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Chapter 65

Of course, the Blanche siblings couldn’t guess the complicated thoughts going through Mara’s mind. After a few moments of silence, her expression brightened again and she smiled at me.

“Maybe you can learn magic too!”

“Him?” Tyler let out a snort, barely managing to keep himself from snickering.

“Why not?” Mara demanded, looking a bit upset at his mockery.

“Brother can say a lot of annoying things,” Erika spoke up, eliciting a frown from him. “But he speaks the truth in this case. You have a talent for magic that he does not. You have a mutation.”

“Eh? A… mutation?”

“That is you can cast magic even though you’re a mortal. Normally, human beings are born as rank one. Over our lives, we gain an average of one rank a decade until we die. This isn’t completely true. You usually climb quickly in your younger years, and then as you age your ranks slow. This is why up to thirty is considered your prime years. Once passing thirty, your speed of gaining ranks or evolving diminishes quickly.”

“Thirty…” Mara glanced at me worriedly.

I rolled my eyes. If that was true, then I’d have been past my prime a few hundred years ago. It probably had more to do with ambition. As men reached thirty, they started to gain responsibilities. They couldn’t act as recklessly once they had wives, children, and their community to worry about. Tanner had made it to flawless by twenty, but after having Mara, he hadn’t made any more progress in the remaining ten years of his prime.

“Each rank is accompanied by a similar rise in status.” Erika continued a somewhat scholarly air about her. “When you evolve, the status increase multiplies by ten-fold. This is why every level of evolution is so much more powerful than the previous. However, for those who have a mutation, one of your statuses increases by ten-fold each level starting. Then, after each evolution, that ten-fold multiplier is put on top of the previous.”

“I see…” Mara had an expression like she was confused, but I understood it easily enough.

A mortal would normally rise from 1 to 9 over his 9 ranks. When he evolved, he’d go from 19 to 99. Then, 199 to 999. This was more or less how my status increased. However, if you had a mutation in any of your statuses, then you’d be born with a 10, and rise to 90. Then, when you evolved the first time, you’d be at 190 and rise to 990. You’d be as powerful as someone one evolution above you in your status of mutation. Although you’d be a few points lower than them, it was likely negligible in practice.

“For you, Mara, although you are a rank eight mortal, you have ten times the mana of another mortal at your rank. This multiplier will benefit you for the remainder of your life. Most people can’t practice magic until they are a paragon, but you’ve already connected to your mana sources. Take a brother, for example. Although he is a flawless, his magic is only a little higher than your own.”

“I have a mutation in agility,” Tyler snorted.

“Ah, yes.” She blushed. “Mutations can exist in any status, but for a mage, naturally magic is the most important.”

“What about Spirit?” Mara asked.

Erika gave me a pitying look. “I’m sorry, he has no magic at all. Even for a mortal, he’s very low rank.”

“It’s hard to believe you two are even related,” Tyler spoke up. “Mutations tend to run in the family. Most family clans have mutations. If your parents have mutations, you most likely will too.”

“Ah… that… I don’t know if our parents did.” Mara spoke carefully, glancing my way.

I shrugged. I also didn’t know if Tanner had a mutation or not. He did seem a bit powerful for someone at his level, so maybe he did. Also, I seem to recall Carolina using magic as a mortal, so it was probably she had a magic mutation too. I wasn’t going to mention it in front of these two though.

“Well, mutations can happen at birth. They’re called origin mutations. Large clans try to find those with origin mutations and bring them in to strengthen their family mutations. That’s where my brother and I got our mutations. My mother was an origin, and her family married her to the Blanche family.”

“More like sold her off.” Tyler made a face.

“Brother…” She shook her head, clearly not happy with his words.

“So, that’s how he was able to hold off a higher rank flawless.” I punched my palm in realization.

“You knew his level? Yes, well, even though we were the same evolution, the Blackbolt leader outranked me. If I didn’t have an advantage in agility, I would have likely not held out. I’m only a rank two flawless, whereas he was a rank seven. There is little question of the victor when there is such an exaggerated difference.” He admitted unhappily. “Perhaps, if he was a simple bandit, I’d have a chance, but he was military trained.”

“You did wonderful, Brother.” Erika tried to reassure him.

“You didn’t do so bad yourself,” I responded. “Even though you’re merely evolved, you still were able to keep them all back for quite some time.”

Erika’s face turned red. “It wasn’t all me. My master prepared some safeguards in case I was in trouble. I still had overestimated my opponent, and it resulted in the deaths of countless people.”

I reached out and touched her shoulder, causing her to gasp. “Don’t blame yourself for variables outside of your control. The only ones to blame are the ones who attacked. You single-handedly delayed them and brought down more enemies than all the knights combined. That is no mean feat. Likely, your flashy spells also brought the sagebeast over, so without your help, everyone, including us, would be dead.”

“Ah… Ah…” She stared up at me, her eyes welling with tears, then a smile formed on her lips. “I knew you were a kind person.”

“Ow, why are you pinching me?” I glanced over to Mara, who was looking up at me with her cheeks puffed unhappily, one hand pinching my arm.

Of course, she couldn’t pinch me hard enough to hurt me, but I didn’t want her to think she could make a habit of it. As soon as I looked at her, she looked away, but her hand remained clinging to my sleeve.

“Y-y-y-you…” I turned back to see Tyler shaking. “Unhand my sister.”

I looked down at my hand still on her shoulder and then removed it. “I’m sorry, that was impolite.”

Erika looked down, biting her lip. “It’s fine, it was an accident.”

“How was that an accident!” Tyler snapped.

It honestly was. The more I was around women, the more my old mannerisms returned. I had seen a moment of weakness in Erika and had moved on impulse. It wasn’t like I cared about her strength or happiness. I had just seen the opportunity to soften her feelings for me and took them without thought. Even after an eternity as pond scum, I still couldn’t stop being a skirt-chaser.

As I was thinking about it, I was looking down at my fingers, moving them in my hand. It wasn’t until I felt Mara pinching me again that I realized it looked like I was savoring the contact between Erika and me. I looked up, putting my hand away. Tyler was shaking in indignant rage, while Erika was looking away like she hadn’t noticed, but her face was red.

“I’m going to patrol the area.” I pulled away and headed down the path.

“Be careful and stay close!” Tyler finally recovered and shouted. “I don’t want you accidentally luring ant sagebeasts to camp!”

I raised my hand, but otherwise kept walking.  Thankfully, Mara let me leave and remained with Erika. It wasn’t that I was running away or anything. Sometimes, it was just better to maintain my distance. Besides, my senses were at a level I could keep a watch on Mara from a fair distance away. After reaching my third human rank, I could make enough cells to leave a piece of myself as a remote sensory organ. Using Anatomical Separation and Signal Transduction, I could leave it any ware and still have an awareness even kilometers away.  I hadn’t perfected vision yet, but it could be used to hear at least.

I also had a place I distinctly wanted to go. I had detected it shortly after we came to a stop and I wanted to investigate it. After the trail turned out of sight, I immediately headed off the path and into the forest. I moved swiftly, and after about five minutes, I stopped at a small pond hidden between some trees. It was nothing like my old pond. It was half the size and was filled with tree roots. There was a clean stream entering into it, which made the water clean and clear.

I pulled off my clothing and then lowered myself into the pond. Saying that I was taking a bath wasn’t the right word. I had come from the pond and had lived in a pond for so much of my life. My human body felt somewhat restricted. I had especially felt it when I took care of those bandits. Moving cells over dry land was difficult. I had to create numerous underground canals to force the cells around, and even with my absorptive properties, I still lost a great deal of the water I had absorbed.

Either way, I wanted to take comfort in this pond. The water was cool and rather clean. After submerging myself for a bit, my body began to melt. Soon, I was completely merged in the water. It felt somewhat nostalgic to be in here. Part of me wondered whether once I finished Tanner’s mission, I’d just find a pond that was out of the way, and then spend my life there.

Since I now had half a trillion cells at my disposal, I quickly took over the environment. I planned to absorb all of the water once I was done soaking in it. In the meantime, I used Decoupling and burned sugar to warm it up. Soon, the little pond had become the equivalent of a hot spring. That took me back to a time long ago when I lived next to the farm and life was simple.

“It should be over here.”

I had let the time slip away and suddenly people were coming. I recognized the voice though and waited as two people stepped out into the area of the pond, a bundle in each hand.

“It’s pretty.” Mara declared.

“Mm! There is a reason I had Brother stop even though it wasn’t dark yet. I haven’t been able to bath since the last inn. You don’t need to worry, this place is safe.”

“B-but… Spirit hasn’t returned…” Mara looked uncertain, even as the other girl began to undress.

“You don’t need to worry about him.” Erika giggled. “If he knew about this place, he might sneak a peek. We wouldn’t want that, would we?”

It seemed like rather than a peek, I was going to get the whole show.