The Way Ahead

Chapter 59: Fire Rocks!

Level Up!

Sleeping 2930

Edwin almost wished it would be drizzling when he finally woke up, simply because it would reflect his general mood. Alas, the weather didnt comply, and it retained its normal rain-free behavior. At this point, he was pretty sure that they must be in a rain shadow of some form or another, probably caused by the mountains to the south.

He only halfheartedly pulled himself from his bed and through his morning routine. Sure, most of yesterday had gone so very well, then he had to go and blow up his campfire and sour everything. Well, it could have been worse. He hadnt started a wildfire, hadnt lost much, and hed had a relatively nice time sitting around the fire later on, watching the flames and generally contemplating life.

Inion wasnt around, but that wasnt too much of a surprise. She would show up at some point, back from doing whatever it was she did at night.

While not especially hungry, Edwin still grabbed a piece of jerky from his food bag and started absently chewing at it, sipping some water in the meantime. Ugh. Hed need to do stuff today, but he just didnt feel up to it. Maybe he could check the results of his experiment?

Nope, it still hadnt soaked into the wood. At this point, Edwin was close to declaring it a failed trial, that clearly some part of purifying the lye had meant the formula wouldnt penetrate into the wood. Was the ash really that important?

Hmm. Maybe in a future variation, he could try purifying lye again and adding ash in afterwards, to see if that had an impact.

Hed still give it another day. Maybe it was just slow. Mostly, though, he didnt want to have to do fiddly alchemical work when he was feeling so generally dour. He mentally ran through his list of tasks. Yeah, he was feeling up to playing in the mud.

Edwins experience with pottery more or less boiled down to a single weekend when he was thirteen, and while he might have learned a lot, it was still almost a decade prior and he had no tools this time around. But how hard could it really be? Well, the answer for once seemed to be not very.

Overnight, his clay pile- Edwin shivered in remembrance of how cold that had been to make- had dried enough to actually be workable, and with a solid block of clay in his hands, Edwin took to making himself a bowl.

Thanks to, well, already having one, Edwin was able to pretty easily get the initial shape of his clay to line up with how a bowl ought to be, simply by forming his block to align with the outside of his dwarven-made one. The problems only really began when he was trying to get an even thickness of clay that wasn't too thin but also wasnt too thick.

Once he had that mostly taken care of, having dug out a few pebbles that were messing with it, he needed to try and get a mostly even lip. Again, doable but tricky, and Edwin wished he had a pottery wheel. That would probably help him with this, and he wished for it again as he tried to peel away his bowl from its template only to have it fall apart on him again.

Edwin sighed. This was going to be harder than he wanted it to be, wasnt it?

About two hours later, he finally had something that basically looked like a bowl, and a Skill to correspond with it at the same time. He wasnt really interested in Sculpt Clay, though, so passed on it. Ugh. He really needed to reassess exactly what Skills he wanted, which Skills would be made redundant by Attributes, how to get said Attributes, and yeah. When he was feeling better.

Edwin put his bowl next to the fire to help it dry out before he fired it. If he put it in too soon, the water inside would vaporize and crack the sides, breaking the bowl outright at worst or drastically weakening its structure at best. While it was drying, he kept at it. No sense in wasting time after all. Maybe he could make an entire distillery while he was at it?

As he was working on his next bowl, Edwin was struck by a passing curiosity about what would happen if he Infused clay. There didnt seem to be much of a pattern if he was honest, and he couldnt help but wonder what determined how certain Infused materials would work. Perhaps clay would follow the path stone took, and harden? That would be really useful, and would allow him to make a lot of interesting sculpture-like creations. Curious, he gave it a try.

Mana Infusion.

Splat.

The half-shaped bowl in Edwins hands immediately liquefied, splattering on his legs and the ground.

Dang it! Now hed have to start over from scratch and breathe, Edwin. Its alright.

Well, he had to admit that he wasnt expecting that to happen. Was this sort of like how sand became almost a superfluid when Infused? Was clay close enough to sand that it just made the clay lose all internal cohesion? Given the way it had spontaneously melted, he guessed it might mimic a ton of water being added all at once?

Edwin tentatively touched a glob of clay and pulled the mana out of it with what little Basic Mana Manipulation he had available to him, letting the mote of magical energy disperse into the atmosphere. The clay didnt solidify exactly, but it did lose a lot of its fluidity and returned more or less to how it was before he had Infused it. Huh.

Well, if it worked how it seemed to, he could absolutely use that. Edwin picked up a dried chunk of clay from where hed discarded it near the pile. It was too hard and brittle to work normally, but

The barest hint of mana animated from where it was stored in his chest, flowing through unseen channels and to his fingertips, where it exited and seeped into the clay. As it did, the clump of dirt deformed in Edwins grip ever so slightly, and a smile crept across his face.

Level Up!

Mana Infusion Level 6465

Edwin had to decline Sculpt Clay twice more, and even a more general Sculpture skill before he was finally satisfied. By working with already-dry clay, merging clumps together by Infusing them, mixing them, and removing the mana once they were combined to get more material to work with, he was able to make the material much thinner than before. That said, he still needed to keep in mind the fact that this was going to deal with a lot of heat and cold, so he was still a little on the more generous side of thickness, but hey! He didnt need to wait for this one to dry out.

While he didnt have any way to make a proper kiln- yet- Edwin still felt that he could figure out a makeshift one. First, he dug out a hole in the ground a few feet deep, mounding the extra dirt around his normal fire pit. Next, he compacted the dirt inside and caked the interior with wet clay. Lastly, he found a flat-edged rock, easily picking up the wet stone from Inions pond despite the slippery rock probably weighing a good thirty pounds. It went at the bottom of the pit, which should help ensure that his bowls didnt fuse with their surroundings, and while he almost grabbed a second one to serve as a lid over his kiln, he realized that doing so would probably ensure any fire he lit would just choke itself out. He wasnt dealing with modern appliances, after all. This would be wood-fired.

He only had the one bowl ready for firing at the moment, but that was fine. He could use the meantime to get more ready. He built up a fire inside the kiln and grabbed more clay to keep working in the meantime.

Edwins Logbook: Pottery

Test 1: Bowl made via mana-infused clay inside kiln. Fire built underneath, no cap for the fire.

Result: Failure. Clay partially hardened from the heat but wasnt cured, so mostly melted in water.

Test 2: Bowl made via mundane clay. Fire built underneath, fire capped but with air channels.

Result: Failure. Clay still not cured, though more successful than test 1.

Test 3: Pot made from mundane clay. Fire built all around the pot, fire capped with ventilation.

Result: Failure. Pot was cracked in half. The outside of the pot was maybe slightly cured, but not the inside.

Test 4: Pot made from mana-infused clay. Fire built around and inside the pot, fire capped with ventilation.

Result: Failure. Pot was cracked in half. Uncertain why. Still not properly cured.

Having fun?

Edwin nearly jumped from where he was contemplating his latest failure, spinning to see Inion having finally returned.

Youre back! Where have you been for the last two days?

Ah, here and there. Hey, did you know dwarves found their way into the Highpeaks? I didnt even know that doesnt matter!

Edwin glared at her, Yeah. Im aware. Actually, he frowned, I think I did tell you about them.

Did you? I dont remember you saying something like that. But I sense a story! Tellme, tellme!

I really rather wouldnt

Too bad! Youre telling me. We have an agreement, remember?

Edwin waited for some kind of tug in his mind, or some form of supernatural compulsion to keep his word, but it never came. Huh. Well, youve been gone lately. Maybe I dont need to keep up my side of the deal because you havent been keeping up yours?

Nope! Not how it works. Besides, Ive been doing my part! I cant help you if Im not around, but I also cant watchya. Its just on hold while one of us is gone.

Edwin sighed and finally relented, giving a short version of his encounter with the fur-faced

Language, Edwin.

Its my own mind! I can swear if I want to! . Not that I will. Habits, right? Sigh.

Still, he gave Inion a bit of an overview of his stay with the Blackstones, and she seemed to be oddly amused at certain parts, particularly when they enslaved him.

So then Oh, come on. Is it really that hilarious?

The fey stopped laughing long enough to explain, Just breaking hospitality in that way. She shook her head, Theyre going to find themselves in quite a few unfortunate situations in the near future, if they havent already.

Edwin frowned, Wait, is karma an actual thing here?

Inion indicated kind of with her hands, Not really but also sort of. Normally, youd need the attention of an yeah, I can say that. The attention of a really powerful Outsider or just really strong ties to Fate, for that to work. Here, though ah, thats too close, sorry.

Something to do with the System, then? Her limitations were essentially regarding speaking about it and about other worlds and their denizens, so Edwin wasnt sure what else it might be. It would be interesting if the System had done something to help him escape, but he wasnt sure how that might work.

Aaaaanyway, carry on.

Thank you for your permission.

Gladly!

Edwin sighed. Now, where was he? Oh right, he was preparing the next firing.

Edwins Logbook: Pottery

Test 5: Built a massive fire over the bowl (made from mana-infused clay), covering it completely and utterly. I will burn this to a crisp if I need to. No cap, will continue throwing more and more wood on it.

Result: A falling branch crushed the bowl. It was fully cured though!

Test 6: Built tower more carefully this time, completely surrounding and covering the bowl (made via mana infusion). Also padded everything with dead leaves. Kept Firestarting going as long as possible. Allowed to cool overnight.

Result: Success! At long, long last. Odd black spots on the clay. Doesnt seem to impact stability or strength.

Test 7: As test 6, though with less Firestarting use and with 5 bowls and the walls for a distillation setup

Result: Success! Lost three bowls which cracked for some unknown reason, but otherwise turned out well.

Edwin looked on with satisfaction at his new water distillation setup. As hed built such that it could be placed over his kiln, even after he had expanded it a few more times, it should serve him well for a good while. At the top, he had set one of his metal bowls, filled with freezing water from Inions spring.

Any water which evaporated would find itself condensing on the metal, then drip down at the center into a collection bowl, which in turn had a channel leading outside of the entire contraption, emptying into a water jug hed made just for that purpose. At the bottom sat a jug for holding the boiling water, and the entire contraption was enclosed by a ceramic cylinder, to help keep all of the water vapor focused.

Hed need to refill it semi-regularly, replacing the boiling water at the bottom with the cooling water at the top, but it should work quite well, especially when kept Infused. While hed yet to figure out what Infusing his cured claywork actually did, if he ran it through Packing, it made the ceramic significantly stronger.

It may have taken him four days in total to get everything working, but he didnt waste his downtime while the kiln ran. In that time, hed declared his purified drying potion a failure, considered doing another trial with his lye, this time adding ashes- though eventually decided against it- and mixed up his final batch of drying potion.

Hed even applied the potion, making sure it had turned out properly by testing it on a small branch- it had- and was now checking that each of his massive logs had fully absorbed the seemingly too small amount of potion hed applied to each. Yes, proportionally it was the same amount as hed tried on the branches, but there was still the nervousness that came from actually doing a full-scale run.

The System was magical in so many ways, but letting his recipe turn out properly, more or less first try? Now that was utterly amazing.

Edwin took a deep breath, turning to face his pile of wood. Every log showed signs it had fully absorbed all traces of his potion, and that it had soaked all the way through.

It had been about two weeks spent in the wilderness, now, and he was finally ready to start making a more permanent home. It was time. All that was left was to burn off the water, and his construction could begin.

Fire-

Oh hey, Edwin!

What? he snapped, Im working! What happened to no interruptions?

Inion just replied by sticking her tongue out at him, I didnt break anything. You can carry on as you were. But do you really want to risk burning the logs themselves?

Edwin nearly responded that this was fine, it had worked perfectly with the smaller scale models but his test log had come out a little singed, and did he really want to risk it?

.Fine.

Hed just use a burning stick, then.

Honestly, reality had no sense of drama.