Once the tree had finished burning and Taylor’s mouth was free from splinters, the two of them collected their prize. Again, Taylor’s ability to sense where a magical beast’s gems were held within its body came in handy as, rather than being forced to pry apart a giant pile of charcoal and burnt wood, she was able to pinpoint precisely where the gem was.

  Both of the gems.

  “Two gems?” Taylor asked, frowning as she held them side by side. Staring at them with her head tilted, she gave him a questioning look. “Why are there two?”

  “Similar to growing more intelligent, higher-Grade magical beasts start having multiple gems instead of just the one,” Leo explained, taking the larger of the two gems from her hand and peering at it. It was a soft, gentle brown, and even he could tell it was a slightly higher Grade than the other. “Beast gems actually cap out at Grade 20, though very few ever reach that high. If you were to take down a Grade 20 magical beast, for example, you’d most likely receive two or three weaker gems that add up to twenty, rather than a single, more powerful gem.”

  “Huh,” Taylor said, sniffing the smaller gem she still held. “Feels like Grade 6… and that one’s a Grade 9. Neat.”

  “Can you tell what they do?” Leo asked, knowing Taylor’s senses were still far more acute than his own. Eventually, he’d grow to the point where he should be able to pick out the skills on his own without bringing them into his core, but it would still be a bit before he grew reliably proficient.

  “The weaker one has something to do with thorns… The stronger one controls roots,” Taylor said after a moment, nodding confidently. “Pretty sure.”

  “That would make sense. Being able to lock opponents down with roots like the tree tried to do to us would be pretty powerful,” Leo muttered, staring at the gem as he contemplated if such a skill was worth giving up his own. With a soul rank of only 13, he’d have to give up both Venomous Jab and either Poisonous or Darkvision in order to make room for the new skill. The thought was tempting, but he wasn’t willing to change his current set up for the skill.

  “Gah, having a low soul rank is the worst,” Leo sighed, knowing he was being ridiculous. A soul rank of 13 was far from ‘low,’ all things considered, though it was definitely nothing to brag to other Cartographers about.

  “Then there’s only one thing to do,” Taylor shrugged, popping the weaker gem into her mouth and swallowing it in a single gulp. “Grow stronger.”

  With Taylor watching over him, Leo sat beside the charred remains of the tree, concentrating as he pulled the raw power from the Grade 9 gem into his soul. The splitting of gems was yet another reason why the speed of advancing one’s soul rank began leveling off so quickly at this point. Where finding gems that matched a person’s soul in Grade was fairly simple starting out, eventually, magical beasts got to the point where their power was split multiple ways. Some of it still went into the gems, but a significant portion began dissipating from the corpse itself immediately upon death. It took practice learning how to harness that loose power and bring it into one’s soul, and until Leo got the technique down, all that power would simply go to waste.

  Focusing on what he did know how to do, Leo turned his attention back to the Grade 9 gem in his hands. The power contained within didn’t take long to fully incorporate into his rank 13 soul, and after spending a few minutes fruitlessly attempting to absorb the ambient power radiating from the magical beast’s corpse, Leo soon found himself continuing through the plane with Taylor at his side.

  The next few days had the two of them fall into a rather comfortable pattern. During the day, they walked across the pleasant plane, keeping an eye out for other suspicious trees and other potential threats. Whenever they came across one of the trees, they enacted the same plan as before, keeping it distracted with Tayor’s nimble movements while Leo used his speed to get in close and burn the beast to the ground. After adding the power of the new gems to their souls, and spending a bit trying to absorb the decaying power from the beasts’ bodies, they would carry on.

  The trees weren’t the only beasts in this plane, however, and Leo and Taylor quickly found themselves fighting a few other curious battles as well. Similar to the spiky trees, there were large, turtle-based magical beasts with dense shells covered in giant barbs. These at least were much easier to take down, as while the shell was pretty much impenetrable, the beast’s head was very much flesh and blood. All they needed to do was wait for the beast to try and snap at them in an attempt to bite their arm off, and they could behead the beast in turn. These beasts were actually weaker, only coming in around Grade 12, but they proved to be far better for cultivation as they dropped single gems rather than two weaker ones. The ability to conjure a powerful shield was extremely tempting, but again, Leo chose to stick with his current skill gems, instead turning all the turtle gems they encountered into raw power to speed up their cultivation.

  Other than the occasional wood sprite found drifting within the branches of the trees, the last type of magical beast this plane seemed to have was another bird-type, albeit ones far less dangerous than the giant birds found within the desert plane they’d passed through earlier. These birds were regular-sized, and only came in at about Grade 3. Weaker than even the arrow-hawks Leo had dealt with way back at the start of his grand mission, dealing with them was as simple as slashing them out of the air when they tried to swoop down and peck at them. Taylor even turned it into a game, seeing how many birds she could leap up and catch in her mouth before they finished their dive.

  These gems were weak enough that Leo was tempted to finally give up Poisonous for one, but according to Taylor, the skill would only marginally lessen a person’s weight. Probably useful in synergy with a handful of other skills, but not exactly what Leo was looking for.

  While they traveled, hunted magical beasts, and cultivated their souls during the day, nights were spent within their small tent where they tended to their occasional injury and slept. Even if she recovered far faster than a regular human would, or even a gem holder of appropriate soul rank, Taylor was still a bit too reckless for Leo’s tastes.

  Her attempting to take a bite out of a spike-lined tree was all the proof he needed of that.

  “Seriously, it’s only a matter of time before you hurt yourself in a way you can’t just shrug off,” Leo warned her as he wrapped yet another bandage around a nasty gash she’d received from one of the snapping turtles that Taylor had been slightly too slow to dodge. “I know you’re tough, but I doubt you can regrow an arm.” He paused, giving her a sharp look. “...You can’t regrow an arm, right?”

  “I don’t think so,” Taylor shrugged, wincing slightly as he pulled the bandage tighter. “Never lost one. Though I did get my sides slashed open by dark cats on more than one occasion. It wasn't the most fun.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen the scars,” Leo snorted, shaking his head as he decided it was finally time to bring this up. “Okay, I’ve been wondering this for some time now. I didn’t want to bring up bad memories, but I have to know. How in the world did you survive being tossed into that plane when you were only twelve years old? Even if your body went through some sort of strange evolution, you should have still been incredibly weak. A single dark cat or monstrous centipede would have torn you to shreds!”

  “Ten years ago… My memories are a bit hazy,” Taylor admitted, growing quiet as she looked down at her hands. “The skill I gained before being thrown through the rift was the Scent skill. That let me find and avoid the worst of the threats. With the dense fog limiting sight, I was able to hide from most of them. I ate the small fish swimming around the trees to survive. Burned my hands and throat, but I didn’t have any other choice. They were weak monsters that I ate by the handful, which made me strong as time went on.”

  “Wow… I wonder if that helped shift your soul and body into what it is now,” Leo muttered, staring at her. “If you were eating those things from the beginning, while you were still acclimating to having a gem shoved into your core, maybe that's why you can cultivate simply by eating magical beast gems now. It certainly would make sense with my earlier theory that your initial physical evolution was based around survival.”

  “Dunno,” Taylor shrugged, her eyes glazing over as she lost herself in her memories. “Eventually, I grew strong enough to take on the monstrous centipedes. I got hurt, but managed to win. Once they were down, I was drawn to their gems and felt something inside me tell me to eat those. That made me grow even stronger, so I started hunting them. Did that long enough that I survived the first time I grew sloppy and a dark cat jumped me. It nearly got me, but I managed to stab through its heart with a pincer from the centipedes I’d been using as a weapon. After that, I got even stronger. Strong enough to handle dark cats and take their power for myself. Then nothing could threaten me.”

  “I can’t even imagine,” Leo said, shaking his head as he tried to picture Taylor as a frail twelve-year-old, desperately running around within the poisonous wasteland and avoiding all the different magical beasts eager to tear her to shreds. She hadn’t grown too much taller, if he were being honest, most likely due to malnutrition over the past ten years. But he’d seen her rip out the throats of enough magical beasts with her very own teeth that he struggled to even picture any version of her as ‘frail’ or ‘helpless.’

  “Anyway, that was the past,” Taylor said, as though surviving years of being all alone and growing up in a poisonous prison was no big deal. “I’m not alone anymore, which is nice. Most of the time.”

  “Most of the time?” Leo scoffed, trying not to laugh as Taylor nodded her head. “I’m sorry, are you still annoyed at the fact that I made you take a bath back in town?”

  “Among other things. I don’t like being wet.”

  “Yes, I’m thoroughly aware by now that you dislike getting wet,” Leo drawled, finishing up with her bandage and rolling his eyes as he sat back in the tent. “Seriously, sometimes I wonder if you’ve had that dark cat gem lodged inside your soul long enough that it's taken over your mind. But you can’t just whip your shirt off in front of people, even if you are soaking wet from the rain!”

  “Stupid rule,” Taylor grumbled, glaring at him. “I change in front of you all the time.”

  “Because you refuse to listen to me when I tell you to wait!” Leo argued, thoroughly exasperated at this point. “Look, I know you’ve got some serious gaps in your memory, but I’m trying my best here. You’re not a kid anymore, you’re a grown woman. You really shouldn’t do things like that in front of anyone other than family members, or some lucky person you fall in love with one day. And I guess healers are fine too, seeing as they train for that sort of thing.”

  “Love,” Taylor said slowly, frowning as she sounded the word out. “I used to love my parents… and our dog… but I can't think of anything else. Definitely not other people.”

  “Plenty of people don’t fall in love until they’re older,” Leo shrugged. “Sometimes not even then. Everyone’s different, that’s totally normal.”

  “Did you fall in love?”

  Leo’s heart caught as Taylor’s innocent question all but sucker punched him in the gut. Memories of Francy’s smile, the sound of her laughter, the smell of her kitchen that seemed to always follow her around, all flashed through his head one after another. They’d never actually come out and used the L-word with one another, but Leo would be lying if he said he hadn’t imagined living a life with one another countless times over the years. In fact, he’d been planning on confessing everything after he got back from his first steps with his parents, once he was a certified gem holder with some actual skills and knowledge under his belt. Only…

  That never ended up happening.

  “Yeah…” Leo said after a moment, letting out a world-weary sigh. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I did. Though she was taken from me by the Planar Lords when they collapsed my plane. Even now, it feels like a hole in my chest that might never go away. Smaller than the one I have from my father, but no less painful.”

  The two of them sat there in silence for a few seconds, each lost in the memories of what they’d lost, or the lack thereof. Finally, Taylor spoke up, her voice uncharacteristically quiet.

  “...Love kinda sucks, huh?”

  “Yep,” Leo chuckled, wiping the lone tear from his eye as he tried to stop thinking about his father, Francy, and his entire plane collapsing into the abyss of nothingness. Sniffing, he nodded. “It really does sometimes.”

  He blinked as Taylor reached out and began patting him on the head again, and despite the rough emotions rolling through his soul, he couldn't help but start laughing at the sudden absurdity of the action.

  “What?” Taylor demanded, her frown deepening. “I’m comforting you.”

  “I’m not your dog Blitz,” Leo finally managed between laughs, wiping away another tear that was thankfully for an entirely different reason. “That’s not really something people do to one another.”

  “Okay? How do you comfort someone then?”

  “I mean, just lending an ear is more than enough,” Leo smiled, erupting into another laughing fit as Taylor’s eyes widened and she pressed a hand worriedly to her ear. “It’s a figure of speech! I mean just being here, listening to someone talk! Letting them know you care.”

  “What about a hug?” Taylor asked, tilting her head as she looked at him.

  “What about them?” Leo asked, equally confused where this was coming from.

  “When you tried to cover for me asking a silly question and lied to Charles about me having a head injury. You gave me a hug,” Taylor pointed out. “You were pretending to be comforting, right?”

  “Yes, and I already apologized for that,” Leo reminded her, growing more confused as she shook her head.

  “I didn’t mind the hug,” she said, frowning at him. “You’re not answering the question. Hugs are comforting, right?”

  “I mean, yeah, I’d say so. They can be. But I’m not about to ask you for a hug,” Leo chuckled, shaking his head at how the conversation had even gotten to this point. “That would be kind of weird.”

  But even as he was chuckling to himself, Taylor scooted closer to him, and he froze as she leaned forward. Reaching out, she roughly put her arms around him, squeezing him far too tightly to be comfortable. She smelled like burnt trees and sweat, and Leo blinked as he realized he’d almost unconsciously hugged her right back.

  “Comforting?” she asked, her words somewhat muffled by his shoulder.

  “Yeah,” he managed weakly, struggling to breathe from how tightly she was squeezing him. Even while his lungs screamed for more air, Leo found he didn’t want the surprise hug to end, and he tried to ignore the fresh watering in his eyes as he closed them and squeezed Taylor right back.

  “It really is.”

  Patreon

  Discord