“Ell. Oh. En. Gee. Ee. Arr.” Kairen painstakingly spelled out the last word of the description, checking every now and again against the handy chart that Zograt the teacher had set up. Then he went back and began to sound it out, almost as slowly.

“Luh. Lon. Long. Longer! The boy said proudly Not only did he successfully read the word, but it was a word that he already knew! It was always a pain when he couldn’t recognize a word. Sometimes it was because he had never heard of it before, other times it was because it wasn’t spelled anything like he thought it should be. If he ever met the person who designed writing Kairen would have some words to say to them. 'Thank you' would be in there somewhere, even if the rest would be complaints about everything else.

Learning to read hadn’t been an easy process for Kairen. Most of the students that Zograt was working with had arrived in Zaros with some level of education already completed, and while Kairen was certainly more dedicated than any of the other students, he was both starting from behind and unable to actually interact with the teacher. Or the materials, for that matter, there were plenty of times that the boy wished he could simply write letters on a clay tablet like all the other kids, instead of having to memorize them by sight alone. He sometimes worked with the named rats to carve random letters in an abandoned alley, but finding safe moments to do so was difficult, and denied Kairen the ability to truly practice that he desired. Despite those setbacks, Kairen persevered, and thanks to his older mind and single-minded focus it didn’t take long before the boy began to see results. Reading was in some ways new, but in so many other ways familiar. He wasn’t learning new words; he was simply finding new ways to understand them.

Convincing the system to switch back to text took a bit of finagling, but soon Kairen was once again staring at a wall of letters. This time though, he could begin the work of breaking that incomprehensible wall down into something he could understand and use to further his plans. There were roadblocks, but nothing insurmountable. The system was designed to be understood, and was more than willing to work with Kairen in order to make that happen. Whenever Kairen came across a word he couldn’t figure out, all it took was a simple request before that word shimmered and was replaced, sometimes with another word, other times with a whole phrase. Only once did Kairen have to ask for additional clarification, and even then that was early on in his lessons when he was still figuring out that combinations of letters could make sounds that they shouldn’t.

Out of curiosity, Kairen tried asking for the original words to be put back, the descriptions that had been replaced with simpler versions when he didn't recognize the words. It didn't take too long before the boy quickly changed his mind. There were a lot more words he didn’t know, but the descriptions were shorter overall, and the ghost figured the unknown words were simply complex ways to say the same things that the system used lots of words for when it tried to make it easier to read. Extirpate was a silly word anyways, when ‘destroy’ already existed. Kairen had the feeling most of the other descriptions were equally useless, telling him almost the same things he had already puzzled out from the pictures or had confirmed from the basic descriptions.

The words had come in handy for the few picture explanations he hadn’t quite understood. It turned out the shrinking monster upgrade didn’t actually make the monsters smaller, but weakened them instead, something that felt obvious in hindsight. Kairen wished it had just shown a monster fighting and being less physical when doing so, but even then the boy couldn’t quite come up with a sequence to capture the all-encompassing reduction in capability that the upgrade provided. It made them weaker, but also slower to react, slower to think, and less durable, while their magic would be less potent. It would only be a small reduction across the board, but it was guaranteed to affect every monster that might wander in.

The other upgrades that Kairen was interested in learning more about were the sun protection upgrade and the mysterious third tier pool upgrade that was still locked behind the relatively useless pool depth upgrade. While the sun protection one only used an image of the sun being blocked, the effect was a general environmental control system, helping reduce uncomfortable extremes of weather and temperature to something more tolerable. It wouldn’t do much against the sheer might of the sandstorms that occasionally came and reshaped the desert, but all other meteorological hazards could be mitigated. As for the locked pool upgrade, it increased the amount of magic present in the water, which would help the pool clean itself faster when dirt or debris was dumped in, as the picture had tried to suggest. It was a more mundane effect than Kairen had been imagining, but the fourth-tier upgrades and their descriptions helped provide the needed context.

The first three tiers were foundational. Each tree built on the lower levels, which was why the second-tier upgrades needed to be purchased before the third-tier upgrades could be bought. Each purchase, each blessing of magic that was woven into the structure of the Oasis helped form the foundation for the next upgrade. As Kairen grew the Oasis over time, the Oasis became capable of handling stronger and stronger enchantments in turn, the limits of which were indicated by Kairen’s upgrade point capacity, or Ambient Meaning as it was actually called.

But while the lower tiers were basic enough that they could build upon each other interchangeably, the fourth-tier upgrades were different. It wasn’t enough to simply have a large enough pool of Meaning to support the upgrade in question, Kairen also needed to have specific lower tier upgrades at a high level of strength. Those upgrades were the framework that future upgrades would build upon, pulling bits and pieces of capability and rolling them all up together into a unified package that could do so much more because it didn’t have to be self-sufficient magically.

Kairen had gained access to three new upgrades when Zar had made his selection on that other screen. Having an intended purpose as a plantation had opened up a single fourth tier upgrade in each tree, although that word wasn’t as accurate since the requirements needed to purchase each upgrade were all over the place, connecting the previously discrete structures. Mr. Mage had mentioned all these effects when describing the selection available, but it was still somewhat strange seeing them casually displayed in front of him. Slowly the boy read out his new options.

“Defensive Exits. A solid barrier covers the Oasis, stopping people from entering or exiting except through certain areas.”

“Plantation Fields. Expands the area of the Oasis and draws water from the pool to water the new farmland. Prevents pests from destroying growing crops.”

“Loyalty Blessing. Makes slaves more loyal to people in positions of authority over them.”

Having an example of a fourth-tier upgrade to work with also helped Kairen realize why he had been unable to bring up a list like he had wanted to. It simply wasn’t feasible, given how many possible upgrades were out there. In a way, the upgrade tree was similar to writing. The lower tiers were comparable to letters. There were a small number of them, and each one did something specific. But once you had enough letters or basic upgradeable enchantments you could begin to combine them in almost endless ways There wasn’t a list of a dozen or even a hundred blessings that Kairen could ask for and work towards. The upgrades were instead created, either on the spot or at some previous point in time where all the calculations were done to figure out what was necessary to support the desired enchantment.

Kairen was ecstatic. It was only a theory, but it made sense to the point where he believed it to be mostly true. The system couldn’t provide a list of all available upgrades because there wasn’t such a list in the first place. Asking for upgrades that Kairen met the prerequisites for might work, or it might not. Kairen could already see how a dozen similar upgrades might all have the same basic requirements, but there was no reason to limit it there. An apple tree farm would want a slightly different blessing from an orange tree farm which would want a slightly different blessing from a fig tree farm and so on. On the one hand, it meant that Kairen couldn’t simply pick the best option out of what was offered to him. On the other hand, it meant that with enough work the Oasis system might be able to build a piece of magic to do anything that Kairen wanted. From evicting the slavers and other evil people, to giving Kairen a tangible avatar he could use to interact with the world, the only limitation was Kairen’s imagination and his willingness to build up the foundation necessary to support what would probably be immensely complex pieces of magic.

Of course, all of that required Kairen to figure out how to actually get the system to create those upgrades for him. Knowing it was possible in theory was one thing, but working through his various limitations to turn it into reality was another. Despite his eager first attempts Kairen wasn’t able to ask for any single fourth tier upgrade to appear, even when he tried to get something similar to the three he already had, or when he tried to figure out what some of the fourth-tier upgrades for the other specializations would be. A part of Kairen was worried that the specialization had completely locked all other upgrades away, but he didn’t think that was very likely. There were simply too many ways that a plantation could develop into something more, and Kairen wouldn’t be surprised if whatever ritual Mr. Mage had built poked at controls that allowed the focus of the Oasis to be switched to something else. What was more likely was that Kairen simply didn’t have access to whatever part of the system allowed for new fourth tier upgrades to be designated. If Kairen was correct, he had somehow taken control of what was usually an automated process. If the system could simply randomly begin investing upgrade points or ambient Meaning into any advanced specialization it met the requisites for it wouldn’t stay specialized for long. Despite Kairen’s ability to manipulate and work with the system to do things that other Oases couldn’t do, there were still limits. The boy wouldn’t be surprised to find out that unlocking fourth tier upgrades was simply beyond him.

Fortunately for Kairen, he wasn’t working alone. The desert rats had been decimated after Kairen had pulled back his blessings, but none of Alpha or his family had blamed Kairen for it. In many ways the sudden culling had been a benefit for the rats, reducing the strain their population was putting on their limited supply of resources. More useful to Kairen was that it had shifted the distribution of the remaining rats to heavily favor those who could see him, to the point where Kairen was beginning to think of them as a different subspecies of rat entirely, instead of just a few gifted ones in a larger colony of normal rats. Medium Rats was the name Kairen had finally settled on, both to describe their relatively normal size but also their ability to interact with him and other parts of the spirit world. The Medium rats were loyal, intelligent, and accepting of the difficulties of their life in a way that Kairen found hard to wrap his head around. He had expected most of the smarter rats to hate him once he explained what he had to do, but they had simply taken it in stride, not changing a single whisker in how they interacted with the lonely ghost. That part of their mindset was completely alien to Kairen, but he was grateful for it nonetheless.

Kairen was hopeful that the Medium rats would eventually reach the point where they could begin to interact with the system, more than just to receive the few blessings he still shared with the small creatures. It would have been nice if their presence had managed to deny Zar or Mr. Mage total control of the Oasis, but it seemed like the rats simply didn’t think in such terms. Getting them to the point where they could somehow influence the direction the Oasis was heading wasn’t impossible, but would take longer to explain and guide the rats towards than it would for humans to understand the concept and do the same.

Fortunately for Kairen, the slavers had recently introduced a new group of humans to the Oasis, and the Medium rats had begun to get over their natural fear of humans as predators.

A lone rat scurried through the dirt, dragging a piece of sausage behind him. Pulling it through a carefully prepared hole the rodent dropped its present, before going to work, quickly and efficiently writing out a simple message. The letters were crude, but Kairen had practiced them enough times in a similar manner for them to be easily legible. It was a simple introduction, a small peace offering, but from small sparks mighty fires could grow. Kairen had great hopes for this single word, written in the dirt.

“Hello.”