Mana Mutation Menace (Journey to Chaos Book 3) (57 page)

“How about a trade: three daggers, two swords, an axe, and
two suits of body armor.”

“That’s oddly specific.”

Eric thought so too, but a lie came naturally.

“I want three daggers for myself and my two teammates, two
swords for Tiza so she can dual wield them, an axe for domestic labor jobs, and
the armor for Tiza and Nolien as well because they lack my and my mentor’s
physical advantages.”

“Alright, that makes sense. Okay, first show me your true
form.”

Eric reached for his grendel identity and allowed it to
shift his human body into its true stature. It occupied substantially more space
and this delighted Sonic. He fingered his way from Eric’s knuckles, up his arm,
and down his back.

“Fascinating! The stuff I could make with this...” He grew
an abacus in his stomach and set about making the calculations. “Now let’s
see….considering your size…..” He moved several rings to the right. “Then
balance that against the equipment you asked for.” He moved other rings to the
left. After a couple permutations of this, the abacus dissolved into his
stomach. “If I took four complete hides, then we would have a fair trade.”

“Deal!”

“What!?” Emily asked. “He wants to take every inch of
flesh off your body! Four times! Even if you
can
grow it back, how is
that okay?”

“Smithery is my Eternal Hobby,” Sonic said seriously.
“It’s what I do to stave off chaotic madness and create meaning in my life.
Opportunities like this are what I live for. Besides, it’s just skin. It’ll
grow right back.”

“I don’t think you grasp how painful this is going to be
for Eric,” Emily said.

“Emily...”

“Shut it, Eric! You don’t understand this either. You may
have an elven girlfriend, but
I’ve
spent a lot more time around elves
than you have. They think differently, and not because they literally have
chaos in their brains. Their Seed of Chaos makes them apathetic. They think nothing
of ripping arms off because they grow back. They can’t understand a human’s
need for food because starvation can’t kill them. They think we’re stupid
barbarians because we can’t spend our lives doing mad science for shits and
giggles. Just because you have a Seed of Chaos, it doesn’t make you an elf.”

Someone clapped. Everyone looked up and saw that it was
Tasio.

“Well said! I’m glad I dragged you here. You’re fun.”

“Go to the abyss. You’re worse than they are.”

Tasio shrugged and said, “Guilty.” Then he disappeared
again.

The smith looked shocked and immediately bowed his head in
apology.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to give the impression that I
wanted to avoid pain by pushing it on someone else. I assure you that elves
still comprehend pain even if we do heal quickly from it. If I could transform
myself into a grendel, I would, but I have no idea how to do so. I don’t know
what they look like and I don’t know how their skin works. How about this?
Three hides.”

Emily threw up her hands. “It’s like talking to a wall. I
don’t think you’ve ever had your skin peeled off before.”

“You have?”

“Eight weeks ago; Bog of Poisoned Glory. I was helping
Kallen find Forol so she could ask the goddess for a blessing. I was infected
by a parasite that ate my skin before my eyes, then moved into my internal
organs. Kallen had to give me two years off her life just to keep me stable
enough to get to the ER. I was in intensive care for seventy-two hours.”

“Okay, two hides.”

“Emily, it’s all right,” Eric said. “If I didn’t believe
in the idiom ‘no pain, no gain,’ I wouldn’t make it through Basilard’s training
sessions.”

“One hide or Eric walks out and you’ll lose this
opportunity forever.” Emily leaned in closer. Her stare was sharp and piercing.
Her Evil Eye filled him with despair for lost time and crushed dreams. “For the
rest of eternity, you’ll curse your greed overcoming your creativity.”

“Fine. One full hide for everything.”

Emily blinked and leaned back. “I’m glad we could come to
terms.”

Kallen slung an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in
close.

“You drive a hard bargain, as usual.”

“It was nothing, Boss. Just practice.”
 

A standard human will replace their entire body’s worth of
skin in seven years. It will come off in tiny pieces and replace itself so
slowly and subtly that the human will neither feel nor notice. It was a
different matter to do the same thing within seven hours.

The pain was atrocious. Anesthetics weren’t an option; the
Seed of Chaos would dissolve it be it chemical or magical. More than once, Eric’s
core grendel instincts designated the smith as a “threat” and his demon personality
had to suppress it. Each time was harder than the one before it, but he
reminded himself of Annala’s depression and Kasile’s ambition.

Other sufferers of mana mutation registered, but they
provided little motivation. They were neutrals in his view and thus they didn’t
matter. It was his mate-to-be and little sister that inspired him. Then he
remembered how much they cared for neutrals, and these in particular had their
own families. This inspired him further.

In the end, there was an empty grendel hide stretched out
on the wall next to Grendel Eric, which Emily found to be creepy. Eric himself
was in a significant amount of after-pain such as nerve endings and phantom sensations.
The Seed of Chaos was still repairing damage; the muscles on his arms
showed, his eyeballs stood out in their sockets, and one could glimpse his
organs. He looked like a chaotic ghoul. Every square inch of him ached.

In exchange, the smith handed Eric a bag. It was quite
plain to behold, not even much in the way of runes. There was only the Flower
of Chaos and Sonic’s own brand for his business.

“It’s a zerofinite bag. Consider it a bonus.”

Eric stuck his head inside the bag and saw everything that
he was promised. He also saw enough room to put one hundred and eight
duplicates of those items and comfortably house enough people to wear them.

He pulled his head out and said, “Wow. Thank you.”

 Eric slung the bag over his shoulder and he didn’t need
his grendel strength to do so. In addition to encumbrance dampening, the bag
also minimized the weight of the items it carried. The trio left the shop to
the sounds of Sonic giggling madly over his new materials.
“Please tell me the next person the list is not that creepy,” Emily asked.

“You’re in luck; the list says ‘elven tech,’” Eric
replied. “Nunnal seems like a well-adjusted and sweet-tempered woman.”

“She is,” Kallen said, “but in her lab, she can be as
scary as Hasina.”

Eric shuddered. Even as an enlightened mage and a grendel demon,
that mad scientist still gave him chills.

“I’ve already been cut open once today. I don’t want to be
vivisected.”

“Don’t worry, she’d wouldn’t want to vivisect you,” Kallen
assured. “She’d rather alter your genetics so you pee lemon juice.”

“Ew,” Emily said. “I think Norej would prefer a
Chocolatier’s Stone. Do you think we can afford one?”

“What’s a Chocolatier’s Stone?” Eric asked.

Kallen nudged Emily. “Good idea, but Honey doesn’t sell
them and Nunnal promised not to reverse-engineer them. But it would be a good
place for a snack. All we need is mud.”

The trio spent the next ten minutes harvesting. They
brushed away snow, dug into the frozen ground, and chopped away at it to gather
dirt into their hands. Eric kept his in his grendel hands so as to carry more,
but the girls had bags for just this sort of thing. It was part of their
profession as field agents.

The village’s epicenter of sugar, spice, and all things
sweet was Honey Ouran’s dessert cafe. Appropriately, it was a cacao tree and the
inside smelt of chocolate, pastries, and smoothies. The layout resembled a
tavern; tables, chairs at a bar, and people fooling around on them. It reminded
Eric of
Full Mug
except the people were hyped up instead of hung over. There
were no decorations, just bark. The many waitresses were more than lovely
enough for any patron.

Brilliant hair and flawless skin compounded with adorable
blue and white maid outfits made the staff irresistible. They rushed back and
forth delivering cakes and refilling hot chocolate, and always with a beautiful
smile. Eric couldn’t take his eyes off them, not even when Emily jabbed him in
the ribs and gestured frantically at Kallen. The chimera shrank in the light of
the elven beauties. Finally, Emily grabbed his ear, pulled him outside, and
shoved his head into a snow bank.

“What was that for?”

“Just because you’re a grendel doesn’t excuse you for
ignoring other people’s feelings!”

“Emily, it’s all right,” Kallen said.

“No, it’s not! You’re wasting your time; there’s no
getting around his elf fetish.”

“I don’t have a fetish.”

Emily sent a dry and incredulous look. “Annala. Zaticana.
Honey. Need I go on?”

“I’ve never met Honey. Wait...do you mean
all of them
are Honey?”

“Yes, they are,” Kallen said. “She cloned herself and
linked them in a hive mind so she could run her cafe all by herself. That’s her
Eternal Hobby. Now about the chocolate...”

She turned around, but Eric grabbed her shoulder. His look
was earnest. Hers was nervous. Emily observed them like a monster watches for
threats.

“Were you jealous?”

“Why would I be jealous?”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

“You’re avoiding the mission.” She removed his hand. “I
don’t do pointless things like get jealous over a guy who has a girlfriend
who happens to be my little sister
!
”

“Uh…Boss?”

“
What?
”
Kallen demanded through fangs.

“Your tail is showing.”

The black and white snake of her true form poked out of
the collar of her jacket. Its tongue slid in and out. Its eyes were knowing and
maternal.

“
Tengo muy amor
demo
Eric
hoshi des—”

Kallen clamped her hand over its mouth. She breathed
deeply in and out and the snake retracted down her back and disappeared. Smiling
awkwardly, she walked back into the bar. Emily followed her, muttering, “Why
did I ever date him?”

Inside, Kallen gave her mud to the Honey standing behind
the counter. This one too was dressed like a maid, but she wore a jeweled
headband instead of a ruffled headdress. Accepting the mud, she placed it into
a machine. Other than being orange, it didn’t look like the fantastic machine
Eric imagined. It was a glass cylinder with two chambers; nothing more. He
thought it would involve big loops and exotic contraptions.

 Honey placed her hands on either side of the device and
worked her magic. The cylinder glimmered as the mud transitioned from the first
chapter to the second. It was now a different brown substance. Kallen stuffed
her face and ordered ice cream to go with it.

“So that’s why it’s called ‘The Chocolatier’s Stone,’”
Eric muttered as he chewed on his own sample. It left him feeling substantially
better, but a bad feeling regarding Kallen remained. It was a strange feeling,
like hurting himself.

A memory stirred as Honey poured him vanilla coffee.
Shortly after his rebirth, when Kallen asked him what she meant to him at the
ICDMM, she had more than a scholarly interest. His reply was confused; she was
not family nor friend, nor food no enemy, nor obstacle nor neutral. He could
only reply that she was like himself.

This will be the subject of my next meditation session.
I’m positive there’s something in Grey Dengel’s part of my memory that can help
me with this. In the meantime, a machine that can turn mud into chocolate
serves my purposes.

“Do you have another one of those?”

“A couple in the back. Why?”

“No reason. Just curious.”

Emily and Kallen both sent him a look; Kallen approving
and Emily annoyed. Honey herself was suspicious and sent out a message to her
clones. She saw what they saw and heard what they heard. Centuries of practice
enabled her to keep up with and process all the information coming from all of
them simultaneously. She was also plugged into the cafe’s surveillance and
security system. Nunnal promised not to reverse-engineer her technology, but
she also promised not to share her own with a human, so she had to be careful. Nothing
could happen in this shop without her knowing about it.

Eric ate the rest of his chocolate, then excused himself
to the restroom. He took in everything on his way and determined that there
were no threats but plenty of obstacles. The magic here was advanced for a cafe.
Even Dengel’s Lair was antiquated compared to a modern elven village. In any
case, it was unfamiliar. Finding all of them and disabling them would not be
practical. Then it hit him—
They’re looking for threats.

No matter what action he took, if he appeared to be a
threat, then they would take action against him. So many attacking at once
would be a challenge and it would be pointless. Thus, he couldn’t appear as a
threat. If that was the case, why appear at all?

“Hide in night, no sight,” he muttered. “Hide in night, no
sight.”

Between his hands, he formed and molded a dark bolt. He
clasped them together to hide this from Honey’s gaze. Not even a Mana Concentration
Detection device would pick it up because it was his spiritual power that was
creating the bolt, not mana. This was not magecraft, but spiritcraft. He drew
the shadows of the room into himself. He nurtured and compressed them until
they were a seed of darkness. For the final addition, he pulled out his crystal
and added a touch of necrotic power to it.

“No one sees death coming, and that goes double for
immortal elves.”

Tossing back his head, he swallowed the seed whole.