The Way Ahead

“How do you know about them?” Inion questioned Edwin. While not overtly threatening, Edwin couldn’t help but get the distinct impression that she was accusing him of something, “And why couldn’t you have led with that?”

“I don’t know!” Edwin raised his hands as something of an instinctual shield against the fey. While there was no real impression of danger coming from the naiad, it was still hard not responding in some way, “It… slipped my mind, I guess? No, that’s not accurate. I just had other questions first? Also, everyone to whom I’ve mentioned moderators dismisses it as crazy.”

“Well that’s good at least. Means things haven’t fallen completely apart,” she muttered and raised her voice with a sigh, “Tell me what you know about them, as well as what you think you know about them.”

Edwin hesitated. How could he not? This was treading dangerously close to talking about his status as an Outsider, and talking about that didn’t have a great track record of actually going well.

He eventually settled upon how he would phrase his response, doing his best to ignore the impatient foot-tapping of Inion in the meantime, “Some time ago, I was involved in an incident which made a bunch of System errors pop up. It required Moderator interference to resolve, and I got two Paths about it. One was the Path Less Traveled, the-”

“Wait, Path Less Traveled?”

“You know of it?” Edwin was surprised. Were error messages that common? No, that couldn’t be it, so then…

“It has something of a… reputation, shall we say. It has a particularly noteworthy Path reward. You should complete it as soon as possible.”

“It’s ninety points, though?”

She nodded, “Well worth it.”

Edwin sighed. Well, it’s not like he had planned to put it off that long anyways, though the reason would still be nice to know… “Can you elaborate?”

“Not really. It does give the sort of reward that most people can only dream of, though, which… ya… I don’t think I can say much more than that. How’d you get so wrapped up in error messages that you needed a moderator to get involved, though?” her eyes probed, glaring and assessing him, “You aren’t involved with the elves, are you? No- even Res- err, never mind. Even they don’t get the Path Less Traveled, thankfully. Blight, that would be a nightmare.”

She rubbed her forehead as Edwin thought. Res? Re-something, that was sure. Res...pawn? Reset? Respec? What would cause an error, though?

“I don’t suppose you’re going to elaborate on what ‘Res’ means?”

“Nope!”

Edwin sighed. Figured. Well, he might figure it out eventually.

“You mentioned two paths, though! What was the other?”

“Well… the other was more like a message of sorts. It was a custom Path called more or less ‘Character limit, can’t talk much, no clue what happened, did my best to help you li-,’ and then it cuts off. I presume it cuts off ‘live’ but I don’t actually know for sure.”

“Huh. Ya, I see what you mean. It is strange. How many points is it?”

“A hundred and twenty.”

“Woah. That’s so many. Whatever you get with that, it’s going to be good.”

“I can take notes with it.”

Ha! The look on Inion’s face was priceless, “You can what?”

“Take notes with it! It’s really cool.”

She sighed, “There has to be more to it. What’s it called?”

Okay, that one he had to hesitate for, “Hmmm. You know what, if you can figure out what my ‘secret’ is, I’ll tell you.” He yawned, suddenly realizing how late it was, and amended his statement, “In the morning.” A glance around reminded him how this all got started, and he groaned, “I should deal with my deer, shouldn’t I? Ugh, I need more light for that. How do you even take care of that sort of thing?”

“Oh, that’s fine. I can take care of it for tonight.”

“You can?”

“Ya! Just toss it to me. It’s mostly finished draining of blood by now, and I can hold it so it’s fresh for the morning. I don’t know how to actually do the cutty bits, but it’s gotta be easier in the daytime, right?”

Well, he couldn’t exactly argue with that, though… “So what exactly are you going to do with it? It’s going to be safe from scavengers and decay, yeah?”

She nodded, “Ya! Fey Circle! It… actually, I can’t tell you exactly what it does, but it makes time pass way slower for stuff on the inside than on the out. I use it all the time to save stuff best enjoyed fresh, though… Huh, I wonder if I fell asleep in there by accident? Usually I just do it to mess with the mortals who like to think they’re so much better than me, and I never spend more than a few seconds in there if I can help it. Did I get stuck? Would that have been where the time went? Anyway, ya! It’ll be in there like a few seconds tops until you pull it out tomorrow or the day after or whenever. Want me to drop it in there?”

“…Sure? Is there some downside to this?”

“Eh, not really. It’s not something I usually offer, but I wanna help you!”

“Still don’t trust that I didn’t screw myself over by doing that.” Edwin muttered, which only served to grow Inion’s mischievous grin even more, “Okay, fine. Are you also going to hide in there?”

“Ehh… probably not. There’s a lot of places I want to see what’s happened to them in the last few thousand years! I’ll probably check those out tonight while you sleep or whatever little mortal thing you do. Just don’t forget I still have questions for you!”

Edwin sighed, but accepted it for what it was. At least she wasn’t being all flirty anymore. He paused, to make sure he hadn’t jinxed it, then mentally sighed in relief. So she couldn’t read his mind, at least. Probably. “Sounds fine to me,” he eventually settled on, and made his way back to his bed, pausing only to drop some fresh wood on his fire.

Level Up!

Sleeping Level 28→29

Huh. He hadn’t expected Sleeping to level up for at least three more days, given it was roughly a week or two between levels now. That was a pleasant surprise. He also just felt so well-rested it was fantastic. All his muscle soreness was completely gone, his head felt nice and clear, and there was no indication of all the frankly ludicrous amount of work he had done the night before.

Even though he didn’t strictly need them to help limber up, he did his morning stretches, pulling himself in and out of the lotus position, fitting his feet behind his head, and generally seeing how much he could contort himself. He likely couldn’t have done even half as much without the benefits of his Sleeping, and it still managed to yield results of its own.

Level Up!

Flexibility Level 26→27

Edwin reached for his new pendant and pulled it out, studying the strange object that was apparently the origin of these new levels. It was vaguely aquamarine in color, though mostly transparent, and the interior seemed to ripple, the beams of sunlight he exposed it to cast shifting patterns on the ground, light passing through it as though it were a great deal of water instead of a static rock. It wasn’t magic, though. He felt no feedback from his Mana Sense when scrutinizing it, which he wasn’t sure how to think about. What were the optics of that sort of thing, if it was entirely mundane?

At the top of the teardrop-shaped stone a thin string passed through either the solid rock or a hole so tiny as to be nearly invisible. While he had first thought the string might be solidified water of some sort, it now reminded Edwin more of some strange combination of silk and grass. Was this seagrass treated to be that high-quality thread he had read about?

He could ask Inion about it later, he supposed. Almanac recognized the material as distinct from both living seagrass and the water-absorbing dried stuff. Not that it came as too much of a surprise, as living and drying had also been considered separate from one another. Why Almanac worked like that for some things but not others- he could use Almanac to tell that his axe handle was made from not-oak, after all- he didn’t know, but he intended to find out at some point.

When Edwin finally pulled himself out his lean-to, he found Inion sitting by his fire, tending to a nice if small little blaze, “So you can leave the water, then?”

“Obviously. How else would I be able to watch you work? I’m bound to the river and pond, but that doesn’t mean I have to always touch it.”

Well, served him right for assuming her limitations, he supposed. Though was that just the result of his Bargain? Though wait. Even if it was, then… “Then what did you have me drag all those trees over to your river for, if you could have just walked over to them?”

“Because it was fun to watch!” Edwin glared at the all-too-happy naiad, “Also because you wanted me to help you train your skills to the best of my ability, which I diiid! You wouldn’ta gotten nearly as many levels if I had just walked, now would’ve you?” she added innocently, though she couldn’t hide the mischievous glimmer in her eyes.

Edwin sighed. It was hard to say she was wrong, he didn’t have anything to really complain about- he basically knew this was exactly the sort of shenanigans he signed himself up for when dealing with a fey- but still... “Fine, fine.”

He ignored the girl’s beaming face to the best of his ability, though it wasn’t easy. She was shifting to always be on the opposite side of the fire as him, so his only respite was staring into the glimmering coals. Furthermore, the smoke from the fire never seemed to blow towards her, only towards Edwin.

Reaching out with his Skill, Edwin activated Firestarting and watched as the flames slowly turned from orange-red to the clean, blue flame normally associated with Bunsen burners as the wood burned more and more efficiently and cleanly. It cut back on the smoke blowing into Edwin’s face, too, until there was nothing beyond distortions in the air from the rising heat while the timber burned with the same steady flame as a gas stove. It had the added consequence of increasing the temperature of the fire by a fair amount, but scooting back just a little bit fixed that problem.

Inion’s slightly pouty face told him everything he needed to about her response to his latest trick, which to Edwin seemed indicative that the smoke was indeed her doing, for whatever end. “So, Firestarting, then?”

Edwin nodded, “It’s saved my life a few times now.”

“Interesting use of the Skill. Normally people can’t hold it for more than a single activation. Are you just constantly activating it, or are you somehow maintaining the activation over a prolonged period of time?”

Edwin stopped. He hadn’t really thought about that lately, but Firestarting was originally just an active skill of sorts, wasn’t it? Casting his Memory back to the Skill description, he recalled it was just ‘make fire’ and that it supposedly got easier with each level. His experiments with combining it with Mana Infusion had gotten him used to sustaining it, but these days he could just keep the Skill going. If he kept it active too long he felt an odd sort of fatigue, like a phantom limb was being overused, but ‘too long’ was in the minutes these days.

“I…. I don’t know. Huh.” A thought occurred to him, “Can Skills grow outside their original use?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, if I combine one of my Skills- Mana Infusion- with other Skills, will the other Skills gradually become more magical on their own?”

“Kinda? It depends a lot on the Skill in question, and how you use magic with it. Skills can grow a bit, though they’re usually fairly fixed in form. If you try to expand a Skill well past what it would normally be able to do, that additional effect usually shows up in its advancement. Well, assuming some level of Path compatibility. It’s absolutely possible to sort of combine two Skills by just practicing using them at the same time a ton, but the System won’t help you much there, though you may unlock a Skill which combines the two in some way. If you don’t take that, you just gotta do it the hard way.”

“Yeah, I’ve had that- been offered a Skill that was just an application of two of my other Skills- happen a couple times. What about just using magic all on your own, without evolving, or advancing your skills or whatever? Like if you just tried to get Fireball without combining Skills, and had that as one of your only Skills?”

“An aspiring Wizard, are we? Learn magic the hard way? Sure, you could do it, but good luck without any help from the System. Sure, if you pull it off you’re budding, but it’s arguable if it’d be any faster or easier than just trying to advance some related Skill into the effect you want. Perhaps stronger in the long, long run, but can you really manage to spend several decades as you try to unlock the perfect Skills?”

“Can you predict that sort of thing? I was under the impression it was almost impossible.”

“Eh?” Inion did the scales-weighing thing again, “Sure, if you want something really specific, good luck predicting that. But generally? It’s pretty simple. Just take Paths which correspond with what you want your Class to be like, take Skills which are basically what you want to be able to do, and it’ll turn out just fine. The System is good with that sort of thing. After all, it’s… no, I can’t say that, can I?”

“What about predicting what Skill will be evolved by a given Path? So you could complete Paths without risking that it evolves a Skill you still want to level, but without rejecting the evolution?”

“You could probably predict that, but it would be really complicated or it’d involve following someone else’s Class exactly. That has problems, obviously, but if you managed it, then yeah, you could just complete the Paths as your Skills got to a high enough level. It’d be great in theory, but who’d be crazy enough to try it?”

Edwin shrugged, “The Empire apparently. Also maybe the Highpeak dwarves?”

“Really? How’s that work?”

“So far as I’ve heard, they just record a lot of people’s Skills and Paths and see what evolves each time, then they can try to figure out the best set of Skills for a given type of person, whether it’s crafting, fighting, or being a merchant.”

“Huh, good for them. Seems like it’d be effective. Oh yeah! You still need to answer a question for me.”

Edwin raised an eyebrow. What was she talking about?

“We got sidetracked. What do you think the Moderators are?”

“Uh, I guess they’d be individuals tasked with ensuring the System runs smoothly? Maybe most things are automatic, they just deal with more complicated situations?”

Inion seemed more or less satisfied with that answer, nodding to herself. Then, she glanced at the sky, looked around at the clearing and stood up, circling the fire faster than Edwin could escape, kicking his hip lightly, “Anyway! That’s enough talking for now. Time for you to get to work. I wanna see you make stuff.”