The next eight work days were that annoying hybrid of immensely slow and incredibly fast. I still had no reply from Lunette, the work at the store was going well, Mrs. Blakrout's package had been located and delivered at last, and my parents had fulfilled several commissions. Customers were pretty constant, but not overwhelming. That was the fast part. The slow part was the agonizing evenings. No measurable progress was made by my parents on the new abilities. I had no epiphanies for them, and they had none on their own. I had bunches of things I could test on my own, but I had enough trouble concentrating enough to move the rocks most nights, so I wasn’t in the state to do any experimentation on new abilities.

When Nineday morning finally came, I was glad that I had an obligation to attend my cooking lesson with Mrs. Halgershine. Something new to learn, with easily seen results. She showed me how to make the mousse with a hand-cranked whipping mixer, ironically very similar to one my first mother had inherited from her mother. That one was still working, last I knew. She told me it could be done by hand with a whisk if you were fast enough and had the endurance, but I shamelessly used the mechanical advantage. Since the recipe took two whipped ingredients, egg whites and the fresh cream. Both of those were carefully folded into a mix of melted butter, honey, chocolate, and the egg yolks.

The last step was one I wouldn’t be able to repeat in summer. It required chilling the mix for several hours. They had a large ice box and a standing delivery order from the iceman. We did not. Wilhena promised to send home the whole batch as a bribe, so long as I called her by name, and not Mrs. Halgershine or ma’am. The sheer cheek of that woman! Shamelessly abusing the power of chocolate to get me to call her by name. Fine. Chocolate wins.

On the upside, the reward was the entire of the batch mousse, except for two servings that Henrig got his hands on while the batch was chilling. Wilhena had gone out to work in her garden, and I was reading one of the more recently acquired illuminated tomes on magic from her collection during this theft. Pretty smart and very sneaky, I’d have to admire that man, if he hadn’t gotten some of my chocolate.

Unfortunately the tome didn’t deal much with how to teach magic, rather than provided several different uses for the magic that most folks knew. It talked about concentrating the heat into a fine point for applications like igniting wet objects. It also addressed the concept of longer slower heat from extended release, instead of just bursting, so that was a known technique already, just one I hadn't been exposed to. Modern education these days, what is the world coming to!

When the chilling was done, I gladly accepted a carriage ride home so I could deliver the mousse unmelted. It was packed in a wooden box, and they put some ice in there too. I would be able to return the box to the store on Oneday.

My parents enjoyed the mousse I bought home, but those heathens didn’t find it as rapturous as I did. Ah, well, I’m happy to sacrifice myself and eat the rest without them. It’s a thankless job, but somehow I’ll manage. With the box and ice, it should last fine for another serving for breakfast.

The remainder of the day was spent grabbing foodstuffs from the market for the coming tenday and doing individual practice. Since I’d settled down into a massive emotional cloud of sugar and chocolate happiness, I decided to work on another one of my many theories for psionics, bolstering my physical toughness. I was not thrilled with the Fragile Fleshy Fist of Failure, and I was going to master the Potent Penetrating Punch of Power.

This time, instead of trying to wrap my energy around my fist, I was going to reinforce it from the inside. I shamelessly based my mental image on transforming my fist into living metal, stealing, or maybe steeling, the idea from the X-men, specifically Colossus. In my mind, my hand was made with bones of solid metal. This structure supported muscles and sinews that were stranded bundles of wire cables, which were covered with a meshwork skin made of tiny steel scales. After several minutes of concentration, I could feel the image lock into place with a mental click, and a noticeable energy drain began.

Opening my eyes, I didn’t see a difference in the physical appearance of my hand, but I needed to test it out. I tapped my finger on a knife tip. I could feel the skin flex, but no pain from the tip. I pressed harder. The skin dimpled, but the knife did not penetrate. So it’s working. Does reasonably well on pointy objects.

Before I could second-guess myself into indecision, I grabbed up the smallest rock and smashed it into the back of my hand. That hurt a bit, but not as much as I was thinking it should. Clearly, the mode performed somewhat better on pointy objects than blunt force. That was in keeping with the mesh image and the nature of chainmail without the underlying gambeson. My final test was a quick slash of the blade across the meat of my palm. I had been holding the power for just under a minute at this point, and I could feel the drain accumulating. It was very slow and steady, except it spiked in demand in response to the rock and the deep slash. Best guess was that it had some level of base cost, plus additional cost for extra damage reduction. I really wanted a rematch against the wood block now, at least once I’d refilled to full capacity, first I wanted to see how long I could maintain it when not taking damage.

Fifteen minutes later, I decided I had enough data. I could maintain the reinforcement of my fist for an hour or so, based on my energy levels now, with some variance if I began taking damage.

I expanded the visualization to cover my whole body, and I could feel the drain build rapidly. In ten seconds, I stopped, releasing what I decided to call Colossus mode, again shamelessly taken from the comics. The energy flow rate was too high for that to be a long term buff. I could manage maybe a few minutes at full energy, but probably much less for practical purposes, because it'd be needed in a damaging situation. While I meditated to recover, I carefully built a new image using leather for skin, with braided ropes for the muscles and dense oak for the bones. Once my energy felt fully replenished, I allowed power to flow into that image. This drain was remarkably less than Colossus.

Time to do a bit of validation testing. The blade still dimpled my skin, and a similar slash caused the equivalent of a paper cut, not quite enough to cause significant bleeding. The tip test didn’t ramp up the drain rate, but the slice did, draining at the rate that was roughly similar in feel to the Colossus mode. Then it ramped back down to the basal rate. I could probably maintain this image for twenty minutes without exhausting my energy. Reduced damage lower protection for much lower costs. If I had to guess, pretty close to linear. No distances involved to make things all complicated, and not enough data to do more than make educated guesses. I’ll call that Woodman.

One last variant to try. I didn’t necessarily need to reinforce the inside of my skin for general purposes, so I dropped out all the subcutaneous imagery, and went back up to the scaled mesh image. Empowering skin-only Colossus took about the same level of energy as the full Woodman, and using skin-only Woodman I felt that I could maintain almost indefinitely.

That seemed like it might be a good way to train my energy and defend against my clumsy nature all at once.

Wait.

I need to check out Colossus mode, see if there’s any stats impact. Reinitiating the power, I quickly checked my stats.

{Status:

Mental:

Acuity:

Perception:

Memory:

10

8

10

Psyche:

Wisdom:

Insight:

Willpower:

7

8

13

Physical:

Strength:

Coordination:

Endurance:

7 (9)

7

11 (14)

Skills:

Energy Conversion

2.937

Energy Emission

2.58

Energy Control

2.178

Channeling

0.063

Instructor

0.017

Meditation

2.574

Walking

5.018

}

Yes! I have discovered buffs! Decent skill gains from the nightly practice too! Endurance and strength are each getting boosted by about 25%, which explains the large drain. The skin only visualization does only the endurance side, but it feels like it costs somewhat more than half. Endurance may be related to both how much energy drain I can tolerate and also how much damage I can take. I can’t tell yet about the damage reduction, it could be endurance, but it could also be boosting a stat that I don’t see with the Basic Guide. Woodman mode drops the boost to around 10%, resulting in one point boost to strength and endurance. Whole numbers and unknown rounding makes that hard to pin down exactly. Dropping to hand only mode for Collosus results in no visible change to my stats at all, but still significant drain.

I didn’t even have a need for any armor mode at the moment, but as I’ve discovered through my own folly here, and through study in my first world, poor preparation provides poor performance. I’d rather have the ability to resist damage figured out now than trying on the fly when I need it.

All the data acquired on that, I meditate to restore my energy and then seek out my arch nemesis, the wood chunk. My first punch is wimpy and a bit tentative, only knocking down the chunk without causing any pain in my hand or visible damage to the wood. My second is more forceful, hitting on the flat side of the wedge and splintering some pieces off the edge, knocking the chunk back several feet. That feels like heavy pressure, reminiscent of punching a workout bag with proper gear on. No pain, no drawn blood. I need to do one last punch at full force. I have to remind myself that I’ve already done this one time without the buff. It turned out fine in the end, so I don’t hold back. I can deal with the consequences if there is a failure.

I strike again. The wooden enemy goes down with a crunchy snapping sound. I panic slightly, but there’s only a small amount of pain. I release the power and my held breath, raising my hand up to check it. There’s no broken bones, only some redness and minor scratches, with a few splinters stuck to my knuckles. I evaluate my vanquished foe. It’s still in one piece, mostly, but the edge part of the wood chunk is nearly detached and several layers are split apart. It wasn’t the completely awesome one punch kindling maker I’d gleefully imagined, but then again, with only the hand mode running, I’m below average for strength.

Despite the less than superheroic result, it’s still impossible to keep the grin off my face. It’s real. It works. What should have broken my hand was reduced to something akin to accidentally bumping my hand into a tree I was walking past. Progress for me. Here’s hoping some time spent individually was as good for my parents’ progress. I yawned, focusing on my hand for half a minute to remove the scratches and the splintery bits. It wasn’t automatic yet, but it was becoming easier to trigger regeneration.

I went outside and washed up, preferring speed to the comfort of a warm bath. I went back into the kitchen, grabbed the water jug and a large pot, then filled them at the pump before the water had all drained back out of the pipe. I went back into the house and put the water on for soup, adding generous handfuls of dried herbs and some salt. Chopped garleek, onion, root veggies, and dried beans served to fill up the pot the rest of the way, so I put a lid on top to keep the heat in the pot and speed up the cooking. That’d take care of meals for the rest of the enddays. Dinner prep work done, I laid down for a well-earned nap.