Blessings and Protections 101

“The concept of blessings is essentially to draw power from lady Sonala.” Gulliver points at the statue carved on top of the quest hall.

“As the goddess of Dreams and Awakenings she possesses the ability to repel darkness and all of the ills that it has with the curse of Umbravar engraved into it.”

Gulliver heads to the middle of the training arena.

“There are many ways to use it, and the capabilities of what you can do with them will vary from person to person. The most important thing when dealing with blessings is to project the feeling of what you want to others, not yourself. A few examples of how it can be used are as follows.”

His hands start glowing orange.

“As support, enhancing the abilities of others. Holy Dream Blessing: Sunrise Vigor.”

A pulsing glow surrounds us, and I start to feel stronger. My body is much lighter, and my muscles are tightening.

I give Juni a soft kick but just with a little bit of force I send him flying on his back. He gets mad and tries to retaliate but Gulliver cuts the enhancement short.

“We can heal wounds or fend off Umbravar influence when in the dark. Holy Dream Blessing: Full night’s rest.”

He nicks his forearm with his fingernail and a streak of blood runs down but as he puts his palm on top the wound is gone.

Is the same one Ruina used on me back in cave entrance.

“As utility, to light dark rooms or warm yourselves and others in the cold. Holy Dream Blessing: Guiding Night Light.”

An orb of light floats from his hand.

The same one Gora showed me on the carriage and to blind that goblin.

“As protection, summoning shields and even traps. Holy Dream Blessing: Darkness ward.”

A semitransparent shield appears in front of him.

“And in some rare cases even for attack. Holy Dream Blessing: Dawn Flame.”

From his hand an orange flame starts to burn, he aims up and shoots it, blowing up high in the sky like fireworks.

The three of us pay very close attention to the explanation.

“As I said before the most important thing is projecting your feeling. You must truly want to support someone to enhance them, you must truly want to alleviate someone’s pain to heal them, you must truly want to light their way to summon a light, you must truly want to protect someone to shield them.” He pauses for a bit. “You must truly want to end their suffering to deliver a finishing blow with this attack.”

Once again, silence takes over.

“There are a lot of applications and uses and there really isn’t a rule on how to use them. New ways of using blessings are always being discovered. The strongest the feeling you have when you wish for it the better the effect. A desire to help people you know tend to be stronger than helping a complete stranger, so take these lessons to also bond with your future teammates.

The three of us pay close attention to Gulliver. Mimi is sleeping on Lafanda’s shoulder though.

The day passes by in a flash.

Juni had some trouble, he could use only a few of them, his defensive ones were especially powerful, the rest were a bit lacking.

Lafanda really showed her skills today she couldn’t use a wide array of blessings, but their power was impressive. Her ability to convey her feeling so openly is surely a big factor in the end result.

While with me, it took a lot of trial and error to get the feel. But by the end I could use every single one of the blessings I tried.

Understanding what I needed to feel to use them was actually quite simple, the problem was the intensity of my feelings. My arsenal has a lot more options than the other two but the ones they excel at are more powerful.

A jack of all trades, master of none situation.

The next day comes, and we once again find ourselves in the training grounds.

This time we are in the presence of another teacher.

She has reptilian eyes, green scales on her skin and a forked tongue. She has her hair in a dreadlock style. She reminds me of a naga.

“I’m Amari. Little old Gulliver taught you all about blessings yesterday, right? Today we have protections class.”

She heads to the center of the arena.

“Different from blessings, protections tend to be a lot harder to teach. The main reason being that every monster is different than the other. So, a lot of this class will actually be about self-discovering.”

Her entire body starts glowing purple.

“Another factor being the fear of fully turning back into your original form. But you will find that the more you use it the better you get at staying in control. You will know you are close to mastering your protections when you stop fearing it and start to respect It and understand your own personal limits. You must come to the conclusion that you are the one controlling it, not the other way around.”

She begins to do basic stretches.

“Different from blessing and their hundreds of uses, protections only have two main uses. The first being to strengthen yourself with the power of your original form. Like such: Holy Nightmare Protection: Monstrous strength”

Her veins start to glow purple but her form stays the same. She dashes around at an amazing speed and follows up by lifting a rock half her size with relative ease.

“This lets you tap into the surface of your strength. This is the basic of the basic, you always want this skill turned on when fighting. Be it to attack or to take a hit. But after training you can go beyond. Holy Nightmare Protection: Partial Transformation”

Her arm grows in size and is now totally covered in green scales and sharp claws. She effortlessly slices the boulder she was holding into many pieces.

“And of course for the grand finally. Holy Nightmare Protection: Full Primal.”

A dark thin layer of smoke covers her body, and when it is gone, she looks completely like a Naga. Her legs turned into a snake’s long body, her torse is humanoid but completely covered in scales and her head with sharp fans and a cobra hood.

She aims at a boulder the same size as her and wraps her body around, constricting it. With one tight pull the bolder cracks and kicks up dust.

As it settles, she has already reverted back into her humanoid form.

“And last but not least, the part where each one of you will have to discover by yourself. Holy Nightmare Protection: Acid Spit”

She spits a jet of light green liquid on the crumbled boulder, as it starts to bubble and sizzle. Soon enough is completely melted and there’s nothing left.

“As I said we are all made different so there’s lot we can and can’t do. Each and every kin has Its own specialty. No helping you with that especially since none of you are of naga kin.” She laughs a little “You must each come to learn what makes you different.”

The three of us pay close attention once again to Amari’s words and teachings, except the three this time is different than yesterday. Now the one paying close attention is Mimi, while Lafanda is just looking towards the sky, lost in thought.

“But in the end of the day, if you don’t practice before handling a tool for real, you’re only going to hurt yourself. So of course, protection training includes another thing.”

Amari enters a martial arts stance.

“Time to learn to fight everyone. One thing is to just throw punches all around. But against slumberwalkers it is not going to work. You need skill and technique to be able to overpower them.”

“What about weapons?” I ask.

The four of them look at me.

“What do you mean weapons?” Amari asks me.

“Swords, axes, bow and arrows. We won’t be learning how to use them?”

“Weapons are made to wound enemies and to hunt animals. As a member of the resting Guild, this isn’t our objective when we go on sightings.”

“Alright Akihiko, was it? How about you go first. Let me see what we’re working with.”

I feel like I was targeted due to my comment, but I decided it is not worth it to try to debate with her.

“Sure.”

We both head to the center and she counts down. I’m not sure what to do. I try to copy her stance but is clear that I have never done any of this before.

As she reaches 0, she sweeps my legs before I can even react and while I’m still in the air, she lands a palm strike on my chest and sends me flying back. It completely knocks the wind out of me.

As I’m on the ground struggling to breathe and already feeling pain around my entire body I can hear Juni laughing.

“Juni your next.”

Juni immediately stops laughing and heads to the center.

She counts down again and goes forward. She aims at his legs just like with me, but he prepares against it. But it’s a feint from her. She switches at the last moment and hits him square in the chin, sending him flying next to me.

I want to laugh but I feel I would throw up if I did. My entire body hurts.

“Lafanda and Mimi, please step up.”

As she counts down, and she goes to attack Lafanda and Mimi fight back with perfect synchrony. It’s like watching a 2 on 1. But I guess at the end of the day it is a 2 versus 1 when one of the opponents has literally two head that move independently from one another.

“Alright, Lafanda you’re not bad. Juni and Akihiko, you two suck. 20 laps around the entire grounds. NOW!!!”

“Yes ma’am!!” We quickly get up and start running. The fear of being hit again overpowering the pain we both feel.

The rest of the day was hellish.

It was all strength training, running and sparing. Lafanda and Mimi once again show pretty good results.

Juni struggled at the start but eventually started to not get beat up every time.

Myself on the other hand…

I never even tried throwing a serious punch before so you can guess how it went.

After eating a bit and taking a bath I can barely even stand. What could But as I reach my room I see someone familiar at my door.

It’s Salazar.

What does my self-proclaimed rival could possibly want at this hour of the night?