52 – Feather

The expression on Saffra’s face was rather comical. She at least didn’t look panicked at being presented another gift—though Vivi predicted that was only thanks to superseding emotions. Wide green eyes flicked around at the huge radius of melted snow, then back to the brilliant, otherworldly red and orange feather.

“Please tell me that isn’t what I think it is,” she said weakly.

“It’s a phoenix feather.”

Saffra winced hard, as if Vivi had physically struck her. “That’s…what I thought it might be. Lady Vivi, why are you giving me a phoenix feather?”

“It’s just a vessel. Here, take.”

Vivi at least didn’t have to insist this time; Saffra, if with extreme hesitation, took the feather without need for cajoling. She cradled its hollow base between two fingers, holding it as far away from herself as she physically could.

“A vessel?”

“It stores a magical construct. Say [Summon].”

Several seconds of dubious silence passed, but finally, Saffra commanded, “[Summon].”

In a familiar display, a pillar of sunfire exploded from the ground, from which, with a cry, a huge bird of burning plumage emerged. Resplendent in orange and yellow, the simulacrum of a phoenix was a magnificent sight, and nearly indistinguishable from one of its true brethren.

Saffra immediately began scrambling backward, almost tripping over herself in her haste to escape the legendary creature. Vivi realized she should have warned the girl.

“It’s not a real phoenix,” Vivi tried telling her, but Saffra was already pointing at the bird, her face ashen.

“A phoenix? You’re giving me a phoenix?”

“It’s a construct modeled to look like one. Calm down. His name is Nova.”

The sheer strangeness of that statement seemed to snap Saffra out of her panic. She turned an incredulous look to Vivi. “His name is Nova?”

In another life, Vivi’s cheeks would’ve colored. Maintaining a straight face, she said, “It’s as good a name as any.”

Saffra’s mouth worked soundlessly. Rather than responding, she faced back to Nova, and her briefly recovering complexion whitened again.

“Phoenix,” she repeated dumbly. “It’s a phoenix.”

“Fake phoenix,” Vivi corrected, shooting an apologetic look at the giant flaming bird, who didn’t seem to take offense. He preened a misplaced feather and seemed generally unbothered by everything happening. “It’s level thirteen hundred. A real phoenix would be much higher. They’re stronger than dragons on average, just far rarer.”

The words didn’t seem to assure Saffra, and Vivi cleared her throat. She wasn’t handling this well.

“Just think of him as any other summon.” She paused. “You haven’t used any other summoning magic, have you?” Her grimoire had been quite small.

“No, I haven’t.”

“Well. He’ll listen to commands. There’s a limit to his intelligence, but most tactical and some strategic orders work. Attack, guard this position, patrol that area. He understands nonlethal orders like ‘subdue without killing’, which many don’t.” She’d tested that during her preparations for ensuring that handing over an artifact of this caliber to a thirteen-year-old girl was a smart idea. Maybe it wasn’t regardless, but Vivi didn’t want to give her any super high-level offensive scrolls, and also didn’t want to leave her without any attack capabilities. Nova was a good middle ground. “Try it. Point at an area and say [Solar Flare].”

Saffra seemed to act on autopilot thanks to sheer mental overload, which Vivi supposed was better than standing there dumbstruck. She raised a finger—to which Nova stiffened to alertness, sensing an incoming order—and pointed off to the distance.

“[Solar Flare],” Saffra stammered, her cat ears flattening in anticipation.

Nova took to the sky with a flap of wings that spawned a small blizzard around them. Hovering airborne a few dozen meters up, Nova began casting a spell. A long, thin strand of gold manifested from the ground and ascended to the heavens, like a lightbulb filament slowly brightening. When the precursor of [Solar Flare] reached its full brilliance, washing the reflective white plains in a glare of yellow, the spell activated.

A pyre fit for a dragon erupted where Saffra had pointed. It was an impressive light show, and Vivi enjoyed it as she did all magic, though she had to say that compared to real upper-tier area-of-effect elemental spells, like [Kaelum’s Thousand-Year Pyre], it was merely exciting, not anything to write home about.

When the spell faded, and a small section of the tundra had been thoroughly melted, Vivi turned to Saffra and said, “Of course, I expect you to use him judiciously. Only for emergencies.”

“Only…for emergencies,” Saffra echoed numbly, cat ears still flattened to her skull.

“He has a few other spells. I wrote them down for you.” She handed the folded paper over, which Saffra mutely took. “To unsummon him, the command is [Dismiss]. Go ahead and do so.”

Saffra obeyed. Kind of automaton-like, as if she’d become a summon herself.

Vivi pursed her lips. She still had the scrolls to hand over, but she was worried any more artifacts would break the poor girl. Maybe holding off until the end of the hunting session was best.

“All right. That’s it for now. Let’s get to hunting. I have a few questions for you about how experience gain works.”

Saffra’s attention locked to her, seemingly out of desperation. Maybe wanting a shred of normalcy. While this was an odd question for Vivi to ask considering her rank, her memory problems explained the gap, and musings over how, precisely, leveling worked in this world were probably fairly common even among higher-level adventurers.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Like what?” Saffra asked.

“It’s clear that at a basic level, both practice and combat provide experience. Has this been studied, though?”

Saffra tilted her head. “Sure. Or, people have tried to. There’s too many factors though. Two people doing the exact same routine will see way different results.” She seemed to relax as she talked, happily wiping the memory of a phoenix melting a small portion of the tundra from her mind. “It’s basically impossible to know how it really works. With any certainty, at least.”

To be fair, progress varied wildly in natural, non-System growth, too. Talent mattered, even if it wasn’t the be-all end-all. “If you ordered Nova to wipe out this entire zone, you wouldn’t level, right?”