Expected Solitude

There remained a bit of soreness in my body still from the fight. But Eri'Sol certainly made it out worse than me. So she was at least back in full shape. She’d be able to charge eagerly into another fight that she had no business doing. I grinned a little and chuckled to myself picturing her yesterday. It was terrifying but we lived, somehow.

“What am I doing? She’s gone. She got bored, had her fill of adventure or just scared. It’s just how people are. I shouldn’t be surprised.” I fell back on the bed staring up at the ceiling. A listless feeling crept into me. It was all too familiar. Whenever it surfaced I’d just bury myself in some game all week. It would eventually fade away.

But maybe thanks to last night’s talk, memories came back to me. Too many bad ones flooded back. It was why I liked games to keep me distracted. I didn’t like dwelling.

It was junior high, my third already. And we had a group assignment due soon. After class, I approached Satoru at the shoe lockers. “Hey…”

He paused in pulling out his shoes, not even looking guilty. “Oh hey man! Sorry about yesterday, but things came up. I couldn’t make it.”

“Oh, I waited at the library… Can you today?”

“No, I’ve got to look after my little sister today.” Satoru dropped his shoes down and put in the loafers.

“It’s due on Monday, we haven’t started on it.”

“Hey don’t worry about it. We’re friends! You’ve got it, right?” He then quickly bolted, most likely to pick up his little sister. But I was left there just like I had been for hours waiting for a ‘friend’ that never showed. And worse I learned later, he had plans with other friends that day he forgot about. But I didn’t want a failing grade and he knew that.

Countless more visited me that just made me sink deeper into the bed. The numerous times no one else showed for cleaning duty or just requested me to do it alone. Friends that promised to stay in touch after I moved, but didn’t even manage one message a week later. Long schedule plans trivially canceled minutes before. Everyone was self centered and callous.

I just accepted it was how people acted. Hold no attachments and it won’t hurt when they abandon you. That was the idea at least. It didn’t always work well. I had to stop getting my hopes up and thinking it would be different. The end was always the same. Everyone proved that.

I wanted to play something. The bed swallowed me up deeper. “Best I could do would be to invent a board game or something. But I can’t play against myself.” A heavy sigh came out of me. Tempting as it would be to just lay around, I did have things to do. I couldn’t let it get to me.

Sitting up, I opened the menu remembering that I didn’t check what progress I made from that. That Vertil creature was as strong as I feared. The level up probably displayed, but I had different things on my mind at the time. She was dying.

I shook my head, getting her out of my thoughts. The character screen for me showed that I went up in level again. That thing gave me another four levels for myself and a level in my class. Even checking on my weapon status, I saw that there was much more movement this time going up five percent. Though I didn’t know what happened when a weapon was mastered. This weapon didn’t have any bonuses applied to it. Maybe nothing and I needed something better.

My thoughts immediately went to asking Eri'Sol when she got back about weapon mastery, but I scrubbed that idea. The Markets and Hoyra should be able to give an answer. I would need to settle on where to put my points this time. But I was curious what my class gave me for a third level.

Navigating through, I found that it was a support skill. A rather curious one by the way it read.

‘Divine Excision – Applies the status Divine Subjugation to enemy target. When a party member or self strikes the marked target the effect Divine Subjugation activates. The effect of Divine Subjugation must be selected before application. If applied again it will overwrite the previous Divine Subjugation status.’

The options I had for status only listed two, an HP or MP drain effect. Each attack would restore ten percent of the damage back. It was effectively another indirect regen, but one that everyone could take part in. So that would help to smooth out damage if there were any raid wide style attacks from an enemy. But the enemies here weren’t scripted, so I couldn’t count on there not being burst damage going out.

It certainly gave me more hope for becoming a better healer. Though the part that interested me most was that with only two options it felt like that could have just been stated in the tool tips. It made me think that in the future the ability might expand to have more options. A few possibilities came to mind, but until it happened I would just have to wait.

Then I heard heavy footsteps outside the room. Must have been another adventurer leaving. I went back to trying to decide on my stat allocation. The continued solo life made Vitality seem like a certainty along with Magic Attack. And the new ability didn’t have any modifications from Mending again. So I still wasn’t being penalized for not using that stat. I wondered if other people in the past thought carefully about it.

My door suddenly burst open with a loud cheerful declaration. “Breakfast is served!” I froze in my place on the bed. Standing there in the threshold of the small room was Eri’Sol. That flaming orange hair blowing back in waves around her sword.

She returned?