Vessels

After getting back home from my little trip with Trevor and Charlotte, I consider spending the rest of the day in my room but in the end, I decided against it, choosing to go to the Lands to meet up with Luoi. After making up my mind I head to the bookshop.

Hugo is sitting behind his desk, writing something on a book in front of him. He doesn't look up as I enter.

"Good afternoon, Hugo," I greet.

"Good afternoon. Congratulations on second place."

"Thanks." I speak. All of a sudden, he stops writing and stares at me. After a few seconds of he looks back down at his book. I get the urge to ask him what was wrong but decide not to. Then I remember something I wanted to ask him about. "Hey Hugo, you mistakenly paid me last week."

During the holidays, when I first joined the Laen, I had gotten a job here to have an excuse to give my mum should she inquire where I was always going. Even though it was mostly to deceive her, Hugo had given me a job - cleaning the bookshop at closing times - and paid me for it. When school resumed, I quit, but I received payment last week even though I haven't worked here for the past month. I had been meaning to talk to Hugo about it but kept forgetting. I thought of just keeping quiet and taking the money, but I didn't fancy doing that to someone like Hugo, so here I am.

"It wasn't a mistake," Hugo says.

"But I didn't do anything."

"I know."

I pause, letting his words sink in. Well, I am not going to say no to free money. I head into the In-between before taking the portal to the Lands of Time. In the Lands, I take a few seconds to appreciate my surroundings, for some reason this place just feels more refreshing than earth and every time I come here, I can't help but appreciate the natural beauty of the place.

Once I am done, I activate a noer and wait. Not too long after a while deer appears not too far from me, trotting gently but making no sound as it does so. It is the deer Luoi usually possesses when he's not in me. It circles me once before settling down on the ground. Then it speaks. "I watched your fights. You did good, but you did let your guard down in your last fight, you might have won if you didn't."

"'Might'?"

"Yes, might. From what I saw you and that boy should be on par, but he seems to have more experience than you."

"Hmm. That reminds me, they gave me some Mage bracelets but I'm not exactly sure how I should use them, or what spells to store in them. Lathia told me to store Ultimates but I don't have anything that can classify as an Ultimate."

"Why don't you try using all of your Uua to create a Roe and then store that Roe? It is crude, but it should hold enough power to be able to be classified as an Ultimate. Of course, you can only use such a thing with the expectation that there'll be a lot of collateral damage."

I hadn't thought of something like that. Luoi is right, it is crude, but the power shouldn't be too little. Even a small Roe can hold sizeable power, and that only takes a fraction of my Uua. If I were to use all my Uua to make one, then just how powerful would it be? Excited, I begin to create one when Luoi adds. "Try using only half of your Uua first. Let's see how it is before you use it all."

I nod and do as he says. A few seconds later I am almost sweating. It turns out there might be a limit to the amount of power a Roe can hold. At first, things went smoothly, but as the power, I tried to store increased it became progressively difficult to store more power in the Roe. In the end, I stop, having only managed to store about one-eight of my power in the Roe.

After storing that, Luoi asks to see the noer I am using for the Roe. I show him. After a few seconds of studying, he modifies the part of the Roe that stores Uua. "This should drastically increase the amount of Uua it can store. Why don't you try again?"

This time, it is easier to create the Roe. I create one more after that, and then stop, panting. I am exhausted. Draining my Uua always has the effect of leaving me exhausted. I have this little theory that it might be because of its effects. Uua within the body has myriad positive effects such as increasing strength, boosting mental capacity, making it so that a little bit of sleep is enough for a whole day, and so on. Perhaps when I drain it, the effects are gone, and then all the little things I had been doing - only sleeping for about four hours, stressful physical activities in the name of training, et cetera - finally begin to show their downsides since the Uua isn't there to take care of it anymore. The theory is probably wrong, but at the same time, it might just be right.

Luoi advises me to hold off testing the power of the Roes I had just created, and I listen to him. While I slowly recover, I begin talking to him about my day, then I remember the vessels.

"Hey Luoi," I say, "what do you know about vessels?"

"Vessels? Why are you asking about those all of a sudden."

"I saw some today. In a Hido. It's this place where Erhaz-"

"I know what a Hido is. Describe to me exactly what you saw."

I do. I told him everything I saw, from the glass cases where most of them were, to the different types I saw within those cases. "So, what exactly are they?" I ask again. Trevor and Charlotte had told me what they thought the vessels were, but I feel like a Fasuru should be able to tell me more.

Luoi lets out a small mocking laugh. "Humans. Sometimes I wonder how your species managed to get this far with the stupidity some of you display. Keeping a vessel in a glass case. Such idiocy. Well, to answer your question the more powerful of my kin keep vessels as a way to channel their power without weakening themselves, it's the same reason we weaker ones want familiar-kin."

"Weaken themselves? Does using magic weaken you guys?"