The Way Ahead

The tower was pure chaos.

Well, it was honestly rather organized, but at the moment it felt chaotic. Edwin hadn’t properly appreciated just how much stuff he’d gotten during his stay until he actually needed to put it all in one place. Most of it was alchemical products, including a lot of failed experiments and byproducts of successful ones. A lot of it was apparatite, but the stuff didn’t go bad and it was still clean, so there was no need to dismiss it now only for him to summon it again later.

Of course, because of the insane volume of stuff that he had, Edwin had found himself in the position of needing a few more chests and crates to store it all in. Improbable Arsenal had actually gotten to the point where most cheap bags and other containers were actually less effective than his own Skill. Granted, a ten-times expansion was far from the biggest he’d seen, but he also didn’t really feel like spending one of his few remaining grai on a wooden box with a hundred-times expansion.

He’d actually briefly toyed with the idea that he might be able to make a business out of applying Improbable Arsenal to pre-made boxes and selling the then-larger containers, but it didn’t work for a few reasons. The primary reason was that over long periods of time, the Skill did fade. The mana he Infused into the container gradually bled out into the surroundings, the Skill weakened, and it all faded. It took a few months, he’d found, so he could easily fleece people if he wanted, but he didn’t want to. Why bother? He was an alchemist, he could make health potions, he remembered how to make porcelain, he was already a gold-printing machine if he decided to get rich at any point.

The one thing that didn’t seem to lose potency was his apparatite, if he used Improbable Arsenal while conjuring the crystal. While it meant he did have options for long-term constructions beyond just refreshing the Skill every so often, it was too fragile to be useful storage for most people and he didn’t really want to sell it anyway.

In any case, for his personal use he could pretty easily make crystal boxes and vials for his substances, then buy a few wooden boxes and chests without any spatial expansion for just a few ves (they had apparently been made by an apprentice, not that you’d know it from the quality of their woodwork) and expand them himself.

It still took ages to pack everything away properly. Part of that was admittedly because Edwin also wanted to sort his stuff while he was at it, but it also was just really time-consuming to take down his entire lab and greenhouse, then relocate their materials and contents into his wagon. The potted plants returned to their shelves and were reattached, drying racks relocated to the ceiling, some local plants had been dug up while wintering and needed their own places to be stored. While Sheriath didn’t have any known overtly magical plants it did have a few with mundane uses, and it didn’t hurt to take a few saplings from the garden.

All the chaos involved just made it more embarrassing when Rillah showed up fully packed in a single bag, a leather satchel not much larger than Edwin’s two hands.

“Really?” Edwin hefted the bag, feeling that it barely weighed twenty pounds. The satchel wascrafted out of fine leather, a scroll of parchment rolled up at the bottom and held securely in place below the main pouch by a pair of metal clasps.

“What? I like it.”

He peeked inside her sack and couldn’t help but double-take, “What the heck is your Skill’s level?”

“Oh, Endless Carrying Cellar? Just level forty or so.”

“That’s the level my Skill is at, but this has to be three times as strong. How?”

She smiled, “It’s a good Skill. And it’s helped by a lot of my other Skills.”

“It’s bound to be. Sheesh, I wish it lasted more than a day or two on its own. I could use that much space.”

“You have an entire cart.”

“And I’m trying to bring an entire lab with me. What’s your point?”

“Nothing, I suppose. Is there somewhere I should put this? It’s all a bit messy.”

“Huh? Oh, right. Just hang it on one of the outside hooks, I’d say. You off to your meeting?”

“No, not quite yet. Their court is in session, but it’s not my time to report until closer to noon.”

“How does that all work, anyway? I don’t think I ever asked.”

“I think you might have at one point, but it’s not really worth remembering. A couple dozen nobles sit at this big desk, with the governor at the center and they ask me a couple questions while trying to make themselves sound impressive. It could be done in six minutes if they actually stayed on topic, but there’s just so much posturing it might take an hour.”

“Better you than me,” he teased, earning a playful swat from her. “Good luck. See you on the other side.”

“Where are you off to?”

“Now that you reminded me, I should check that Lefi’s stuff will fit in the wagon. I bet he’ll be happy to not have to carry it all, but… well, he probably has his own spatial expansion Skill, doesn’t he?”

Rillah just shrugged as they turned in opposite directions.

Lefi did not have a Skill of his own for spatial expansion, a fact which Edwin felt very momentarily proud of as a single area in which he was actually better than the omnicompetent adventurer. Then, of course, Lefi had to go and lift Edwin’s entire cart with a single hand and carry it outside when they were trying to get it around the obstacles in the stable. Edwin could have probably done that, in all honesty, but it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as effortless.

At least everything found its place in the end, and other than a brief scuffle involving Yathal having somehow misplaced his shoe- and how it ended up on the roof of the tower he could only wonder at- it was blessedly uneventful. All that was left now was to actually leave the city, and they’d be free once more.

Edwin had all but forgotten how impressive the Sheraith gates were. The twin waterfalls, he reminded himself as the mistake of past-Edwin thinking they were rainbows came slamming into the forefront of his mind, framed the massive doorway perfectly, allowing a trickle of people in and out.

A gnome with the color palette of a sunset scrambled past the cart, darting between the comparative giants surrounding him before effortlessly scaling the interior wall on unseen handholds, slipping into the gatehouse above.

With a bit of closer inspection, Edwin realized that the waterfalls weren’t painted- they genuinely were blue. And also granite. He suspected Skill shenanigans, though without closer examination he couldn’t see if Skillful Assessment would give any insight into if the Skill was still present.

At least the way out of the city should be a lot quicker than when they came in. He just hoped Lefi would get his weapons back without any issue.

Almanac told Edwin that the ‘Experienced Lirasian Gatekeeper’ was apparently present when he came into the city, as was the Junior Gate Guard functioning as his assistant, not that Edwin remembered either of them.

“I see your ‘month or two’ turned into half a year, Adventurer.”

“Indeed! It was not intended, but the snows came early this year.”

“You shouldn’t have been here when they came, but that is decidedly not my problem.”

The man turned and said something to his assistant that Polyglot seemed to be blocked from understanding. It wasn’t a very good block, Edwin could have easily overpowered the effect just by trying to listen in, but why bother? It might make them mad if they detected it, and it probably wasn’t important if their body language was anything to go by. True to form, they waved Lefi and Yathal through just a moment later, and it was Edwin’s turn.

“Good riddance, I see.”

“Look, I didn’t get into any trouble other than what found me,” he defended himself.

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t really care. Get along.”

“So I had some weapons to pick up?”

It took a fair bit of wrangling, but Edwin eventually managed to retrieve, among other things, no less than seven daggers, six swords ranging from a foot long to as tall as Edwin himself, five gold-colored flails, four different shields, three short tridents, two halberds….

And a full sash of throwing knives, his internal monologue sang.

“I don’t know why you need this many weapons,” he leveled a stare at Lefi, “Nor how you could possibly use them all, but seriously what the heck.”

“One must always be prepared!”

“Five! You have five flails, and they’re all made out of brass. Why. And also how. Where do you keep all of these when they aren’t piled in the carriage?”

Inion emerged from where she was hiding in the back of the wagon, slipping next to Edwin. He gave her a quick smile as she brushed against him, distracted from his complaints against Lefi.

“I hope it wasn’t too cramped?” He was glad that Inion had in the end decided to come along, but shoving her in a barrel of water to smuggle her past the gates probably wasn’t the most comfortable.

She shook her head, “It was just fine. Now hop off. I’ll drive today.”

“Really?” he raised an eyebrow, “Today was my day.”

“Bill and I have an understanding. I’ll take care of it, now shoo.”

He shrugged, “Okay? It’ll be nice to stretch my legs, I guess.”

Edwin hopped off the wagon, trying to figure out what Inion’s game was today, but after a few moments without success, shrugged and turned back to keep talking with Lefi. Unsurprisingly, the adventurer had already moved to speak more with Yathal, leaving Edwin behind.

Ah well, he could appreciate just being on the road as much as anyone, and while his muscles had atrophied after several months of… less constant use- his training had definitely fallen off a fair bit, particularly towards the end- his Skills and Stamina had not, so he wasn’t suffering too much from just walking. It just gave him the chance to appreciate the sights, and he could always fly if his legs ever got sore.

The fields, so full of ready-to-harvest crops when they entered the city, were now barren dirt save for a few opportunistic weeds popping up here and there. The road still carried a few traces of the recent cold, a couple snow drifts piled at the edge just off the stonework. The air was as clean as anything Edwin had ever experienced, carrying with it the scent of recent rain, and the faint trills of birdsong were just barely audible over the clatter of the wagon.

It was a nice day.

An hour after they’d left the city, Kynigos barked something to his boy, who perked up immediately.

“Huh? Oh!” Yathal started spinning around, searching the area for something.

Curious, Edwin decided to see what it was the boy was looking for. Within seconds, he spotted Rillah’s figure about a kilometer back, her face beaming as she looped and dove through the air, her wings the color of frosted grass.

“Oh hey, Rillah got out,” Edwin noted at the distant figure.

“Aw man, I wanted to see her first!”

“Maybe next time, when you get Seeing to a higher level.”

“We gonna stop and wait for her?”

“Nah,” Edwin shook his head, “Look at the rate she’s going, she’ll catch up before too long. Although…”

He thought for a moment before a grin snuck across his face. While level thirty in Unbound Tether was just barely too weak to fully lift himself up- he estimated he could output about seven hundred Newtons of force at this point, which could cut his effective gravity nearly in fourth- Rillah was a bit lighter than Edwin, and he could toss her around with relative ease if she wasn’t fighting back. He hadn’t tried this recently, but perhaps he ought to give her a bit of ‘help’ catching up? While Unbound Tether couldn’t hit the moon, a mere kilometer was well within its range.

He mentally reached out with his Skill, attached it to the tiny figure and pulled. Far off, Rillah jerked slightly as gravity suddenly seemed to change around her before she adjusted and tucked her wings in for a dive. While she was well out of range for Numeracy, Mathematics came in and saved the day. Assuming she was about 55 kilos, he should be accelerating her at about 11 meters per second per second, so then when combined with gravity speeding her up by around ten meters per second per second she was experiencing about a forty-five degree angle dive by flying straight forward and a combined acceleration of about sixteen meters a second. That would total something like seventy meters a second at terminal velocity? He wasn’t sure how her wings interacted with it… Further testing required.

It took about thirty seconds for the speeding figure to finally reach them, but as she got close enough Edwin cut off his Skill- he didn’t actually want to be hit by the girl, after all. While potentially amusing, being struck by someone flying at 250 kilometers per hour would not be good for his continued health.

He needn’t have worried overmuch, as Rillah swept her wings out on approach, bleeding off massive amounts of speed in seconds and gliding to a stop right in front of him.

“Edwin!” she complained, playfully swatting his shoulder as her wings faded away.

He just laughed, “What? I wanted to give you a hand.”

“Mmm…. Fine. But a little warning next time?”

“And how, may I ask, would I give you a warning when you’re that far out, exactly?”

“Well, you could…” she trailed off before glaring at him, “Okay, you win this round. I’ll forgive you… if you do it again later.”

He chuckled, “Deal. You know, I think it’s strong enough to properly lift you now. I’m probably a bit heavier than you and I’m almost there when not too geared up.”

“Speaking of gear…”

“We had to toss your bag inside when we went through inspection. Second chest on the left.”

“Thanks,” she ducked inside, slipping past Inion. The fey pretended to not notice her, but the slender girl had no issue getting past her regardless.

She reemerged a couple seconds later with her bag slung over her shoulder, and was still adjusting it as she nimbly hopped onto the road and stepped up to walk- eh, she was more dancing then walking- beside him.

“So, how’d it…” Edwin started, but found he was already drowned out by the booming voice of the last member of their little adventurer’s party.

“You rejoin us at long last! Did your quest conclude admirably?”

Her smile grew slightly wider as she nodded in recollection, “Oh yeah. You should have seen their faces. So I was standing there like any of the other boring meetings, and they were talking about how despite their best efforts they still hadn’t gotten an adequate replacement, yadda yadda, and the whole time I’m trying to not just straight-up yawn just because of how boring it all is.

“Then this one real pain, Soraeflas, decides to puff his feathers by saying how I clearly can’t be trusted because I said I’d have trouble come winter and spring but they hadn’t had any kind of poor weather. Another noble said that it was probably just nature doing my job for me and I hadn’t really been needed after all.”

Edwin couldn’t hold back his chuckle, and Rillah smiled even wider as her eyes twinkled, “So naturally I took great delight in saying that no, as a matter of fact, I wasn’t lying. Nor had the natural weather been incredibly calm, but he was right that I hadn’t been needed, nor would I ever be needed again, and I was leaving the city right after the meeting. Now that set off a whole chain of amazing responses. They ranged from accusing me of being a faithless adventurer leaving the moment I could- let’s be fair, I am- to saying I was sabotaging their city, and it was absolute pandemonium until Governor Kos’velista brought it all under control. He demanded I explain, and I mentioned that you’d made an artifact which could replace the role of the city mage altogether, and they wouldn’t have to keep trying to find anyone, since they were clearly having so much trouble.”

Edwin laughed, but Yathal looked confused so he explained that, “There were two nobles far, far away that were both trying to get the job, but they didn’t know Rillah knew that. So when I made the spinny thing upstairs, I made it so neither of the nobles could get the job.”

He nodded in probably-not-understanding, but he at least looked less confused so Edwin returned his attention to Rillah, who had paused in her explanation.

“Their feathers spun such lovely shapes, let me tell you. There were a few screeches about shoddy craftsmanship, intentional sabotage, and undermining authority. I just blew back at them that my tax was to serve until a ‘suitable replacement had been found,’ which your little artifact definitely counted as.

“Some tried to complain that I was flying off and leaving them with something that would clearly break immediately, but they shut up when I said it had been in use for over two weeks and had stopped one storm I wouldn’t have been able to prevent without it.”

“Wait, it did? When was there a storm?”

“Oh yeah. It would have been a big one. I’m surprised you didn’t feel it. I promise it was there though.”

“You’re the weather mage,” he shrugged, “I was just making sure the machine worked, and I didn’t… oh! Was that the day the local wind mana like doubled or something?”

“Week and a half ago?”

There wasn’t much consistency in what counted as a ‘week’ from what Edwin had seen, but since it was Rillah, a week and a half was nine days, which… “Yep. That’s actually good to know. I mean it should have worked but it’s nice to know for sure. Sorry, you were saying?”

“Yeah! Stop interrupting! Yathal complained.

“Excuse me for wanting to know how the debut of my greatest creation so far went.”

“Yeah, well you’re a bluequill.”

Kynigos barked something that Edwin got the distinct impression was an admonishment along the lines of ‘language,’ prompting his boy to stick his tongue out at the dog.

“Now that set off a whole new set of arguments, a lot of which aren’t suitable for young ears.”

“Hey! I’m almost ten! That’s basically an adult.”

“And what tier are you?”

“One…” he grumbled, “But I know if Kyni let me then I’d get to tier three quick!”

“You’ll get there eventually,” Rillah reassured him, “There’s no need to rush it. The older you are when you become an adult, the stronger you are.”

“It’s true,” Edwin confirmed, “I’m only tier two and look how strong I am.”

“Wha!” Yathal looked betrayed, “You’re not an adult either? How come you get to be all grown-up then?”

“Because I made sure to level my Skills when I was young so I grew up big and strong. And you know Lefi’s only tier one too.”

“Yeah, but he’s Lefi. He doesn’t need to be all grown-up to be awesome.”

“Well, that’s what my situation is too.”

“Do you have a buncha Skills like him too?”

Rillah chuckled, “I don’t think anyone has Skills like Lefi does. Well, maybe everyone combined does, but he’s got pretty much any Skill he’s seen.”

“It is simply the burden-”

“Let me guess, the burden of being Exceptional?”

“It is simply the burden of… exceptionalism.”

Edwin rolled his eyes, “Sure. I’m certain that’s what you were about to say. You’re just mad I predicted it.”

“Alas, being as Exceptional as I is not an easy task, though you make a valiant effort.”

Rillah swatted Lefi’s shoulder, “Stop getting distracted, you lug. Now, where was I?”

“Arguments that Yathal isn’t old enough to hear about,” Edwin reminded.

“Right. So, lots of arguments. I managed to shut most of them up by saying you got Paths for it, but then they started accusing you of trying to pluck them with maintenance. It took ages before I could sneak a word in, but I eventually managed to say you were giving up all claim to it, it was a gift, and that you’d trained Pierash on how to keep it running for at least a decade.

“You should have seen their faces in response to that, ah, such a sight. The thought that a commoner would be taking over? It kept going after that, of course, but I managed to sneak out before it got too bad, and no Task break!”

“You know, in the abstract I’d almost feel sorry for screwing over people. But at the same time, I can’t say I’m actually sorry for automating a superfluous task and screwing over a bunch of nobles jostling to get themselves a cushy job.”

“I know! Messing with people who deserve it is so much fun.”

Off to the side, Edwin noticed Inion perk up slightly, which made sense. Fey classically loved puncturing inflated egos and providing some comeuppance, and this story definitely qualified for both.

“So congratulations! You’re now officially a nuisance.”

“Why, because I gave them a nigh-priceless treasure?”

“Yep!”

Edwin laughed, a mischievous smile creeping across his face at the thought. He had a notification pending from the looks of it, and he curiously pulled it up.

Congratulations! For giving away an expensive artifact with no expectation of repayment you have unlocked the Philanthropist path!

That was… strange. Why did it only update now?

“Path?” she asked.

Edwin nodded, “Any idea why it only just now awarded it, and not when you actually let them know I was giving them the accumulator?”

She shrugged, “It happens sometimes.”

“Yeah, but doesn’t the System know everything? Why did it wait until just now? It’s never had any problem awarding me a Path for something I didn’t know I had done before.”

Rillah just shrugged again, “Who knows?”

“Hmm. Hey Lefi!”

Lefi didn’t know either, but he did have several stories of him in a similar situation- earning a Path well past the actual actions taken to unlock it, when he found out that it had occurred. At the same time, he also had stories about him learning about events which happened nearby, but he had neither heard nor seen.

Proximity, perhaps? Was everyone’s System individual and they couldn’t share information, so it could only read what should be earned based on the individual’s perceptions, or they were close enough? But then how would Skills like Common Knowledge work? Or just in general, Skills which provided information to the individual that they didn’t have before.

Come to think of it, did Common Knowledge actually call upon some form of crowdsourced knowledge repository, or did it draw on some kind of objective truth behind the System? He’d dismissed it as likely just being the former, but if it was based on the same kind of knowledge as his Alchemy did, maybe he was missing out on something really useful.

Clearly, the answer is to just stick with Rillah, who has lots of Skills like that and can fill in all my gaps of knowledge…

His eyes drifted towards Rillah, who had paused her dance to talk to Yathal about something. He didn’t hear their exchange, but her laugh was unmissable and almost brought a smile to Edwin’s face all on its own.

Yeah, if she’ll have me.

It would be nice to have a friend. It would be… oh so nice. Ideally… well, ideally Rillah would sometime soon pass his test for friendship, and he could… he wasn’t sure. Be more forward? That would be awkward, but odds were good that by the time she passed the test- assuming it ever happened- he’d be much more comfortable about being honest around her. Not that she was uncomfortable now, but…

He shook his head, and his fingers idly reached for a string bracelet that hadn’t been on his wrist for years. As Rillah started playing her flute once again, Edwin’s mind couldn’t help but wander back slightly to a time before…

No. He was not going into that now. It was thinking about Earth as well as already-painful memories. This was a good day. He wasn’t allowed to feel bad.

He did keep half an eye out in hopes that Rillah or Inion had noticed his lapse into sadness, but no such luck. He was absolutely awful with emotions, he knew. For both his own and those of others, his strategy essentially amounted to ‘ignore it and hope it goes away,’ which he knew wasn’t conducive to making friends.

He also didn’t know how to fix that, though. Even on the off chance he did recognize when someone had an emotion, he wasn’t able to muster up the social courage to do anything about it other than provide slightly-awkward advice. So… it was kind of hypocritical of him to hope that anyone else might be any better in regards to him.

Then again, it was really only a test to see if someone actually cared about him and his emotions or they were just pretending or being polite, so he could definitely pass the test with other people. Noticing when someone was feeling bad, then actually trying to find out what was wrong with them- even through a light dismissal- that was definitely within the realm of possibility.

Right? He wasn’t being unreasonable, surely.

All it would take was someone just pushing a bit, when he was feeling sad, not just telling him to ‘cheer up,’ but actually trying to find out why he was sad and not settling for an empty platitude or two. Rillah was inquisitive and empathetic, so surely she’d be able to figure out if she tried.

Until then, he’d just… wait, apparently.

Wait and hope.

That was no call to be sad now, though. The sun was shining, the air was clear, and he was on the road again for the first time in what had to have been six months. He was just a level or two from true, nigh-limitless flight, and he had quite fun traveling partners, each doing their own thing.

Rillah was playing a phenomenal, upbeat tune to which Yathal was loudly singing lyrics both off-key and off-beat. Kynigos scrambled ahead, chasing a bird off from where it had perched on the road ahead of them. Despite a heroic leap from Kynigos, the bird he was chasing got away, and the dog landed in a heap. Then he picked himself up, shook himself out, and promptly started running after the next bird. Lefi’s laughter boomed out at the scene, and even Inion smiled.

Edwin grinned.

What a great day.