Being around people in a non-work relationship was… tolerable, Edwin found.

He still wasn’t the biggest fan of Lefi- the man was far too energetic and enthusiastic for him to really get along well with the guy- but he was at least, well, tolerable. Thanks to his supposed ‘Exceptional’ skill, he and everyone near him had their Skills level at a rapid rate, which on its own was already a fantastic benefit when paired with Inion’s Muse Token. However, if that wasn’t already enough, Lefi also had an absolutely absurd amount of experience with getting and using Skills. Thus, Edwin was able to try and get some pointers on his own Skills just by talking to the guy.

Lefi had some pretty startling insights into how Arcadian Elixir worked, for one. Somehow, he sussed out not only the Skill’s existence but also deduced some basic functionality for it. It was like a cooking Skill, in that if he made something to eat the Skill would engage. That much didn’t surprise Edwin. No, what caught him off-guard was the fact that if he grew food, the same thing would happen.

He’d been… skeptical, to say the least. However, a brief experiment with a bean Edwin dug out and grew with his talsanenris confirmed the revelation. It made sense for a ‘fey food’ Skill, but it still wasn’t something he was expecting.

Oh, and what he made was also more nutritious. No surprise there. While Lefi wasn’t able to figure out for certain whether or not it reduced the appeal, taste, and nutrition of food Edwin didn’t make, he did confirm that the manner in which the Skill engaged was similar to Cooking, Hearty Meal, or Potent Concoctions. Thus, even if he did leave some sort of lingering effect with his creations, he wasn’t dooming people to a life of constantly pining after his food and his food alone.

At least not yet. And that was quite the relief. If he was the only supplier of food which was nourishing and didn’t taste like dirt, and he could inflict the condition on whoever he wanted just by giving them a homegrown carrot… he wasn’t really comfortable with the idea.

Would that make him some sort of not-drug dealer? Super addictive, hand out apples to junkies?

Other vague drug-related concepts Edwin wasn’t familiar with?

Moving on!

The primary area in which Edwin was hoping to get some pointers on was in using his magical Skills. Inion wasn’t a good teacher in that regard (her normal tactics of ‘throw things’ not working all that well for more complex tasks), so he was hopeful that Lefi would be able to fill in.

At least, Edwin was pretty sure that Lefi was a mage. His mana sense kept lighting up when the man did random tasks, even those that didn’t seem to have any Skills associated with them. However, he couldn’t figure out what kind of mage he was. Ritual Intuition provided exactly no information to that regard, to the point Edwin momentarily was unsure if he even had the skill working (he did).

He’d ask the adventurer about it at some point in the future, he decided. In the meantime, he’d work on not immediately chasing answers to every passing question he considered. Also, it would be rude to inquire about something he was obviously trying to keep quiet. In the meantime, he might slowly hint at the idea that Edwin knew Lefi had magic, and once he did ask, it would be really circumspect.

“So…” Edwin hazarded, “You have magic?” he asked.

Hey, it had been a day! That was loads of time!

“Hm? Magic?” Lefi was caught off-guard by the question, “What makes you say such a thing?”

“Well… I think you know I have a couple of magical Skills.”

“Such as your Flight, yes. What of it?”

“Wait, how- actually I suppose that one is obvious, isn’t it?” Edwin realized, “Or did I just tell you? But yeah. Got it by combining Packing and Mana Infusion. Fun times. ”

He shook his head, “Anyway, one of them is a magical sense, and it lights up all the time around you. But I can’t tell what kind of magic you’re using. It just feels like nothing and it’s really weird.”

“That is most curious! Though I fear I must disappoint you. I am no mage, as amazing as such a status may be! I merely have hundreds of Skills, some of which are indeed slightly magical in nature! It is the inevitable conclusion to having so many evolved Skills- purely by random chance, you will eventually get a magical Skill, and once you have one, I’m certain you are aware, it is much easier to get another!”

Edwin frowned, “How does that make you different from a mage, though? I can only use magic in the context of Skills. But anyway, I have another Skill that lets me see skills, though. And they don’t always trigger in unison. So far as I can tell, you’re using magic outside of the context of any Skills you have as well. How is that not a mage-thing?”

“That is quite the conundrum,” Lefi exuberantly agreed, “But perhaps it is more likely that you are simply unable to tell when I am using a Skill! I will confess to having some Skills which are indeed magic, though that is not terribly uncommon at higher Tiers, you understand. However, they are just that- Skills.”

“Why wouldn’t I be able to sense the Skill?”

“Well, though your Skill Identify may be able to detect Skills I use, how sensitive is it? What do you sense? I am amazing at everything, after all,” he said with a grin. “It would be understandable if you weren’t able to tell when one of my constant Skills begins using a magical effect.”

“I don’t fully follow. Are you saying you might have a passive Skill that you can push into being magical?”

“Ha! I knew you were smart. My Wind-Strider skill is constantly in use, granting me fair winds everywhere I go, but if I push it, then I have the most magnificent ability to cause my cloak to flap!”

“…what?”

“I believe you heard me! You are not deaf, no?” Lefi shouted.

“I mean, at this rate I might end up that way…”

“Ha! That’s the spirit!”

“Are we sure you’re not deaf?” Edwin muttered.

“Most certainly! I have Hearing at level seventy-one!”

“And your Listening skill?”

“I… don’t have that one.”

“Explains a lot.”

Lefi seemed genuinely confused for a moment before catching the joke and erupting into laughter.

“Let me guess?” Edwin winced, “You have Shouting?”

“I do indeed!”

“Okay, okay. I think we’re getting off-track. So you have Skills that are always active, but if you push them you think I can feel them?”

“What else would it be?”

“Can we… test that?”

“Now, Edwin. How would you feel if I questioned you about your Skills?”

“But like, you provided a perfect experiment for me! I want to test this hypothesis, you don’t know how important this is for me.”

“What? It is important that you understand my Skills?”

“Yes! No! But you presented me with knowledge.” Edwin’s mind was racing with the sorts of experiments he could try. What exactly were the limits of his Skills? At what point did a Skill cross over into being a magical Skill instead of a ‘mundane’ Skill?

“It’s science. I can learn! You have to let me do this!” Even as he said the words, Edwin realized he was getting carried away, and withdrew, his eyes falling. Lefi had pulled away while Edwin was animatedly pushing for experimenting, and it sank in just how much he’d messed up.

“Sorry.”

“No harm done, my friend! None at all!” Lefi tried to reassure him, but Edwin shied away from the reassuring pat the man offered. He’d gotten carried away, he knew it, and wasn’t particularly keen on empty platitudes to make him feel better.

He’d been doing so good in Joriah, too.

“Edwin!” a voice snapped him out of his musings, “Stop moping!” Inion had looked away from Yathal and made eye contact with him.

“I’m not moping!”

“Yes you were!”

“How would you know?”

“You always get all mopey when you start moping,” she offered in her typical non-answer.

“That doesn’t make any sense!”

“Should I leave you two alone?” Lefi teased, and Edwin turned to glare at the adventurer. Inion, for her part, just laughed.

He wasn’t entirely sure when she’d stopped teasing him about trying to seduce him, and while he was perhaps ostensibly happy- not that he’d ever really minded that a pretty girl wanted to flirt with him- there was the small, traitorous voice inside of him that said she wasn’t interested in him because of how she’d gotten to know him better. He tried to squish the impulse of the social paranoia he knew it was, but it still stuck in the back of his mind as a niggling doubt.

After all, it made sense that she would travel with him and help him. She was Inion, after all. They were contractually bound together and had spent a year in close proximity. That sort of thing would always beget closeness. That didn’t mean that she liked him for who he was, though.

He mentally sighed. He wished that he had a friend who he could just… spend time with. That wouldn’t get bored and annoyed at him when he went on his diatribes about science, who would be able to talk to him about stuff he found interesting. No, Inion didn’t count. He couldn’t articulate why, but she didn’t.

Lefi didn’t count either. Beyond the fact he found the man slightly grating- though within the bounds of tolerance- he was clearly the sort of person who ‘liked everyone’ and wanted to make them all feel included. Personally, Edwin suspected that kind of person just reveled in the feeling of marginally positive interactions with a lot of people. He couldn’t actually care about Edwin on a personal level, after all. He didn’t know Edwin well enough to make an informed decision about him. He didn’t really care about him, just that he was a person. No, what Edwin wanted was…

“I said stop moping, Edwin! And I mean it!”

“Okay, okay! Fine!”

Did aggressively dragging him back from the verge of a depressive spiral count as care? He supposed it did, and he was glad that Inion could do that. But did she care about him, or just that he was the person to wake her up? Was there something about Edwin Maxlin in particular that-

“I warned you!”

Edwin looked up just in time to see Inion tackle him in a floating leap.

“Gaaahhh!”

“That… that… whoo.” Edwin tried to catch his breath, “I didn’t even know I was that ticklish. I think I might have gotten an Adaptive Defense level from that, actually.”

He shook his head, “First off: where did that come from, and secondly, do you have a Skill for that?”

His former tormentor just grinned, “Well, when you get all mopey I need to do something to break you out of it unless I wanna see you not do anything for the next two days or more. Tickling was a last resort, but it did seem to be effective.” She noted, stroking her chin.

“Wai wai wait. No.”

“Oh, you didn’t have fun?” she teased him.

“Well, okay, yes. But you can’t just go grabbing me and tickling me for an hour to break me out from being mopey!”

“Well why not?”

“It’s not.. it’s not right!” Edwin lamely said, then tried to gather his thoughts, “I’m my own person, you can’t just… tickle me for an hour just because you think I could benefit from it.”

“But it worked so well!”

“That’s not the point! Like… what if it were something more serious?”

“But it’s not? It’s tickling you and cheering you up!”

“But you’re still… doing stuff to me without my agreement.”

“And?”

“That’s bad.”

“Why?”

“Because…” Edwin knew he was absolutely awful at debate, particularly when unprepared- his conversations with Xares and Galen had spoken to as much- but this was a new low. He also wasn’t in the best mental state to debate, either. He was too exhausted from Inion’s efforts to break him out of his spiral.

What made it more annoying was she wasn’t completely wrong. His nihilistic ‘everyone hates me’ urges had been pushed away for the time being, and while it wasn’t a permanent solution, it worked, as much as he hated to admit it. He wasn’t sure why it worked- barring Skill shenanigans anyway, which were entirely possible- but it had.

“It’s still me and my body. It’s a matter of principle. When I say not to do something, that’s an absolute.”

“Psshhh.” She waved her hand, “You’re not even a century old. What do you know about what you want?”

“I’m literally the only person who knows what I want! You certainly don’t.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! I know exactly what you want.”

“And what’s that?”

She patted his cheek, “You want some friends your own age, and to learn about alchemy. You’ll get there eventually, don’t worry.”

“Hey! You aren’t my mother!”

Inion just chuckled and pulled him in for a hug, “Don’t worry, I’ve got you. I’ll take care of you just fine.”

Edwin gave a halfhearted struggle more out of principle than anything. Human- or close enough, he supposed- contact was something he generally enjoyed. It wasn’t a full substitute for having someone he was genuinely close to, but it did help fill the gap.

“I’m still mad at you,” he muttered. “This doesn’t change anything.”

“Of course, Edwin. Of course.”

…It was nice, he had to admit.

Very nice.