The Way Ahead

Chapter 25: Settling Into the Roost

Edwin found himself milling around awkwardly as the caravan crew started loading up frankly ludicrous amounts of lumber into the wagon train (turns out the covered wagons also had spatial shenanigans going on), feeding stack after stack of milled logs into vehicles which looked shorter than the logs being fed inside, but that was magic for you. It looked really strange, and all he really could do was gawk until Aerfa dropped by to show Edwin where to go, namely the second in the train, apparently a passenger wagon.

There was only a single other person in Edwins wagon, a tiny sleeping bird-person, and upon laying eyes on the individual, Aerfa started screeching, Is this where youve been, young miss? Get your lazy tailfeathers out of here and do your chores before your talons go brown! Come on, Faera, we dont have all day! Get, get, get!

The poor child- presumably one of Aerfas- wait, were their names anagrams of each other? Huh- literally flew into the air, jumping with a squeak as she tried to fly past Edwin and escape the wrath of her mother. Edwin stepped to the side just in time as Faera darted out the door.

Identify

Avior Child

Get back here, you ungrateful fledgling! You have chores to do! Hey! Dont you give me that tone!

Edwin unconsciously shrunk away from Aerfa as she took off after the fleeing Faera, the two avior entering a midair dance reminiscent of an eagle trying to catch a songbird. He shook his head at the spectacle- not that he had that much room to judge- and put his meager possessions and assigned bedroll off in the corner of the fairly spacious wagon. While the outside was probably about ten feet wide by twenty feet long, the inside was at least triple that in each direction, there was even a second floor of sorts, but climbing up the ladder to it didnt uncover anything noteworthy.

Once he had gotten as situated as possible, Edwin returned to the outside, where he saw Aerfa dragging her struggling daughter with one talon through the air. After depositing Faera on the ground near where a handful of horses were milling about, who just sat and pouted for the moment, Aefra returned to talk to Edwin.

Apologies. She loves to shirk her duties, even though she knows thats why I let her come along on the route. It looks like you were able to store your belongings? Good. We leave first thing in the morning, dont be late. You dont have any duties today, so go have fun and enjoy doing whatever it is you adventurers like to do. Kill ten rats or whatever.

Edwin heard the clatter of wooden boards from around behind one of the halfling house-trees, and Aefras head snapped up, staring in the direction the sound had come from, and she jetted off without so much as a word.

Well, she did say that he should enjoy himself. The village seemed to be busy greeting one another, lots of chatter driving its way into Edwins skull. Nothing there, not that he really wanted to interact with people anyway. Hmmm. Edwin pulled up his Status. He hadnt looked at the whole thing in a while.

Name

Edwin Maxlin

Age

22 years

Race

Extraplanar Human

Class

Foreign Alchemist

Attributes

Mana 5

Skills

Magical

Basic Mana Sense: 29, Firestarting: 29, Alchemy: 43, Mana Infusion: 57

Physical

Athletics: 27, Breathing: 20, Flexibility: 15, Nutrition: 16, Packing 5, Seeing: 16, Sleeping: 21, Survival: 17, Walking: 28

Mental

Identify: 29, Polyglot: 6, Mathematics: 37, Research: 40, Outsider's Almanac: 62, Visualization: 25

Combat

Bomb Throwing: 9

New

First Aid 13

Paths

Skill Points: 223

Very Much Yes- Eventually

Micro-Biomancer 0/90, Path Less Traveled 0/90, Realm Traveler 0/120, Scientist 0/60, Alchemical Warrior 0/90

Promising

Stonehide Vanquisher 0/60, Titan Slayer 0/90, World Traveler 0/60, Researcher 0/60, Explorer 0/60, Outsider 0/60, Unkillable 0/90, Blackstone Conqueror 0/60, Mage 0/60, Field Medic 0/60

Maybe One Day

Survivor 0/60, Athlete 0/60, Daredevil 0/60, Pioneer 0/60, Novice Pyromancer 0/60, Pyromaniac 0/30, Wanderer 0/60, Exile 0/30, Escapee 0/30

Meh

Lumberjack 0/60, Way of the Empty Hand 0/60, Trapper 0/60

When he first pulled it up, Edwin wasnt sure where he would put his First Aid skill. It wasnt magical, it wasnt really mental, it certainly didnt fit into combat, and physical didnt fit either. Eventually, he just created a new utility category, which on further reflection also expanded to include Almanac, Identify, Firestarting, and Alchemy. They werent quite mental/magical skills, just sort of related.

Anyway, he had time to kill! And no need to worry about keeping his strength up, or what various overly-nosy prison wardens would think. That meant he could experiment with his skills! Hooray! The first and most obvious thing that Edwin could think of to try and push his skills limits was to use Mana Infusion to improve their capability. It had been a long, long time, but Edwin faintly remembered the skill description for Infusion mentioning that it worked on his skills. All he needed to do was to figure out how.

Firestarting was easy. So easy, in fact, Infusing it had become almost second nature at this point, making it hard for him to tell exactly how the skills interacted. After a fair bit of experimentation, he felt that he had figured it out. It worked by Infusing both his fingers and the air around them at the same time, and triggering Firestarting at basically the same time. Even that wasnt quite enough, though pairing the skill use with a snap of his fingers seemed to be sufficient.

Okay. Now that he had established a baseline, all he needed to do was to use the same logic to his other skills!

How the heck was he supposed to do that? Firestarting was a bit of an unusual skill, so far as Edwin could tell, as it allegedly had a passive benefit, but he could also use it actively. The fact it was a passive skill let him Infuse it, but it wasnt until he used it actively that the mana seemed to actually do anything.

Okay, what about Almanac, then? It had an active effect- namely entering a new message- but also had to have been passive for Identify to key off of it, right?

A fair bit of experimentation later, Edwin didnt feel any closer to a solution. Why was it so easy for him to feel the passive aspect of Firestarting, yet so hard to identify the passive portion of Almanac? Just using Mana Infusion at the same time as Almanac maybe did something? His mana went somewhere when he pushed it at the skill, but he couldnt figure out any difference in the skill manifestation. Even his Basic Mana Sense seemed to tell him that the mana just left, with no apparent destination or channel away. It was... puzzling.

He eventually found that he could get his success rate of Infusing Almanac up significantly if he first primed his mana by using Firestarting. It helped him get his mana flowing in a way that he could then grab and feed into Almanac it was weird. It felt in some ways like he was somehow manually controlling the beat of his heart, yet not quite.

At some point during his experimentations, he suddenly felt Almanac bite into something new, and in a way that felt decidedly different from his normal messages in some indefinable way. Confused (he had already gotten virtually every last board in the wagon tagged by then), he gave a simple message of just This is something new and strange, then started hunting all over the wagon for what it was that he had tagged.

Im Board 1.

Im so very board.

Lalalalalalala

Supercalifagilistic

Uhhhh. Im out of ideas?

Level63lengthtest:2022242628303234363840424446485052545658606264666870727476788082848688909294969810110410711011311611912212512813113413714014314614915215515816116416717017317617918218518819119419720020320620921221521822122422723023323623924224524825125425726026326626927227527828129429730030

Im board two.

3.1415926535897932365something

Something something clever statement

Look at me, Im important maybe

Reminder to drink water

*whittles innocently*

And on and on it went. Eventually, Edwin glanced down at his hand at just the right moment, his gaze drawn by something, and his Identify locked onto the phantom flames produced by his Firestarting.

This is something new and strange

Edwin nearly jumped as he found the message. He confirmed it wasnt just his hand- it wasnt- and then reconjured his Firestarting flames.

This is something new and strange

He could sing! Not actually, but if he were to ever sing for joy it would be right now. He was able to Almanac magical effects! He had tried before but it hadnt worked, but apparently Infusing his Outsiders Almanac let him tag at the very least magical skills, maybe all magic, maybe all skills!

Level Up!

Outsiders Almanac Level 6364

Identify Level 2930

Mana Infusion Level 5758

Research Level 4042

Oh! He could tag sections of his Status with this! There wasnt much he could really do with it at the moment, but in the future he could use it to save what his skill descriptions were so he could refer to them easily. Between that and being able to Almanac skills in use, this changed...! Well, okay. Not everything. Maybe not even some stuff, honestly. It was cool, but when would it actually be useful? He had yet to encounter any magical spells or anything thus far, but maybe being able to Identify skills would be useful? Or did it have to be magic? Sigh. His momentary excitement significantly dampened, Edwin moved on with his experiments, hoping another skill would have better luck.

Now that he had an idea of what to do, Edwin was fairly easily able to determine that Infusing his Identify just allowed him have more than one Identify box open at the same time. Normally, using Identify again closed any pre-existing results, but if he Infused the skill as he used it, it wouldnt close until he chose to dismiss it. Handy.

Using it with Packing required Edwin to Infuse whatever he was carrying alongside the skill itself, and made the container he was using to carry things stronger, but only so long as he was in contact with the object. He found that out the hard way when his grip on his last remaining spare sack slipped while trying to cut it with a knife, resulting in a fairly lengthy tear in the fabric.

Trying to Infuse his eyes while utilizing Seeing had one of the absolute coolest effects. His eyes glowed! In a really nice shade of blue, too, just a bit brighter than his natural eye color, and with just a hint of green. He couldnt see (heh) any other effects though, sadly. Still totally worth it.

Edwin wasnt sure if he was Infusing breathing correctly at first, his mana not going anywhere nor having any apparent effect when he tried, until Edwin realized that he had been involving it every time he had successfully breathed fire using Firestarting. Realizing that confirmed that he was Infusing it correctly, but otherwise didnt help him figure out what if anything Infusing only Breathing did. It did, however, give him the idea to try and use multiple skills at the same time to try and combine their effects.

The first combination he found with an obvious use was Seeing and Basic Mana Sense. Not only did his eyes still glow, the buzzing sensation that normally accompanied his arcanoception was replaced with the ability to see faint, ghostly halos of light around magic. It was super imprecise- Infusing his fingernail made his entire arm and a fair bit of surrounding air glow, but it was perhaps even better than just the glowing eyes.

Congratulations! For imbuing a part of your body with mana, you have unlocked the Physical Arcanist Path!

You have unlocked the Fire Breath skill!

Accept Skill? Y/N

You have unlocked the Reinforce Object skill!

Accept Skill? Y/N

Level Up!

Seeing Level 1619

Basic Mana Sense Level 2930

Mana Infusion Level 5859

Research Level 4243

Poking around at his Skills more gave Edwin a general sense for a handful of them which had a sort of... synergy, where he would be able to use Mana Infusion to combine their effects, even though he wasnt able to determine what those effects were. Athletics/Walking, Seeing/Identify, Sleeping/First Aid, Mathematics/Visualization, Breathing/Sleeping, Research/Alchemy, Survival/Nutrition, Packing/Athletics and Research/Polyglot were the ones he was able to find before the light started to fade outside, as each combination took quite a bit of fiddling to actually tell if it worked or not. He didnt even want to think about testing combinations of three or more skills. That was a (sometimes literal) headache for another day.

Outside, the caravans members were sitting around a campfire, chatting and laughing in what must have been the Avior language, given its resemblance to some mix between birdsong and the cries of a hawk. Edwin naturally couldnt understand a word of it, save for the occasional out-of-context snippet which either Aerfa or Faralo spoke loudly enough for him to hear. It looked like they were having a great time, which Edwin might have normally enjoyed being a part of, but they certainly wouldnt appreciate his presence, and he quite literally didnt understand what they were saying.

So, he didnt go out. His bedroll was still more comfortable than what he had been on more often than not, anyway. Besides, he wanted to see if he could get the Breathing/Sleeping combination working, anyway.

He didnt get the chance to, exhaustion pulling him to sleep before his head even hit his pillow.