Something Drastic

If it had been Pax of the previous cycle, he would have stomped Djyn under his foot.

If Pax hadn’t been trapped in the body of a child, it wouldn’t have even been close.

If Pax had turned on pain nullification, he wouldn’t have given Djyn such an opening.

But Pax had lost.

Considering the fact that Pax’s goal was to defeat someone several times stronger than Djyn, it was understandable that he was slightly…disheartened. However, that is not to say that Pax was anywhere close to giving up. In fact, Pax had known that his child body would not be enough to defeat Kael Drogo for a long time. Waiting for over a decade to simply grow up was not an option though, so Pax had been looking for a solution.

A significantly smaller mana pool and significantly less strength were two things that were hard to compensate for. This is why something drastic was necessary.

The fight against Djyn just showed Pax how dire his situation actually was. This removed any doubt from his mind as to what he should do.

Simply put, the plan was to force his body to grow up significantly faster than normal. From his previous life, Pax knew that there were several hormones that were responsible for causing children to grow. Namely, Growth Hormone, Insulin-Like Growth Factor, Thyroid Hormones, Insulin, and Testosterone.

Interestingly, Pax understood more about this sort of thing in this life than he had in his first life. This was due to the effects of Trance, the strange method of meditation used by magicians of this world to create new spells. Trance gives an individual an intuitive understanding of how a concept works without them truly understanding it. Therefore, Pax couldn’t explain it, but he understood how each hormone affected his body and could control their release.

Of course, simply releasing large amounts of hormones into his body would not cause Pax to instantly grow up. If he did this then he would most likely just end up crippled. But combined with his other healing magics, Pax could increase his metabolism and heal whatever negative effects came out… probably.

Of course, there were other things that Pax’s new spell would be doing, he just couldn’t explain it even if he tried because of Trance.

Now, after finally making all the preparations, Pax was finally ready to cast his most complicated spell to date.

Knock Knock

“Hey Pax, are you busy right now?”

“...Yes”

…

“Well, I’m coming in anyways”

Sadly, these doors did not come with locks for some reason.

An extremely tall and lean man wearing an eyepatch appeared in the doorway. He ducked through and glanced at Pax, who was sitting cross legged on the floor. After a brief pause, he continued to speak:

“It’s been a while since we’ve seen you Pax, I was just making sure you were still alive.”

“You could have done that from outside the room, Captain.”

“Well I wanted to see you with my own eye.”

…

“Right… Now that you’ve done that–”

Before Pax could ask Captain Vincent to leave, he got cut off.

“You see Pax, whenever the team gets a new member, I like to sit down with them and have a little talk with them. Usually, it’s super casual but since no one has since you since we boarded my Skywhale I had to barge in like this. Actually, Eris said that she once saw you sneaking into the kitchen to steal some food…”

Realizing that Vincent wouldn’t be leaving any time soon, Pax sighed and then gestured towards the floor next to him. Since the room was rather small, with a bed taking up half the space, this was about the best he could do.

Once Vincent was sitting on the floor, he leaned back to the bed and continued:

“Ever been on a Skywhale before?”

“No, but a long time ago I once took a trip on an airship. This isn’t so different.”

Vincent smiled when he heard that.

“An airship…Hah, you’ve had an interesting life Pax. I’m sure it’s been uniquely painful in a lot of ways. Thing is, everyone on this crew is vying for the saddest backstory award. I don’t mean to belittle your experiences of course, I just want to let you know that you’re not alone. No one will force you to open up, but I would recommend at least talking to the other guys. We are going to war after all, if we don’t have each other’s backs, who will?”

Pax didn’t respond but nodded thoughtfully.

“As a show of good faith, I will now tell you the story of how I ended up where I am now. No need to thank me.”

Pax opened his mouth as if he wanted to interrupt, but then closed it again and sighed.

“I was born in a small village in the southern region of Old Artenia called Villa de Leyra. Had two parents, a dog, and a cute little brother. Thing is, I was born with inhuman strength. Doctors said it was some sort of magical phenomena. Somehow my body had been permanently augmented by ….Well, it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that I couldn’t control my strength in the slightest. To this day I still struggle with it. I can’t even imagine how difficult is was for my parents to deal with a baby who could punch a hole through a boulder.”

When Pax’s gaze reached Vincent’s face, he saw that Vincent’s usual carefree smile had been replaced with a melancholic frown.

“Anyways, it’s because of that that my relationship with my father has always been tense. My mother was always kind though… In any case, all the other kids were scared of me and bullied me. Oh, I was also freakishly tall so they may have bullied me for that too. One time I fought back and almost killed one of the other boys. That just caused more problems for my family though. Sigh, My brother was always nice to me too, but I could tell that he was scared of me and secretly held some grudges.

“Fast forward a few years and things aren’t much better. Almost crippled a girl during sex and later got hooked on some bad drugs…. I don’t remember what happened clearly back then, but I had an argument with my brother. When I woke up, he was dead. His neck was snapped like a twig. Things were hazy for a while after that. I ended up sold into slavery. Then I was a gladiator –That was when I lost my eye actually. During the Great Northern War, Artenian forces happened to be pushed back to Huasca, where I happened to be a gladiator. They decided to enlist us because things were going bad, and after making my way up the ranks, I ended up here.”

“...Oh wow, that didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would. Nice job.”

Vincent pretended that he didn’t hear the insult hidden in Pax’s words.

“Well, I’ve done this a few times so it makes sense that I’ve gotten good at it. I skipped over a lot of details though so don’t think that I’ve run out of things to say.”

“Hah, I would never… So what now?”

“Now? Uh… Well, we’ll be making one last stop to pick up our last member. After that, we’ll go to Port Laverford, take a boat to New Artenia, and go to war. For now though, you can get back to whatever you were doing before I got here.”

Vincent got up to leave but stopped in the doorway.

“Oh yeah, that last member we’ll be picking up is a healer. Maybe you’ll be able to learn something from her. In any case, look forward to it.”

Closing the door, Vincent left Pax in an empty room.

After contemplating for a moment, Pax proceeded to cast the spell he had been working on.

It worked… almost good enough.