CHAPTER 47: WALK IN THE FOREST

"You are doing that thing again..."

"Huh? What thing?"

Cecilia had been using Appraisal on some herbs they found and reading the entries to make sure she wasn’t misremembering the herbs. At this moment, she was holding a patch of veilbloom in her hand when Marya made her comment.

"You are looking at something, though there’s nothing there. Is it something from the system?"

((Damn... she really is observant.))

"It’s a technique. Now that I think about it, you don’t have Appraisal, right? Is it something you can unlock?"

"I don’t know..."

Cecilia noticed that Marya’s eyes shifted out of focus. She was definitely looking at the system screen right now.

"Where do I see which techniques I can unlock? I can only see the ones I already have."

"Isn’t there a button in the ’Techniques’ screen? On the bottom-left corner, it looks like an open book."

"No, there’s nothing in there..."

"How did you unlock the other ones?"

Marya’s eyes focused back again, and she stared at Cecilia.

"My mother taught me to say the words ’technique unlock’ plus the name of the technique in my head. When I do it, a small screen appears asking for confirmation. In the last years I tried several words, but never got it working again."

"I see... That’s a way to do the command bypassing the UI. Hm... try doing it using the word ’appraisal.’"

Marya nodded, and her eyes shifted out of focus again. A few moments later, her face lit up.

"It worked! Accept! Hmm, I didn’t need to say that out loud. Okay... now I have it in my techniques list."

She took a branch of veilbloom in her hand and used Appraisal on it.

[Veilbloom (green)

Found in shaded clearings of temperate forests, often growing in places where mist lingers even at noon.

Highly responsive to mana manipulation. Its potency increases when the preparer channels radiant-aspected mana through it.

Has cicatrization properties.]

"Huh? I gained a level in a new skill! I now have... Lore, with herbs under parenthesis? What is this?"

Cecilia smiled gently and nodded.

"’Lore’ is a skill about knowledge about the world, and it has several variants. It affects the amount and detail of information that the Appraisal screen brings. The more things you appraise, the more it will rise, and you will be able to learn more stuff."

"Ohhhh. That’s so useful. And what does this green color mean?"

"It’s the rarity of the item. The green color is pretty low, just one step higher than grey, the lowest one."

Marya quickly took out her notebook and pencil and started scribbling things.

"What are the other levels, Miss Cecilia?"

((She is a really dedicated one... As Gertrude said, she’s a hardworking girl, but it’s nice to see that she’s as meticulous about knowledge as she is about house chores.))

"In order of rarity, they are gray, green, blue, purple, golden, red, orange, and diamond."

"Diamond is a color?"

"It’s a bluish hue of white. Don’t ask me why they named it like that. Maybe it’s just to make it sound really powerful."

"They who?"

((Oopsie. It isn’t like I can just answer ’the devs.’ But what do I say? Oh, I know...))

"The people who compiled the information... whoever they might be."

Marya leafed through her notebook until she found something she wrote some time ago, then showed it to Cecilia.

"This is the prayer you used that night, right? The one that brought Margarete back? I tried writing down the words I remembered.

The page showed an uneven scrawl, probably written right after Ceci’s birth. ’Ephen na...’rath silurai, Thalen mori en’shae.’

Cecilia felt something tugging in her chest.

((She remembered it perfectly...))

"You shouldn’t play with those words. They call for powers you’re not ready to understand."

She warned softly, but without any anger or contempt.

"But they helped you, didn’t they?"

Cecilia sighed.

"Yes. But it’s a bit more complicated than that."

Marya frowned, not quite understanding.

"What exactly do they mean? I also heard you using two other words a few times, in different spells. One is... is... Phane... ros?"

"Phaneros. It means ’light.’"

"And ’nythea’?"

"Death."

"Why do your spells always mix both?"

Cecilia looked at the confused child with a conflicted heart. She was happy to teach, but she didn’t know exactly what she thought about religion.

True, Morielen, her character, was a priestess of a goddess she, Cecilia herself, created and designed. But that was inside a game, and it was a roleplay that she loved... as a roleplay. But this was the real world and real feelings of a real person.

But one thing was true. The philosophical thinking behind those concepts was something she believed in. The teaching was true to her heart, even if the goddess was just a game concept.

"Because one doesn’t exist without the other."

The girl mulled over that, then smiled faintly.

"That’s... sad. But pretty."

Cecilia chuckled and petted her head.

"That’s a good summary of life."

((Ephemerys would like this one... Wait, why did I think that?))

An intrusive thought popped in her mind, startling her. She suddenly sounded like an actual priestess, even to herself.

They spent the rest of the day gathering herbs, as Marya used her Appraisal on everything she could.

"Miss Cecilia, does Appraisal work on people too?"

"Yes. On people, animals, and monsters..."

"Can I use it on you?"

"Yes. But only because I’m allowing you and teaching you. It isn’t something you should go using on other people, because it’s intrusive. It’s like prying into their conversation or reading their diary."

"I understand. I promise I won’t ever use it on people."

"Good. There are two exceptions, though. If they are bad people trying to do something to hurt you or other people, you can do it to protect yourself.

The other exception is when they are afflicted and you are trying to help them and need to see what illness or status affliction they have so you can use the right treatment."

"Oh, Appraisal can do even that??? Okay, pinky promise, I’ll only use it on people in those two situations."