The Way Ahead

Edwin limply lay on the roof of the carriage, muscles slowly recovering. They’d pushed him so far with Overcharge that his sweat was slightly black in color, leaving him looking as though he was coated in a thin layer of ash. Worst of all, he still hadn’t figured out how to concentrate the effect in one part of his body, and he was starting to suspect that brute force might not be the correct method to go about it.

Huge surprise, yeah. But in his defense, both Lefi and Inion had thought it stood a decent chance of working. That a week of using Overcharge at least every day and trying to direct the flow of mana hadn’t accomplished so much as sparing his fingertips had passed meant he was finally trying the route of the Alchemist.

Namely, think about and theorize strategies without actually testing anything.

He’d test it like a scientist once his mouth no longer looked like he’d eaten charcoal.

In the meantime, his job was to lay around and think about himself. Literally. He’d turned as much of his Perception inwards as was physically possible, pulling on Anatomy to try and help him explore his own form.

He’d found that Alchemy liked to prod him slightly as he did his examination, and while he had been left marginally skeptical as to the value of the Skill after his time in Panastalis, it hadn’t led him astray so far. Granted, it had only really given him slight pokes about methodology in the past, giving him a bit of intuition about how much heat a potion needed and how long it should be left on the fire, but as the Skill approached level 90 it had begun to give him more underlying knowledge.

Such as, when combined with Anatomy, how his Attributes were interacting with his body. Now, the knowledge was basic. Really, really basic. But it was still there. Well, other than for Impact, but he wasn’t clear what that Attribute did anyway, so...

Health he sensed concentrated in his heart like Galen had said, and for lack of a better word, it tried to maintain the status quo of his anatomy. It was a gross oversimplification, of course, but it seemed broadly accurate. It had a picture of what Edwin ‘should’ be, and pseudo-intelligently either directed Edwin’s natural self-repair mechanisms to restore him to that baseline or actively resisted attempts to pull him from that baseline. What was most interesting was how it prioritized what to repair.

Anything that was utterly critical for Edwin’s life- namely his heart, brain, and lungs- was given an extremely high priority for repair, to the point where it outright made them more resistant to damage. Or maybe it had just cleansed and fixed those three organs so quickly Edwin hadn’t noticed them be affected by his Overcharge overuse.

From there, it expanded its effects out to the rest of his internal organs, before finally moving on to his muscle, bone, and skin. It still had limits, of course. Because it utilized his own body’s functions, Edwin didn’t think it would enable him to regrow a lost arm or whatever.

That said, if he wasn’t otherwise injured and had the entirety of his Health dedicated to protecting his limb, odds were good the Attribute might keep him from losing it in the first place. It was major enough that Edwin could tell so long as it wasn’t busy trying to keep him from dying of blood loss or averted his death a couple of times, it would be able to keep his arm intact.

Overall, it was a curious process, and sensing his own body slowly scrub out the toxins built up from raw mana overdosing was really fascinating. Stamina helped to, and was equally fascinating in its own way. That Attribute was all about motion. Namely, it provided energy to his body and carted waste away. Instead of nutrients randomly drifting through his bloodstream until they encountered his kidneys and were filtered away, Stamina seemed to guide the molecules to the place they were needed, be it through excretion in his sweat, being purified in his lungs (thanks to Fresh Air), or just his body’s normal purification organs.

Because of how rarely he ate, he wasn’t entirely sure where Stamina actually got the energy it used, and it remained a mystery until Edwin managed to activate Skillful Assessment looking inside his own body. Once he had, though, he was able to ‘watch’ the process of Stamina taking energy straight from Survival and Nutrition, putting it directly into the cells that needed it.

Looking at his body and its Skills unlocked a wholly new dimension of analysis, too. He could see Nutrition working around his digestive system, Purify working double-time in concert with Health, and the way that Flexibility and Athletics interacted with each other and Health and Stamina alike was really interesting, even if he couldn’t fully grasp its intricacies.

None of his magical Skills, or even Mana, were obviously present in his physical body, which Edwin wasn’t too surprised by in all honesty. They must have been associated with his soul or whatever. He’d go looking for the answer to that metaphysical question another day.

There was a faint flicker from his mana sense when he activated Flight, his skeletal system linking together into a single magical object and reaching a tendril out to his surroundings, but at that point, between splitting Perception between Anatomy, Basic Mana Sense, and Skillful Assessment, the clarity of his internal perception was… low. He’d revisit the proposition when he had a few more dozen points in Perception, perhaps.

It was tricky trying to figure out where Overcharge fit into the system. He wouldn’t be able to fully tell until he actually used it while looking at himself in this manner, but he knew how it felt and he could speculate.

He was acting like an alchemist, after all.

So, random speculation time!

Overcharge was based on his Mana Infusion. Normally, he used Mana Infusion from his fingertips, but it obviously wasn’t coming from there for Overcharge. Instead, it seemed to be coming directly from his mana reservoir. From his admittedly hazy memories of first unlocking the Attribute, that was located between his collarbones, at the top of his lungs. So, assuming that was accurate, the mana would flood out from there and fill his body. Perhaps it followed his blood, or maybe it was more closely associated with his breath?

I should test this, he traitorously thought before quashing the impulse with a reminder to stick to thought experiments only for this stage of the process.

Either way, he knew from experience that it was rather futile trying to keep an Overcharge originating from his chest from spilling out into his entire body. Perhaps he should try to change the source of his Overcharge, then? Like if he manually activated Overcharge via Mana Infusion, maybe that way he could get the effect to start from his fingertips? If it spread from the end of his arm, maybe he could keep it restricted to below his shoulder.

The only question was how he could do that. Maybe he could use his Health and Stamina for that? He had noted how his Health always fought to keep his body in place, and how Stamina was good at keeping contaminants contained…

Maybe he could leverage them in a combined manner where Health fought against the encroaching Mana and Stamina worked to keep the Mana contained? It might work, though he’d need some way to actually manipulate his Attributes. Maybe he could get Perception mixed in somewhere? It was the only one of his five Attributes he could directly manipulate, after all.

Oh! Maybe there were some sort of Health Manipulation and Stamina Manipulation skills? Those would be very interesting, and hmm. Would he want them if he could get them? His initial reaction was ‘no,’ just because that was his default response these days to new Skills, but if they could give him anywhere close to the sorts of benefits that he got from Basic Mana Manipulation they would be well worth the extra effort. Maybe he could pick them up after he evolved Flight, if they did exist? He’d have to ask Lefi, he’d know.

Okay, back on track. How would he be able to fight off Mana with his Health and Stamina? The former was higher than the latter two, though perhaps combined they’d be sufficient. Maybe he should try to alchemically boost his Attributes? He had what he referred to as his Health and Stamina potions, but that was just for convenience. They didn’t actually affect the Attributes insofar as he knew. The former was essentially a blood clotting agent and the latter was practically just really sugared caffeine.

Something to look into, he supposed.

What might he include in them, though? He hadn’t encountered anything that he’d felt had particular resonance or whatever with his Attributes, but maybe he just wasn’t looking in the right way? Now that he could actually ‘see’ his Attributes, maybe he could figure out if eating any of his ingredients provoked some kind of response from them? It wasn’t a thought experiment, but he was getting kind of sick about just imagining stuff.

He popped open a new Almanac tab and felt around for his satchel.

Test one, Talsanenris….

Level Up!

Skill Points 773→778 (Average level: 43)

Anatomy Level 40→42

Flight Level 40→41

Overcharge Level 20→21

Sapper’s Apparatus Level 49→50

Edwin woke up to the sensation of a drop of water landing on his face. He flailed around slightly, accidentally smacking Inion and waking up the fey in turn. She swatted Edwin in retribution, which was fair enough, but before she could fully understand what was going on Edwin had already retreated from the roof of the carriage, carrying his sleeping pad to the vehicle’s interior.

He needed to check on his potions, naturally. That was his excuse, and he was sticking to it.

When the sky pealed with a mighty thunderclap, unleashing a torrent of water he remained quite dry inside of his little lab. And he would stay that way, which was why he shooed away Kyni when the wet dog tried to get inside the carriage.

There was a lot of stuff that water would mess up, after all. He couldn’t have the pup shaking himself dry and getting all of his stuff wet. He had spent a fair bit of time trying to sanitize everything, and getting dog-water over all of it would just contaminate his experiments.

He was just taking care of his potions, naturally. That was his excuse, and he was sticking to it.

Granted, it didn’t hold up quite so well when Yathal tried to take shelter, but there was enough of an overhang above the driver’s seat that he was still able to get the boy to sit there. As a bonus, Kyni could join him, so long as the dog didn’t go inside.

Inion didn’t care much about the rain, of course. She was still a water spirit, and it didn’t matter where that water was. It was still her day to be on driving duty, but that position hardly required actually being in the driver’s seat, ironically.

Lefi had some kind of Dryness skill to keep himself in the clear. He, like the rest of them, kept most of his weapons and gear stashed in the carriage, but retrieved his gray cloak and donned it once the rain started. Even hours into the thunderstorm, not even a drop of water had clung to or soaked into the woolen garment or the rest of Lefi’s garb.

Amusingly, his fiery hair had calmed down somewhat, revealing black hair that smoldered with red light, like coal being kept down by the rain.

In any case, Edwin wasn’t totally fibbing when he said that he needed his space in the interior to work on his potions. It was absolutely true. Now, he had been able to work in more cramped areas than the carriage in the past, but he still liked having the space to himself. And besides, who knew if one of his experiments might suddenly blow up? It had happened in the past after all. Nevermind that he was unlikely to experience another coal dust explosion while working with talsanenris and sinbalyne.

His experiments had revealed something interesting. His talsanenris potions did in fact supplement his Health, but only slightly. It was more accurate to say that they relieved some of his Health load by providing basic preliminary healing throughout his body, freeing up more of the Attribute to act as it saw fit.

Sinbalyne was more interactive with his Attributes, but not in a good way. It interfered with Stamina as it attempted to go about its business, slowing down the delivery magic running within his body at all times.

It was that reaction he was attempting to replicate now. If he could somehow isolate whatever component of the sinbalyne allowed it to interfere with his Attributes, he might be able to plug talsanenris or other effects into there!

He wasn’t having any luck at the moment, though. His initial trials didn’t have any of the key attributes (heh) of what he was looking for, and it wasn’t until he attempted functionally using Mana Infusion without using Mana Infusion that anything started to actually click. Essentially, the Skill liked to just insert mana directly into a substance with no regard for what was already there. While he was now able to Infuse some low-magic substances, his Infusion seemed to override whatever base magical abilities the substances had. Instead, what he was trying to do was use his Basic Mana Manipulation to manually add mana to the mixture, increasing the density without disrupting anything that was already present.

It took a fair bit of effort, but he eventually managed to pull out a metaphorical drop of mana to the tips of his fingers. However, it was repelled by the potion until he forced it into a slightly more concentrated form, making it feel like a tiny candle to his mana senses. Only then was it accepted into the potion, vanishing from his fingertip into the solution in the blink of an eye.

Then his attention was wrenched to the side by a notification he most certainly had not been anticipating but was most certainly welcome.

Level Up!

Refining Level 1→2