52 – Like a Cucumber

Despite the pain his body was in when he returned to the camp, Jonny was in high spirits. And hungry. Very hungry. Apparently, spending all day out hiking, waiting, and fighting was good for working up an appetite. When he got to the campsite, he immediately grabbed one of the largest chunks of meat they had on hand and got a fire going to thaw it, humming to himself as he did.

“Something good happen?”

Jonny flinched. He had thought she was asleep. Perhaps she had been, but seeing her now, he was pretty sure she had been pretending. Now that he thought about it, her sword was in a different spot than it had been when he left.

She was probably ready to come after me if I stayed out too much longer, he realized.

“Yeah, you could say that,” he said.

“You look like you were in a rough fight.”

Jonny glanced down, somehow for the first time noticing that his jacket was slightly torn up.

“I guess I kinda was,” he said. “There was this goat thing with huge black horns and gravity magic. It kinda kicked my ass.”

“A gravity goat?”

“Is that really what they’re called?”

“What else would they be called?”

“I dunno. Something cooler?”

“Like a cucumber?”

“What?”

“Cool as a cucumber. You said that the first day we met.”

“I did? Oh yeah, I did!”

“Are cucumbers considered cool in your homeland?”

“Uhhhh, no not really. That saying is ‘cause… I actually don’t know. It’s just a saying.”

“I see. So I take it from your good mood that you were able to kill the goat?”

“Nope!” said Jonny, turning the steak over to let the other side thaw. “As I said, it kicked my ass. But, watch this!”

He held his arms out to his sides, then made himself heavier, and his arms fell to his sides. A second later, he realized that was perhaps the most boring demonstration he could have done.

“Wait, hold on,” he said, trying to think of something more interesting to show.

“You can use internal gravity magic?” asked Igrette.

“Yes!” said Jonny.

He then made himself as light as he could, and pushed off the ground with his hands. He only got a few inches off the ground, but it took much less effort than it should have, and he fell slowly enough to be in the air for almost a full second. More than enough to demonstrate what he could do, at least.

“And now that I can do this, when I go back, I’m gonna kick that goat’s ass and take its mana well. By the way, it had a mana well. I didn’t just fight it for no reason. It’s got a whole mana well to itself, and now that I can use internal gravity, I can kill it, and we can stay there. It’s kind of exposed, but it should be fine for a while. I’m pretty sure the goat basically cleared everything else out in the area, and there aren’t many places for other things to hide. You should be able to recover well there!”

“Really?” she asked.

“Really,” Jonny confirmed. “It’s perfect.”

“It almost sounds too perfect,” Igrette said with a frown. “Are you sure the goat was alone?”

“Pretty sure. I waited there for a while, and nothing else showed up.”

Igrette’s frown deepened.

“It’ll be fine,” said Jonny. “There’s, like, nothing else around. I didn’t even see any plants. I bet that there’s not even anything else living around.”

“I certainly hope so,” said Igrette. “So we’ll be moving in the morning, then?”

“Yeah, probably,” said Jonny. “I figured I’d bring you most of the way there, then go beat up the goat, then come back to bring you the rest of the way.”

Igrette nodded, though she still looked uncertain. Jonny was actually happy about her uncertainty. He understood her concern, but he was also pretty sure she was just confused. She had been prepared to die, but now she was suddenly going to live again.

He had to admit she had a point about it all being too perfect. It was almost like the mana well had been designed for their specific situation. And her questions put a seed of doubt in his mind about whether or not the goat was actually alone. He tried to brush them aside, though. The goat looked pretty alone, and if there were more, he doubted they were as strong as that one. It was clearly very experienced and very skilled at combat.

Igrette did not press any further on the subject, at least. Instead, she turned the conversation to internal gravity magic, and now that Jonny could use it, she started giving him more specific tips on how to use it, and different techniques to use it better. The techniques all boiled down to just turning it on and off, and raising the intensity, but it was still eye-opening.

The most basic thing she said was that when striking, it was best not to activate it until as late as possible. She called it “gravity flashing” and basically, the idea was to max out internal gravity right at the moment of contact to keep from sliding without interfering with the strike. Punching or kicking in high gravity was quite difficult, so having it active the whole time was not ideal, and using gravity flashing also helped to conserve mana.

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When he told her his idea of using it to counter the goat’s magic, she said that she was about to advise him to do the same thing. In that fight, the goat’s main weapon was its control of gravity, and if he could neutralize that, it was just a goat. A very strong, very experienced goat, but still just a goat.

She also talked more briefly about some advanced techniques that involved using internal gravity for movement, but she said that most people couldn’t use it effectively. Enhancing or lightening personal gravity was one thing. Changing which direction it pulled was so different it was almost an entirely different branch of magic. Simple flight or rapid movement could be learned by combining physical agility with vertical internal gravity control, but true gravitational flight was something only the most skilled mages could accomplish.

While she spoke, Jonny took care of the meat, and by the time she finished, their dinner was ready. Jonny idly thought that maybe eating nothing but meat every day wasn’t the absolute best for his health, but he felt fine so far, and he had never really liked vegetables much anyway, no matter how his nutritionist tried to prepare them.