Chương 110: 2-8 Intervention

"Just what am I going to do with you, child?" Charly chided him. Josef, for his part, sat with his head lowered after being thoroughly scolded by the old lady. After checking over Zippa, she had spent the better part of an hour scolding him about the irresponsible development of abilities and how utterly idiotic he was for silently harboring something so dangerous. Apparently, skill descriptions didn't normally get as bad as what he had received.

While she too hadn't heard about anything similar, unsurprising considering nobody runs around with a heartstone these days, she did have experience with people that developed less than desirable properties for their skills. Even outright detrimental ones, which had put the lives of their users at risk. Such was the information she had access to, as one of the few places that people could reliably turn to in this city.

"I know my grandson isn't always the best influence, but this one's a first," she sighed, putting down a smoking pipe. Josef had never seen her use that before, so she was probably less composed than she appeared outwardly.

"Are you talking about Zippa's fire?" That notion surprised him. Frankly, he figured his friend's fire had always been a volatile mess. Charly nodded.

"How much do you know about his past?"

"I've put some parts together. About the flames and his parents. He wanted to tell me the full story, but we never got the chance to sit down and talk afterwards." She froze for a second while taking a drag from her pipe, then calmly exhaled the smoke seconds later.

"I see. If he's ready to talk, then I won't be taking the chance away from him. Just know that both of you are the same brand of reckless idiots. And I dearly hope you don't throw yourself down the same hole he did. I don't want to see that happen ever again. And I don't want to know what it would do to my boy." Josef solemnly agreed, "I'll not let it come to that. I promise."

"I'll hold you to that. Now, for the tough part of actually fixing this disaster before it blows up…"

"How bad is it, doc?" Josef joked mirthlessly. He didn't know how exactly his skill had translated that phrase, but it actually got the old reptile chuckling. Then, she lightly thwacked him with the pipe.

"Lucky for you, Onyx here vouched that your magic didn't target anyone directly. It only flailed around aimlessly." Looking over to where Onyx was leaning against a wall, the large reptile wordlessly nodded in affirmation.

"So at least it looks like you didn't pick up a habit of draining people, right?" Taken aback, Josef shook his head vigorously.

"Of course not. The thought of that just feels… wrong. Sure, I don't exactly try to avoid it if it's a fight for my life, but otherwise people aren't for draining." There had always been the option before, especially on his first days at the clinic, when mana was in low supply. However, it had felt too strange to ask for permission to suck their mana to speed things up.

"That's your saving grace right there, or things would have turned ugly. You better keep it that way if you want to get better."

"And how do I fix this?" Josef inquired. As much as he liked his mana-draining capabilities, he did not want to handle spontaneous tentacle eruptions around other people. That sounded like a worse experience than puberty.

"Now, you don't have to answer me if this is too personal a question…" she petered off, but continued when he made no move to interrupt her, "How far along is that heart of yours?" Josef saw Onyx flinch hard in the back, as if that question was a low blow. He knew information from the status sheet was very personal, and he'd gathered that this would go doubly so for something as rare as a heartstone. However, he himself didn't really care about such notions, so he gave her a straight answer.

"It's Moderate with five stars." He simply shrugged when the wyrm shot him a sharp glare. Charly, in contrast, took another calm puff from her pipe, seemingly deep in thought.

"I'd congratulate you on getting that far, but it makes it much harder for you to correct the course of that thing. Normally, the best time to introduce major changes would be when pushing for the next rank. In this case, though…"

"That's going to be a lot harder, right?" Josef asked even though he could answer that himself. He had only seen a single example of those ranks continuing above the fifth, and that was with his chaos affinity.

"Getting those stars to fill up must be extremely hard. I only have a single one of those." Suddenly, Onyx looked like he was about to spit blood, and Charly almost dropped her pipe, only to smack him with it.

"I wish I could file this away as a joke, but your face only speaks of ignorance." Charly tiredly rubbed her temples.

"Yes, breaking into that realm is far from easy, and rarely done. But even if you could somehow guarantee that step, that wouldn't help you. In fact, it would only make it worse."

"Why?"

"Because breaking through that wall is a transformative step, causing an evolution based on everything you achieved to get there. It's a way to double down, expand and strengthen what's already there, not to introduce fundamental change," she explained, making the issue obvious for him to grasp.

"So I need to course-correct before I get it to Pinnacle. Which is practically no time at all. With small grade increases, which rarely change all that much." Josef summed up his understanding, receiving a nod in turn.

"How do I pull that off?"

"That's never an easy thing to figure out. I suggest not using your draining magic at all for now, and stopping your heart whenever it tries to do so itself. That sounds like a good way to hammer restraint into both." Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Not using his best magical staple? That was practically his signature spell! From the very first time he had stepped into the dungeon, that whole line of magic had saved his life time and time again.

He couldn't even imagine fighting without it.

"Don't make a face like I just took away your firstborn," Charly chided him.

"It's for your own good."

"And if I have no other choice but to use it?" It was less a question and more of a complaint.

"Don't." Her answer was brisk.

"Now, let's talk about your new sleeping arrangement." Josef hadn't thought about it, but he could hardly share a cot with someone if he was always at risk of lashing out when he let his guard down. He'd need a room of his own for sleeping and working on his domain.

"I regained a lot of mobility already, so I might as well go back to Zassa. She probably still has space to give me an entire room for myself. Then I can go back and forth, just like in our early days."

"You want to walk through the sewers, alone, in that state? Absolutely not!" She almost hit him again with that pipe, but he barely managed to dodge.

"A summoner is never truly alone." Josef tried to sound sagely. He could pick Sprout up at the tavern, and Pretzel was less than half a day away from her return. Also, Nibbles didn't have a reason to stick around after the shop's closing time, meaning he was almost back to full capacity. Only Dusty was still painfully out of reach. The pipe caught him by surprise when it came back in a reversed strike.

"Those children hardly count as chaperones!" She brutally broke down his reasoning.

"But maybe it's not the worst idea. I could send Onyx to escort you every day. And that hag can surely handle your little outbursts." Charly was rubbing her chin, mulling the idea over.

"You hired me to guard the clinic, not to babysit." Onyx complained loudly.

"This boy is the clinic, you brat," she waved off his complaint.

"Besides, the alternative was to house him in your room upstairs. You could take the beating if he loses control." That shut him up real quick. Josef, for his part, was glad about his idea, because it felt like he just dodged a bullet. Sick or not, that guy would have made him sleep on the floor, he knew.

"Hold on, this guy got a whole room while I had to share a cot down here?"

"That's the difference between working for me, and causing me work." Charly told him flatly, though her eyes crinkled with some amusement.

"Though if you had rather shared a bed with him…"

"No!" their denial came in stereo, echoing throughout the basement. Josef quietly reevaluated the old reptile, from a goading grandmother to a sadist who wanted to watch them burn. Coughing into his fist, he decided to quickly steer the topic elsewhere.

"Anyway, are you sure about sending Onyx with me? That would leave this place exposed for a bit every day." Charly dismissed his fears.

"I've held this shop for decades, lad. You think there was a lack of scoundrels trying to force me out? Or to quietly do away with me in the night? This old lady still has her tricks, and I'm not going down easily." Her message was clear, especially after her earlier words. He was the clinic, and Onyx was meant for his protection, anyway. She hadn't kept the reptile around because he was necessary for her shop's survival.

Admittedly, if she could run the place long enough to grow old doing so, then whatever 'tricks' she had were likely tried and tested.

"Alright, I guess it's back to commuting every day." Josef sighed, not looking forward to it with how weary he still felt. His condition had immediately improved now that his mana was flowing more freely, but that didn't change the fact that he felt like on the first day after getting past the peak of the flu. On the mend, but less than optimal.

"Chin up, the exercise will do you good. Gotta get out there and get some fresh air, or you'll waste away."

"We're walking through the sewers for most of it!" He complained, causing the old reptile to cackle lightly.

"By the way, how late is it? Maybe I can still get some work done before we close and I leave for Zassa's."

"It's barely noon. Leave the work for the rodent. You should be getting more rest." Charly denied him.

"I've sat around long enough. Now that I have some mana, I wanna get back to casting spells. Besides, I was thinking more along the lines of working on a cure for the Stillness." He gestured towards Zippa's resting form.

"That would double up at helping improve my condition, too." Even if he couldn't figure out a stable spell to purge the sickness from others, just working with his chaos affinity would help him recover considerably more quickly. So doing that as soon as possible was basically mandatory for him. Perhaps the conviction he felt reflected in his eyes, because Charly relented after holding his gaze for a bit.

"Very well, but you better not be planning to test some new magic on my grandson."

"No, I test every new spell on myself first." The pipe smacked him not once, not twice, but three times without mercy.

"We've had some patients with discoloration come in before. Folks who got caught up in that whole mess too close to the disaster. I'll get one of them to swing by soon." Apparently seeing no need to explain her violence, the old lady told him how things would go instead. Josef had an inkling of who she was talking about. While he had freed everyone in that last safe-zone before things went to shit, he had hardly taken the time to check them over for lasting damages.

There was certainly a chance some of them walked away with a permanent reminder of what had almost consumed them. The same was likely true for those adventurers that came prepared with Sanctum's own armors, as he still doubted them to be completely safe while completely surrounded by order-mana. Most of those would have gone back to the guild, but plenty of them were probably sourced independently by Vasaj. Extra bodies that the elf decided to throw into the grinder as to improve the overall chances of success.

"I'd rather not test new spells on patients that come for treatment," he answered, not liking the moral implications.

"Also, I should be more resistant to my affinity if things do go awry." In the end, they reached an uneasy compromise, where Onyx was supposed to knock him flat if it looked like he was about to try something stupid. Josef wasn't sure if the wyrm could actually go through with it, considering how their dragon-given positions dictated an imbalance of positions, but neither of them dared to correct Charly on her decision.

She would, however, still call in someone in need of his help, because no amount of testing on himself could replace learning to do it on others. As things had finally been sorted out, Josef sat down with Nibbles, and focused on bringing out his chaos affinity. Recoiling in pain after his first careless attempt, he patted his concerned familiar on the head.

"Please watch over me, bud. This will probably get worse before it gets better."