Yeah, getting in sync with Lannah wasn’t as intimate as I thought it would be. I mean, yeah, she had to hold my hands, but she was almost back to the stand-offish girl of the first night. She was stiff, which I guess, in a way, helped us sync our breathing.

It was much easier to sync my breathing with hers than to try to have her with me. She breathed faster than I did. Likely because of how much smaller she was. Also, it didn’t help her that I did all my training to keep my stamina from draining. It didn’t hurt either that I could watch her breath much easier than she could me. At least I told myself that.

It was getting our hearts to sync up that was the hard part. She had told me that it would be done with magic many times, but we didn’t have that, so we just had to work on being slow. So we both closed our eyes and just kind of slowed down as much as we could.

It was after about ten minutes that it dawned on me that for the same reason that she breathed more, her heart would tend to beat more. She was shorter. I opened my eyes and saw her eyes closed. She was resting as much as she could while still not falling asleep. I started to watch her chest rise and fall and got my breathing to sync up again. Then I could have sworn I saw a smile form on her lips.

That was it for me; my mind started to go off from what we were trying to do and over to what was waiting for us. This was a gamble, and just below were goblins that wanted to kill and perhaps eat both of us. I hated the goblins. I knew I had fought them some, but I hated them. They all needed to die.

As I started to get worked up, my heart rate spiked, and on its way up, we both got the pop-up.

Synchronization acquired.

Then I got a pop up

Current Experience 2000/9000

Total experience 52019

Level 23

Name

Lannah Darkweaver

HP

60

MP

294

Race

Human/Elf

SP

105

Defense

4

Primary Class: Merchants Daughter

Level: 19

Secondary Class: Hostess

Level: 13

Strength

25

Intelligence

42

Vigor

35

Dexterity

38

Willpower

55

Vitality

30

Half elf* Night vision 1, Expanded Mana +2 per IQ

Familial Contract

Request from Lannah Darkweaver currently Synchronized.

Lannah Darkweaver offers access to her full mana pool and all duties of a Familial Contract per custom for the following:

Your Family name once found or earned to be hers and those of her children

Protection granted as able from all who wish her harm per custom

1 blank core from The Necklace of Cores per month of contract

4% of all earned experience until you reach level 10

.5% of all experience earned after you reach level 10

To say I was shocked wouldn’t be an understatement at all. I was downright blown away at her stats. I had nothing to compare myself to up until this point, and now I was seeing a young lady who had me beat hands down on everything.

With how much I struggled to beat the goblins, I was confused that she was captured at all or that we were hiding there. She was much more powerful than I was, and her mana pool far outstripped mine.

I, of course, would be a fool if I didn’t take this. Even if she slipped in the duties of a Familial Contract, whatever those were. We needed the mana, and she had twice as much as I did, along with a much higher recovery. With this, I could drain us both and get all the cores needed to finish my bow.

I willed the acceptance of the contract and then felt things change in me. There was now a cord that felt like the line of mana I could make when imbuing things that reached out to her. So I gave it a little tug and felt mana start to stream into me, filling my pool back up.

I could feel and see the mana like it was mine coming from her and rolling over to me. This was great. With this, I could make the cores needed and perhaps even make a fire rain large enough for long enough to finish the goblins off. So many options opened with her having such a large mana pool.

I was grinning like a fool when I looked over at her. Lannah was trembling, not in a scared way. No, she was feeling the mana pull and she was reacting like she was lightheaded.

I only had a few points to fill up, and the flow stopped, and I watched her quickly school her face as she recovered. “You didn’t tell me about that part.” I chided her.

“Well, you made a good case that we needed the cores to get out of here so it is what it is.”

“Will it always be like that?”

“No, you yanked on the bond kind of hard to start the flow and so it was a fast flow of mana. The faster the draw and the more that is taken the more painful it feels.”

“That is going to be awkward. I guess that is why it is not done often?”

“It will get better with time most mages keep a slow trickle going because it is easier to increase the flow than start it.”

“Do you know the range on the pull?

“Yes, they say that a Familial has to be within a league, but the more powerful the mage the further that could be.”

“So could it be less with me being a zero?”

“It is not based on level, we don’t know what it is based on but those who are or will be more powerful have a longer range to use the mana.”

“We didn’t discuss length of this contract and I didn’t think to ask how long is it for?”

“The contract ends when the holder dies. Which would be you. I will stop aging when I am fully an adult and stay that age until you die. As a wild human, it will be about a third of my life. Then I will keep aging.”

“What?” I almost gasped out.

“The length of the contract is until you die.”

“So if it has been the other way around would it still have been till I died because you are half elf?”

Lannah smoothed the front of her dress down and said, “no, it is till the contract holder dies. If you were a full elf and lived a thousand years than I would stop aging at maturity and stay that way until you passed. Then I would keep living until my normal death.”

“This sounds like you got the better end of this in all ways.”

“Mostly, but you now have access to my mana and my regeneration and so have just become much more powerful. We can now create those cores you wanted and see if we can say alive long enough for my dad to get us help.”

“So I saw your stats and I am confused as to why you can’t just take care of all of the goblins on your own? Even as a zero I was able to finish off about half a dozen by myself and you are far more powerful that I am.”

Lannah smiled a little and spun her finger through her hair. “Well, for one, my highest combat skill is dagger at a 5 so I am not much in a fight. While goblins might not be much they have us so far out numbered that I couldn’t even last a minute down there.”

“Why is your dagger so low? Skills climb quickly.” I asked with a little bit of disbelief.

“So early on they climb fast and I guess for you do will for a while. At least until we get you taught how to read.”

“What do you mean?”

“Skills take more to level as their level goes up and your personal levels go up. So for me to raise my dagger to level 6 I would need the my Primary class + Secondary class + 1 times the current skill level times 4 number of successful uses. So that would be around 800 successful uses to raise it to level 7 and close to a 1000 to make it to level 8.”

She sighed a little, “What that meas is for you, to raise a skill from level 6 to level 7 would be 24 successful uses and to level 8 would only be 28. Which is why it seems to you like skills go up quickly and one of the reason I told you not to show anyone your stats again.”

Lannah looked at me with a serious look. “Arn once we get back to my city, we don’t want to teach you to read right away. It would be a huge waste. We need to get you trainers to get you every skill we can up to the highest we can get you. Then after that we can teach you to read. The more you can learn before hand the better!”

I took a big breath and slowly let it out. “That’s a lot to think on. I felt like I was getting skill levels kind of fast but I wasn’t sure how it was going. I didn’t know that it would be this hard to level a skill for everyone else.”

I stood up and yawned and popped my back. “Before we create the core I should go check and make sure the goblins aren’t coming up the wall yet.”

I edged through the trees to check. It had been long enough that the goblins had cooking fires going and were settling in. To me, they seemed like they were just about a stone’s throw away. I might try to pop a few mana stones into their camp after they finish settling in. They take a few seconds to get ready, but each one could finish off a few enemies. The problem, of course, were the casters and the lighting bolts.

As I was backing up, I saw the rock about five feet away from me explode after being hit by lightning. I ducked into a ball and rolled my head under as the rocks showed down on me.

Lannah screamed from behind me somewhere as I got up and ran. A second explosion that was all fire happened to my right, and I saw flame go all over the place. Much like my fire rain, this acted much as water does with the way it moved and flew through the air.

I got around to where the fire was, and Lannah was holding her arm close to her body. She was using her other hand to pull a sliver of rock from it. Next, she pressed her hand down, I saw a green glow through her fingers and her mana dropped by 8, but her Hp maxed back out.

I walked up to look at her arm, “heal minor wound?”

“Yes, costs 8 mana and heals up to 10 health and the debuffs with the wound.”

I smiled and sat down, “well they have us stuck here for now. Let’s see what we can do with putting cores into this bow.”