31 – Reading and Writing

I didn’t stay outside for much longer.

Much as I wanted to, the sky had started to near-imperceptibly lighten. Not dawn yet, but my instincts were already prodding me.

Only when the curtains fell into place behind me, plunging my room into pitch blackness, did I relax.

The second rat had graciously decided to also donate some blood after seeing his brother not suffer any ill effects. Not much more than a few drops, just like before.

Different to the previous rat though, I’d licked the spot before placing my incision. This had two effects. First, as I’d expected, it closed the wound back up in short order. Second, much more interestingly, it eliminated all pain when I pricked the skin. Very useful.

Even more useful, this local anesthetic effect lingered for a moment after my spit had dried or been wiped away.

Makes sense that a bloodsucker would develop saliva that dulls pain. It reminded me of various parasites back on Earth.

I might be misremembering, but did mosquitoes have an anesthetic effect? Or was that ticks? Mosquitoes definitely had a blood thinner. Either way, their bites were painless. The itching came afterwards.

In addition to the removal of pain, skin I licked was a bit numb. So it might not be totally impossible to bite someone without them noticing. Say if a person was sleeping. Obviously an awake person would notice unless I somehow developed incredible stealth abilities. I wasn’t nearly as small as a mosquito, after all.

Putting the growing list of properties contained in my saliva aside… Really though, can I bottle and sell this stuff? Ahem. Putting that aside.

My second rat blood donor confirmed my previous findings. Blood I drank contained mana.

This opened a lot of interesting considerations.

I had to assume most normal mages couldn’t just regain significant amounts of their reserves by drinking blood. Well, if they could, then at least unlikely as well as me.

An assumption based on little evidence, but I decided being a vampire must give me some benefits in this field. It would be quite disappointing if humans got even a slightly comparable benefit out of my main gimmick.

Blood-mana-content might be an explanation for why that blood I got from the dead ritual sacrifices was so bland. The collected blood I’d been splashed in had smelled amazing, after all. I wasn’t sure this was the reason, since I didn’t know how much impact mana had on the actual taste, but it was a possibility.

Could also explain why the rats taste so good, comparatively. They’ve been eating from that tree for a long time.

It wasn’t the easiest answer to get, but both the rat brothers I’d met earlier had been eating those fruit since shortly after they were born. If they accumulated mana in their bodies from the mana-rich food, their blood would also have more. Especially compared to a chicken raised in the town down the hill.

Not like there was anything inherently super different between a chicken and a rat that I would assume affected blood taste. Obviously rats were mammals and chickens were birds – assuming biology in this world worked similar to Earth – but why should a mammal’s blood taste so much better otherwise?

I need to try some other animals for comparison, if possible both specimens raised in town and ones from near a mana well.

Maybe I could find a rat from in town? If there were so many here, surely the town less than a kilometer away wouldn’t be free of them? And the mana well appeared to affect a very limited area.

Actually, now that I think about it, didn’t Anaster mention animals sometimes being improved by access to mana? I really have to check a different rat from elsewhere.

Pretty sure the rats here weren’t monsters though. They weren’t aggressive, not to mention not being that much bigger than I’d expect. Also, I very much doubted Anaster would have missed it. He might not have done anything about it, but I was pretty sure he’d have at least commented on it.

Something came to mind as well. Mia had placed an order for a ‘whole pig’ with a local farmer, as we’d discussed. She’d said it would take a few days to properly butcher and prepare, but that was a few days ago. It hadn’t been super important during the ongoing demon situation, so we hadn’t talked about it further.

But the delivery date should be soon. That would add another sample to my library.

Obviously the blood I’d be getting would be in form of blood sausage, but I could see whether there were any traces of mana. And of course test how filling processed blood was.

I had the suspicion there would be little to no mana left, but confirmation would have to wait. The blood sausage would also probably not taste nearly comparable to fresh blood, but if it worked as a bland way to fill my hunger, I’d be more than happy.

For now, I assumed my mana reserves were full. At least full enough that I didn’t have the drained sensation any more. I actually couldn’t feel it at all right now. Which was weird.

Still, I was excited when I picked the booklet back up. Then I put it down with a sigh.

If I jellied myself for hours, Mia would find me non-responsive when she came to check on me. I really didn’t want to do that to her, if at all avoidable.

Good thing I had a fully stocked desk here.

Fishing around the drawers, I found a sheet of paper, a fancy quill and a small bottle of ink.

Staring down at the empty page laid out on the table, the quill dribbling a blotch of ink onto it, I realized a rather large issue.

Memories inherited from Kalin were seamlessly allowing me to speak the local language. I didn’t even really notice it wasn’t English until I thought about it right now. My mind just kind of translated whatever I heard and spit out what I wanted to say.

Writing… wasn’t as easy. Kalin could read and write. His education had been limited, but not that much. But it wasn’t even remotely as ingrained as speaking. Especially now that it was jumbled up with my knowledge of the English alphabet and vocabulary.

Somehow, I’d managed to pen two letters perfectly fine after I’d been here less than a day, but now I was having issues. It might be because I’d simply done it back then, while now I’d made the mistake of thinking about it. As a result, now my mind was involved and it was confused.

Frowning, I attempted to sort the mess. I really didn’t want to start writing in a foreign language if I could help it. Especially since the language came from another world.

I had absolutely zero data on this, but how could I be sure there weren’t other people from Earth reincarnated here? If one of those ever saw notes in English, it would give the game away immediately. Or worse, what if a local was hostile to reincarnators and interrogated one before? Someone like that might recognize otherworldly languages as well.

This might all just be paranoia talking, but I really don’t want to risk it. After all, I somehow appeared here, taking over this body. So all the evidence available says it’s possible. And if something happens once, what’s to stop it from happening again?

To snap out of my linguistic problem, I pulled a book I’d found in the desk drawers out. This was another of those ‘treatment’ tomes Kalin had a lot of in his tower. The contents were utter garbage, as far as his memories went. It was in the local language though.

Leafing through the book, I grew a bit more confident in not mixing up the alphabets. Whatever the language here was called, it was a bit similar to English in structure. Letters formed words, formed sentences etc. None of the letters were the same and some – from my perspective – unusual sounds were represented, but it wasn’t really more complex than any foreign languages on Earth. Ones based on a different alphabet.

A foreign language I received years of transplanted memories for.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Aside from my initial difficulty, once I actually put quill to paper properly, Kalin’s muscle memory took over. Not like my message was very long.

‘Hello Mia,

In case you find me collapsed, know that I’m probably fine. I tested the book uncle Anaster gave me and it might knock me out.

If I don’t wake up or react (but am not actually dead, check my heartbeat and breathing), then please handle my affairs for me until I do wake up.

Thank you. Hopefully this message is totally unnecessary.

Signed, Kalin Steelheart.’

Placing the paper well visible on the desk, I sat back down on my bed. The metal booklet lay in my lap.

Opening it, I confirmed the first page was still the only part available. The patterns also hadn’t changed in the time the book had been closed.

Taking a deep breath, I placed my fingertips into the empty spaces. Pressing down when my touch was apparently too light.

Even though I was expecting it this time, I still couldn’t help but gasp.

Again my fingers felt light stings. And again there was a pulling, dragging, draining at some other part of me. A part I didn’t feel at all until then. This time the sensation was much clearer.

Not only was it obvious that I was being drained, but I could also clearly tell this drain went through my fingers. The increased clarity of the perception also meant it was significantly less pleasant. Especially so since I couldn’t pull my hand away, much as I wanted to.

My heart beat. I was surprised, since it had felt much longer. Apparently barely more than a second had passed. The book stopped gripping me. Then followed the part I’d been wary of.

A deep emptiness filled me, a void in a non-physical part of my body. And as if on cue, my body repeated its award-winning ‘puppet with its strings cut’ performance.