I’m glad Pul needs to do more work right now. It gives me time to figure out what he needs to be ready, both in gear and in advice. Gear is pretty simple, at least. With all the delving he and the others do, he’s got plenty of good delving gear. He’s got his cleaver and the karambit knife, he’s got some nice enchanted leathers for armor, and a moderate spatial backpack. He’s not going to be able to haul off mountains of treasure, but it’s plenty of space for him to bring back whatever denizen cuts he likes the look of.
We could try to get him an upgrade, but he honestly doesn’t need it. Loot’s a thing for dungeons. He’s not going to find any treasure chests out deep in the Green Sea, so he mostly just needs to carry food, water, a tent, and a sleeping bag. Some potions and medical stuff would be a good idea, too, but he can visit Rhonda to get those.
Food shouldn’t be too big a deal for him, either. Yvonne and Vernew both know how to dress their kills, so it shouldn’t be difficult at all for him to be able to butcher them in turn. He might need some kind of portable butcher’s table, but ‘portable’ and ‘butchers table’ are mutually exclusive. We might be able to finagle something with spatial nonsense, but not on short notice.
Besides, Thing and the other nerds have enough on their plates already. I don’t need to go piling them higher. There is one thing that I think will be an excellent opportunity for him to train, though: archery.
A compound bow should be easy for him to pick up, and even if it’s only ever a backup for him, being out in the woods with Yvonne will be the best training chance he might ever see. I take a few minutes to consider if I should try to get him some trick arrows, too. A grapple arrow would be very ninja, but with gravity affinity… I don’t think he’ll ever need it, and that’s if he can’t just slip through shadows to get where he needs to.
I come up with a few other potential arrows before setting the idea aside. Maybe if he was into tinkering or alchemy, or if he bucks expectations and fully embraces the bow, but for right now? Trying to foist it on him would risk overloading him. I’m not going to do that to my scions, I’m certainly not going to do it to the young ninja I’m trying to mentor.
I might run the idea of alchemical arrows past Rhonda later, if she ever seems like she needs a project. Her work with the fancy mana rings is probably going to keep her busy for a while, so no rush to introduce the idea to her.
So if I have a few ideas for what not to introduce him to, what should I actually try to teach him? So far, things have been pretty basic, what with most of what I actually taught him being to even unlock the class in the first place. But once he got it, I mostly let him figure it out himself. He’s doing well, but it makes me wonder if I should try to teach him even more?
He’s been more comfortable with gravity than shadows so far, so ordinarily I’d try to encourage him with his lesser-used affinity. Unfortunately, I’m still not sure how shadow actually works. I have Onyx as an example, but I don’t know how much of what she does is her affinity, and how much is her being a shade. Still… it might be a good idea to let her teach him a thing or two about shadow affinity. She definitely understands it a lot better than I do.
And following a similar train of thought, I should teach him about gravity. I’m pretty familiar with it as a concept, but I haven’t put the theory into too much practice just yet. Well, not on the scale of an adventurer, at least. I don’t think he’s going to have much use in levitating huge orbs of earth off the ground, and he’s already figured out the trick to changing his own personal gravity to let him stick to all sorts of odd angles.
So… he has movement handled. He also has at least some version of a defensive ability, too. I don’t know if his fancy parry works too well in melee… but I think it’d be a good thing to focus on. I’d been teaching him the concepts behind judo, because I don’t actually know the martial art. But I do know the classic judo throw takes advantage of a foe's center of gravity. That should be ripe for abuse, and a good starting point. Sure, he tends to have his hands full with his knife and cleaver, but he should still be able to hook into something and throw it over his hip.
Arguably at least as offensive as it is defensive, but it’s more about countering than initiating an attack. That, and I don’t know how well it’ll work against larger foes. I think he could manage even one of the direbears once he gets good at it, but those are not the largest denizens. And against like a slime or a vine, or one of the soil elementals, the entire concept kinda falls apart.
I pick at the idea of offensive gravity abilities, and while I can think of a lot of them, they all feel… advanced. Really advanced. Like needing enough mana to make a serious dent in my own mana kind of advanced. Even the classic of just cranking up the gravity on a foe to crush them under their own weight seems pretty inefficient. Maybe some kind of orbiting knife? That’d be cool, and he could probably do that without too much difficulty.
Maybe some kind of gravity blade? The idea feels more like a spatial than gravitic technique. How do you even cut with gravity? An idea bubbles up in my mind at the rhetorical question, and I pause to mull it over.
Cutting might not be the word most associated, but shearing is a common descriptor for tidal forces. When balanced properly, it literally makes the tides, just pulling on the water of the oceans enough to get them active. But when not balanced, it’s the sort of thing that tears moons into debris rings.
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I mentally experiment with a few potential methods to generate a tidal force, and have a few promising methods by the time Pul shows up. I’m relieved to see Teemo seems to be fully relaxed, even with me having gone pretty hard into gravitic concepts. I think it might be because of us both getting better at not melting his brain, but he speaks up and smirks toward my core, even from the porch.
“You remember why you got the gravity affinity in the first place, right, Boss?”
When you… oh, right! Heh, you already had your mind blown by it once, it’ll take a bit more than tidal forces to do it again, eh?
“Exactly, Boss. Now to see if we can teach it to Pul without leaking his brain out his nose.”
I chuckle, a little nervous that it might happen, but feeling reassured as I remember Pul has the affinity now, too. He might not really get the major theory, but he doesn’t really need to to be able to make it do what I’ll try to teach him.
He walks to the porch wearing his more normal adventuring gear, leaving the sneakier ninja stuff in his bag for now. “Hey Teemo!”
Teemo smiles and hops onto his hand as he gets close, and quickly makes his way to Pul’s shoulder before directing him down a shortcut. “You excited about the trip?”
“Yes. And uh… a bit nervous. I don’t think I’ve even been out of sight of the town before.”
“Ah, it’ll be fine. You’ll have an expert Ranger and the spiderkin Huntsmistress along. Try to learn as much as you can from them, and do what they say, and you'll be fine out there. I’ll get you a list of things to make sure you buy or make, mostly a small tent and bedroll, small enough to fit in your pack. If they won't fit, you should probably splurge and get a bigger space. A ninja needs to travel light, but when going into the wilderness, it’s better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.”
Pul nods, weighing the capacity of his bag. “I know I can fit a lot of meat into it, so I don’t think I’ll need to get a bigger pack.”
“That's about what Boss figured, yeah. He’s hoping to help you with your training while you’re out there, too. I won’t be there to translate, but you can learn from more than just me and Boss. He’s going to get you a bow to practice with, and ask Yvonne to make sure you know how to put the pointy ends where you want them by the end. He’s not trying to make you an archer, but having a ranged option will be very important in the long run.
Pul nods again as he steps out into the secret training room, where Rocky nods at him before returning to the speedbag. I don’t know what he still has to gain from it, but I’m not going to tell him to stop something that clearly works.
“Boss also wants you to practice with your affinities. Onyx and Rocky are going to be along, too, so they can both help you with your fighting, and Onyx can help you with your shadow affinity.”
“Thediem doesn’t have advice for shadow?” Pul asks, looking surprised as Teemo laughs.
“He knows a lot less than a lot of people think. Shadow is one of the affinities he knows practically nothing about. He has a few vague ideas, but they’re so vague even he isn’t willing to test them yet. Thankfully, Onyx should know enough to make up for it. Now, for an affinity that Boss does understand, let’s talk about gravity, hmm?”
Rocky grunts and stops the speedbag, coming over to listen. Teemo gives him a curious look, before smirking at his grunt.
“Rocky says he wants to know a bit more, too. He got the affinity the same as everyone else, but it’s not one he worked to get, so he feels pretty inadequate with it.”
Fair enough. Gravity isn’t an easy one to translate into personal scale anyway. I explain tidal forces to Teemo, who gives a low whistle at the weaponization of the concept, then launches into his own explanation for the others.
“So far, most of the gravity stuff has been using just one center, or playing with where the center points. Boss wants you to use what happens when something is pulled between two different centers. It’ll be hard to make work for a punch, but it should work great for stabs and cuts. The closer you can get the two centers, the more disruptive it’ll be, so try to focus them on either side of your cleaver, Pul.”
He dutifully pulls out his cleaver and concentrates, and I can feel two small gravity wells about a foot to either side of the cutting edge of the blade. “Now, the hard part is going to be keeping them apart. They’re going to pull on each other, too. The other thing to watch for is the reaction for your cleaver. If you don't keep them balanced, you could bend it out of shape, or even break it.”
Pul increases the distance in concern, and Teemo laughs. “Just keep an eye on it and you’ll be fine. Though you might want to practice with some throwaway blades before trying it on your good stuff.”
The changeling lets the wells dissipate, which Rocky takes as his cue to try it himself. His wells appear a finger-width apart, and the disturbance between them is clear in the air, like a heat shimmer. Teemo nods.
“Yep, like that. The forces are centered between the… well, centers, so the next step is to stretch them into a line or maybe a circle. Gravity likes to have things spinning around things, so experiment and see what you can do.”
Rocky plays with just the two for now, getting a feel for them as Teemo returns his focus to Pul. “So that’s offense. For defense, Boss wants you to refocus on your judo, and use gravity to help. Your weapons will make it harder to throw people around, but throwing things around is exactly what gravity’s for. You’ll just have to figure it out on your own. Or with Rocky and Onyx’s help, more likely.”
Rocky grunts and grins, and despite how intimidating Rocky can be, Pul smiles eagerly. “I can’t wait!”
“Good! Then get practicing! I’ll get the list of stuff written while you do that, and get you a bow and some arrows, too. Go easy on him, Rocky. Boss likes him in one piece.”
Rocky and Pul both nod and prepare for some training, without even reacting to the joke. Clearly, training is serious business. Or I need new material.
