Jason decided to test out his skill evolution before he did anything further. He figured that even if he did decide to respec it out, he might as well have some fun with it first, right?

Since it was now late afternoon and he was already quite worn out, Jason settled on applying his new skill to whipping up a batch of his [Serenity Tonic] -based tea, perhaps in bottled form. The last few times he’d made it, it had come out too strong for his tastes, and Jason wanted to see if he couldn’t make a system-labeled drink out of it like Kera had once suggested.

Of course, this mean he needed to run down to Flora’s shop first, because he was out of both Produce and Calm supplies. He also owed Therissa a batch of healing potion anyway, so he might as well do both.

So he headed down to the shop, and purchased a few pounds worth of various supplies from Flora. He also paid a brief visit to a local farmer’s stall in the market, before heading home and ensconcing himself in the kitchen.

Fortunately for Jason, his skill helped him navigate the specifics of a medieval kitchen, and he soon was pulling a tray of now-dried, sliced lemon rind from the brick oven beside the hearth. He set that aside to cool, and conjured a very large pot, which he filled with water and placed over the hearth fire to boil.

Next, Jason ground up several dried herbs he’d purchased, chiefly lavender and lemongrass alongside a few others, which he mixed into a bowl with a carefully measured portion of black tea leaves. Once that was done, he diced up the now-cooling lemon rind as finely as he could, and dumped everything into the pot just as it came to a boil.

He pulled the pot off the fire and set it down carefully on a tall stone slab that served as a sort of preparation table, in order to let the water cool slightly while the tea steeped.

Next, Jason prepared to make some actual Serenity Tonic, but before he he could, [Prepare Legendary Fare] intervened by means of informing him that he should add the traits directly to the tea in specific quantities before infusing mana into it.

So Jason ground down his sources of Produce and Calm, estimated the amount of actual tea he was making here, and added them to the pot.

He paused for a moment, trying to decide which skill to activate, but then realized his cooking skill was more of a knowledge thing than something he activated. So he focused on the mental image of exactly what he wanted: a proper tea with magical properties and its own specific name.

“Brew Potion, Infuse,” he commanded.

The pot glowed briefly, and Jason felt his mana levels drain a fair bit.

A heavenly smell began to fill the room, and Jason hurriedly conjured up what amounted to a giant tea-strainer, which he used to filter out the tea leaves from the water after pressing what flavor he could from them.

The all that remained was to bottle the still-hot tea, and Jason soon had a good two dozen pint-sized flasks of tea.

As Jason was bottling up the last of it, Kera came to investigate.

“What on earth is that fantastic smell?” She asked Jason.

He grinned at her. “So you know how you were suggesting I hide my potion making as something else to further conceal what I’m doing?”

He held up one of the filled flasks. “I present to you, actual [Sereni-tea], brought to you by my newly evolved, unique cooking skill.”

“Analyze Item,” he commanded, and then shared the screen with Kera.

Sereni-Tea: A wondrous, some even say magical, tea blend that soothes the heart and soul and relaxes sore muscles

Kera laughed and gave a small jump, clapping her hands together. “You did it! You made an actual named item!”

He grinned back at her. “Want to try the first one?” he asked. “It was your idea first, after all.”

“Gimme,” she said with an excited grin, holding both hands out.

Jason passed her a flask. “Careful, it’s still really hot. But it should be good iced too, if you prefer that. I’m sure we could get Lumi to chill one.”

“Nope, the hotter the better for me,” Kera said, prying the cork out. She took a cautious sip, followed by several long gulps.

Jason winced a bit. That had to burn.

Then again… she does have that fireproofing spell, he thought.

Kera let out a long, satisfied sigh of relaxation as she looked up at the ceiling. She looked back down her flask, both hands held around it. She breathed in the aroma for a moment, then looked at Jason, blinking slowly a few times.

“I.. wow. Jason, this is.. fantastic stuff. I can’t even…I need to sit down to enjoy this properly I think, before I fall over.”

Jason laughed a bit ruefully, and picked up two more flasks.

“Go sit in the den, then. I’ll go find Lumi and we can all have a bit of tea. Its close to dinnertime anyway, we can haul out the food the neighbors brought by while we’re at it.

“Mmmmm,” Kera mere hummed in agreement as she inhaled the steam from her tea again. She took another sip and exited the kitchen, taking a seat at the table.

Jason went in search of Lumi.

Lumi took a final sip of her tea, and gave a contented sigh as she pushed her plate away from her.

“Well. That really hit the spot,” she said. “I’m lost for words, Jason.”

“Hey, I just made the tea and made sandwiches,” he replied. “You can thank our neighbors for the spiced meats and vegetables that went into it.”

“I’m with Lumi,” Kera said sleepily. She stifled a slight yawn. “This was like… exactly what I needed to come home to after our trip. You’re hired.”

Jason gave a worn-out laugh. Truth be told, he was pretty exhausted himself, and the girls were right. This had been a good idea.

“Well, I can’t promise I’ll keep the skill, but I’ll keep that under advisement,” he said. “Speaking of, though, did either of you pick out any of your new stuff?”

“I haven’t, yet.” Kera said. “I figure I’ll wait til just before the meeting with the Guild rep, then see what it opens up before I do the actual respec. I can alway re-spend the points, I’m assuming.”

“Oh, that reminds me of something else,” Jason said. “But we can talk about that later. What about you, Lumi?”

“I’ve got a few things to report,” she replied with a nod.

Lumi pulled up her status screen, showing it to the others.

Name: Lumiriel Dun'Val Race: Human (Outworlder) Gender: Female Primary Class:

Spellblade 10 Subclass: Knight 9 Subclass: Sunwarden 9 Secondary Class:

Duskreaver 1 Subclass: None Subclass: None

“As you can see, I’ve rearranged my class structure more than a little bit,” she said. “I finally picked up Duskreaver, which actually granted me a new specialization choice called ‘Twilight Valkyrie’. In addition to sounding totally badass, picking it seems to have also opened up some further classes that all seem similar to both Sunwarden and Duskreaver in theme, so at this point I’m giving serious consideration to just dropping Knight, picking up armor and weapon skills manually, and seeing if I can’t just focus wholly on this magic warrior business.”

“I may very well see what effect respeccing Knight out entirely would have, depending on whatever results Kera ends up seeing for the demonstration,” Lumi said.

“Ah actually,” Jason interrupted, “I may drink one myself tomorrow beforehand. No offense Kera, I’m on board with you doing the demonstration still, but I was thinking it might be a good idea to know what to expect. And well… I don’t want you to risk getting trapped in some form you don’t like. I don’t really expect us to not be able to respec more than once, but….”

“I get it,” Kera said with a dismissive wave. “It’s fine.”

“Sorry, Lumi,” Jason said. “Please, continue.”

Lumi nodded. “Well, as I said, I might respec Knight out and pay for any skills I need to keep Spellblade and stuff unlocked. Assuming that’s something I can do, and I’m not totally decided yet. But I keep thinking how Knight keeps giving me these skills I’m just not using in comparison to the others, except the basic stuff, so…”

She shrugged.

“I mean, I got Thundering Charge, and Challenge, and Horsemanship… none of which have really been important, though I guess Horsemanship did come in handy a bit. I also got ‘Oath of Valor’ this level, which is some kind of ritual thing that, well, its a bit like a paladin’s alignment restrictions, which I don’t want to touch with a ten foot pole.”

“So….” Lumi continued, “If I was to just earn and pay for my Armor and Shield skills, which I could probably get Denaire to help me with, I could just drop the class. I’d lose Horsemanship, Charge, and Challenge, but… eh.”

“Wouldn’t you lose your swordmanship too?” Jason asked.

“No,” Lumi replied with a shake of her head. “I actually paid for that before accepting Knight. Same for Mobility.”

Jason shrugged. “Seems like it might be worthwhile then, if there’s any benefit to dropping a class after you’ve invested XP in it. We don’t really know how that’ll work, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Lumi said, “that’s why I’ll wait til Kera, and I guess you, give it a try first.”

Kera started to say something, then stifled another yawn.

“Yikes, sorry,” she said. “I think sitting here after a nice meal is starting to get to me. I was trying ask, are you going to replace it with other classes?”

“Maybe several, actually,” Lumi replied.

“Is that a good idea?” Jason asked. “I mean, I know ts worked well for you so far, but there’s that XP cap thing.”

“Actually, that’s what I’ve been doing with some of my time while you were out,” Lumi said. “I asked some carefully-worded questions about preferences for multi-classing over single-classing, and… got some rather surprising answers.”

“Oh?” Jason asked.

“Yeah. So apparently, it’s on surprisingly equal footing here, at least for the average adventurer,” Lumi said.

“See, it turns out that most classes are very front-loaded for new skills. We heard a little about that from Therissa, in how you normally get new skills from leveling rather than straight up ranks. Well, that sort of changes as you get into higher levels. The higher level you get, the more you stop getting new skills and skill points, and the more you get pure stat boosts at certain intervals. Sure, you do get really good new skills at rare intervals, but you start hitting a lot of ‘dead levels’ where you get very little.”

Jason nodded as he realized the implications. “I get it,” he said. “Because of the difference in progression, it becomes a question of having a lot of very high ranked skills, versus having a spare few but epically strong ones because they’re backed up by raw stats. The classic versatility versus specialization choice.”

“Exactly,” Lumi said. “A level 500 Archmage, if someone ever actually managed to hit the cap, might have spells capable of leveling entire cities, while an adventurer with 80 Levels in 6 difference classes would have an unimaginable level of skill in whatever they chose to do. In fact, it can even be just a different means of specialization. Imagine leveling say, your basic throwing skill, Jason, and putting three or four hundred ranks worth of skill points into just that skill.”

Kera laughed. “I wonder if you could literally shoot the moon here.”

Jason grinned. “Maybe. It wouldn’t surprise me, to be honest, if there were people out there capable of things that would just be completely insane back home.”

He turned to Lumi. “Did you happen to ask anything about common level caps? I mean, I assume that max-levels don’t walk around all over the place.”

“I did,” Lumi answered, “and you’re right. Average ‘top’ adventurers generally cap out around two-fifty or three hundred before retiring, and that’s the best of the best, really. It just gets too expensive between levels past that point, and by then you’re losing more than half your XP to accumulated levels, so you start seeing almost no growth.”

“In fact,” she confirmed, “that’s one reason most people do multiclass a lot, and what kind of was the nail in the coffin as to why I will: The XP curve is based on class level, while the penalty is based on total. A fifty percent penalty when you’re trying to go from level twenty to level twenty one isn’t nearly as bad as when you’re trying to gain your two hundred and fifty-first level. So if you want to hit higher level totals earlier, multiclass is the way to go.”

Jason leaned back in his seat, and rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“That’s some pretty major info, there,” he said.

“I’ll say,” Kera said. “Though it does leave out that you’re splitting XP between classes.”

“Only kind of,” Jason pointed out. “Your subclasses effectively get ‘free’ XP after all. I mean, look at Lumi’s total skill ranks compared to ours, right? She’s way ahead in total levels, even if your actual highest level is highest of all of us. Plus there’s the whole synergy potential thing.”

Kera sighed. “I know, I know. Actually I’ve been thinking about maybe picking up at least a secondary now that I’m all caught up to you guys.”

“Really? Like what?” asked Jason.

“I’m not sure yet,” she replied, ”but I was thinking something along the lines of nature- or monster-based spellcasting. Like Shaman or Druid. I’ve actually got both of those in my list now, ever since I learned Thorn Trap from Flora.”

“Ask around,” Lumi suggested. “That way you can pick something with potential synergy before you try the respec. Maybe ask Aria about that Beastmaster class?”

“That’s the plan,” Kera confirmed.

“Any other news?” Jason asked Lumi.

“Oh, right!” Lumi exclaimed. “Sorry, got a little sidetracked there. Yes. This actually has bearing on the whole ‘put lots of skill points into specific skills’ thing. I actually got three tier increases, so now I have Advanced Swordsmanship, Advanced Shield Use, and Advanced Armor Use instead of Basic. That all came with Twilight Valkyrie as some sort of synergy bonus for having multiple tanking classes. And while I didn’t get any new skills right off the bat for Duskreaver, I did get two new spells, Icicle and Frost Armor. Icicle is surprisingly decent; even though its basically the same as my Frost Bolt shape, it’s really cheap to cast. I suspect with higher ranks of Spellcasting it will be practically free. Frost Armor meanwhile is your pretty standard armor buff.”

“Care to demonstrate?” Jason asked.

Lumi gave a brief yawn of her own.

“Bleh. Actually, can that wait til tomorrow?” she asked. “I’ve got several other things I don’t think you’ve had a chance to scan either, like Solar Flare, plus I got new stuff from Sunwarden too that we don’t wanna use in the house, and I’m totally beat.”

Kera yawned again, too. “Yikes. Double for me. I’m all for bed, you two. I can barely keep my eyes open even though its only early evening.”

While system theory was definitely high on his list of interesting subjects, the girl’s yawns were reminding Jason of just how exhausted he was, too.

“Alright,” he said. “We can reconvene in the morning. Let’s get things cleaned up.”

After climbing into bed, before he drifted off to sleep, Jason began with the simplest of the books Jerrik had given him, the basic primer on common enchantments. It was fairly heavy reading, but Jason managed to learn several basic starter runes before sleep overtook him.

Runes Learned: Enhance, Resist

The following morning saw Jason rising early, and he headed down to the market to get some further food supplies. First he visited the butcher’s shop for some cuts of bacon, then purchased some flour, eggs, spices, and even a pail of milk from some of the farmers’ market stalls, which were open early on account of the influx of extra people staying in town.

Jason wondered if they went out to their farms with an escort in the morning or not. Supposedly everyone had evacuated to behind the walls, but he supposed that wherever there was money to be made in a crisis, you’d find someone trying to.

Regardless of the reason, it meant Jason could treat himself, and consequently the girls as well, to a proper American breakfast of bacon, fried eggs, and pancakes. He briefly lamented the fact that he didn’t have a ‘Wakefulness’ trait to make some kind of magic-based coffee.

The smell of breakfast woke the girls, and Jason got a bit of a shock when Lumi staggered into the den seeking the scent of breakfast.

He turned quickly to studiously face his cooking, for Lumi had wandered out of her room clad only in her underthings. Given that she’d had to get local ones made, meant she was clad in little more than braes and a romanesque breast-band.

Jason’s face heated a little as he stared up at the wall. Lumi seemed…a bit different than previously. More… shapely, than before. That might have been his imagination. Which he was now having a bit of trouble keeping under control.

“Um, Lumi?” he coughed politely.

“Mmph?” he heard her mumble as she presumably dragged herself over to the table.

“You might want to put some proper clothes on first.”

He heard a gasp, followed by a hurried door closing.

Jason was standing there, chuckling to himself and trying to think about ice cubes when Kera opened her door to join him. She at least had taken the time to properly clothe herself, with Ceri riding on her shoulder as usual.

“What’s so funny?” Kera asked Jason as he shooed Echo, who’d slunk into the kitchen behind his mistress, away from the spare ingredients from the market.

Jason chuckled again and shook his head.

“You just missed Lumi. She woke up a bit… slowly, let’s say. After having removed most of her armor and clothes to sleep.”

“Oh dear. Did she…?”

“I daresay she’s awake now.” he laughed. “This is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about back when.”

“I shouldn’t tease, though, I suppose,” he conceded after a moment. “Its an easy enough mistake to make if you’re used to certain things, We’ve all had to deal with sharing space so much lately, that when you finally have a chance for some real privacy, its easy to slip up.”

“I am so sorry,” Lumi said to him from the den as she exited her room again. She didn’t have her armor on, but had put on her tunic and pants. Her face was flaming red with embarrassment. “I’m just so used to having my own place, and I usually… and we have private rooms now, and…”

Jason waved off her explanation. “Don’t apologize to me. I’m the one getting an eyeful, and you’re hardly unattractive with that, what…? Fourteen..? Fifteen..? Appeal of yours,” he laughed. “I should be the one apologizing to you, because I can’t deny my own amusement. Anyway, it’s fine.”

Lumi flushed again in further embarrassment. She mumbled something Jason didn’t catch, but Kera did.

“What, eighteen now? Really?” the other girl replied, surprised.

“I-I finally spent my points,” Lumi stammered more clearly, looking down at her feet. “Appeal is tied to Might, and mine's...twenty now.”

Jason suppressed an innapropriate urge to comment about Dungeons and Dragons characters. Instead he pulled the eggs off the griddle he’d conjured up and added them to three plates piled with bacon. He slide a plate in front of Lumi and pushed her into the chair.

“Eat,” he commanded. “That’ll get your mind off things. It’s fine, really.”

He passed Kera a plate of bacon and eggs as well, placed his own down at the table, and then brought out a platter of pancakes.

“Here we go,” he said. “Sorry we don’t have syrup, but we do have butter at least. Though I daresay homemade butter is a far cry different thing than what you find in a grocery back home.”

By the time he’d finished speaking, Kera had already snatched a pancake from the stack, rolled up some of her bacon inside, slathered a bit of butter onto it, and then crammed a big bite into her mouth.

She closed her eyes and chewed for a moment.

“Don’t care, its great.” she said after swallowing.

Jason rolled his eyes at her. It was a strange way to eat a pancake, he thought, but each to their own.

Breakfast was finished swiftly after that exchange, with Jason and the others tucking in without much talk. Kera ate like she was half-starved, and Jason wasn’t the sort to talk much until after a meal, while Lumi… well, she was slowly getting over her earlier embarrassment.

Afterwards, Lumi volunteered to do the cleanup while Kera saw to Echo and Ceri. Since Jason had done the cooking, he was left to his own devices, so he decided to go upstairs and prepare that batch of health potion for Therissa.

As he sat down at his lab table, though, a thought occurred to him:

Namely, that if he was going to test the Elixir of Rebirth, he should probably try leveling a class at least a level or two, just to see what happened when he unlearned it.

He’d skipped over doing it last night in favor of his attempted tea-potion, but there wasn’t any reason not to unlock the classes now.

Golemist Unlocked. Skill Point acquired. You have learned a new class skill, [Animate Object], Rank 1. You have learned a new class skill, [Command Creation], Rank 1. Engineer Unlocked. Skill Point acquired. You have learned a new class skill, [Advanced Mathematics], Rank 1. You have learned a new class skill, [Reinforce Structure], Rank 1.

He quickly skimmed through his new class skill entries.

Animate Object: By inscribing a simplified variant of the False Life sequence on an everyday object, you can grant it the gift of independent motion, to carry out your commands. Command Creation: Through an inexpensive application of mana, you can enforce your will upon any of your creations. Higher ranks result in greater range and comprehension on the part of the creation. Reinforce Structure: You are an expert when it comes to detecting flaws in the design of a building and can compensate through a better understanding of physics when completing repairs or performing maintenance.

Nothing unexpected there, he thought.

He checked his artificer specialization options.

Nothing had changed.

Hmm. That’s still kind of a surprise, to be honest. I’d have expected some kind of magical construction options, especially when Lumi had her own kind of synergy option. Maybe I’m missing something? I’ll have to talk with Sevani when I go see Therissa.

Shrugging mentally, Jason moved on the the next stage of his task: potion-making.

By now, he had the process down pat: Grind up the flowers, adding a tiny bit of water to help. Then scrape it into the bowl along with a scoop of the insect-shell powder, add water, and…

“Brew Potion.”

Jason’s mana drained heavily as two dozen potions’ worth of least healing potion was created at once. He filled the vials, packed them into a small wooden crate, with straw for insulation, and headed to the Lodge.

Despite the relatively early morning hour, there were already quite a few people coming in and out.

Jason stopped at the door and addressed the light blue-skinned boy.

“Excuse me, is Therissa around yet?” he asked, “I’ve got a delivery that needs to go to her, personally, and I have some business with her as well.”

“Sure,” the boy said. “She should be at desk as usual.”

“Thanks.”

Jason pushed his way through the door, crate held under one arm. Sure enough, Therissa was behind the usual counter. Jason wasn’t really sure why the boy would call it her desk, but then again, she was always sitting at it doing paperwork, so maybe that was an accurate term.

Therissa looked up as he approached.

“Ah, welcome back Jason. Is that…?”

“It is,” he confirmed. “Two dozen, which is a little more than you asked for, I know, but I figure I’ll be making a lot use of both Jerrik and Flora in the near future, and if it’s alright, I’d like to ask for a bit of an advance in coin, so to speak.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” he said, “I mean, we’ve got a house now, which means I need to stock various things like food and water, or have coin to buy meals somewhere else, and there’ll be odds and ends supplies for making a few things, and so on.”

“Ah, yes of course,” Therissa nodded. “One moment.”

She took the crate from Jason and hauled it away upstairs. A few minutes later she came back down, his time carrying a small leather coinpurse.

“Here you are,” she said. “That’s about two hundred gold worth of various coinage. Will that suffice?”

“Most certainly,” Jason replied. “We’ve got some of our own left over from the starter package thing, but I’ve already had to make more than one trip down this way to pick up things I was missing, so I wanted to be sure I had appropriate payment on hand and didn’t have to keep asking farmfolk to accept Guild credit.”

“I understand. Oh, and before you ask,” she said, “I did speak to Aurion, and he will be available to speak with you later this evening. If you’ll be in, I can send a runner to your home when he’s ready.”

“That works,” Jason replied. “Thanks.”

He bid her a goodbye, and returned to the house.

It was a bit of a surprise, but he found Kera and Lumi sitting in the den, playing a card game. The cards were overly large and made from thin wood rather than paper, but Jason recognized a card deck when he saw one.

“Wait, where did you get playing cards?” he asked, confused.

“Down at the market yesterday, when I was wandering around asking questions,” Lumi said cheerfully. “The deck isn’t quite the same, it’s got five suits instead of four, and it’s got jester, bard, princess, king, and wizard, instead of the normal face cards, but otherwise, I think most stuff will work just fine with only slight rules changes.”

“That’s… what, then?” Jason asked. “Two to sixteen? Or…?”

“Jester is the one, so it’s actually one to fourteen, so it’s pretty close, number-wise,” Kera replied. “Only one extra card.”

“Huh. Interesting. Well, I’ll leave you to it,” He said. Jason started to move towards the stairs, but then suddenly stopped and turned.

“Actually, here,” he said, dropping the money pouch on the table. “Later, why dont you two divide this up for us all. I got Therissa to front us some extra spending money for supplies and stuff. This way we all have some as needed.”

“Uh, sure, but what will you be doing?” Kera asked him.”

“I’ll be playing mad scientist in my lab,” Jason replied. “Time to get a bunch of stuff going before we meet with Aurion later tonight.”

“Have fun,” Lumi told him drily, her eyes more focused on her hand that on what Jason was actually saying.

Jason turned, headed upstairs, and stood at his lab table for the second time that morning.

Alright, I want to at least set up refinement of something, he thought.

He sighed, eyeballing the cluttered table surface. Therissa’s couriers had just kind of heaped everything together, which meant before he could do even that much, he’d need to actually clean he place up.

So he spent the first hour pottering about his lab, shifting various apparatus from table to table until it was relatively organized: one table for heating and agitating, one for cooling and settling, one for open space to let longer-term processes sit as needed, and one smaller table to actually sit down at, for grinding and other processing. He also filed away several of his non-perishable ingredients, such as the fulgurite, placing them onto the shelves so he didn’t need to dig through his bag to find them.

Jason was about to pull out one of the scarab eggs and use that as his first refinement subject, when Lumi came up the steps carrying a small package.

“Wow, you really cleaned the place up,” Lumi commented, looking around. “A guy who can cook, clean, and tries to be a gentleman. A girl might just feel a bit impressed.”

Jason just rolled his eyes at her. He was pretty sure she was just teasing him.

“This is for you,” she said, handing him the package.

He took it and looked at the label. “Ah, this would be the earthheart samples from Tersk. Thanks.”

“No prob.” She turned and went back downstairs.

Well… might as well start with these instead of the eggs like I’d planned, he thought.

He set the package down on the smaller table and opened it. Inside was a good half-dozen different chunks of crystal, and several of the much smaller bloodgems.

Jason picked up each earthheart fragment and analyzed it separately.

Earthheart Fragment Traits Learned: Crystallize, Earth, Defense, Density, Steel.

Two shards had both Steel and Density, which Jason set aside for now; those seemed potentially very useful, and he didn't want to waste them on experimenting. There others had a mix of the remaining traits, some with only one trait, others with two.

He selected the fragment that only had a single Earth trait as being the best candidate for a first try.

He set the others aside, then set about crushing the crystal into tiny fragments within a reinforced basic, using a weighted hammer. Once he’d reduced it to tiny shards, and then used his mortar and pestle to grind it into a fine powder.

Next, his refinement skill provided the next step: Mixing the powder with precise, if small, amounts of water, common dirt, and table salt to produce a grainy sludge, then heating in one of the crucibles. This would result in a fine, brownish-colored ash, just enough for two units of Earth.

The whole process took Jason the better part of two hours, largely because the grinding process was labor-intensive, and it took him awhile to get the crucible hot enough. He considered that he might want to invest in some kind of rock-crusher, even if it was only some kind of crank-powered clockwork one. It definitely might save time in the future, so he added it to his mental to-do list for future projects.

Once he had the two units of earth, it was time for the next step: seeing if he could use one unit of Earth to make two more.

This idea was predicated on the existence Jason had heard Pelk mention offhand during the trip: Mana crystals. Apparently, under the right conditions, mana could crystalize around a kind of solid core, which was the primary source of arcane powder beyond disenchanting existing objects.

But Jason also knew that mana came in ‘flavors’ from Flora’s lessons on the subject of elemental magic, so it stood to reason that there could be different kinds of mana crystals. What better way to get new units of an elemental trait than to manufacture aspected mana crystals with synthesis, and then refine them for additional traits?

Jason’s intuition, or perhaps his skills thinking for him again, told him it should be a relatively simple process. So he prepared a solution that used one unit of Earth and two units of arcane powder. Then he engraved an absorption rune onto one of the many pieces of quartz he’d retrieved from the Wastes, and buried it in a pot of dirt. Then he poured the prepared solution onto the buried crystal.

“Alchemical Synthesis, Infuse!” he commanded.

His felt his mana drain quite severely, almost half of his already large pool, and the pot took on a pale shimmer that was barely visible. Jason immediately knew hat he’d succeeded in making something, but that it would be roughly an hour until the process was complete.

In the meantime, he set about beginning the refinement of a large number of health, mana, and restore traits. Those went by considerably faster, since some required very little processing, like the insect shell powder, while others were simply easier to grind down than the earthheart had been, and could be set to precipitate out of a solution on their own over time.

After the hour was up, Jason checked on the pot of earth. He first checked the exterior, and seeing the shimmer was no longer present, he brushed aside the top layer of dirt to reveal a long, thin, sliver of opaque yellow crystal.

He pulled it free of the dirt.

“Analyze Item.”

Elemental Shard (Earth): A simple mana crystal that formed under the aegis of earth-aspected mana. Has a wide range of applications in enchanting.

Jason let out a shout of victory and pumped his fist.

Now if I could only use his process to make other traits out of less complex ones, or vice versa. Imagine making Wind or Lightning from the fulgurite’s Storm trait. Or taking a water trait, boiling it into a gas, and making steam. Or…

Jasons mind began to careen wildly from application to application, and he soon found himself feverishly scribbling down notes to himself on a sheet of parchment.

Storm becomes Water and Wind…Wind becomes Air…Air feeds Fire…

Somehow along the way, in a flurry of half-formed, barely-understood thoughts as his mind raced faster and faster, scribbling on parchment transitioned to scribbling on the table, which turned into carving a circle which turned into….

Jason blinked, and a fog seemed to drop away from his mind. He looked down, and gaped. He was holding the fang of the crystal serpent he’d kept, and he’d apparently carved some sort of ritual circle into the table.

He couldn’t even remember doing it, but he knew what it was for.

Jason’s Earth Shard was sitting in the center of the circle, with one unit of arcane powder piled at each cardinal direction, and one pile of kindling sitting in a stone bowl at each of the diagonals. He pulled a wooden dowel from the pile left over from making his mangonel, and used it to light the piles of kindling.

He placed both hands flat against the two hand-shaped spaces at the ‘front’ of the circle.

He took a deep breath.

Here goes…

“Basic Transmutation, Infuse.”