[CYA] Chapter 99: Life and Death

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RFMgHOvqJJ28kAm642mEs6YemhxaduoM21GVygyhdPg/edit?usp=drivesdk

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<Alex, Real - Endure, High School Main Hall>

That afternoon, as Alex again fought as the linchpin with three spear wielders to either side, they had a visitor to their little battlefield.

Stephen, the Death Mage, came to the wall to watch near the end of the between-meal interval.

He didn’t interfere, nor did he watch for long enough to give the impression that he was trying to pick holes in their various fighting styles. Instead, it was rather obvious that he was making his presence known, and then politely waiting until they finished.

They did so less than ten minutes later, when the ‘afternoon snack’ bell tolled forth, causing the seven fighters to surge forward before they withdrew in an orderly manner, all gaining the top of the wall before the undead recovered enough from their brief surge to re-engage them.

It was a bit frustrating holding back and not finishing off the undead, but since there still weren’t enough of the creatures streaming in to continue challenging them if they engaged in wholesale slaughter, they needed to fight the same opponents multiple times in order to work on their skills and teamwork to best effect.

Now that they were back out of danger, none of them were out of breath, per se, but they were all weary, and that was made evident as waters and other drinks were pulled out and guzzled.

It was hard to hydrate while in constant battle, but Leanne had proposed returning to a nearby sporting goods store to pick up some hydration packs. In theory, that could help immensely.

Alex had no issue with his own hydration as he could summon water straight into his own mouth. The only difficulty he foresaw was timing it so he could swallow before he needed to breathe again, but as it turned out, his ring of breathing removed that concern, simply taking a bit of mana. Even so, there had been a few instances where his timing had been less than perfect, and his body had hitched despite no difficulty in breathing presenting itself, and he’d ended up having to fight while spluttering and coughing because he’d accidentally sent water up his own nose, much to the initial confusion of his battle companions.

It was odd to get his body used to ‘breathing’ normally while drinking. Even while splitting and coughing, his breathing had been easy as… well breathing normally was. Good thing to practice, I suppose. This is more valuable than I even assumed it would be.

When his companions inquired about his difficulty, he’d told them about the spell to Create Water, and how it interacted with the Ring of Breathing. They’d understood and had universally refused his offer to create water for them within their mouths—or at least try to do so—much to his bafflement.

Either way, now that they were out of the thick of things, they were all furiously hydrating, while he was mostly fine.

Stephen took that moment as his opportunity, stepping forward and holding out his hand. “Alex, right? I’m Stephen. We met before?”

Alex nodded, taking the skeletal man’s hand. “Good to meet you again, Stephen. So, a death mage?”

Stephen chuckled. “Yeah. It made sense to me.” He shrugged. “Plus, I’ve always thought death magic could be fun.”

Alex grunted, a bit unsure what the man was there for.

The other man grinned, leaning forward conspiratorially. “I’ll answer the question you are likely too polite to ask. No, my appearance has nothing to do with my magic. I’ve always had a hard time eating. No, it’s nothing to do with body image. I just don’t really like food or eating. When I did eat, I had trouble keeping most things down” He shrugged. “Before all this, I basically survived on Mountain Dew and goldfish crackers. Both great, but they weren’t designed to be the only food someone eats.” He shrugged again. “Regardless, I was trying to get help, but doctors had a hard time believing that I didn’t do drugs. Thus, most of the tests they did, or treatments they prescribed, were geared toward ‘catching me out’ as a meth user or something of that kind.”

Alex blinked at the torrent of information, deciding to focus in on the last bit. “So… no meth?”

Stephen laughed jovially, clearly not offended in the least. “Not even once. Heard it’s nasty stuff, and I’m bad enough off as it is. Or, at least, I was.”

Alex grunted. “But… now?”

The thin man shrugged. “Something in the initialization cured me. I can eat pretty much anything now.”

“But short rations…” Alex was starting to understand.

“And heavy exercise, yeah.” The man shrugged again. “But that’s not really why I’m here.”

Alex chuckled. “I figured not, as interesting as it is to know. What can I do for you?”

“I want to test my magic against yours. I think that the training would be good for both of us.”

Alex arched an eyebrow. “I’m not exactly keen to be pumped full of death magic.”

Stephen was already shaking his head before Alex finished. “No, no. I figured we’d each try to fill the same object with our power, or transfer our power through it. In that way, we could let the magics fight it out in something inanimate. That way we could observe, learn and grow. Worst case scenario, we’d only be exposed to a few bits of the other’s magic.”

That… that actually sounded like a really good idea if Alex was being honest. “Yeah. That’s probably a really good idea.”

Stephen smiled, the expression filled with a strangely human joy and excitement, undiminished for his tall, emaciated frame. “I’m glad you like the idea. I’ll find a few items for us to try. How about after last call tonight?”

Last call? It took him a moment to remember that that was what the last ‘meal’ of the day was called. “Sure. That sounds like a plan.”

Stephen looked at the others as they returned to their feet, or otherwise reoriented on Alex, nodding to the five who had been in his group, and smiling at Natasha. “Speaking of food, shall we?”

Alex nodded. “Lead on, Stephen. Let’s put some meat on those bones.”

The man rolled his eyes good naturedly as they moved back toward the high school. “Yeah, yeah. Never heard that one before.”

The rest of the day passed without incident as Alex ate, fought, gave Life to the unturned, trained, and finally showered, only then finding Stephen in one of the side rooms.

Laura was on ‘guard Alex’ duty for the time being, and she took up position outside the door, pulling out a book as she settled down.

The classroom had all the desks pushed to the sides to clear a space in which Stephen was already sitting on a comfy looking cushion.

Opposite him was another such cushion, and between the two stretched a number of similar items.

There was a wooden broom handle as well as one of aluminum. Then, there was a rope, and what looked to be a hollow metal tube.

Those four items caught Alex’s attention as he sat down. “So, what’s the plan?”

Stephen grinned. “Glad you made it. My thinking to start is that we each grab one end of the same item, and send either Life or Death ‘to the other end.’”

Alex considered a moment before nodding. “Sure? Do you have a limit on your Death? Or is it just a spell or…?”

Stephen nodded. “I’m limited in a sense, I had to sacrifice some of my max HP to create a ‘Death’ pool that I can draw from. I can increase that all I want, but I can’t decrease it, if that makes sense.” Alex nodded his understanding, and the man continued. “It refills pretty slowly, but the spells that I do have which use it use very little and are vastly more powerful than a spell using the same amount of MP.”

“Huh, so you enact your magic through DP?” Alex arched an eyebrow.

Stephen gave him a flat look, then snorted, shaking his head. “No. No, it’s not called that.”

Alex shrugged. “If the acronym fits…”

“It does not.”

“Fine. So Death?”

“Yup. I have two hundred points currently. What about you? Does it work similarly with Life?”

Alex finally sat marveling at how comfy the floor pillow was. It still wasn’t as good as a well made chair but still. “It’s actually a bit similar. I have to pull Life from my max HP as well, but it’s not gone for good, and it restores only when I have full health, and at that point, it takes ten thousand points of HP—regenerated while at full health—to gain a point of Life back, raising my max HP back toward the true maximum.”

Stephen sighed. “Wow… that’s a lot better than Death…” Then, then man frowned, seeming to be considering further. “Wait, you have to be at full health to restore it?”

“Yup, and I can’t restore it at all otherwise.”

“Hmmm. I actually gain Death if I’m hurt, it seems to be around 1% of the damage I take. Beyond that, dealing damage gives me Death, or it just slowly refills about ten points every hour, or five percent of my total Death Pool.”

“That’s a bit slower than my Life refills when I’m at full HP, but I have crazy recovery rate and this ring to quintuple it.”

Stephen nodded, glancing at the ring Alex held up. “I can see that. I also have other means of recovering, so…” He shrugged. “Different but probably similar.”

“Can you use your Death to heal?”

“Others? No. Myself? Sort of… even if not really?” Stephen rubbed his upper arm with the opposite hand as he considered. “When I take a hit, instead of gaining Death from damage taken, I can spend that amount of Death to negate the hit and damage. It isn’t very efficient as it’s effectively double the ‘sticker price’ in Death points for me, but I do have that option.”

Alex’s eyebrows went up. “That’s pretty cool. Is that a separate skill, or just an inherent part of being a death mage?”

“Seperate skill. Death’s Defiant Defense.”

Alex told him about his ‘Life’s Active Defense’ skill, and Stephen chuckled.

“It really does seem like at least parts of our classes are mirrors of each other. I’m excited to see what we can learn with the new perspective.”

Alex found himself smiling as well. “Indeed. So, shall we get started?”

Stephen nodded. “Let’s.”

Alex grabbed the rope first, as something about it made him think of Life in a way similar to the wooden broomhandle but a bit more strongly.

As such, when he tried to send Life down it, he thought it would be easy… He was wrong.

He had quite often sent his Life into things, but never along them. In fact, he’d often lamented not being able to send Life into his enemies through his sword, but he’d also never had such a controlled environment in which to try.

Stephen on the other hand, was able to start sending magic onto the rope as soon as he picked up the other end, causing the thing to darken to Alex’s Basic Mana Sense enhanced eyes.

No… that’s not right. Even with my eyes closed, I can see the darkness of the death magic progressing. If I do that, though, I don’t have the visual of the rope to overlay onto it.

“Alex? Are you going to start?”

Alex sighed. “I am trying… I’ve never sent my Life through or over something… except in cases where I was affecting the conduit as well.”

“Ahh, like all those undead you ashed to save us?”

“Yeah,” Alex quirked a smile, “like that.”

“I see.” The thin man frowned, scratching at one temple, disturbing part of his mop of dark hair. “Do you have any spells or abilities that use Life?”

Alex shook his head. “I can send Life with a touch and some mana, or with my blood, but nothing uses it as a resource.”

“Fascinating. You aren’t a Mage, right?”

“No, a Greatbladesman.”

“Even more interesting. It’s possible that you will be limited to direct contact because you are a melee class, but I’m just guessing. It’s also possible that you just haven’t found the trick of it. When you send blood, do you have to be in contact?”

Alex frowned, almost saying ‘yes’, but then he paused. “Not direct contact? I don’t think I could do it across a room, but I don’t have to touch where my blood is going directly.”

“Okay, perfect.” Stephen smiled. “Picture that. Imagine sending your Life to the other end of this rope, but through the rope, not through your blood.”

Alex sighed. “That makes no sense.”

The other man shrugged. “Well, I’ll be here, try various things.”

Alex looked at the advancing death warily. “What happens if that reaches me?”

“It’ll feel like weakness in the hand holding the rope, but at this level, that’s about it. It’ll hurt, but not too much.” Stephen shrugged again. “Though, I don’t know if your Life magic will make you more or less susceptible to Death.”

Alex sighed. “Well, I suppose it will be good to find out.”

“Indeed.”

They continued to talk as Alex tried various things. Nothing worked, and with a trickle of Death contacting his hand—actually not doing any HP damage even as it caused his muscles to lightly cramp and spasm—he was having a hard time focusing. To take his mind off the pain, he asked, “So, Death is good against undeath?”

Stephen smiled. “Yup. It seems that Undeath is a weaker combination of Life and Death magics, greatly susceptible to disruption by both. My current theory is that either magic type unbalances the mix, ruining the ratio and making it no longer ‘undeath.’ At that point, it ceases to function as the various magics and effects need it to work.”

“That…” He blinked a few times. “Huh. That actually makes a lot of sense. It would explain why my Life unravels them so effectively.”

“Exactly. Death seems to just shut them down, but who actually knows what the ratios are, what tolerances are, and what going outside those tolerances to either side actually does.”

“That’s true, yeah.”

Stephen really did seem to be picking up a far deeper, more conceptual understanding of his magics than Alex was, but he supposed that that was due to the base nature of their different classes.

Eventually, frustratingly, Alex realized that he should be letting the skill guide him, rather than trying to force the Life to do what he wanted to do. 

As to which skill? He had two that seemed to apply, both Basic Life Transfusion and Basic Internal Life Manipulation could be useful here, and in truth he was leaning a bit on both. He was focusing on the former, as he tried to move his Life outside his body, and the latter as he tried to do that without additional mana expense.

Even so, what he was aiming for was beyond both in different ways, and as he finally leaned on the skills more fully, it clicked into place, and his Life moved from his hand and onto the rope, pushing back at Stephen’s Death.

Stephen’s focus snapped back to the rope, and he set aside the book he’d been holding in his other hand. “Hey! It looks like you’ve got something there.”

Alex couldn’t help but grin. “Yeah, so it seems.”

“Well done.”

Alex was sending his Life—at a rate of about a point every twenty seconds—down the rope. As he did so, it seemed to reach an equilibrium with Stephen. There was a decided drop off in ‘strength’—if that was even the right word—of his Life as it went. The fact that Stephen was experiencing a similar thing likely explained how he was able to push the Death back with such ease at first.

He’d put five points of Life down the rope, and more was poised to flow down, but as it was now meeting a near-equal flow of Death, there was a bit of a stop, pressure building just slightly as his Life just wouldn’t keep moving.

Stephen described the same thing happening on his end.

When nothing changed after about a minute, they both tried to draw their power back.

Stephen’s began to withdraw immediately at his desire, but Alex found he had to shift his mindset so that the Life he was still in contact with ‘passed’ the command down the line. Only then did his Life slow and draw back from the withdrawing Death.

Stephen was grinning, practically ear to ear. “That was great! Did you get anything from that?”

Alex almost said ‘No,’ but then he noticed the notifications waiting for him. “Well, it seems like I might have. Let me check.”

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