“Jason, why is the table on fi — Oh my god! Jason, what the hell!”

Jason was lying on the floor, confusedly staring up at the ceiling while someone stood over him, shaking him by the shoulder. He thought it was Lumi, because said person was shining like a beacon, but his mind felt like it was mired in mud and his vision was blurred.

He wasn’t sure how he’d ended up on the floor.

He tried to speak, but was short of breath and his throat was as parched as the Crystal Wastes, so all that came out was a dry, unintelligible croak.

His head swam as… yes, it was Lumi…helped him up into a sitting position after running her hands over him, presumably checking for any visible injuries.

Jason tried to speak again, but couldn't get more than a single word out.

Once he was upright, Lumi wrapped his fingers around a cup, and helped him lift it to his mouth. He drank.

After a moment he gasped for air, which caused his head to spin more. He realized his head was pounding, and every inch of his body felt weak and fatigued. He could feel Lumi’s [Warmth] skill beating against his cold, clammy skin, ever so slowly restoring him.

“Status,” he croaked out.

MP 0 / 510 SP 0/100 Ongoing Status Effect: Mana Withdrawal

Even in his brain-addled state, Jason could guess what had happened. He had activated Basic Transmutation at an already low level of mana, and his skill had drained even more, emptying his pool, converting his stamina, and then even his vitality into what was needed to power his skill.

“Whoa, take it easy,” Lumi admonished, not being able to currently see his screen. “One thing at a time.”

“Mana,” he managed to say after taking another sip. He tried to vaguely wave one hand in the direction of his bag on the table. Belatedly, he shared his screen with Lumi with a mental command.

Lumi immediately understood what he wanted, and retrieved a [Mana Potion] from Jason’s bag. She opened it, took the cup from his hand, and carefully helped him drink the potion.

Jason felt a rush of warmth pass through him as the potion suddenly restored a good five hundred mana. His headache faded to a tolerable level, and though he still felt fatigued and weak, his mind cleared and he didn’t feel like he was on death’s door anymore.

His status still said he was mana fatigued, though.

Jason gave a weak groan of complaint and just laid back onto the floor for a moment to rest.

“Ow.” he said.

Lumi kneeled down beside him.

“Feeling better?” she asked him with a bit of a smirk. “Didn’t we talk a few days ago about the whole ‘don’t be reckless’ thing? What on earth did you do?”

“I figured out what Basic Transmutation does,” he replied after a moment, still trying to catch his breath. “I don’t know why it never occurred to me before… but it’s for converting one element into another, using a mix of chemistry and ritual magic.”

“And…,” he said with a slight cough and a grimace. He had to pause a moment to breath between sentences, though between the potion and Lumi’s [Warmth], he was slowly recovering. “It apparently uses a hell of a lot of mana… I was low on it to begin with when I activated it…. Note to self: drink a least mana potion or two first next time.”

Lumi looked at him with concern. “Are you going to be ok? Flora warned us about mana saturation. It can do some bad things to you, and if you passed out, I cant imagine being too low is good for you either. I get light headed when I’m out.”

Jason took another long breath. “I uh, yeah. Maybe we should ask her to pay a visit. I don’t think I’ll be able to walk there though.”

“Should I…?”

“No, Warmth feels like it’s helping,” he said. “Maybe ask Kera? I bet she could send Ceri with a note.”

Then Jason coughed lightly again, this time with a bit of a wheeze. “Help me up, please,” he asked, extending a hand. “I think I’d better have a lie-down for a bit.”

Lumi hauled him to his feet, and threw his arm around her shoulders to given him some support when it turned out he was a bit unsteady on his feet.

It was a little blinding, standing so close to her with [Warmth] activated, but being so close actually made him feel even better, so he didn’t complain.

Jason realized the table was still on fire, with a large red crystal shard sitting in the center of the diagram.

“Uh, I suppose we should put out the fire,” he said belatedly. “I think its done now. At least it worked.”

Lumi extended her free hand and just conjured a small ball of water, which she summarily dropped onto the surface of the table. The water hissed and spat, flashing to steam as it touched the [Fire Shard]. The flames around it were extinguished, leaving behind a sodden mass of kindling and ashes.

“Why did you set our table on fire?” Lumi asked him as she helped him navigate his was to the stairs.

“Sorry. I’ll explain later. At least the table’s made of stone,” Jason replied.

“Yes, but our house isn’t.”

“Fair,” Jason conceded as they carefully navigated the stairs, “But that’s why I asked for some bags of sand and dirt along with everything else, for smothering fires.”

Lumi helped Jason into his room, where he gratefully sank onto his bed with a sigh.

“Ugh,” he said. “Definitely need to watch my mana levels in the future. I feel like crap.”

“Serves you right,” Lumi said, though her tone was light. “What were you trying to do anyway?”

“I managed to turn a piece of earthheart into what I think will be two units of fire trait, and maybe mana trait too, though I’ll need to check.”

Jason explained how he’d refined the earthheart, mixed some of the resulting Earth trait with arcane powder and created an Earth-aspect mana crystal, then transmuted it.

He began to get a little excited as he explained, since he hadn’t really thought about all the ramifications yet. “It seems like it costs a fair bit of mana, but thanks to refinement, it means I can effectively convert any traits I’ve got into any elemental ones I need as long as I have at least one elemental trait of some kind around.”

“How do you figure?” Lumi asked. “That sounds pretty badass though.”

“It’s like this…” he explained, “I can take any two alchemy materials, right? Let’s say, the mushrooms and the Iparea. Normally, that would be two units - one Restore and one Fortitude. I refine them down until I have two of each, which allows me to make two antitoxin potions.”

“I then disenchant the antitoxins for arcane powder. I then take a piece of fulgurite, refine it down into two units of Storm, and mix that with the powder to make a pair of Storm Shards. Then I can convert that into some other element by powering a transmutation circle with my own mana, and get two Wind shards… which can then presumably be refined down into four units of Wind trait.”

“I’m making some assumptions here,” Jason said, “to make an example, but the basic principle is that I can essentially take three different alchemy items and turn them into two of something I actually want, as long as that something is an elemental trait. There might be some other stuff I can do this with too…”

Jason trailed off suddenly as a thought occurred to him. he pulled up his notification history, and checked his analysis results from earlier.

Elemental Shard (Earth) Trait Discovered: Earth, Mana

He blew out a sigh of relief.

“What’s wrong?” Lumi asked.

Jason gave a short laugh and shook his head. “Nothing. In my excitement and whatever my skill did when it sort of set me in autopilot, I totally forgot to actually read whether or now I’d gotten a trait from the Earth Shard. I did.”

Lumi rolled her eyes at him.

“You’re too reckless. Seriously, be more careful, Jason. Slow down a bit. Its a good thing I came to check on you, or you’d be passed out under a table that was, you know, on fire.”

“Sorry,” Jason said a bit sheepishly. “I did get rather carried away. I plead system influence.”

Lumi rolled her eyes at him again, and pushed him backwards into the bed with a wry grin. She stood up.

“Get some rest, you,” she ordered. “I’ll go find Kera and have her send a message to Flora and ask if there’s anything we should watch for.”

Jason didn’t protest, and soon found himself drifting off into an exhausted sleep.

Jason awoke a only few hours later, feeling quite a bit better. It was still only early afternoon, if the sun beating down on his face through window was any judge.

He stretched, and noticed a glass flask of some kind of liquid sitting on the side table. It had a note attached to it.

Someone had written “Drink Me” on it, with nothing else.

I would bet all the gold I have at the moment that that’s Kera’s handwriting…seems like something she’d do, Jason thought to himself with a chuckle. Probably a restorative of some kind from Flora. Well... doctors orders, right?

He popped the clasp and drank it down. It tasted a lot like a particularly bitter tea. Not terrible, but not pleasant either.

Placing the empty flask back on the end table, Jason climbed out of bed. He checked his status, saw that his mana fatigue status had vanished, and decided that maybe he’d be fine to get back to work.

He stood still for a few moments, considering whether he wanted to take it easy and read up on enchanting, or whether he should head back up to the lab. Then his stomach growled at him, and he was reminded that he’d missed lunch.

Hmm… maybe I could try to make a restoration food? he considered. Better see if Flora left any instructions though.

So Jason left his room and went in search of the girls. He followed the sound of laughter to Kera’s ‘stable’, where the two girls were apparently giving Echo a much-needed bath.

Lumi was holding both hands in the air above Echo, conjuring balls of water and then splashing them down on top of Echo, who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying herself. Lumi kept having to dance away from the rockhound’s head, and more than once Kera nearly got a face-full of tail-spikes as the beast wriggled happily while Kera tried to scrub at her hide with a rag.

Jason wondered about the water getting everywhere, as they were indoors and the floor was made of stone, but he needn’t have worried. When he asked, Lumi laughed and shook her head.

“Nope. Check it out.” She pointed to the floor in one corner.

Jason looked, and saw they had laid down some sort of flattened, woven mat, maybe about six feet long and three feet wide, lined with faintly-glowing runes. He thought it vaguely resembled a tatami mat, except that it was made of cloth and leather, rather than straw or rushes. Whenever water touched the mat, it vanished into thin air instead of being absorbed.

“What is this…?” he asked, crouching down.

“I bought it from Jerrik for fifty gold,” Kera said. “It occurred to me, we’re always flinging water around all over, and we don't have a mop or anything like that, and it isn’t like we’re near the sea to get actual sponges, so… I asked Jerrik if he had anything magic to clean up spilled liquid.”

“It still needs to be emptied out later,” Lumi said, “but it’s like a sort of bag of holding for liquids. Anything liquid that touches it gets sucked into the ‘container’ part, and you can use a command word to empty it out at your convenience when it gets full.”

Jason considered the mat for a moment.

“Analyze Item.”

Mat of Absorption - A soft floor mat capable of absorbing liquids it comes in contact with, storing them in an extra-dimensional space until the command word is given to release them. Critical Success! Thanks to your extensive knowledge of, and exposure to, the runes used in creating a Mat of Absorption, you have been able to decipher the full sequence! Advanced Runic Sequence Learned: Liquid Absorption - Capacity, Continuous, Bolster, Water, Absorption, Bolster, Spatial, Storage, Capacity, Command, Storage, Projection. Runes Learned: Water, Spatial, Storage

An idea formed swiftly in Jason’s head, a way to gain some practice with Enchanting, and possibly, one to gain a level or two for Engineer. He must have had an odd look on his face, because Lumi looked over at Kera with concern.

“Uhhh, did we break him?”

Kera leaned over towards him and poked him in the side.

“I’m still here, you know,” he said drily. “Just thinking. I learned how to make more of these, and probably bags of holding at the same time.”

“Really?” Lumi said, pausing in the act of conjuring another ball of water.

Echo nudged her lightly in the stomach.

“Ow. Dammit, Echo, your head’s too sharp,” she grumbled, pushing the rockhound’s face away with one hand. “It’s like playing with a kitten, all sharp claws and not enough care, except she’s half as large as you are.”

Jason chuckled at her. “Better keep going then?”

“To answer your question, though,” he continued, “Yes really. The book Jerrik gave me has instructions on bags of holding to begin with, and I just got a crit and learned how to make this thing, which is similar. And…”

He paused dramatically.

“…How would you girls like it if I installed a hot water shower…?”

It didn’t take Jason long to get what he needed together. He gave orders to an excited Lumi and Kera to find away to convert half the ‘stables’ room into a walled-off shower stall while he made a short trip out to the marketplace. As he left, the were discussing maybe just commissioning a multi-panel wall divider from a local carpenter like you occasionally saw in movies. It wasn’t like they didn’t already have a door to the room, so he left them to it.

Jason walked down to the market after retrieving the fire shard from his lab. It was warm to the touch, but not uncomfortably so. His first stop was Jerrik’s shop, simply because he didn’t know where to find Pelk’s family’s place.

He pushed open the door to find both Jerrik and Nissette already helping other customers, some of the new adventurers. Or rather, Jason corrected himself, some of the trainees.

He waited his turn politely until Nissette was available to speak with him.

“Ah, Jason was it? How can I help you today?”

“Actually,” Jason began, “I had just wanted to ask for some directions, but it occurs to me now that after you modified Kera’s staff for her, maybe I should ask you first…”

He held up the fire shard. “Would you maybe have any advice on how to go about mounting this as part of an enchantment? I’ve not tried incorporating items with special properties into things yet. But I wanted to get this set into a metal sphere or placed in some sort of housing.”

She took the shard from Jason, examining it critically. “Hmm, this is a pretty good sized mana crystal. Fire aspect, yes?”

Nissette handed he shard back to him. “Unfortunately, I can’t really help you. Setting something like this would fall under jewelcrafting or metalworking, and that’s not something I or my husband specialize in. Though if you came back after it’s been set, I could see about using [Personalize] to get it just right for you.”

“Could you maybe give me directions to where I can talk to someone who could do it?” Jason asked. “I’ve heard that Tersk’s family does all sorts of metalwork and glassblowing..?”

“That they do,” Nissette replied. “They’d definitely be the ones to talk to.”

After getting detailed directions to Tersk’s forge, on a whim Jason asked about soap. After all, they’d had it available for the baths at the inn. As it turned out, Nissette’s shop had a fair stock of lavender-scented tallow soap; apparently it was cheap to make, and was popular enough with the townsfolk that the town had a dedicated soaper who sold his wares through more than one of the local shopkeepers, Flora included.

Jason bought a few bars at the shockingly cheap price of a handful of copper pieces each, recalling that back on Earth, soap had been heavily taxed as a luxury by monarchs of the medieval period.

He supposed that might be a benefit of living in a region where politics and nations operated in a different fashion thanks to the Voice: Anger your citizenry too much by passing oppressive levels of taxes on comforts, and you’d be liable to have a band of adventurers come knocking on your door to have a stern word with you.

For that matter… I wonder if King is a class or what? Jason wondered as he exited Fanciful Finery. I’d think that nations would come and go all the time here, thanks to human ambition mixed with magic turning people into one man nuclear arsenals. I should ask sometime.

Nissette’s directions were easy to follow, and Jason soon found himself in one of the other districts, standing outside a wide, high-roofed stone building with an open front. Several smeltery ovens at the edges gave off an intense heat that caused Jason to break out in a sweat just from standing nearby. The clanging of metal hammers upon anvils could be heard further within the structure.

“Can I help you?”

A fair-haired dwarven woman dressed in thick, heavy clothes and a leather apron much like the one Tersk had worn approached him with a businesslike manner.

“Um, yes, I think so. I’m looking for someone who might be able to craft me a hollow metal sphere and affix a mana crystal to it for enchanting. And if Tersk has some time to see me, I’d like to discuss something with him regarding the earthheart we brought back.”

“Hm, better come inside then. I’m Bereth by the way.” She held out a soot-coated hand to Jason, oblivious to being covered in the stuff.

He shook her hand anyway.

“Jason.”

Bereth lead the way into the forge building, where Jason nearly covered his ears at all the noise. She took him to a low stone table at the back of the structure, where Tersk was sitting and looking over a set of tools, holding a jeweler’s loupe in one hand as he inspected a piece of glassware for flaws. He place both objects down on the table as they approached.

“Ah, you’re the Enchanter lad. Here so soon? I’d’ve thought you be at least a few days before you figured what you could do with those stones.”

“Ah… well actually, you’re at least half-right,” Jason said. “This only indirectly about then. I managed to, well, use the special properties of one of the pieces you sent me to make this,” he held up the fire shard, “and I was hoping you might be able to set it into something for me so I can try making use of it.”

Tersk’s eyebrows rose. “You managed to make a mana crystal? And an aspected one at that?”

“Almost got myself killed doing it, too” Jason said with a wry grin, “though at least now I know how much mana it takes, I’ll be prepared next time. But yes.”

Tersk accepted the shard as Jason passed it to him. The dwarf picked his loupe up with the other hand, and leaned in to examine the shard closely.

“Hmm, exceptionally pure, too,” Tersk commented as he rotated the shard this way and that. “A result of being crafted, I wonder?”

After a moment, Tersk set his loupe back down and scratched at his beard. “Well, I can certainly do what ya need. How long it’ll take depends on how fancy yer lookin for, or how big a piece you want.”

“I don’t need anything major,” Jason replied. “This is just a prototype really. A simple hollow, wrought iron sphere or cube the size of a fist would do the job, with the shard mounted facing downward, and some kind of chain on the top to hang it overhead. It doesn’t need to be pretty, though if it’s fast I wouldn’t say no to something nicer.”

“Well that’s an odd request, though it’s simple enough to do. You want the shard pointing at the ground?” Tersk asked.

“That’s right,” Jason answered.

“Aright then.” Tersk turned to the dwarven woman who was still waiting nearby. “Bereth?”

She shrugged. “Shouldn’t be more than thirty minutes. We’ve got several blooms about ready for shaping right now. I could have the whole thing done in an hour.”

“Any specifics on the mounting itself or the sphere?” Bereth asked Jason.

He thought for a moment.

“A flat, raised ring around the mounting would make the engraving easier,” Jason replied, “and maybe a flat band around the cardinal sides of the sphere would help similarly. I’m still a bit new at this, so a bigger space to work with is better.”

“Any kind of requirements for the attachment point? Does the rest need to be smooth or polished?”

“No, I don’t think so,” he told her. “Oh, and I’m pretty sure I don’t need the whole shard. Feel free to cut down to size if you need.”

Bereth nodded. She took the shard from Tersk, who passed it her, and then walked back out into the forge proper.

Jason turned back to Tersk.

“Um…” he hesitated. “There was something else I wanted to ask you about, but it’s… a sensitive matter. I’m not sure if your son may have mentioned our… disagreement or not?”

Tersk glowered a bit, and then sighed.

“He did, and I can’t say I’m too happy about it. What do you want to ask about?”

Jason hesitated again, picking his words carefully.

“Where I’m from,” he said slowly, “there’s a…we’ll call it an adventuring class, an engineer variant, really, that I’m interested in maybe picking up, or at least looking into, that might make use of black powder, and which I suspect just might get me access to a rare, or even unique, class thanks to some of my rather… unusual skills.”

“Like what?” Tersk asked him bluntly.

“Well… like what I used to make that fire shard, and the bombs that Pelk saw me use. I’ve opened up engineer, I’ve got a pretty good basic understanding of clockwork, and how steam engines work, and how to make gunpowder, and…”

“You want to know how to become a Machinist.” Tersk said.

“I don’t know what it would be called,” Jason said with a shrug. “But that sounds about right… I want to combine that stuff with all of these things I’m learning about crafting with runes thanks to having two very different enchanting classes. I know I can come up with ways to make all this stuff fit together if I can just work out how to unlock a suitable class. But the catch is sort of, well…. I’d need your cooperation to do it, because I have no way of sourcing the ingredients, like sulphur and coal and steel, to actually use a class like… Machinist, was it?”

Tersk stroked his beard thoughtfully for a few minutes, deep in thought. Jason merely stood by patiently, letting him think, rather than trying to do his best to be persuasive; if dwarves here were anything like the ones from fiction back home, pushing would just lead to heels being dug in.

The dwarf muttered a few times to himself under his breath, but eventually scowled and spoke again.

“You understand, you’re asking quite a bit, here. Ordinarily I’d just say no outright to helping someone with this in any way, but it sounds to me like you’re three quarters of the way already, and what you’re talking about will be… expensive.”

Jason tried not to grin a little. “I assure you, I do have the money. If not direct coinage, I can absolutely find something you’d be willing to barter.”

Jason paused for a moment. “Actually… I wonder...? If it isn’t too presumptuous an offer… perhaps I could offer a bit of knowledge from my own people in return…? I’ve noticed that glass is fairly popular here, but it’s all…relatively cloudy. Blown, or made in a mold mostly from wood ash and sand taken from the Wastes, right?”

“That’s correct.” Tersk replied cautiously.

Jason gave him a huge grin “What if I was willing to trade you… in exchange for mere raw materials… a technique known among my people to make some of the clearest, purest glass you’ve ever seen in your life, and brand new ways to shape it?”

“Would that, perhaps, be worthwhile offer…?” he asked.

Tersk coughed lightly into his fist as a gleam came into his eye. “Ahem. That might… be enough, yes. It… wouldn’t be like I was teaching you anything, right? Nobody could fault me for… just selling you some odds an ends and maybe doing a little work here and there.”

“If you’d maybe be so kind as to perhaps show me about your forge…?” Jason asked him. “Oh, and if you could spare some parchment?”

Two hours later, Jason strode back into the house with a huge grin plastered over his face It had taken a fair bit of work to periodically distract Tersk so Jason could reference his phone to fill in the gaps in his knowledge, but he’d managed to draw out both plans for building a muscle-powered machine press made purposely for glass molding and rough sketches of the methods common to 19th century glass cutting, plus explained how they could extract zincite from the Wastes (as it was crystalline in nature) and use it to produce a lead-free form of crystal glass that would be perfect for both pressed and cut glass.

Jason wasn’t always able to provide exact specifics in many cases, due to things like not know local means of establishing temperatures or precise measurements, but Tersk assured Jason that his people were good enough to work it out now that they had the general idea. Skills counted for a great deal once you were pointed in the right direction, after all.

In exchange, Tersk had promised Jason access to any unusual ores or minerals he might need, though Tersk warned Jason that much of what he was asking for would need to be specially ordered.

He was fine with that, and was willing to pay the costs involved with shipping via Wayfinder Gate if necessary.

Though he probably needed to start making some enchanted stuff that he could sell. He couldn’t rely on potions forever.

He had plans for that, but first he wanted to finish up the shower head. Bereth had finished his sphere, and he’d also gotten her to make him a tall steel tripod with a hooked end on the top, perfect to use as a ‘stem’ for the shower head.

“Jeez, where did you go, the moon?” Kera asked him teasingly as he entered the den. “You’ve been gone for ages.”

“Sorry,” Jason said in an unapologetic tone, giving the girls a grin. “Only got caught up cutting a major deal with Tersk for access to all sorts of stuff, like gunpowder.”

“What? Are we making guns now?” Lumi asked, shocked.

“Well, maybe,” Jason said. “We’ll see what I end up ultimately doing class-wise, but it’s possible. I’m not sure I want to make heavy use of something that will be difficult to make ammunition for, but there’s all sorts of options there. Tersk mentioned some kind of Machinist class that’s like an adventuring engineer type like you sometimes see in videogames. I’m definitely interested to see how that might work alongside artificer and alchemist.”

“That seems like a dangerous can of worms to open.” Lumi said.

Jason shrugged. “Maybe, but I think we’re in need of some serious firepower, so I’ll take whatever I can get at this point.”

“Anyhow…” Jason held up the metal sphere, which was made of polished steel rather than plain iron, and had the fire shard embedded in it. “Time for some enchanting.”

“Ooh, I can’t wait!” Kera exclaimed. “I call dibs first.”

Jason rolled his eyes at her. “This will probably take me long enough that by the time I’m done, it’ll be almost time to go see Aurion.”

“Boo. Can I watch though?”

“You could, but I need to actually spend a bit of time reading about the food and drink purification runes first.”

“Fiiiine,” Kera drawled in an exaggerated huff as she sat down on one of the chairs.

Jason made his exit, first retrieving his book on common enchantments. He returned to the lab, sat down, and began to read.

Runes Learned: Preserve, Purify, Food, Drink.

An hour later, he was ready to begin.

First, Jason dumped a whopping nine points into his Engraving skill, raising it to Rank 10. His hope was that doing so would help prevent his previous issues with ruined work due to simple mistakes.

Then, recalling how he’d run out of mana performing the Transmutation, he dumped all of his available stat points into Spirit, raising it to 16. This bought him an additional 100 mana, and it was increasingly seeming like he was going to need it.

Jason began the [Engraving] process by first starting with an overly large wooden bucket, one big enough to hold a few gallon’s worth of water. He painstakingly etched, or perhaps carved was a better word for wood, a rune sequence that would turn the bucket into something like a cistern with a constant water purification enchantment on it: pour fouled water into the bucket, and it would vanish into a much larger space where it could be stored long term and the purification charm would cleanse it over the course of a few hours. All you needed go do was roll up the Mat of Absorption over the bucket, speak the command word, and voila… recycled water.

Next up was the ‘shower head’. This was essentially exactly the same enchantment as the one on the Mat, except with slight changes to the sequences: The absorption and storage sequences were applied to the sphere, and linked to a separated projection and motive rune sequence with the fire shard used as a focus, to give the water a bit of a ‘spray’ and heat it as it was ejected forcefully from the storage space.

The work was difficult, and Jason’s fingers were cramped and sore by the end. He even had to pause midway through to whip up some basic least potions so he could disenchant them for the arcane powder, because as it turned out, he needed nearly a dozen units to activate the runes. In the end though, he successfully completed the [Engraving] on the first try.

He flexed his fingers and blew out a sigh of relief when the last rune alighted, signifying successful completion.

Jason wasn’t finished just yet, though.

He took the second piece he’d gotten from Bereth, the metal tripod, and engraved yet another modified sequence along it’s length. The absorption runes began at the base of the tripod, on a small spur of metal that didn’t quite extend to the floor, and ran the runes all the way up to the tip of the hook, where he inscribed a modified version of the projection sequence.

Now he was finished.

Jason then hauled the three pieces downstairs, one at a time, taking the into the spare room. He placed the mat down flat in one corner as Kera and Lumi watched on in curiosity. He placed the large bucket to one side of the mat, and the tripod IN the bucket, and finally hung the shower head from the tripod, wrapping it’s chain tightly to the frame.

Then he stood back, and surveyed his work. It was a bit… simple looking, being little more than a bucket, a steel pole, and a steel orb, but it would do for a first go.

“It looks… a bit underwhelming,” Kera said.

“Sure, but it’s efficient. Lumi, can I get some water in the bucket?”

She obliged, conjuring several balls of water for him.

Jason spoke a series of command words. First the runes on the tripod flared as water was drawn up from the bucket and into the sphere, which was followed by a short, fine spray of water. Jason stuck his hand in it, and then pulled it back with a yelp.

“Yikes! Definitely hot!” he exclaimed as he noticed a notification window pop up in his peripheral vision. “Maybe a little too much for my tastes. I’ll need to work out temperature control for future version.”

Jason took a moment to explain the whole system to the two girls.

“It’s not 100% automatic,” he finished, “so you’ll need to dump the water in the mat back into the bucket for purifying, but otherwise the enchantments all the work for us, and we won’t need to keep asking Lumi to conjure water because it will keep getting cleansed and recycled. Water Waste Awareness Programs, eat your heart out.”

Kera abruptly leaned forwards and threw both arms around Jason’s neck, giving him a big hug. “I’m so happy I could kiss you right now,” she mumbled into his shoulder. “Thank you.”

She stepped away from him with contented sigh, “Plumbing, I have missed you so.”

“I hate to burst your bubble, but we’re still lacking a toilet,” he said drily.

“Bah, if you can do this, you can manage that,” she responded with grin. “I believe in you!”

Jason laughed. “Well, that’s going to have to wait for awhile, I’m afraid. It’s nearly time for our meeting with Aurion, and I just got some level-up notifications, so that means it’s time for me to test the Elixir before we go.”

“Let’s head back up to the lab. The Elixirs are in my bag.”