Chapter 27: Chapter 27: Alphina
"Zayne," I said, once she’d finished testing weight on her injured leg and found it marginally more bearable after the potion. "Zayne Ailfos."
"Alphina," she said, wincing as she shifted against the tree. "Alphina Baewick. And I owe you considerably more than a name for what you just did."
"You don’t owe me anything," I said, offering an arm to help her rise. "Wrong place, wrong time. Anyone would’ve done the same."
"Anyone wouldn’t have dropped three Ironhide Tuskboars without breaking a proper sweat," she said dryly, accepting the support with visible reluctance, the kind of pride that didn’t enjoy needing help. "But I’ll let the modesty slide, for now."
We made slow progress back toward the marked trail, her arm braced across my shoulders, weight carefully favoring the uninjured leg. I let Absolute Appraisal drift toward her once, quietly, curiosity outweighing caution for just a moment — the same instinct that had pushed me toward Shadowfang’s sealed chamber, now aimed at something considerably more personal.
[Appraising: Alphina Baewick]
[Rank: Elite]
[Estimated Level: 68]
[Notable Trait: Exceptional Mana Affinity — Water/Ice specialization, rare compound potential detected.]
I kept my expression carefully neutral, filing the information away without letting it show. Elite rank, a full tier above Mortal — considerably more accomplished than her current, battered circumstances suggested, and a mana affinity flagged as genuinely rare even by whatever standard the System used to measure such things.
"You’re a mage," I said, keeping the observation deliberately surface-level. "Water, if the scorch marks on your staff mean what I think they do."
"Ice, more precisely," she said, a faint, proud note slipping through the pain. "Academy-trained, Tula’s Arcanum. Though clearly not skilled enough to avoid getting cornered by three overgrown pigs."
"You held your own long enough for help to arrive," I offered. "That counts for something."
---
She filled the walk back with careful, measured explanation, the kind of information a trained researcher offers when she’s decided someone has earned at least a partial accounting.
"I wasn’t out here by accident," she admitted. "Academy’s been tracking the migration anomaly for two months now — official reports, structured surveys, the sort of careful methodology my professors insist on. I got impatient with how slowly that was moving and decided to do some independent fieldwork instead."
"Against advice, I’m guessing."
"Considerably against advice," she said, with a wry, self-deprecating twist to her mouth. "But I’d found something worth the risk. The migrations aren’t random, and they’re not simple fleeing behavior either. Every creature I’ve tracked moves along converging vectors — different starting points, same eventual direction."
"Converging toward what?"
"That’s what I was trying to determine when your Tuskboars found me first." She grimaced, shifting her weight again. "My working theory is something’s actively drawing them. Not fear-driven flight — attraction, or compulsion. Something with enough presence to override territorial instinct across multiple species simultaneously."
I felt a cold, familiar weight settle at that, memory of Shadowfang’s unstable core stirring uncomfortably. A source, drawing creatures toward it the way a wound draws blood.
"That sounds like it could be connected to a destabilizing dungeon," I said carefully, testing the theory without revealing how directly I’d already encountered exactly that phenomenon once before.
Alphina’s eyes sharpened with genuine interest. "That’s precisely my leading hypothesis. Problem is, there’s no known dungeon registered in that stretch of forest. Whatever’s drawing them, if my theory holds, it’s either unregistered or entirely new."
I said nothing further, filing the implications away carefully, though some part of me — the same restless curiosity that had never quite settled since waking in this world — found the mystery genuinely compelling despite every reason to simply let it be someone else’s problem.
---
We reached the watch line as afternoon light began its long slide toward evening, and the guards’ reaction to both Alphina’s condition and my account of the Ironhide Tuskboars carried the same recalculating weight I’d grown used to since Shadowfang.
"Three Tuskboars, solo," the senior guard repeated, studying me with open skepticism. "That’s not F-rank work, son. Not even close."
"Circumstances were pressing," I said, the familiar deflection settling into place. "Didn’t have time to be modest about it."
He studied me a moment longer before letting it go, waving both of us through toward the road proper, though I caught him exchanging a look with his partner that suggested the report would travel considerably further than a routine patrol log.
Alphina insisted on managing the remaining walk with minimal support once we reached even ground, though she accepted a second dose of healing potion gratefully enough. "The Arcanum will want a full account of what I found out there," she said, as Tula’s walls grew steadily larger ahead of us. "And I suspect the Guild will want yours, given how thoroughly you’ve apparently outperformed your registered tier in a single afternoon."
"Probably," I admitted, resigned to it.
"For what it’s worth," she added, glancing sideways at me with an expression that had shifted from wary evaluation into something warmer, "I’d like to stay in contact, beyond simple gratitude. Whatever’s happening in that forest, I suspect it’s larger than either the Academy or the Guild currently realizes, and I could use someone capable of handling what I apparently can’t manage alone."
"I’d like that," I said, and found, somewhat to my own surprise, that I meant it more personally than the practical framing suggested.
---
We parted ways near the Chapter house, Alphina insisting she could manage the remaining distance to the Arcanum’s healing wing alone, though not before pressing a small, carved token into my hand — her personal seal, she explained, sufficient to send word through Academy channels if I ever needed to reach her directly.
I turned the herb-gathering quest in at the counter, the clerk’s eyebrows rising at both the completed gathering quota and the addendum I felt obligated to add regarding the Tuskboar encounter.
"This’ll need a formal statement," she said, stamping the slip with visible reluctance. "Guild investigator’s already been assigned to the migration anomaly — this account will likely land on their desk within the day."
"Understood," I said, accepting my modest coin reward and the growing certainty that institutional curiosity about me had only compounded rather than settled since arriving in Tula.
---
Alone that evening, back in my rented room above the tavern, I turned the day’s events over carefully, weighing Alphina’s theory against my own private, unspoken knowledge of exactly what a destabilizing core could do to the creatures surrounding it. Whatever drew those Tuskboars and the wider migration both, I suspected it wasn’t so different from what I’d already stabilized once before.
I opened my Status, more out of habit than urgent need, and let my attention drift toward something that had been quietly nagging since the fight in the clearing.
[Primordial All-Element Affinity — Dormant. No active mana channeling recorded.]
I stared at the notification a long moment, turning the gap over with genuine frustration. Affinity across every known element, granted in a single overwhelming rebate — and yet I hadn’t drawn on mana once, not against the Tuskboars, not anywhere since the domain’s creation. Every fight I’d won so far had run entirely on Qi and swordsmanship, the mana side of my capability sitting untouched, theoretical, exactly the way Swordsmanship Foundation’s knowledge had sat useless until I’d forced myself through weeks of clumsy practice to actually use it.
Affinity alone grants access, not fluency, I remembered, the old warning from the very first purchase description echoing back with fresh relevance. Access wasn’t the same as ability. I’d spent a month mastering Qi circulation through hard, deliberate practice — and mana remained, despite every elemental foundation theoretically available to me, a door I hadn’t yet learned to open.
I thought of Alphina’s ice-marked staff, the precise, practiced way she’d clearly drawn on her own affinity long before tonight’s disaster. Whatever separated her competent, trained mana use from my own dormant potential, it wasn’t going to close itself through passive ownership of a rare, powerful skill.
Time to find a teacher, I thought, closing the Status window with fresh, deliberate purpose. Whatever else Tula has to offer, somewhere in a city this size, there has to be someone who can actually teach me how to use what I’m apparently sitting on.
I settled in for the night with that resolve fixed firmly in mind, the day’s rescue, the migration mystery, and my own dormant mana all tangled together into the next stretch of a path I was only beginning to properly walk.
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