Lumi had already changed out of her armor in order to take her shower, so she had to run back down to her room in order to retrieve her shield bracer. While Jason waited he continued to process various ingredients via refinement, and listened in on the discussion between Kera, Ravs, and Aldin, who began to speak a little about their own backgrounds.

Aldin had a series of questions for Kera, for he found her wide array of monster magic fascinating. Jason learned that as Ravs had said, the boy’s mother had been mana-touched, and a [Beastmaster] on top of it. He’d managed to inherit at least a portion of her talents, and thus had a natural interest in druidic and shamanic magic, which often dealt with beasts and elemental power.

“You really enjoy the whole monstrous thing, don’t you?” Aldin asked once Kera had briefly demonstrated her Crystal Serpent form, after having realized she had yet to add it to her list of learned creatures.

“Yep!” Kera replied with a grin. “I mean come on, how many people get to go through life experiencing the infinite variety of shapes that nature has on display? And it’s fun, and a bit of a rush, too.”

“Have you considered maybe picking up any monster classes?” Aldin asked. “I’d bet a hundred gold you can, with those skills of yours.”

“Huh?”

Aldin explained.

“My family is… something of an expert on that sort of thing,” Aldin said, gesturing to his ears with one hand. “See, monsters, even ordinary beasts, can gain classes of their own that tend to progress differently than standard ones. But under the right circumstances, people can be eligible for those classes too. Druids and Beast-kin races most commonly, but that’s just the easier routes.”

“Really?” Kera asked with curiosity in her voice.

“Sure can,” Aldin confirmed. “I’ll show you. Mind sharing control of your screen with me for a minute?”

Kera considered. “Ok, but if you change anything without asking, I’ll mash you into paste.”

Ravs snickered. “She could, too. That gorthek thing looked heavy.”

Aldin held up both hands placatingly. “I promise I won’t change anything, it’s just easier to show you.”

Kera shared her screen so everyone could see, then shared her controls with Aldin, who quickly navigated through several different screens, examining her current skills, traits, and stats.

“Hmm, yeah, you should be eligible. Here, look.” He pulled up Kera’s list of potential class unlocks.

“I don’t see anything unusual.” Kera said, examining her screen.

“Ah, but I'd bet you always are in human… well changeling or whatever, form when you’re spending your points, yeah?” Aldin asked with a grin. “Try your crocodile form.”

Kera stood up and moved a distance away from the table, shooing Echo away from her side so she had a clear space to shapeshift.

Aldin leaned in to look at Kera’s screen, which had updated with several new entries. “Lets see… [Flamespawn]? Didn’t expect to see that. [Silverblood]’s not unexpected, given changeling…several aspected versions… where did those come from?”

“Aha!” Aldin exclaimed pointing to one options. “Here we go, [Dire Beast]! That one is perfect for someone with your skill set!”

“What, you mean like Dire Bear is an actual class for bears?” Jason asked from where he was working.

“Pretty much,” Aldin said. “There’s a whole system of… let’s call them evolutions, that are picked up like classes, that monsters can get. Usually they’re themed around aspected mana, though sometimes —”

“Oh! Like the snake belt!” Kera interrupted. “It actually lets me do all sorts of dungeon variants for snake monsters. I keep thinking I should take some time to try out a bunch of different ones and see what I can learn.”

“It does others?” Aldin asked. “You should definitely explore that then. Never hurts to have more spells. Even if you don’t use them often, you never know when something will come in handy.”

“What’s so good about [Dire Beast]?” Kera asked.

“Some classes don’t actually give out a whole lot in the way of new skills,” Aldin explained. “Instead, you get additional skill points and an early start into the bonus stats that come along with reaching higher milestones. You already have some great skills worth ranking up, and thanks to the way they work, you don’t especially need new ones, right? Well, [Dire Beast] will get you a sort of flexible pool of stat increases for when you’re shapeshifted, plus extra skill points every few levels which you can put towards your magic.”

“That sounds… really useful,” Jason commented as he began placing prepared prismatic shards into their respective receptacles. “Is there a downside?”

“Well, probably not for her,” Aldin said. “The main drawback, as it were, is the classes’ lack of new skills and inherent specialized nature. If you’re the type to multi-class a lot for versatility or synergy, that’s an issue. But since Kera’s skills let her learn new stuff just from encountering it, and her strength is more based in her raw stats anyway….”

“It becomes a non-issue if she wants to continue to focus more on the monster magic and beast shape sides of things,” Jason finished. “Great for specialization, not so much for versatility, except that she already has versatility by virtue of her skills. Gotcha.”

Kera shifted back into human form, and took a seat. Echo pushed her head into Kera’s lap, where the girl began idly scratching Echo’s chin.

“Hmm… I do kind of want to take a third class,” Kera said. “One of my biggest issues right now has been a general lack of points to spend compared to Lumi.”

“You are a bit MAD…,” Jason commented. Seeing the scowl on Kera’s face, Jason hastily explained. “It’s an optimization term. ‘Multiple Ability Dependent’. Meaning that your effectiveness, unlike ‘simpler’ builds like a straight wizard or a fighter, is governed by many different stats. Like back home, a straight wizard really only cares about Intelligence, and maybe Dexterity, and a fighter cares only about Strength or Dexterity along with maybe a little Constitution. You though care about Spirit, Intellect, Might, Agility, and Endurance all in various proportions, as well as need high skill ranks to make the fullest use of your monster magic. Hence, ‘MAD’.”

“‘Multi-classers are MAD for trying to do too much at once, while single-classers are SAD and boring’,” Lumi quoted as she came back up the stairs.

“Sorry, just something one of my friends back home used to say.” A flicker of regret passed over Lumi’s face, but it was quickly banished as she approached the table and set her [Shield of the Elementalist] down on the tabletop.

“Why the discussion on it?” she asked.

Kera gave her a brief summary.

“I say go for it, honestly,” was Lumi’s response. “It’s not like you can’t undo it.”

“I still can’t believe you have a way to remove a class entirely.” Ravs said, shaking her head.

“Please keep that to yourselves, by the way,” Lumi said. “Just to reiterate, while we’re willing to tell the people we work with, it’s not something we want to bandy about.”

“I don’t really see the big deal, honestly,” Aldin said.

“That’s because you would have to start over at level one,” Ravs said. “People just starting out though? They’d love to get their hands on a way to let them experiment a bit before making decisions that will determine the course of their lives.”

“Moving on,” Lumi said firmly, “Here’s the bracer, Jason. What’s the plan here? I don’t want you messing around with it.”

“No no, nothing like that,” Jason replied, returning to his seat at the table. “It occurred to me, I’ve never actually taken the time to analyze your bracer with any of my skills.”

He tapped the tabletop. “It seems to me that it might be like this transmutation circle, and maybe even Kera’s belt. All three deal with modulating elemental stuff right? Yours manipulates the nature of your shield based on the provided element, Kera’s belt twists her form and applies a given aspect temporarily, and my skill, among other things, allowed me to permanently change the nature of infused mana crystals.”

He pulled the bracer to him. “Maybe by taking a detailed look at all three, I can come up with something that would let me shape the results of random elemental magic.”

Jason activated his Arcane sight, turning the bracer over and over in his hands. “Hmm… yes it does have control runes. Maybe it… yes.”

He glanced up at Lumi. “Put it on and run through a few different shields while I watch closely?”

Lumi slowly demonstrated, conjuring several different, unusual elements using her [Elemental Cantrip] skill to power the bracer. Jason examined both the bracer and the shield each time.

After the fifth one, Jason had her stop. “Could I see your belt for a minute, Kera?”

“Uhhh… it’s sort of partly woven into my dress now, as you can see, I’m not sure if…”

Lumi leaned over and whispered something in her ear.

Kera blushed. “Oh! Right. Duh. Hang on.”

Her figure began to flow, and then shrink. Her robes collapsed into a heap, and Kera, now a light blue-and-silver skydancer drake, crawled out from her pile of clothes.

“There we go. I can just be like this for awhile,” Kera said. She bunched up her body, and then jumped upwards. Her wings flapped wildly, still poorly uncontrolled, but this time she managed to reach the edge of the table, which she latched onto with her foreclaws. She pulled herself up.

“At least I can manage that much.” She grumbled.

Lumi retrieved Kera’s robe, threading Kera’s enchanted belt out from the body wrap portion. She handed it to Jason. Echo came over to sniff at Kera’s new shape, while Ceri took a more direct approach and jumped up onto the table as well, curling up against Kera’s side, for all the world looking like one cat taking a nap besides another.

Jason examined Kera’s belt in detail with his [Arcane Sight]. Unfortunately, since she’d already used it, he couldn’t have her try it out while he watched, but then again he’d already spent plenty of time watching her change shapes.

He passed the belt back to Lumi, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. There were similarities between the belt’s runes and the ones on Lumi’s bracer.

Lumi took the belt from him, and then stood for a moment, looking down at Kera. Then she gave a lopsided grin and scooped up Kera’s robes from the floor. Then she sat down in a chair and arranged them in her lap.

“Come on,” Lumi said, beckoning Kera over. “I know you well enough by now to know you like being pampered, and you’re too cute right now for me to pass this up.”

“Scratchies! Yesss!” Kera did a little dance where she wiggled her tail around, and then hopped into Lumi’s lap, where Lumi began giving her some head scratches. Kera made a pleased, sort of half-purr, half-hiss sound. Jason rolled his eyes at the pair before turning his attention to the runic circle carved into the table.

He tapped the table thoughtfully for a few minutes, and then decided he might as well Analyze the process itself. This time he used the Ocean shard; he didn’t see an immediate use for it, and he could use something like an Ice shard, which was a small side step and thus shouldn’t cost him too much mana. Just in case thought, he drank one of his new least mana potions first.

The ritual was simple, now that he understood its basics: the circle did most of the work for him. All he needed to do was provide the catalysts, in this case being several chunks of ice, courtesy of his frozen waterskin downstairs, and several doses of arcane powder.

He watched intently as the mana drained out of him and swirled away into the runes of the circle. He tried to focus specifically on the catalysts, the point where the raw mana pushed into the circle interacted with the placed ice in order to determine the final form the transmutation circle was aimed at.

Jason blinked, surprised.

Is it really that simple….?

“Lumi can I see your bracer once more?” he asked.

She pulled it off and passed it to him.

Jason turned it over in his hands, examining the top of the bracer, where the engraving was the most complex, centered around the gemstone. He laughed.

“It is that simple!” Jason exclaimed.

He began pointing to different runes inscribed on the surface.“Look here. Your bracer is actually made of three enchantments, Lumi, rather than just one. In fact, almost all full enchantments are made of more than one. I should have realized that was significant.”

“See this here?” he said, pointing to the ‘start’ of the runic script. “This is basically present on anything that doesn't use its wearer’s mana. It lets the item passively draw mana from the environment and store it, to be released when the item is activated. Different items will have different complexities of this enchantment, which leads to different storage capacity and recharge times and strengths.”

He slowly rotated the bracer, running his finger along the script that curled around the edge of the bracer until it reached the gemstone. “This is the main enchantment. It’s pretty bog standard; little different from the elemental projection one I put on my wands. It’s a simple sequence that says ‘hey, shape the mana that comes out into a barrier’ and then…”

Jason trailed his finger up towards the gemstone, where a separate script circled the setting. “...Defines the barrier type,” he finished.

“Thing is…” Jason continued with a tap of the gemstone, “your bracer doesn’t just do one barrier type like a normal shield spell would. The ‘type’ section is linked to its own, separate enchantment that simply stores a tiny bit of elemental magic and holds onto it until you store something else. The whole thing stands in place of where the defining element should be, allowing the wearer to choose the properties of the shield like you would defining a variable in a math problem.”

“And that’s good?” Lumi asked.

“‘Course it’s good,” Kera said, lifting her head, but remaining curled in Lumi’s lap. “Variables means nested functions, which means all sorts of crazy stuff, right Jason?”

Jason grinned at her. “Exactly. With this, I can totally make something that will give me a degree of control over things like prismatic spells. It’ll be complicated and probably cost a lot more mana than normal, but… I'm thinking it might be worth it for the versatility, and if I can work it so I can choose to just let it be random when I want to conserve energy….”

“How would you do that?” Aldin asked.

“I’m thinking that’s were the engineering comes in,” Jason said.”I could try and design a piece of armor, or a complex staff or gauntlet with moving parts. Something I could slot different runes into in order to achieve the results I want at any given time.”

“Doesn't the sequence need to be kept whole, though?” Lumi asked. “When Kera smashed that dummy it’s enchantment broke, right?”

“I don’t think that will be an issue here,” Jason replied. “The dummy’s runes were fully active with mana flowing through them when Kera struck it. As long as the enchantment is ‘off’ while I’m switching parts out, it should be ok. After all, technically your bracer forms an ‘incomplete’ sequence when it doesn’t have anything stored, and it works fine.”

“Why not just make something like my bracer directly, then? Like a wand that casts whatever element type you stick into it?”

Jason shook his head. “Because I think I can make something simple that works on all sorts of things. Like a ring or a gauntlet maybe with a transmutation circle that would interact with wands, a staff, bombs, you name it. Anything that produced an elemental effect that I can hold in my hand and then just shape into whatever element I want at the time.”

“Why not go further?” Ravs asked. “I don’t think I have a grasp on limits here, but couldn’t you just do this for many aspects of an enchantment?”

“Quite possibly,” Jason said, “But I don’t know what the effect on mana costs would be. It might leak mana like crazy or have unforeseen side effects, like how an item’s capacity runes affect the overall strength of the effect. Runes take up space too, so I'm not sure how much room I'd need, nor whether or not I could use [Metamagician] or [Improvise] to influence the exact element. I'll want to start simple and work my way up.”

Ravs snorted. “This already sounds far from simple.”

Jason shrugged.

“Never know until you try,” he said. “But enough of that. I’ll need to speak with Tersk tomorrow on getting some specially made stuff if I want to try anything like that. I need to get together with him and Jerrik tomorrow anyway.”

Jason looked at each of the others. “In the mean time… how does dinner sound? I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”