It's obvious why this world is so underdeveloped. Five thousand years of history and they haven’t managed to come out of the Dark Ages! This stupid [Status] thing takes away all the reasons for innovation and just makes people lazy. It’s worse than Communism!

Every improvement is spread throughout the world in an instant. The results of your hard work, distributed to the world without your permission. Without the opportunity to profit from your invention, why would anybody invent anything?

- Todd Franklin, Thoughts of the Gods Chosen

Why, Todd? Because they wanted to shit on a toilet, that’s why! I looked up from my work and sighed. Right now, I was ‘helping’ Kyle dig a trench from our house to a nearby gutter. I say ‘helping’ because he didn’t actually need any help. I could use a shovel with much more ease since I came here, but Kyle was a machine. He actually had [Craft (Stone)] as a skill as well, so our trench would be covered and lined with stone once we were done.

[Craft] was a weird skill. When you unlocked it, it started with one available type - for example, I had unlocked [Craft (Iron)] but had not yet purchased it. Every time the skill improved, it offered a choice of additional types of crafting. Kyle - because he’d planned to be a farmer before meeting Felicia - had [Craft (Wood, Stone, Shingles)]. The really crazy part was that if you had the skill points, you could drop a level in the skill and bring out a subtype into its own skill, like [Craft Wood].

That skill now got all the experience from crafting wood, but the original skill now acted as a bonus when you used [Craft Wood]. So you could get much higher effective skill levels than you could with one skill alone. Exactly what skill subtypes were available at each level was different for each person, it seemed that some crafts were more adjacent to others.

So Kyle didn’t need help, but he did need direction. Connecting the inside of a house with the hole that served as a sewer wasn’t something that they’d done, back where he was from. And I wasn’t willing to just stand there and tell him what to do, so I was doing my best to aid with the unskilled part of the labour.

Talnier didn’t have proper sewers. Well, it had one sewer. The main keep, where the Count lived, predated the rest of the settlement and was supposedly plumbed. There was a sewer tunnel running from it to the river, terminating in two small grated openings. Too small for a monster - or a human - to get through, obviously.

Water constantly flowed through the tunnel into the river, suggesting that the tower had its own spring, or there was some sort of enchantment constantly producing water to keep it clean. When the town was built, the nobles had refused to allow anyone else to connect to the tunnel, leading to more speculation that the tunnel also led to where the family kept their darkest secrets. I’d been making a lot of enquiries around town on sewer-related matters, and that was a favourite story of the townsfolk.

So instead of proper sewers, they’d dug narrow, deep trenches down the centre of the two main streets, with a couple of branches leading out to other areas. They were mostly covered by stone slabs, but they couldn’t be entirely covered, because then people wouldn’t have anywhere to dump their waste.

In the nicer areas, like mine, small branch trenches were leading off so we didn’t have to walk into the middle of the road to offload. These terminated in small pits surrounded by a low wall and capped with a wooden lid. It looked a bit like an old fashioned well, but without the bucket.

One of those was what we were connecting to our trench. I’d wanted to lay pipe, but pipes here were made of copper, and quite expensive. Not that I couldn’t afford it, but I was worried about someone digging it up. So a covered trench lined with cut stone would have to do. I had been talking with an [Alchemist] about getting something to seal it with - they had a whole lot of compounds that they didn’t keep in stock, but could make on-demand.

Kyle moved on to placing and mortaring the cut stone we had bought. My sad contribution to the digging was completed, so I went to work on the other components.

My plumbing solution wasn’t going to be for the masses, but that was a problem for the future. The actual toilet was going to be a Phantasmal Object, stabilised by a [Spell Storing] enchantment. I’d shown one to a [Potter] but he didn’t think he could make it. For now - for me - this would have to do.

I’d ordered three tanks from a local [Tinker] - one for hot water, one for cold, and a smaller one for the toilet. All three were going to filled by enchantment.

The hot tank would be heated by an enchantment as well. I wanted to use my Fire Gem for something, but a warming enchantment was more controllable, and less likely to start a fire.

My first enchantment was for the toilet, using [Spell Store] to manually trigger [Water Stream] with for a volume calibrated to the size of the tank. We’d have to trigger the enchantment to fill the tank, then pull the plunger to flush it.

I was going to do the same arrangement for the main water tank, but…

You have crafted a Water Fountain, Quality: Good. You earned 125 XP

[Enchanting] Level 3 acquired through use

For gaining a skill level you have been awarded 1 XP

It was kind of irritating to think that doing one more [Enchantment] back in Anchorbury would have given me this, but I’ll take it.

[Sense Liquid] rune purchased for two points.

[NOT] rune purchased for one point.

[Freeze] rune purchase for two points.

I’d been waiting for the skill to go up, so I didn’t need a lot of time to consider what to purchase. Now the next enchantment could be triggered whenever it didn’t detect water. Back in Anchorbury, I would have had to include a mana storing circuit, but here there was enough mana to power the enchantment continuously.

You have crafted an Endless Water Fountain, Quality: Great. You earned 320 XP

I got distracted by the notification - that wasn’t a bad XP reward! It seemed to have gone up significantly with the improved quality level. I checked my logs, and my effect total had been 52 for that enchantment. Average was effect level 20, and Good was 30, so my best guess for the next stage was probably 80? I should be able to reach that with another two skill levels.

I returned my attention to the actual enchantment, now pouring water into a small pot I’d prepared. Theoretically, this spell would keep producing water until the world was drowned, but at such a slow rate that eventually evaporation would outstrip production. Assuming it didn’t fall into a puddle of its own making. It did make me wonder where it all came from.

Eh, magic, not my problem.

I’d spent a couple of hours on these two enchantments, so it was time for lunch, and then training. I popped my endless water generator into the pot and headed out.

“Are you ready?” Felicia asked. When I nodded, she came at me with her staff. The two of us were fairly well matched. Neither of us could beat the others defence total by enough to get through the other’s armour - as long as I didn’t use my enchanted daggers, anyway.

So we could fight as hard as we liked, knowing that injury wasn’t a real possibility. Kyle watched over us, calling out tips and encouragement. This wasn’t as good as the real thing - you got more skill experience when you were stressed and afraid for your life. Successful blows still hurt though, so going at each other hammer and tongs built up a certain amount of stress.

Even so, by end of a gruelling, exhausting session, I still hadn’t improved.

“It gets harder after level three,” Kyle said when I complained. “And harder still as you go on. Even so, you should be able to get level four in [Dodge] and [Dagger] before we go on another expedition.”

“What about Felicia?” I asked. She already had fours in those.

“Probably not?” he hazarded. “It takes about a year of normal use to get a skill to five.”

“That long?” I groaned. I wanted everything now damnit!

“Maybe less, depending on danger, of course,” he said, amused by my petulance. “I hear a lot of noble families put their kids through hell, just to get them decent skills quickly.”

“Aubert sort of said something about that,” I said thoughtfully. “Like, punishment for failing?”

“Like whipped until you can’t stand for failing,” Kyle said, his face losing its smile. “Then healed back up again for the next day - trains your [Body Development]”

“Je- Phadan’s Mercy!” I exclaimed, switching to one of the local swears at the last minute. I needed to practice that. “Do they all do that?”

“I don’t know - it was just a story my parents told me,” he said. “My family doesn’t have the best opinion of nobles.”

“That’s an understatement,” Felicia chimed in, getting up off the floor. She’d run out of [Stamina] before me - she may have had a higher skill, but her [Strength] was letting her down. “Are we done? It’s Kandis’s turn to cook.”

I’d been worried we wouldn’t get it done before the next dungeon trip, but by some miracle, here we were. We crowded around the door to the toilet, encased in the small room we’d walled off from the newly constructed bathroom. That had been a stretch for these guys - when you didn’t have plumbing, you just set your bath up wherever it was convenient. Now we had a dedicated bathroom. Walling off the toilet was less controversial - as long as it was going to be inside, they wanted it as separated as possible from everything else.

The plumbing had been tested for the bath, but this was the real test. A leak here could have disastrous consequences. We were listening to the gurgle as the water tank filled for the first time.

“Well, here goes nothing,” I said and pulled the string that opened the valve. Something I’d long taken for granted, but then thought I’d never see again, happened. The toilet flushed.

Felicia had lost the toss and soon came in from outside. “The water came out,” she said. “I guess that means it’s working?”

“Probably,” I said, “We might get some leakage somewhere, and we’ll have to see if it gets blocked at any point, but for now…” I started shooing them out of the room. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I need to pee.”

Name: Kandis Hammond Profession: Phantasmal Artificer Level: 4 [HP]: 360/360

[Stamina]: 480/480

[Mana]: 800/800 Age: 24 Abilities [Strength]: 3

[Agility]: 3

[Finesse]: 4

[Soul]: 3

[Intelligence]: 5

[Charisma] : 10 [Unspent Ability Points]: 5

[Unspent Skill Points]: 2

[Unspent Development Points]: 0

[Unspent Spell Levels]: 0

[Unspent Rune Levels ]: 0 Skills [Body Dev.]: 3

[Stamina Dev.]: 4

[Perception]: 3

[Identify]: 4

[Scribe]: 3

[Calculate]:4

[Mana Sense]: 3

[Mana Dev.]: 4 (5)

[Illusion Magic]: 4 (7)

[Water Magic]: 2

[Creativity] : 2

[Disguise]: 2

[Deceive]: 2 (5)

[Charm]: 3 (4)

[Conversation]: 4 (6)

[Intimidate]: 2 (3)

[Intrigue]: 2 (3)

[Persuasion]: 3 (4)

[Dodge]: 4

[Jump]: 2

[Climb]: 2

[Run]: 3

[Memorise]: 3

[Teach]: 3

[Enchanting]: 3

[Adv. Math.]: 2

[Sing]: 2

[Stealth]: 3

[Research]: 2

[Cook]: 3

[WM: Dagger]: 4 (5)

[WM: Triggered]: 2

Unlocked Skills [WM: Axe] [Thrown] [Hunt] [Gather] [Craft (Smithing)] [Craft (Tinker)] Traits [World Walker]: Level prerequisites for Professions are overridden. +1 bonus to all stats

[Gift of Tongues]: All languages are understood.

[Female]: +1 bonus to Charisma

[Silent Casting]: Allows you to cast spells without a chant

[Subtle Casting]: Allows you to cast spells without gestures

[Disease Resistance]: You are more resistant to diseases of all types.(Upgradeable) Spells Known [Static Image], [Light], [Unseen Sound], [Simple Invisibility], [Disguise], [Conceal Mana], [Greater Invisibility], [Improved Blind], [Dispel Image], [Phantasmal Object], [Phantom World]

[Water Stream], [Water Ball], [Water Walk] Runes Known [Cool], [Heat], [Effect: Touch], [Constant Effect], [Sense (Temperature)], [Trigger], [Accept Energy], [Sharpness], [Target Self], [Generate (Fire)], [Target (Cone Projection)], [Undead Bane], [Gather Energy], [Sense (Touch)], [Spell Storing], [Sense Liquid], [NOT], [Freeze]