The Way Ahead

Edwin had always preferred warmth to cold, and so while Adaptive Defense did a great job of keeping him from utterly freezing, or even getting too cold, he really would prefer that he had super warm, super comfortable underclothes.

Yes, he could get something made of wool. Yes, he could have gotten clothes already made supernaturally warm via Skills. But those were the boring options. Edwin wanted to try and add the warming properties himself, and he needed something absorbent to test out his potion. It was all a part of solving the mana-accumulation problem, after all. He could make potions, sure, but could he make something using his potions that had magical properties?

It was perfect practice for more advanced things, after all.

Edwin ended up getting two new undershirts, both perfectly fitted to him, pure white, and apparently made out of something called ‘wheatspin,’ a surprisingly soft fabric considering it was apparently made of discarded wheat stalks spun into thread.

The tailor he had bought it from had boasted that his was the softest wheatspin garments in the city, that he alone had the Skills needed to take the normally coarse and stiff fabric and make it actually wearable. While somewhat skeptical, the price the man gave was about in the range that Rillah had told him he should expect for the shirts, so he shrugged and bought them anyway.

When he asked her later, Rillah confirmed that what the man had said was more or less true, though certainly exaggerated. Wheatspin was a common fabric at all levels of society. The poor wore it because it was made out of incredibly cheap material, all the way up to nobility who wore it as a statement showing off how Skilled their personal tailors were. That the man Edwin had visited was open to the public meant that he wasn’t good enough to be privately contracted, but that by no means made him bad. The fabric was still as soft as anything he could remember from Earth, almost silk-smooth but somehow with a very different texture.

It was a curious dichotomy, but not especially relevant for his current task.

Namely, how did you light a shirt on fire without burning it up or using flames?

He had practice from his hot-water experiment, sure, but that was different. There, he was just allowing the two elements to combine in a natural course of action. The flame went out because the water extinguished it, but it was heated in turn. More fire, and it would have produced more steam than water.

Unfortunately, cloth- particularly wheatspin- was flammable, and just shoving alchemist’s fire- Refined concentrated firevine sap- into it was a sure-fire way to burn his practice shirt to ash. Hm. What about if he tried to filter his personal Infusion again? It had worked well with his little whirlpool jar when he Infused motion into water, why not heat? Of course, he’d only been able to get his Imbuement to stay permanent in water, but that wasn’t too much of an obstacle.

Edwin closed his eyes and conjured his mana visualization. Okay, he had a source, a series of filters, and a variety of other tubes, pipes, alembics, and other glassware which didn’t technically do anything but were nonetheless synonymous with alchemy thanks to fantasy media.

Once he had a clear image in his mind, he spent a minute assembling a match for it in reality, fastening different premade sections together with freshly-conjured Apparatite bindings. Once it was all assembled, Edwin added his two primary ingredients into the mix- distilled water and alchemist’s fire.

In theory he might be able to do this with nothing but magic, but he used the liquids nonetheless. Both because they psychologically reassured him that he was doing something physical, and because they also triggered Alchemy and gave him an extra 90-odd skill levels of experience and power. Plus, if this worked he’d have an actual, physical result and not just mana practice.

Carefully gripping his water reservoir, Edwin slowly Infused the liquid, making sure he kept control over the mana inside. With his other hand, he Infused not the alchemist’s fire- doing so didn’t work well as a few small explosions had testified- but more tried to overlay the liquid with his mana. As he did so, he pulled on Basic Thermokinesis to tune his Infusion towards fire. It was a weird sensation, but one he was slowly getting better at.

Fortunately, for all that it was ready to burst into flames at a moment’s notice, alchemist’s fire wasn’t a high explosive and still required air to burn. So, keeping it in a sealed container was enough to keep it as a liquid, even as he mixed it with Infused water.

Between his greater experience and additional confidence that came from working with this kind of alchemy, Edwin was able to create a steaming bottle of water with just a few minutes of work. It wouldn’t get hotter or colder, he knew, but if he left it out it would evaporate and waste his work.

Success, it would seem, and one that was decidedly better than his last attempt at creating perpetually heated water. Edwin released his tight grip on his Infusion while he assessed the result. Now all he needed was to Refine it, mix it with molai, and turn it into a proper dye.

A tiny star lit on his finger as he began.

When he was done Refining, he was left with a reddish-gold liquid that was… exactly the same temperature. Interesting. He would have thought that concentrating it would have made it warmer. What was the difference, then? He knew it had to have done something, but what exactly that was…

Further testing required, he thought as he set a small measure off to the side.

The bulk of his Refined hot water went into his cauldron, and guided by Alchemy, he mixed crushed molai alongside some glowleaf as a stabilizer, brewing it until the entire liquid was illuminated in reddish light. He filtered out the solids remaining from his molai and glowleaf and tried to dye one of his new shirts.

He didn’t exactly know how to dye, but that was a small matter. It was just soaking it, wringing it out, rinsing it, and repeating. How complicated could it really be? Yes, yes, it could be very complicated, but it didn’t need to be.

After several washes, Edwin let his shirt hang up to dry, watching it gently steam.

A few hours later, he returned to find his shirt an interesting faintly-red color, and grinned. It looked like it turned out well, and he eagerly reached out to feel his new eternally-warm shirt…

Edwin frowned. It felt no different from before. Clearly, he was doing something wrong. Further testing… actually, he might not need to test this. There were people with way more experience than him in magical matters.

“Oh, so your lady friend couldn’t help you?”

He sighed, “No, Inion. Rillah doesn’t have any experience with making magical things. Something to do with storms not being containable.”

“What makes you think I can help you then?”

“You made Obairlann,” he pointed out, “That was pretty magical.”

“That’s not really the same.”

“Can you help me or not? I came to you because I thought you might be able to provide some kind of new insight."

“Oh, not talking to me just for fun?”

“Considering you find some way to snipe at Rillah every time we talk, no. I know fewer people on this planet than I have fingers, and if I wanted to hear people badmouth one of them I’d just wander around the city.”

“You’re making a mistake with her…” she cautioned.

“I don’t care.”

“She’s manipulating you.”

“And you aren’t?”

“Not like she is.”

“Again, I don’t care. Not like you seem to think, anyway. I’m comfortable around her, I don’t care if that’s some sort of magical compulsion, it’s not something I’ve been getting anywhere else.”

Inion didn’t have a response to that.

Edwin sighed, “Can you help me or not?”

“I can.”

“Will you? Look, if we don’t have some topic that we can focus on while we chat, we’re just going to fall into another argument about Rillah.”

“I do not like that woman.”

“I know. Trust me, I know. And I wish I knew how to help reassure you. But that’s also not something I want to talk about right now. So… magical stuff?”

Inion finally seemed to concede, “I wouldn’t describe myself as much of an enchanter, but I know I can definitely give you some information.”

Edwin gave a warm smile, “Thanks, Inion. Really, just having anything to build off of is enough at this point. I can figure out the details myself, but I have no clue what I’m doing.”

“Let me see what you’ve tried so far.”

“Okay, so this was when….” Edwin gave a quick rundown.

“I see,” Inion nodded, “So your first problem is just what you were enchanting.”

“Oh, so I do need to directly apply my magic to the cloth, not just dye it then?”

“Yes, but no. You made the potion… probably fine, I can’t speak to that. But you just used it as a dye, without doing anything to then make the cloth itself more magical.”

“So all the magic stayed in the dye, and when that dried out, it changed the composition…”

“Ending all of your work, yes.”

“Okay,” Edwin nodded absently, “So… what? Do I… I don’t know. I knew I was doing something wrong, but that only helps so much.”

“That’s something I can help with. Fey bind themselves to a location or an object, and we’re changed accordingly, but so too is our Bind, ya?”

“So… what?”

“I’m getting there. What if you were to do something similar? You have a comparable ability, don’t you?”

“Fey’s Caress?” he asked, confused, “But the Skill said that I take on properties of it… yeah. ‘Bind yourself to a touched material, gaining some of its properties.’ What does that have to do with enchanting, though?”

“It’s a binding, it goes both ways. Remember when I bound myself to you?”

Edwin nodded, rubbing his forearm, “It was hard to forget. But I thought that was because you actually bound yourself to me while I was water, and then because of magical… stuff, you could then keep the binding to me even afterwards? What does that have to do with enchanting? Are you saying I might be able to give some sort of enchantment to myself?”

“Close enough. I doubt you could make yourself magical, your own inherent mana would fight it off once the Skill subsided. But you still brought about lasting magical change to both my pond and the Rhothos river with the Skill, yes?”

“You mean like how I took you from your pond and put you in the river?”

“Ya!”

“Wasn’t that because of your ritual… thing? And because that’s your ability?”

“Ya! Ya, it was. Magic is complicated, much more than your science-”

Edwin scowled halfheartedly.

“-but the same idea still applies. If you bind yourself first to something magical, then hold the magic while you bind to something else, you might be able to directly transfer the magic from the one to the other.”

“How do I do that?” he complained, “So far as I know it’s only physical attributes that I copy.”

“I don’t know! Oh, don’t look at me like that. It’s your Skill, I don’t know that much about it.”

“Well you’re no help. ‘Oh, Edwin. I’m a great and wise fey who can help you with your magic. But I dunno how to actually help you do it.’ Honestly, at least Rillah’s upfront with me when she doesn’t know something,” he teased.

“I’ve told you before, I’m no magi,” she shot back, “All I know is that I see some similarities between how your Skills work and some enchanting. I’ve never actually enchanted something, all I can do is follow a few rituals I know.”

“Hm,” he mused, “It is a pity that you don’t get along with Rillah, it would be interesting to see both of you working together with your musical magics. I won’t ask you to try, it’s just… well, a pity. How do your rituals work, anyway?”

“They’re instinctive. It’s like asking you how you breathe, or how your heart beats. You may know the answer, but that’s because it’s something you’ve tried to learn. I just never did…”

They stayed there for a while, talking about all sorts of things. It got tense at times, but they made it work. Edwin breathed a sigh of relief. He might not know how to reconcile the two women, but at least he didn’t have to choose between them yet.

He had friends- or close enough- and he wasn’t about to let that go any time soon.

It itched.

Of all the possible outcomes, Edwin had to admit, itching was not one he had anticipated. He’d followed Inion’s advice, trying to Caress his Refined materials. For whatever reason, it didn’t work, at least at first; he could copy the mundane aspects of the substance, but any mana stubbornly refused to be drawn or copied (whichever it was) into his hand.

Following a hunch and some trial and error, Edwin found that he needed to activate Overcharge at the same time as Fey’s Caress if he wanted to absorb any magical properties, and he got a fair bit of use from his Overcharge pauldron, even needing to make more of his mana-blocking potion because of how much he was going through.

But, of course, absorbing magic itched. It was only a little bit while Overcharge was active, but if he let that Skill lapse while he maintained the magic, it was easily ten times worse.

It took a colossal amount of will for Edwin to actually take a good look at what was going on. So far as he could tell with his mana sense, Overcharge drew mana from his Infusion, which these days began at his fingertips. If there was another source of mana available right there, they got mixed together.

Otherwise, Edwin’s personal mana blocked anything foreign from entering. It was an interesting revelation, and he needed to see how flexible those limits were at some point.

In any case, his personal magic wasn’t strong enough to force the foreign mana held in place by Fey’s Caress out of his body, but that was where the itching came from.

Once he released Fey’s Caress, though, it was definitely strong enough, and all the absorbed magic leaked out rapidly. If he combined that with mana Infusion, he could even co-opt some of that mana and shove it into his target object.

It seemed perfect for what he wanted, honestly. Edwin looked at his shirt- as it turned out, washing out the fabric also got rid of most of the color- and mentally prepared himself with a curt nod and a deep breath.

Right hand into the bowl of water, check. Activate Overcharge and Fey’s Caress on the water at the same time….

Check.

Mana flooded into his arm, but Edwin wasn’t going to take any longer than he had to. The moment he felt Overcharge hit saturation, he pulled his hand-shaped water out of its bowl and laid it onto the fabric. It absorbed a bit of his hand, but it shouldn’t do much more than leave his skin slightly sore and raw for a bit, like a rope burn.

Overcharge lasted just under thirty seconds, and if he timed his Infusion and cut off Caress at the same time the Skill ended, he had the best chance of making this work….

Check.

The collapsing Skills sought to offload mana wherever it could find, and fortunately there was another Skill right there, ready to channel as much mana as it was provided, albeit slowly. Happily, the action seemed to reduce the severity of Overcharge on his arm, as the mana wasn’t left to wreak additional havoc on his biology.

Hm. Was that a potential way to reduce the Overcharge backlash in the future, maybe? Something to investigate.

That was irrelevant for right now though, first he needed to see how the shirt fared.

Initially things looked promising. The shirt was definitely Infused, and even was the right temperature. It triggered his mana sense too, reminiscent of a hot spring and… the sensation was already fading in favor of just becoming normal Infused fabric. What? Why was it fading? Mana Infusion pretty much didn’t wear off so far as he knew, so why was this fading?

Within just a couple of hours, the inherent heat he felt from the shirt had almost entirely faded, despite the shirt still being magical. What was going on?

Repeating the experiment led to the same results, so it wasn’t just a fluke. Hmmmm…

He’d come back to this later, he decided. Clearly, this was more complicated than he’d initially thought.

His arguments with Inion kept floating back to the forefront of his mind, much to his annoyance. He’d definitely know if someone was using mental Skills on him, wouldn’t he? He definitely would. Adaptive Defense would be tuned in that direction, surely? It was almost custom-tailored to trying to fight that kind of long-term insidious but harmful effect.

It would definitely work, so why was he even worrying about it? Inion was just jealous, he was sure. He could confront Rillah about it, maybe that would help. But… what would he do? Did he want to know if she was influencing him? He was happy the way things were.

He was just being paranoid though, he was sure. Rillah wouldn’t… well, okay. He needed to remove what he felt that Rillah would or wouldn’t do from the situation. He didn’t know her that well. Just looking at this objectively. He could do that.

Edwin set down his tools and pulled out a chair, dropping into it and closing his eyes in thought. He dealt with unknown phenomena all the time, this was no different.

Observation: He was very attached to Rillah, and was willing to go out of his way to help her out, spent a lot of time with her, and generally trusted her.

Hypothesis 1: Rillah was using some kind of mental compulsion Skill on him.

Hypothesis 2: Edwin was just genuinely that lonely and starved for human contact.

Evidence in favor of Hypothesis 1: Immediate fondness for Rillah, confirmed presence of one or more mind-affecting Skills in her repertoire, noted fixation on trying to help her, defending her against Inion, Inion’s suspicions.

Evidence against Hypothesis 1: No activation of Adaptive Defense, no obvious Skill effects active so far as Skillful Assessment can see.

Evidence in favor of Hypothesis 2: He did really like Rillah. She was nice and willing to talk to him, willing to take him along on outings and intentionally make sure to include him in stuff. She made sure that he took breaks and took care of himself, and stood up for his need of breaks. He was keenly interested in getting to know her better…

In whatever form that may take, he admitted to himself, though he was more looking for a friend rather than a romantic partner… not that he’d really decline that either.

Other than with Inion, a part of him whispered, which he didn’t really have a good response for. Well no, he did, and it was that just physical intimacy wasn’t what he was actually looking for and was what Inion was most likely to teasingly ask him about. He’d also never taken her up on her offers, so who even knew how serious they were?

Anyway, he was getting distracted.

Evidence against Hypothesis 2: Inordinate fixation on Rillah beyond normal interest might dictate, confirmed presence of one or more mind-affecting Skills in her repertoire and a known willingness to use them….

Edwin frowned. He couldn’t really think of that much evidence against his second hypothesis, but that didn’t mean it was true. Particularly for something like this, where it was the validity of his own perceptions that was in question. What was he really doing, anyway? He had found a person he liked, and now he was spending time with and trying to help out said friend as much as he was really capable. There wasn’t anything unnatural about that…. right?

Even if he was being excessive, that didn’t mean Rillah was stepping out of line. Heck, maybe this was just how he normally would act in the stressed situation of trying to impress someone he liked, it wasn’t like he had that much experience in that regard. At most, maybe Rillah was just trying to help him along with any Skills she might have, or maybe they were just passive or harmless. Heck, that was probably worthy of its own hypothesis come to think of it. So…

Hypothesis 3: Rillah has some level of passive/socially acceptable Skill that she is using, and is encouraging him in his pursuit of companionship.

Evidence for Hypothesis 3: Matches with what she’s doing with Yathal, encouraging him to be more confident in himself, all evidence with Hypothesis 2 applied, but with reasonable courses of action magnified.

Evidence against Hypothesis 3: Lefi and Inion most likely have similar Skills, and his feelings towards them were remarkably different from how he felt about Rillah. Inion would likely recognize that was what happened and be able to explain it.

Besides, how would he react in either situation? If it turned out that she wasn’t using any Skills on him, and his behavior was just the result of his own nature, then he’d obviously want to keep doing what he was doing. He didn’t have any real reason to stop what he was doing, her request- not that it even really was one- aligned with his personal research anyway, and it was as good a goal as any.

That also complicated things if she was influencing his mind with Skills. Some amount would definitely just be socially acceptable, he was sure… though he should probably ask that of Lefi, instead of just assuming they were considered alright, shouldn’t he? Anyway, if she was influencing him in that way, it didn’t invalidate his reasons for helping her out. He might ask her to not se them anymore, but what difference wold it make? Well, he’d have to reevaluate his priorities when his mind was unaffected, that much was certain, but he didn’t anticipate his logic really changing.

I really, really should just talk to her, Edwin thought, It would solve all of this so nicely.

He really, really should. Communication was absolutely key to any kind of relationship. But he also didn’t want to lose what he already had, however that might happen. Who knew how Rillah would take being confronted about social Skills? He definitely didn’t want to say anything about his feelings, in case that might make her treat him differently.

Talking was the smart thing to do. He should do it. Right now, he should hop off of his chair, head downstairs and find Rillah, then talk to her about his concerns and find out her side of the story.

He should do it.

It was exactly the right move in this situation.

….

It would resolve this entire situation.

It was the reasonable, emotionally mature thing to do.

...

…He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t.

He couldn’t take the chance of messing up one of his few friendships, and for what anyway? If she didn’t like him and was just using him, she didn’t exactly need a Skill for that, she would just have to ask. He liked being helpful, and hers was an intriguing problem besides. Learning how to enchant wouldn’t hurt, and would definitely be helpful for him going forward. It wasn’t like she was asking him to do anything seriously inconvenient, nothing that he would later regret. Maybe he’d be able to ask her more about her social Skills and try and suss out some information that way.

Edwin sighed. To make himself feel better, more certain in his status as not just a mind-controlled puppet, he wouldn’t do any more enchanting work today. He’d….

Well, he’d figure something else out.

Stamina was a bit of a strange Attribute, Edwin noted. Well, all Attributes were strange in their own way, but Stamina was his current focus so its peculiarities were the most obvious. He could feel it swell and fade with every breath he took, sweeping through his body and carrying with it nutrients and carting off waste to be disposed of.

It honestly seemed like a bit of a magical enhancement or even replacement of his circulatory system, and Edwin idly wondered if with an insanely high level of Stamina his blood might be almost entirely redundant. As he studied it, though, it also just made everything he did… easier. It was subtle, definitely, but once he spotted it, it was obvious and made a lot of sense. After all, Stamina seemed to increase his physical energy, and while some of that could be explained away by nutrient transportation, there was still a finite amount of energy that Edwin had available in his body at any given time.

However, Stamina largely seemed to bypass that, and once he went looking Edwin noted that the Attribute helped with all motion in his body. His muscles were saturated with Stamina, and every time he contracted them, it served to make the action smoother and easier. It didn’t make him any better, it just made him tire out slower and recover faster. Unlike Health, it didn’t seem to be exhausted per se (or if it was, it was incredibly minute), he was just constrained by his normal human limits.

Which was stupid. He had magic! He had superhuman resilience and a ton of different supernatural Skills! He wanted to leap tall buildings in a… well, okay, he could do that. But not because of Stamina! He was clearly missing something with his Stamina Manipulation skill, because all he’d figured out how to do was move around some of the Attribute, and while he thought it was likely that his efforts were making things easier, whatever benefits it was providing were miniscule. He most certainly wasn’t doing anything close to what he could do with mana.

…Whatever.

He’d figure it out eventually, and for now he was just going to keep poking around the Skill and leveling it. And so he sat, not quite meditating as he tried to grab onto his Stamina. If his Mana Manipulation was like trying to fill a bathtub with a spoon, this felt like picking up sand wearing oven mitts- the dexterity just wasn’t there. So, he tried to push instead of pull. Pushing into one arm, then the other. To his legs, into his lungs. Each time he did so, there was perhaps the slightest benefit to his motions, but so slight they might well have just been a placebo.

Eventually he settled into a bit of a rhythm. Since the Attribute already pulsed with his breaths, Edwin settled more deeply into a breathing routine and just tried to… enhance what was already there.

With every breath out, he pushed Stamina into his limbs. Every time he breathed in, he pushed it back to his torso and head. In, and out. In, and out. At some point, he tried moving his mana in unison, just to see if anything would happen.

There wasn’t any obvious change in efficacy, no Path, no new Skill offered, no sparkling lights, but it felt right, so he kept doing it while he mused. Health, Mana, and Stamina were the normal ‘resources’ in games and the like, sure, but why would they be here? Alongside Perception, Dexterity, Speed… what was the common thread, why were they all attributes? What made Attributes different from skills anyway? It wasn’t like there weren’t passive Skills, and heck, Edwin’s Walking functioned in a way really similar to how Stamina reinforced his entire body. There clearly was something going on there, but what? It also really made him question how much Stamina normal people had, and how unlocking an Attribute influenced things.

Well… Mana, Stamina, and Health all gave Edwin what felt like pools of energy. Magical, Physical, and… Life? Life-force. Hm. He was starting to understand why the alchemists of Panastalis developed a humour-like model of the body, that’s what those Attributes more or less were, weren’t they?

He’d been thinking of Mana as the overtly supernatural of the three, because what it did had no analogue to how things ‘should’ work, but that was flatly false. Here, he’d encountered creatures that used magic just as they might use their physical bodies to defend themselves or hunt. Mana was undoubtedly a fundamental part of the world- and he really needed to stop thinking about how things ‘should’ work because that was flatly incorrect. But maybe he should look at the other Attributes like that as well? He could do supernatural things with mana but not stamina. Was he unintentionally constraining himself? How did all of this fit in with it seeming like everyone had some amount of Health and Stamina at least?

He breathed out, his stamina and mana flowing to his extremities, then back in, and the Attributes ebbed back to his lungs and intermingling with the fresh air.

Was that the secret? ‘There is no spoon, only your imagination is holding you back?’ Could he do all kinds of crazy superhuman stunts with Stamina, make his own mage-like Skills? He didn’t know he couldn’t, after all. Why shouldn’t he be able to fly with Stamina, phase through solid objects? It might be crazily complicated, but the System could help him out there surely. All he needed was the tools.

He waited with bated breath for a Skill or Path unlock, but nothing showed up. No easy answers here, it would seem.

Well, that was no matter.

He’d just figure it out himself.