The Way Ahead

While his failures in enchanting his shirt had definitely pushed off the project slightly in favor of his other training and practice, it was ultimately too interesting of a goal, too fascinating to truly put aside completely.

Edwin had eventually figured that perhaps he was trying to take on too large of a project at once. Cloth and wheatspin were fairly complex, very inhomogeneous materials already awash with Skills and who knew what else. There were just way too many variables at play to give any kind of meaningful results.

So, he was simplifying. He knew he could Infuse rocks, he did it all the time. While water was still the only substance he could meaningfully induce any amount of permanent magical change in with just filtered Infusions, his Alchemy skill was telling him that it was decidedly possible with other things, he just needed to… figure it out. If he could figure out how to change the property of a pebble, he could then extrapolate into a shirt… hopefully. That was the idea, but it was proving… difficult.

Failure was important. You could frequently learn way more from something that you failed on than something you succeeded with. Failure frequently led to the biggest innovations in human history.

That was what he was trying to tell himself anyway.

Edwin glared at his latest failure to Caress magic into a rock. It felt like… well, like trying to shove water into a rock without increasing the size of the rock. Unlike most of his Infusions, it felt disconnected from his actual Mana Infusion skill. Maybe because this was more along the lines of proper Alchemy Essentia, changing the fundamental nature of his materials? If his normal Mana Infusion was like dissolving solvents into water, his current efforts were more like… heating up or cooling the water, maybe? Or perhaps more just changing the solvent. Though that didn’t quite work either, hmm….

He was also having to revise his theory for why he couldn’t Infuse his skills like Basic Thermokinesis and Flight to them already being Infused as part of their basic state of being. It made sense, he knew that improving his mana throughput helped with his Flight range, so perhaps all of his fundamental magical Skills could benefit his non-fundamental ones? A bit like how Purify worked with Fresh Air.

As for why he needed to revise it in the first place was because he came across yet another instance of breaking his apparent ‘can’t use the same Skill twice simultaneously’ limitation. Namely, he figured out how he could Refine two things at the same time.

It was all thanks to his magic practice. Not only could he get his initial Refined mana prepared way faster and easier by imagining it as a distillation process, he could now keep a hold on two separate mana beads simultaneously. He had to distil them separately, sure, but that was barely even a challenge. It all added together to Edwin feeling fairly confident in his ability to selectively Refine an aspect of a given object to what he wanted.

He was even able to figure out what was up with his Refined heated water! He was essentially Refining its temperature, not in such a way that it increased its heat, but more just… its heat capacity. While he could still influence the temperature of un-Refined heated water- especially increasing the temperature to boil it off- nothing in his toolkit was able to so much as budge Refined heated water from its natural temperature of 61.3 Celsius. Basic Thermokinesis, burying it in snow, and a blazing fire all failed.

The only things that did work were Rillah bringing a significant amount of her ice magic to bear, and diluting the Refined liquid in a bunch of water. Edwin wasn’t sure if the latter really counted though, because boiling off all the water it had been mixed into allowed him to recover almost all of the Refined heated water from the bottom of his bowl, still at 61.3 degrees.

He couldn’t help but grin. He’d made something that was flatly impossible and an inherently magical substance. Sure, he’d done that sort of thing before with his fulgurite and abysite glasses, but it felt different knowing he could make more pretty much whenever he wanted. Firevine was tricky to grow, sure, but he had an absolutely massive stockpile of its sap and wood so he wasn’t too worried about running out.

It also gave him something of an idea. He’d been having no luck just shoving magic in, it kept leaking out, but what if he took out stuff to make space for what he was trying to add? It made sense in the way that only a semi-frazzled brain could properly imagine, but it fit vaguely the sorts of nonsense he would expect from magic. It was a bit like trying to scrawl a modification for lab procedure over the former instructions. While both sets were present, whatever metaphysical trait-reader was responsible for translating magical aspects into physical measurements would get confused and go with what looked like the default. Just like how trying to write in a lab book with pencil wouldn’t get many people to follow different procedures.

However, if you erased the original instructions and then wrote replacement text, then they’d be way more likely to actually follow instructions! In theory. Assuming… anyway, that wasn’t relevant.

Best of all, he already had a substance that was essentially Refined temperature. Now all he needed to do was figure out what little magical part of a rock told it it was supposed to be room temperature, rip it out and replace it with something else!

Of course, rocks didn’t have an inherent temperature. With some poking and prodding with Refining he had been able to find something that was perhaps more accurately described as magical heat capacity. Some experimentation had shown that a Refinement of it had seriously increased how long it took him to heat up the remaining sand with Basic Thermokinesis, and even Infused Firestarting needed a fair bit of work before it would heat up the former stone.

It didn’t seem to meaningfully impact mundane heat capacity, but Edwin’s tools to measure that were decidedly limited... and he needed to focus anyway! He had a task, he was sticking to it.

He had still been having trouble with everything he Refined turning to dust (unless it was ‘inherently’ a liquid, a distinction Edwin hadn’t been able to fully nail down yet), but a few days… weeks… of practice had solved that too.

He’d just needed to be way more selective with his targets. Refining inherently tried to grab all the magical traits of his target and render them down into just whatever he was selecting for, which included structure.

He wasn’t entirely sure how changing a magical attribute of a substance messed with its physical makeup, but that was another question for later. He could actually Refine ‘structure,’ in which case he was left with a sort of strange, crumbly clay as strength and toughness were reduced that nonetheless looked identical to the original rock.

It took a long, long time to figure out how he could target specific aspects for removal instead of enhancement, but he managed it in the end by comparing his mana to aerogel, of all things.

“Aerogel?” Lefi, unsurprisingly, hadn’t heard of the stuff and it was kind of important for Edwin’s alchemy ‘lessons’ with the guy, so he found himself in a bit of an impromptu lecture.

“Okay, so do you know what gelatin is?”

“Gelatin? Bone pudding?”

“Uhh… probably. I think you get it from bone, anyway. So, gelatin is this strange sort of semi-solid substance, yeah? Where it’s not exactly liquid but it’s also really jiggly and not a rigid solid. So that’s a colloid- a suspension of one type of matter in another. In this case, it’s a bunch of liquid, namely water, in a sort of sponge-like solid structure.

“So, somewhere along the line people obviously started wondering about what would happen if you somehow took the water out. Now, if you are familiar with gelatin- bone pudding, whatever- you know that you can’t just boil the water out, it just makes the structure collapse and get all over the place… basically, it ruins the structure. Well, that’s only true under normal conditions. There’s this thing called an autoclave, and that’s basically what this is meant to be,” he indicated a sealed Apparatite box connected to his tubing.

“So an autoclave is pretty much an oven that can go up to really high temperatures and is completely sealed, usually at really high pressures. Remember what I was saying about pressure and temperature influencing a substance’s boiling point?”

“Aha! I see. So you… how does such a thing work?”

“Well, an autoclave can heat up the gelatin until the water in the structure is both liquid and gas at the same time, more or less. It’s complicated, that doesn’t really matter right now. What matters is that an autoclave can, in the right circumstances, take the water out of gelatin and leave behind just the sort of spongy, dry framework around it. There’s actually a bunch of substances like that, but aerogel is what you get if you make silicon gel- think gelatin but made with different stuff- and then take out all the liquid. That just leaves this really light stuff that’s super cool, really great at insulation, all that sort of thing.”

“I… see,” Lefi didn’t sound very confident, but that didn’t matter much.

“Anyway, the important thing is that I was able to picture the basically structural mana of the rock as gelatin, with the kind of mana I want to remove as the water. Then…”

It had taken quite a bit of time, but Edwin had been able to make a sort-of autoclave for mana, submerging the pebble in a huge pile of Refined dust of whatever it was he wanted to remove and then turning up the external forces and leaning on Alchemical Dismantling until the stone and its bed… lost cohesion, with the magical structure of the rock getting really lose and allowing the chosen property to mix freely with the powder it sat in.

Once it was in that state, all he needed to do was remove the pebble from its dust bed- if he didn’t, the end result absorbed additional Refined powder and ended up strengthened instead- which was still easier said than done. Introducing any other mana to the situation destabilized it all and created some very weird results, and touching it with his bare fingers was completely out of the question. Anything without mana was flooded with active autoclave-like mana, and usually burned to a crisp.

In the end, he devised a setup where the pebble sat directly atop a sieve in a bowl, then was buried in Refined dust. When it was time to remove the dust, he just lowered the bowl and allowed the powder to fall through the holes in his mesh, draining away. A few small shakes later, and the pebble was left almost completely free of that particular magical aspect.

He could even reuse the dust! If anything, each practice run he did increased the amount he had unless he did something wrong, but it was utterly miniscule.

In any case, removing the… he needed a word for it. Trait, maybe? Trait worked. Once he removed the heat capacity trait from the stone- which resulted in an oddly temperature-neutral substance, though only when magic was involved- he thought it would be easy to add in the heated water’s temperature trait.

It decidedly was not. By removing the stone from his ‘mana autoclave,’ it settled into its new form and once again became impervious to trait manipulation. This time, though, it didn’t have any way for Edwin to leverage open the trait he wanted to edit.

It was a bit like trying to swap two blocks from the bottom of a block tower. Removing a foundational block would make the entire thing at the very least close up, at most make the entire thing collapse. Unless of course, there was some kind of secondary support holding up the tower to leave space for the replacement when it was added.

...or something like that, anyway.

There was some seriously awesome potential stuff that he could do with that. Unfortunately, the coolest ones- like magical transparency from mana-cast glass or mana absorption from molai- interfered with his magic enough that he couldn’t actually make the autoclave work. Anything else was hampered by the fact his current trait manipulation only affected magical properties… except for when it didn’t, like when he removed strength and his pebble crumbled at the slightest touch. He hoped that he could further explore or outright overcome that limitation eventually, but… well, one thing at a time. He always had things to explore, and not enough time in his entire life to explore it all.

Edwin made a mental note to ask Lefi about immortality Skills. The guy looked sixteen but was apparently closer to a hundred, he was bound to have one.

In any case, if he wanted to transfer properties, he’d need to figure out how to do it all in one step. The problem was, in order for his mana autoclave… manaclave? In order to get his manaclave to work properly, Edwin had to have it be an entirely closed system. Even a simple Apparatite stick, poking around to move the pebble, interrupted the process. Further complicating the whole mess was that until the autoclave seal was broken, the trait remained. But, breaking the seal by dropping the powder away also would re-solidify its traits. He couldn’t even do some clever trick with piling powders together thanks to the second trait-material being liquid.

In other words, he needed to figure out some way to directly replace one type of mana with another type of mana… when he couldn’t mix the two substances, couldn’t move his pebble around, and all in less than a fraction of a second.

It seemed like an impossible problem.

Edwin couldn’t help but grin.

This was perfect.

Edwin sat on the ground, giving his legs a break after completing Lefi’s latest obstacle course, trying (and failing- seriously, would it kill the System to give him a Skill that was easy to use? Okay, other than almost all of his Skills come to think of it) to use Stamina Manipulation to fight against the soreness in his legs.

“So Lefi,” he started, getting the man’s attention, “How do Immortality skills work? I talked with Rizzali- my Registrar- about them at one point, but I want to get your opinion on them. I figure you’d know… a lot, about that sort of thing? I’m guessing you have one, from what I’ve heard.”

“You would be correct! I do indeed know much about those Skills. I know much about all Skills, after all.”

“Yeah… yeah. Anyway, what sorts of things come about from the Skills? Rizzali said that just the basic Immortality was a trap… no advancement, or something?”

“Ah, of course! Immortality is indeed the most classic immortality Skill, hence the name, but it is far from optimal in most situations.”

Edwin patiently waited for Lefi to finish his grandstanding.

“You see, Immortality has a very simple effect and method of leveling: every level you possess in it extends your death by old age for a single year, and it levels at the same rate! It does not prevent you from aging, however, and of course if you are no longer capable of leveling it, such as if it evolves, you lose its protections.”

“Wait, so you’d just get really old from it too? What if you were young when you got it, would you just sort of waste the extra levels? And why does evolving it make it worse? Couldn’t you get something that would give you much the same benefits, just better because it was evolved or whatever?”

“It adds years upon your life, you understand. If you possessed sixty years of life ahead of you when you obtained the Skill, you would continue to have sixty years upon its evolution. As for evolving into a superior form, it is certainly possible,” he agreed, “And some of the better immortality Skills can be obtained in such a manner. However, it is usually also possible to gain said Skills without taking the apparently-useless Immortality skill. After all, if you find yourself with a stronger form of immorality later, the original Skill no longer provides you with much in the way of benefit, you see?”

“So it still makes you get really old, and is kind of pointless once you get a better Skill? I guess it makes sense why that would be considered inoptimal. But still, immortality. Couldn’t you I don’t know, get a Skill that keeps you young without making you immortal?”

“Youthful Appearance and Youthful Vigor are what you are thinking of, and can be obtained via a number of appearance-based and physical Skills respectively.”

“But they still aren’t the best?” Edwin guessed.

“Indeed not. Age Resistance is the best Skill for retaining your youth, and although it provides not true immortality, it most certainly can provide a longer life than most would feasibly require.”

“Slows down but never stops?”

“Indeed.”

“Well… alright, then. So Immortality makes you age but not die, Age Resistance slows down your aging, can you combine them?”

“Such an accomplishment would truly be a feat, and would leave one largely untouched by the passage of ages.”

“But not perfectly, and nobody’s accomplished it?”

“Edwin, you must understand that most of these Skills have but one or two recorded holders. There is much we do not know of them. I know of none who have earned both Immortality and Age Resistance, but what you speculate most likely holds true, yes.”

“That’s… fair, I suppose. Do you think that I could get Age Resistance?”

“Your Adaptive Defense is a promising candidate for such a Skill, yes, though I would advise you not become too invested in the idea as of yet. You must understand that Immortality Skills are very rare, particularly before tier five.”

“But you got one at tier two?”

Lefi didn’t respond.

Edwin sighed, “Well, what about an elixir of life, or waters of youth, or something? It’s a classic pursuit of alchemy, is there anything like that?”

“I have never heard of such a thing existing, though I am certain one could. Indeed, it is not impossible you would create such a potion or be granted a Skill with such an effect. However, be aware that no immortality- save perhaps that of Emperor Xares himself- is perfect.”

“Is that known, or just speculation?”

“Nothing with the System is known save that it can do all.”

“In other words-” he started.

“Further testing required?” Lefi cut in, beaming with a mischievous smile.

“Oi! That’s my line!”

Edwin’s stomach was tied in knots. It wasn’t technically a tricky subject but it was undeniably one that could go wrong, particularly if he wasn’t careful. But he’d been on a bit of a roll with getting conversations out of the way, hopefully that momentum would keep him going?

“So…. Your Fire skills? I remember noting them during our snow day, and I’m still curious. Why was there a mental Skill involved in that?”

Rillah chuckled, “Aw, is that all? Why the serious face then?”

Edwin shrugged and tried to school his expression into a more neutral configuration, to unknown success, “Just… other stuff,” he halfheartedly responded, “Nothing to worry about.”

“If you say so,” she teased, “So what didya wanna talk about?” she flopped over on her chair, stretching in a way that was rather appealing…

Focus, Edwin. That’s not why you’re here.

“Your fire skill?” he asked incredulously, “Like, I literally just said as… ah, you meant beyond that. So talk to me, I don’t know the right questions to ask.”

“Paths too, or just the Skills?”

“I’ll record the Paths later, I think,” Edwin decided, “When I’m trying to fill out the Almanac entries on them.”

“Playing Registrar, are we now?”

“I mean, there’s no real reason not to. I’ve got a Skill that works really well for that sort of thing after all. Anyway, what do you have?”

“Well, my basic fire Skill was Spark,” she pulled up a flame in her hand, “That helped me conjure fire really easily.

“Then that went to Dancing Flame,” a wave of her hand directly the flame away from her hand, flickering merrily as it flew around her as she summoned another over her palm, “Which let me move my flames around as well as conjure more. Fire Snake turned it into a proper attack, so I can make all these fiery ropes and stuff which deal more direct damage.

“But my favorite is my newest. Mesmeric Flare,” a mental Skill wrapped around the fires as they stretched out with use of Fire Snake, and the colors of the flame began to deepen and shimmer, scintillating and luminescent. It demanded attention, and Edwin could scarcely fight it as the room grew more and more filled with the beautiful flames…

Adaptive Defense poked his attention, and the prompt was enough to get him to break free of the fascination.

“That’s potent,” he remarked, “I’ve been pretty good at resisting mental Skills in the past, but that’s tricky. Very beautiful though.”

“It is, isn’t it?” she agreed, “It definitely helps, you know? Mental Skills always work better when they just reinforce what you already want to do.”

Edwin mutely nodded, looking at the curtains of fire before him. It looked almost like the aurora borealis, just right in front of him and somehow even more spectacular, “I suppose it’s easy to get distracted by something so eye-catching, isn’t it?”

“Yep! Even being immune to my own Skill’s fascination doesn’t keep me from loving to stare at the colors. It’s definitely my best mental Skill.”

That’s the perfect opportunity! Edwin mentally screamed, I can bring up whether she’s trying to charm me as just a part of the conversation. It wouldn’t even be awkward!

But do I want to know? Another part of him questioned, I don’t want to lose a potential… friend.

Of course I do! Knowledge, knowledge, knowledge! Ask her already!

“Your most potent? What else do you have, then?”

“Why Edwin. You’re being so forward today.”

“Oh come on,” he sighed, “I thought you said we were past all that nonsense.”

“I like it,” she finished with finality.

“Oh. Yay?” Edwin unsteadily answered, “Um, what do you have then?”

She glanced around, pretending to be furtive, “Well, other than Mesmeric Flare, the direct charm Skills I have are-”

“Direct charm Skills?” Edwin asked, then shook his head, “Wait, sorry. Continue.”

“Well, Idyllic Form, among others, isn’t exactly a charm Skill, but it certainly helps the others. Those would be, oh, Charm, Good Impression, Calming Touch, and Allure.” She laughed slightly, “Turns out, the Charm skill gives charm-like evolutions. Then I have, oh let’s see, Inspiring Speech, Memorable Night, Worthy of Notice and Mesmeric Flare.”

“Is that a lot?” Edwin asked, “It seems like a lot.”

“Oh, well it depends on who you ask. Most nobles have at least two base charm-like Skills, and I have one. Of course, most people have no basic charm-like Skills unless they’re a merchant or performer, who have lots. Of course, I’ve definitely been called a bard before and it’s not entirely inaccurate!” she laughed.

“But all your others?”

“Are the latest evolutions of other Skills.”

“What does Allure do?” he asked.

“Why, Edwin!”

He sighed, “Are you trying to inure me to your shocked and-or scandalized reaction by using it so much or something?”

She didn’t respond, and Edwin blinked, “Wait, are you?”

“Here, are you ready for Allure? I don’t use it a lot of the time, so prepare yourself.”

“Um, when you ask it like that, I’m not…”

Edwin trailed off as his brain was fully preoccupied with looking at Rillah. She was gorgeous. Gentle eyes, a slender but athletic frame, unblemished and smooth skin, clothing that accentuated her body without directly being immodest. Luxurious and immaculate hair, tied back in a way that only served to show she needed no intricate work to be the absolutely most beautiful woman Edwin had ever seen. He tried to speak, to say something about it, something about feelings, anything for her, but his tongue refused to respond. He tried to get up, to reach out and stroke her arm, but he couldn’t do anything, his entire being affixed to simply staring at her, taking in the sights as much as he possibly could…

The Skill switched off.

“Gah!” it felt like his brain was plunged into freezing water, and his thoughts short-circuited once more, this time in the opposite direction, as a million different considerations rushed into his head, pulling him every which way. How Rillah looked wasn’t exactly the last thing on his mind, but it certainly jumped back to a normal level of priority.

“That was… unpleasant,” he admitted once he had his internal monologue in order, rubbing his temples. “And way stronger than I was expecting.”

“Unpleasant? That’s new,” she asked, “Why?”

“Um, it’s…” Edwin’s brain was still somewhat scattered, but he tried to pull his thoughts in order to respond, “I very rarely am ever focused on only a single thing at a time, and I’ve never had all of my brain forcibly shunted to a single train of thought. Then just sort of in general…” he trailed off, “Yeah. Wow, that was really strong. Normally I can distract myself, but that was something else.”

He shook his head, getting it mostly clear, “What made it so strong, do you think? I’ve been able to resist mental Skills before.”

“What were they like?”

“Well, I had to deal with an order I was compulsively forced to obey, avoid responding to someone commanding me to talk, and… I think Inion did something at some point.”

“Ah, so mostly compulsions?”

“I guess so? Oh, you think it has to do with your Skills being more around attention than actual commands? I could see it,” he rubbed his forehead. “Though I should probably try to train myself to break out of it. But also, you said you don’t use it much. How’s it so strong if you never use it?”

“Well, it’s still improved by my other Skills and my Charisma,” she explained, “And because we’re sitting here where it’s just you and me, this is the best-case scenario for the Skill’s use.”

“You know, I idly tried to get a social Skill some time ago. Never pushed that hard, but nothing ever came of it.”

“Lotsa people don’t, and they do just fine. You could definitely stand to get a Bargaining skill, though.” she teased.

Edwin rolled his eyes, “Never had any luck, unfortunately.”

“Anyway, my turn! I wanna ask some questions about your Skills!”

“I still have… eh, I’ll ask them later. Sure, ask away.”

“So your cooking Skill, what’s it like?”

“Arcadian Elixir? Well, it’s…”

It had been a while since he’d been out and about, Edwin realized, and it had been a good month since his last proper day off in the snowball fight. He knew the reasons why he didn’t like leaving the tower, but it would still be good for him.

It had snowed last night, and the glistening white was a marvel to behold, but he couldn’t help but wonder what sorts of things were out in the city. Stretching his legs a bit would be good for him, he decided. He also should make sure he didn’t take too much money to not invite thieves, but he definitely should take at least a smoke bomb and a few fireball pellets.

Oh, and he should let Inion know that he’d be out and about. Just in case something happened.

Day on the town, here he came.