Lighter than Air – Part 2

“Oh, Tanney,” Fianna said, though she had her back to the entryway. How the heck did she know Tanney was there? “Do you need something?”

“W-well… huh… I… sorry, it’s nothing,” she said, half her head peeking into the room. “I’ll just go back to—”

But then we heard it. A loud, unmistakable growling sound.

Wait, is she…?

“Ah…!”

“Tsk. You didn’t have breakfast with us earlier, right? You should have said something.”

“I w-was waiting for you two to finish your conversation, Boss. That’s all.”

“Sorry we took so long. We got distracted speaking.”

“N-n-no, it’s fine.”

“And I know you’re shy, but you need to keep yourself well fed, okay? Especially when piloting the ship.”

“R-right, Boss. I’m sorry, Boss.”

“Well then, Takashi,” the ‘boss’ said as she stood up, “I’ll be piloting the Airdrake for a while now so Tanney can eat something. Feel free to come with me if you’d like to keep chatting.”

Hey, seems like she actually enjoyed our little conversation.

Honestly, I considered that proposal wholeheartedly, but I couldn’t find any more prescient questions to ask. And anyway, I was curious about Tanney herself, the only member of the Airdrake crew I hadn’t spoken with yet.

“Thanks, but I won’t bother you anymore. I’ll hang out around here.”

“Geh…!”

Did Tanney just… ‘geh’ at me?

“Very well. Tanney, please be nice to our guest.”

“O-ok, Boss.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw the two women switch places. Fianna left with her usual elegance, while Tanney scurried inside, her fox tail hanging limply between her legs. She kept giving me weird glances, and her whole demeanor was more than unapproachable.

Am I really that scary…?

This was the first time I had had a proper look at her clothes. She had a heavy, purple robe completely covered her from head to toe, making her look more like a druid than an alchemist, and it seemed way too big for her short stature. But well, it somehow made her even cuter, so it was all right with me. The white tip of her orange tail was peeking from under the robe, occasionally swishing from side to side.

I… kinda want to pet her…

Seeing her so guarded, I couldn’t find it in me to strike up a conversation, so instead, I let her do her thing. Meanwhile, I pulled out a bunch of Magic Crystals from my Hero’s Bag and placed them on the low table in front of me.

Yzara said it would be alright for me to learn Profane Magic, so I guess I should do it now while I have the time.

“Huh… hmm…” I heard from behind me.

When I turned around, Tanney’s face was right there, staring at me with lovey, sparkling eyes—eh, who am I kidding, she was staring at the crystals.

“Tanney? Is something wrong?”

“Eeek!” She said, taking a step back.

There’s being shy, and then there’s whatever this is.

However, contrary to my expectations, she didn’t immediately go hide in the corner.

“Is…is that a Profane Magic C-Crystal?” She asked.

“Sure is. Why do you as—”

I hadn’t even finished my sentence when the girl trotted over, just so she could stare at the crystal as closely as possible.

“Oh, wow. It r-really is one!”

“Is it really that exceptional?”

“Yes! Ever since the White Death started s-spreading, Dark Beasts have become rarer and rarer. That’s why I don’t think Yzara was to blame for the White Death. Oh, sorry, I heard a bit of your conversation before, eh-eh. We beastman have excellent hearing, you know? Anyway, t-think about it—with why doesn’t killing monsters infected with the White Death give Profane Magic Crystals? Makes no sense. Nowadays, to get a Profane Magic Crystal, you have to kill a monster with intrinsic Profane Magic. From around here… I guess it was a Wisp?”

Well, I’ll be damned. She’s a bit of a chatter-box!

“Yeah, you got it. We killed a Wisp and—”

“The drop rate on P-Profane Magic Crystals is quite low. You were very lucky! It’s amazing you could even defeat one. Don’t Heroes spawn really weak and stuff?”

“Ah-ah. We sure do. Thanks.”

I could see her tail waggling happily behind her. She was definitely quite excited to be talking about this stuff.

Is she some sort of magic otaku or something?

“Hold on, aren’t you an Alchemist? You have Profane Magic too, right? So how did you get yours?”

“Ah! W-Well… My family had some Crystals stored away. E-Everyone in my family is an Alchemist. As Profane Magic Crystals got rarer and more expensive, my father tried to get his hands on them by all means necessary to safeguard the future of the family business. Plus, Alchemists are fundamental for the airships to keep flying. He got some via friends, or even during expeditions he went on.”

“So, how expensive are these crystals nowadays?”

“Depends on how far away you are from the frontier. In Adaville, I last saw them being sold at two Silver.”

“T-two Silver?! That’s enough to cover half of this trip!”

That was ludicrously expensive. Each of the elemental magic crystals could be sold at one Bronze in Arcforge, and the Holy and Profane Magic ones at one and a half Bronze. This was a sixteen-time increase in value.

I guess it has been a hundred years since the design team balanced the prices of the shops, though.

“I wouldn’t recommend you sell it, though,” she said. “You wanted to get Profane Magic to complement Chloe’s Holy Magic, right? Having both on your team is quite valuable. And plus, you can easily cover the cost of the trip by taking quests at the Adventurer’s Guild.”

“Yeah, that’s true. Alright, I’m going to learn it now!”

I think I still know how this works.

I held the round crystal in my hands, and focused. Suddenly, I felt a rush of energy—something definitely unholy—spread from my hands and fill my entire body. It was a rather unnerving experience, but it was over about as quickly as it began.

“Congratulations, Takashi the Profane Magic Initiate.”

“Well, thanks a bunch. You think you could teach me some spells?”

“I’d love to! But if you don’t mind, I’m a-actually starving over here.”

“Oh, right. Don’t let me keep you.”

I watched Tanney pull out a can from a shelf and pour out its contents into a plate. It was a red-brown, corned beef-like paste that frankly didn’t look very appetizing. Just as I was considering just how hungry she was to have the appetite to eat that, she got a little cheeky smile.

“Since we’re going back, I think I can splurge a little.”

From her pocket, she took out a red, translucent stone. Of course, I knew what this was—a Philosopher’s Stone, an item Alchemists needed to transmute items into other items using mana.

“Organic Transmutation,” she called in a low voice—as if trying to hide the fact she was using alchemy—as she held the stone above her plate.

“Wow!”

In front of my eyes, the strange meat paste began to glow a deep red—just like the stone—and started to change shape. After it finished glowing, it was no longer an indistinct paste, but an actual wagyu A5 steak.

Okay, I couldn’t tell if it was A5, or even wagyu, or exactly what sort of animal it came from, but it certainly looked like a real piece of meat and not processed pink sludge.

“Woah, that’s incredible!”

“Eh-eh, t-thanks!” She said with a wide smile. “It gets lame eating processed meat all the time.”

I’m sure Tanney didn’t understand why I was so surprised. Alchemists could turn items into other items, yes—but that was limited to, say, transmuting metals, or types of wood, simple things like that. Actually turning some indistinct meat sludge into a proper steak was way beyond what was possible in Arcforge.

Well, I guess at this point, I shouldn’t be surprised about any of this anymore.

I kept staring at Tanney with intense jealousy for a while as she happily devoured her steak.

“W-What is it? I’m not sharing, okay?”

“No, that’s not it. I just had a question about alchemy—”

Her eyes immediately sparkled like gems. “Please, ask anything! I’m always up for talking about it!”

Guess the path to Tanney’s heart is talking about alchemy and profane magic, huh.

“Keil told me before that you’re the one who made the gas that keeps the Airdrake floating. It’s a lighter-than-air gas, right?”

I knew back on Earth that airships were lifted by either hydrogen or helium, two gases that were lighter than air. But those materials didn’t exist in Arcforge—in the game, air was just, you know, air. It wasn’t made of any further components because it didn’t need to be.

I could swear her eyes sparkled after hearing my question. “That’s right! So you have that in your world too, huh! We used to use all hydrogen, since it was easier to make, but there were a lot of accidents, so now we use a mix of both. The Airdrake has a bunch of helium cells surrounding a core cell of hydrogen at the center, so it’s not flammable,” she said, puffing out her chest with some pride.

Phew, that’s one less way to die in this world at least.

“Alchemists figured out how to create helium and hydrogen, then?”

“We did! It was my great-grandfather, actually.”

“Really…?!”

“Yes! It took a lot of trial and error for my him to figure out how to transform air and what were the properties of these ‘separated’ gases. Eventually, he learned that those gases were lighter than normal air, and then he pioneered their usage in the first airships. That’s how my family became famous in the first place. Nowadays, there’s a formula I must use to create helium, so it’s quite standardized.”

I was super impressed. In just one hundred years, Iditath went from a medieval fantasy to a pre-modern society, and they even invented chemistry and air travel. I couldn’t help but be a bit proud, even though I had absolutely nothing to do with it.

“Eh-eh.” When I noticed, the little fox girl had a dumb smile on her face, and she was swaying to and fro happily.

“What’s up with the grin?”

“Nothing… It’s just that no one ever asks me about alchemy.”

“Really? But it’s so cool!”

“Well, I-I… tend to get a bit too excited about technical details no one understands.”

“I think you were just fine right now. I’d love to talk with you more about this.” If for nothing else because I’m curious about how all these systems even work in the first place.

To my surprise, Tanney blushed slightly. “T-Thanks.”

“Oh… huh… you’re welcome.”

This fox girl reminded me of those NPCs in Arcforge that were written to be very lonely, and part of their quests involved the player showering them with attention.

Finally, I meet someone nice in this world!

Compared to Yzara, who was hellbent on killing me, and Fianna, who introduced herself at knife point, Tanney just exuded pure niceness.

I guess Keil is fine too, if a bit intimidating.

And that niceness continued after she got her meal finished. We sat back down on the sofas, and she helped go over the three basic Profane Magic skills—<Shadow Strike>, <Darkness>, and <Curse>. Tanney even offered to be the guinea pig for me to test out my magic, since she resisted Profane skills, being of a Profane class herself.

“Those basic skills should be enough to carry you for now,” she said, apparently not phased by my hitting her with them repeatedly at all. “But you really ought to get some more, if you want to thread the path of the Profane Mage. For example,” she began, as a rather more sinister smile bled onto her face, “the skill I just got before this expedition! Let me tell you, that was a hard grimoire to get my hands on!”

From the swishing of her tail, I could tell she was excited about this.

“A new skill, huh? What is it called?”

“Mind Break. It stuns enemies as long as I continue to cast it,” she said. “The Boss keeps saying I’m too weak in actual fights, so… I wanted to get it to boost my power in battle. Too bad Keil and the Boss didn’t let me try it out on them…”

Despite her sad tone, her eyes were sparkling like I hadn’t seen them yet.

Wait, did she serve as a guinea pig because she wanted me to serve as one back?!

“Agh. Fine. You can try it out on me. I should resist it, right?”

“Alright! Mind Break!”

No lead up whatso—uhh?

Before that thought finished, my mind went blank. Like, literally blank, as if I had lost the ability to think. I could see, hear, and feel just fine, but I wasn’t processing any information whatsoever. It was as if the engine of my brain stalled and refused to start again. I couldn’t even feel nervous or anything; it would be fair to say I didn’t exist as a conscious being anymore.

And, from my perspective, as soon as it happened, that state vanish, and my brainpower returned like a torrent of water.

“What the hell…?” I said as I instinctively dried the corner of my mouth. Apparently, I started drooling a little bit.

“Oh, that was way more effective than I thought, even to someone who resists Profane Magic. No wonder they didn’t want me to use it on them.”

Yeah, if you used it on the others, they’d probably collapse for a few minutes at most.

“Now, if you want, I could try teaching it to you—”

But she never got the chance.

Suddenly, a loud blaring sound filled the entire cabin.

Oh-oh. I don’t know what this it, but it can’t be good.

The fox girl’s good mood suddenly turned sour and serious.

“It—it’s a monster attack!”