Okay, bring up Drafting. Calvin thought, kicking his heels from the side of his tower, the light of Soscath shining down on him as he surveyed his domain.

I have a domain. Sometimes none of this feels real…gods, I wish I could sleep through this boredom.

You know, that face on the moon is a result of a burning mine? If you had a telescope you could see my former office.

“I did not know that,” Calvin said, glancing up at Scowling Moon. “Now bring up Drafting.”

Boo. I’m just tryn’a carry a conversation since you were so bored.

Your Drafting Skill has reached level 45!

Please choose six Abilities and/or mutations

Master Builder: User may spend 1 Bent per second, real-time, to enter a 1:(Drafting) Time dilation effect. During this time, Drafting correction applies to the user’s ability to create things from the materials on hand. If the user attacks, leaves a (Drafting) foot radius sphere or does anything other than build, the effect immediately ends.

^From Mayfly’s Body, M*necraft Debug menu

Back to The Drawing Board: Correction also applies to singling out flaws or inefficiencies in User’s Designs.

Scroll-Work: 1 Bent: User may store an external Bent ability in a piece of paper or similar object. This may be their own or another’s Abilities. Released at will by the holder of the ‘scroll’.

^From Bent Manipulation, The Iroh Special

Reverse Engineering: Correction applies to understanding how a given object works and creating a blueprint to replicate it.

Dating Sim HUD: User Now sees potential conversation options with other people, along with a meter above their head that reflects their feelings towards the User. To their left will be a panel containing all relevant information User is aware of.

From Visualize, Playboy.

Drafted Grimoire: 4 Bent to store an object into a piece of paper or other fine sheet. Time does not pass inside the paper. User may use the contents of any paper as a target of any of their abilities without needing to know the object’s position as long at the paper is within (Drafting) feet. If the paper is damaged, the object is lost.

^From Dupdomancy, Abyssal Alchemy

Steady hands: Correction applies to effective Kinesthetics level.

Idiot-Proofing: Blueprints drawn by the user apply the user’s correction to others trying to understand and remember them.

^ We can finally compete in the race against nature's ability to create a better idiot.

It’s ALIIIVE!: Correction now applies to designing living or formerly living creatures.

^From Abyssal Alchemy & Race.

Mutations

Igor Brain: Grow a specialized sub-brain that can aid in the design and recall of complicated structures/processes.

^yes, Master!

^ Slight chance of becoming an eldritch abomination. You know, assuming you weren’t already slowly becoming an undead as your body slides inevitably toward death. Cuz who doesn’t wanna be an eldritch abomination, amiright?

Never go without: User’s appendages may be transformed into Pencils at will. Extreme amounts of writing may cause damage to the user’s body.

^*shrug* Why not?

…

Calvin was scanning through them time and again, trying to separate the wheat from the chaff.

…

So, you gonna take the dating sim HUD?

“No.”

D’aw!

Master builder is nice, It’s AlIIVE! Helps with Chimera designs, Reverse Engineering will help with recreating the emitter, and possibly more, when we begin trading with the Knick-Knacks.

Igor Brain and Never Go without were still right out. Steady hands was superfluous. Calvin’s kinesthetics was so far beyond human that improving it had very little actual effect due to diminishing returns.

Idiot Proofing is interesting… as is the Grimoire and Scroll-Work, and Back to the Drawing Board should help me advance our technology quicker.

There were seven options Calvin liked, and only six slots.

Calvin set aside the passive abilities he knew he wanted and focused on the active ones.

Master builder was interesting, and he was fairly cetain he could find a way to take advantage of it, but…Dupdomancy could easily fill its role in a pinch. With Dupdomancy he didn’t even have to move anything, simply copying all of the available parts into the right shape.

Now that he had Multi-Split, anyway.

So Calvin could cross Master Builder off the list.

That left him with six out of six, but just in case, he reviewed the other two active abilities.

The Grimoire Ability was interesting. It was similar to the Copy Kit mutation from Dupdomancy, except it didn’t have any hard limitations on the amount he could carry, except for the number of sheets of paper he would need.

They had to stay protected, so they would most likely be bound into a…Grimoire.

Interesting.

Since the description said they could be used as the target of spells, Calvin immediately thought of Shifting, Trait Doctoring and Dupdomancy.

Basically, store his Spell Components in the book, so he didn’t have to carry around explosives on his belt. Plus there was no explicit mass limit, so if he wanted to, he could carry around a ten-ton chunk of Abyssal steel, and use it as a focus for both Shifting and Trait Doctoring.

Yeah, I like that one… except having to now carry around an obviously targettable book everywhere.

And the other, Scroll-Work. That looked like a good way to save some fireballs for a rainy day.

Now that Calvin couldn’t regenerate Bent without women on hand, it might serve him well to keep some things in reserve. He could even bind them into the book. Nothing saying he couldn’t.

Am I just paranoid thinking people will target the book? Calvin thought.

Not really, but the ability to target the pages without having to know where they are means you could carry them in a satchel or backpack or something. You don’t have to hold the book above your head and scream ‘THIS IS MY WEAKNESS!’

Fair point.

I Choose Scroll-Work, Idiot Proofing, It’s AlIIIVE!, Reverse Engineering, Back to the Drawing Board, and Drafted Grimoire.

The tingles of new Abilities were so intense they were almost painful, and Calvin nearly fell off the ledge of the balcony as he clutched his head. It felt like ants were tap-dancing their way between his ears.

“Whoops,” he said, grabbing the ledge and hauling himself back to he could tingle without fear of plummeting to his…death? Discomfort?

“When did I lose my fear of heights?” Calvin wondered aloud as soon as the tingling stopped, glancing back down at the flattened stretch of mountain far below his feet.

Somewhere between learning how to fly and becoming so physically powerful that terminal velocity literally can’t harm you.

That kind of makes sense. I mean, I know those things in my brain, but they don’t feel like they’ve been internalized naturally. It might just be…

Undead trait? Elliot asked.

Possibly.

Calvin pulled out his journal and made a note before heading back inside his tower, sitting down beside Learner.

“What are you doing tonight?”

“There was an interesting creature in the Siphon today that could control its size at will.” learner said, pointing to a creature in a glass jar. It was a writhing mass of tentacles with barbed ends and a little gnashing mouth that seemed to open wider than the creature’s main body. Overall, it looked like it would be terrifying if it were any bigger than its current palm-size form.

“Is that thing the same species as Squelch?” Calvin asked, referencing the poor human-loving tentacle monster who’d sadly perished when Uleis had been destroyed.

Unless she go out of the city when things went crazy. Who knows?

“Yes, I think it’s a male of the species, sadly without the unique ‘Sapient, Social-Craving’ mutation. However the creature’s moronic unchecked aggression makes it far less troubling for my brain to do this:”

She opened the jar, and the palm sized creature immediately began to swell.

Learner reached into the jar and nipped off a tentacle, drew it out and sealed the jar in the blink of an eye.

The creature’s rapid expansion slowed just shy of filling the entire jar, then it began very slowly shrinking back down to its former size.

Calvin stared at the jar for a moment.

“How big did you say that thing got?”

“I didn’t say. But they can become…oh, about the size of the city in the right conditions. They like the air here.”

She set the slowly shrinking tentacle down on the table and sliced it open under a microscope. Eventually learner began quietly humming to herself as she took notes on the creature’s anatomy, tapping the floor.

“Is that you or your brain that likes music?” Calvin asked.

Learner blinked and pulled away from the microscope to stare into space, seemingly surprised at that question.

“I didn’t realize. We both like it, but for different reasons. It makes my brain happy, while I find the repeating patterns of music relaxing.”

“Good, good. If that creature gets out of the jar, You’re responsible for killing it immediately, before it has a chance to get anyone killed.”

“Agreeable,” the Eldritch abomination said, peering through the scope. A moment later, one of her fingers turned into a tentacle and began changing size.

She clicked her tongue. “No, that’s not it. Somehow the cells stay the same size, even though there’s no way that should work.”

Calvin set concerns about his city being flattened aside. Learner might be somewhat naïve sometimes, but she wasn’t irresponsible. If the creature got out, it wouldn’t be because of mishandling, and she would immediately finish it off.

Calvin got back to his portal generator, and the flaws in his design immediately stuck out like a sore thumb. Low pressure here, useless dangly bits there. Pieces interrupting the wave-form there.

He didn’t know exactly how to fix them, but knowing what was wrong with his creation was a huge step forward.

Muahahaha! Calvin thought, his Wizard King persona taking over as he dove into creating what no one thought was possible: Cheap and effective portals.

*** Jonathan Ilestar ***

“Hello, Father,” Nadia said, sashaying through the center of the court, pale-faced nobles backing away from her as she approached the empty seat among her brothers and sisters.

Many illusionist women used tricks of the light to sculpt their features to be more pleasing, but Nadia had done none of that. Illusions were impossible within range of The Throne.

She was now inhumanly beautiful, inflaming lust in all who looked upon her.

Except for Jonathan.

It wasn’t because she was his daughter. It was because that…thing was a reminder of what the young upstart had done to his daughter, and how that reflected on him.

The horned creature was a walking, talking, humiliation.

“You are not my daughter.” He said.

“Why don’t we let the Throne decide that?” Nadia said, without slowing her steps.

An excellent idea. Jonathan thought.

He siphoned the power of the trapped minds inside the throne, bringing their gibbering insanity to bear on the creature. Focusing their torment directly on the creature’s brain.

She smiled.

The creature smiled as she walked through the torrent of mental energy and took her seat, third to the left of Jonathan.

The enchanted seat glowed, a soft blue light radiating out from underneath it, confirming her as a bearer of the Ilethan bloodline.

“Would you look at that!?” Nadia gasped in faux surprised, tears brimming at the corners of her eyes. “I am a real princess.”

Jonathan realized any further display of anger would make him look weak, so he bottled in his anger and allowed Nadia to speak.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Nadia purred, scanning the crowd. “I was unfortunately unable to attend court these last two years, as I was both a prisoner of war and dead. It was a trying time, but I’m back now, and I come bearing…gifts.”

Nadia stretched sinuously in her chair, and Jonathan spotted more than a few women swallowing drool. The noblemen were simply transfixed, frozen in place.

At least that part of her hasn’t changed, Jonathan thought sourly before correcting himself. No matter what happened, this creature was not his daughter and had no right to sit beside him.

But he couldn’t openly discount the Throne’s power to determine the Ilestar bloodline. If he did that, it would open the door to questioning the legitimacy of all his progeny and she knew it. He could tell by her sly sideways glance.

Walking through that mental barrage and sitting on Nadia’s chair was incontestable evidence of her heritage. If the chair weren’t fooled, she would have burst into flames and ash.

For now, people believed her claim, and refuting it undermined his own.

Which is why I’m going to have to have this demoness removed in a more oblique manner, Jonathan thought, not bothering to hide his scowl.

He was presented with two options: An untimely death, or complete political failure…followed by untimely death.

Nadia had been ambitious too, she had been brash, just like this thing, but she also had a certain level of caution, hiding behind a Mind-Slave. She’d also been taught a proper fear of her father.

He glanced askance at it.

The demoness’ black horns curled back over her head in an elegant, sensual crest that evoked illusions of a woman’s back. Her lips were ruby red, full and pouting, her eyes were large with brilliant blue irises and long black eyelashes. Her black hair shone like water.

He hated her.

Untimely death it is.