Chapter 17

Title: Preparations for another journey

After arriving in Ionia and finding out who Nejime's mother was she lost the urgency in her journey. Phesto quite preferred this, though he still lacked a place to belong to, he definitely didn't want to rush in finding it. So with their extra time on hand, they spent a few days in the coastal town assisting the townspeople and learning about the local flora.

During this time Phesto extensively used his energy sense as well as the help from the townspeople to analyze all kinds of different plants found nearby with the system. To his surprise, the effect was quite amazing. When they showed him a rare medicinal herb and Phesto used his energy sense he got this in his interface.

[Vein-Pulse Leaf

Type: Magical Plant

Effect: Strengthens the heart and improves blood flow.

Effect: Blessed by Ionia

Extended Information:...]

Blessed by Ionia wasn't part of what the townspeople told him. Expanding the description for the effect it said.

[Blessed by Ionia:

Surrounding magic stimulates this plant's growth and protects it from wildlife]

An interesting effect, but he couldn't do much with it. Instead, he focused on the extended information for now. Checking it out, Phesto was bombarded by mostly useless trivia as well as some other interesting sections such as 'Expected Location' and 'Possible Processing Options'. They were probably called 'expected' and 'possible' because he couldn't ever confirm these claims, still he didn't want this lumped in with other useless trivia so he rearranged it in the system to have another section called 'Possible Information'.

Telling the system to rearrange the information for everything else in the system he was suddenly assaulted by a strong headache. Staggering this made Phesto wonder. Was the system linked to his mental capacity? That was quite possible, after all, it didn't seem like there were many external factors with the system. And everything that it was able to do was related to how much he knew or what he was able to do.

With this being the case would strengthening his body have an effect on the system's capabilities? It wasn't an unreasonable assumption, after all, appraisal improved with his improvement, and considering how the system already assisted him whenever he trained it didn't seem that weird if that assistance would also improve.

But no matter the case that was still an assumption on his side and he wasn't yet sure how he could improve the system's auto assist function. Would he have to improve his body? His brain? Or maybe he had to learn more, maybe the more skills, techniques and styles he learns about the more accurate the system will become. It might further explain how he was able to quickly learn all the skills that Nejime taught him.

After a few days, Phesto finished analyzing all kinds of plants and materials that could be interesting or important. At the same time, he was also testing out his magic from time to time. As the magical energy around him felt completely different than when he was in Shurima or on the ocean it took him some time to get used to casting magic in this environment. While he was testing out his earth magic he came to know of one problem, that was that the mode of transportation he used in Shurima wouldn't work out very well here.

The magic in Ionia had a spirit of itself, remembering the lore it was aptly called the Spirit of Ionia, and though casting magic on a larger scale was still possible he had to slowly attune himself with his surroundings before casting it. Using magic that affected the environment seemed, without attuning himself for a very long time seemed to be a no-go. Casting it without attuning himself would lead to the spirit of Ionia turning against him.

When he was testing it, he used his magic to throw a pebble while ignoring his surroundings, the repercussions for that were vines appearing out of nowhere making him trip when he came back from training. Still, he also remembered hearing about instances of houses coming to life, if the trees were felled incorrectly.

Though with this being the case he also got another skill, from when he was attuning himself with the surroundings, it was called "Spirit Attunement" and it boosted the speed and extent to which he could become attuned with the spirit of Ionia and others, though he had not come into contact with any other spirits yet.

Still for the time being he wouldn't be able to use his earth magic to speed up his journey with Nejime. Telling her about this, he also told her about having to attune herself with her surroundings only to be surprised.

"Attunement with my surroundings? What do you mean?" Nejime asked with a puzzled expression.

"What I mean is that the magic in Ionia is alive, it pretty much has its own will. Actually, I'm pretty sure that it does. Haven't you noticed how when you're trying to cast and use magic outside of your body it feels like you're interacting with something, something that you first have to get the 'OK' from?"

"No, well kind of. Remember when you told me to meditate because the magic was in this place was soothing? That's when I noticed how the magic felt alive, but I've never felt that I had to first get an OK, in fact, I've actually felt that the magic around me would follow my will and it's been incredibly easy to cast magic."

Baffled by Nejime's response, Phesto wondered if her constitution had something to do with it.

"Nene, remember when I told you about your condition? It might actually be helping you out right now."

"No, that would be... possible. You said my condition was that I had an overflowing amount of magical energy and my body couldn't handle it."

"Exactly, and in the eyes of Ionia's spirit, you might seem like a rare flower that it wants to protect. But that's still just an idea. I've been training my energy sense extensively these past few days and I want you to cast magic while I try to see what exactly is happening."

Placing a pouch he had with him on the ground he mentioned for Nejime to move it around with her magic.

"Alright."

Channelling her magic, Phesto put all his attention on Nejime and drove his energy sense to the max. As Nejime channelled her magic he could see that she never bothered interacting with the magic around her, instead, the surrounding magical energy jumped on her magic and adapted to whatever she was doing following her exact will.

After moving the pouch around for a bit, she stopped and looked to Phesto, waiting for a response. Not responding, Phesto was surprised by what the system showed him.

[Nejime

State: Healthy

Physical Strength: 41

Magical Strength: 746

Passives: Overflowing Magic, Blessed by Ionia]

[Overflowing Magic:

With a body capable of withstanding it, the magic within constantly grows without stop]

[Blessed by Ionia:

Slowly improves the physical body and calms the magic within down]

Blessed by Ionia. That explained why she didn't need to attune herself to her surroundings after all her surroundings are attuned to her. He saw this passive before on a plant, but seeing that the specific effect was different it seemed as if the effect would change depending on the target.

Improving her physical condition and helping in calming her magic down were definitely the best effects to help her grow. But still, not only is she a genius in terms of comprehension, but now it looks like she is going to be a genius in growing her strength as well. Since the ship ride her body's strength has grown five-fold and her magical strength tenfold.

Done with the system's report he saw that Nejime still waited for a response from him.

"Well, the condition you had before is still there, and it seems that as long as your body is strong enough, your magical powers will grow without stopping. As for you being able to cast magic so easy, it seems that Ionia's spirit really likes you, it's constantly nourishing your body and helping you with controlling your magic by calming it down.

All in all, you're in an amazing state, how knows you could probably rival an Ascended by doing nothing else other than sleeping and lazing around. Hahahaha"

Hearing this Nejime was happy and confused, the sickness following her for most of her life, was now gone and it instead turned into her new strength, so she was happy about that. But hearing that the spirit of the very land they were standing on was supporting her, still felt a bit weird for her. She knew that half of her blood was from this land, so she had a connection with this place, but as she lived her whole life in Shurima, Ionia still felt foreign. Seeing her weird expression Phesto changed topics and brought up the issue of travelling.

"Now, your condition aside, I won't be able to cast earth magic to conveniently move us around anymore, at least not for now. So, do we just walk?"

Honestly, Phesto didn't mind travelling by foot. In the past few days, he learned quite a bit about the local fauna and flora. Quite a lot of things were edible and with Nejime around they wouldn't have to worry about natural disasters, wild animals or anything like that. As for bandits or the likes, his energy sense still worked unchanged and he was a living radar, so those could be avoided as well.

Nejime also seemed to not mind, as she agreed with Phesto to walk for this journey. Having decided on where to go, and how they wanted to reach that place, they did their final preparations and got ready to leave. With the money they earned from helping the villagers, they bought a map and provisions to last them for a week, and they set out to the north, the map they had shown, that they could reach the town of Zhyunia within a few days.