around her with her mind seemed like a lot of fun.

“Whatchu up to?" Emma asked her as she bounced around on her toes.

“Just trying to see if I can control my summoned weapons with Frost. Doesn’t seem like I can, though.” Zoe let both of the daggers drop to the ground.

“Aww, that would’ve been cool. So what’s next on your big plan?" Emma asked.

“Well I think I’m all good now, to be honest. So I guess it’s off to Moaning Point next.” Zoe took a deep breath. The thought was a little scary.

Emma hugged her. “I’m sure you’ll be fine. When do you think you’ll leave?”

“I dunno. I’ve still got some shopping to do first, so maybe in a few days I guess.” Zoe said.

“Ooh! Lemme come shopping, that sounds like fun!" Emma smiled.

Zoe laughed. “Alright, sure. Lets go tomorrow, then.”