Cold. Waking up, I glance out the window. It’s still dark out, but it feels like I’ve slept for a few hours. But it’s cold.

Glancing over to Colt, he’s still sound asleep. No surprise there, his Fae body doesn’t react to temperature so much. ‘Damn Magickal Anatomy…’

Breathing out, I’m shocked as I note that I can see my breath. Groaning, I struggle to get out of bed. The buoyoberries have sunk under my weight and frozen in place.

After slowly extracting myself from the bed, I equip some clothes. Stats help with temperature, but I must have been sitting in this cold for a while.

A small knock on the door grabs my attention, shivering slightly, I wrap my arms around myself as I walk to the door. Opening it, Adreanell is standing, bundled up with likely the entire contents of her vault in clothes.

“L-L-Lucas? W-w-why is it s-s-so c-c-c-cold?” Adreanell is shivering, despite having layers of clothes on now. Her stat totals are lower than mine, lending to her being so much colder.

“I’m… not sure. I’ll check the air conditioning runes in a second, just… let me go to the bathroom first, okay?” Leaving the door open, I walk to the bathroom door, opening it and using a bit of Floramancy to make the lights from the evergleam fir branch glow.

They’re slow to start up, which I note as strange, but shrug in my grogginess and finish my business. Tapping the rune that should “flush” the toilet, nothing happens. ‘Well, that’s weird…’

Walking over to the sink, I can’t get water to flow either, none of the runes are responding to my touch.

Using Hydromancy, I wash my hands with that instead. Colt went to my house and took all the soaps, shampoos, and conditioners from it yesterday while he was waiting for me to finish enchantments.

Stepping back into my room, Colt is awake now, hurriedly pulling on a shirt because Adreanell is in the room. “Lucas! Why is it so cold in here?”

He may not be affected by the cold like we are, but he can still perceive it.

“That’s what I’m about to find out. None of the runes in the bathroom are working either.” Shrugging, I move out into the hall.

“Hey, Colt, can you go check the mana crystals downstairs? Maybe they’re faulty or something…”

“Sure thing.” He takes the stairs quickly, reaching the bottom as I go to inspect my inscriptions.

Within moments he calls back up to me, much to the complaints of Becky somewhere downstairs. “They’re empty! Why are they empty?”

Feeling confused, I take a closer look at my rune setup. “I don’t understand… these runes should be converting heat into mana, those crystals should be barely touched if not topped off entirely…”

Musing to Adreanell, she shrugs, enchantment isn’t her area of expertise, though she watched me sometimes yesterday with interest.

“Uh oh.”

“Uh oh?” Adreanell’s voice has more concern than mine.

“Remember when I said these runes were really efficient and that’s why I picked them? Turns out I was reading the numbers in my enchantment book wrong. These runes are way more expensive than the cost, that’s why they cool so quickly!”

Indicating to the wall in front of me, I point out the frost forming on it. Beginning to feel embarrassed at this blunder, heat touches my skin for the first time in hours.

“Okay, this… will take some time.” Quickly running through the house, I disconnect each of the runes from the main system of the house, allowing everyone to begin to recharge the mana crystals in a group effort.

“I could have sworn I got a level up yesterday after doing these runes too…” Checking my notifications, the message is right at the top.

“Aha! ‘Level up! For continuing to use the runes at your disposal in a new... fashion…’” My mood drops as I read those last two words.

“New fashion… The Construct has a fucking sense of humor. Not a smart fashion or a clever fashion… a new fashion.” Facepalming, I groan at my own stupidity.

With a surge of mana, I burn away the old air conditioning enchantment and begin to rewrite one, picking different runes from my book.

This new arrangement will be more customizable for how cold it gets, and I even add in some options for heat in the winter months.

The new setup doesn’t simply pull or add energy from the environment either, it will just blow hot or cold wind with an Aerokinesis enchantment mixed with enchantments from the sink and the forge for cold and hot.

Repeating this process for each of the spots in the house, the new setup should be significantly less costly. It’s mostly the conversion of heat into mana that has exorbitant prices anyway.

Setting the temperature up slightly, warm air starts to fill the house. Colt walks around murmuring about making sure the cold didn’t damage the tree significantly.

Fortunately, it’s an evergreen so it’s made for this kind of weather. It should be fine after some nature magick recovery by Colt.

Everyone is wide awake both from the cold and the excitement of the morning, so Colt starts an early breakfast once all the mana crystals are refilled and I’ve checked over every conduit to make sure nothing was damaged.

Testing various runes around the house, none of them were impacted by the cold, allowing me to sigh in relief.

Level up! For learning from your mistakes and overcoming adversity, your Talent: Adept Enchanter has reached (2/50)!

‘I swear The Construct is taunting me.’ Shaking my head, I walk into my bathroom, tentatively turning on the waterfall shower. Water immediately begins to cascade out from the spout.

Testing it with my hand, I turn up the temperature just slightly more before stepping in and enjoying the heat.

After an unnecessarily long shower, I step out only because I can smell that breakfast is nearly ready.

Drying myself at the speed of magic, I’m dressed and at the table in moments. Colt gives me a side eye, shaking his head. “You’ve been spending too much time around Becky…”

“I’m only so quick because it’s your cooking.” Giving him my most saccharine, wide-eyed look of amazement, he scoffs and sets a plate down in front of me.

“You’re lucky you’re hot.” He grumbles and walks back into the kitchen.

My surprise grows when I look at the plate in front of me. “Pancakes! Wait, how did you make pancake batter?” Poking at the pancake, I note it’s slightly more yellow than usual.

Colt walks back into the room with a bottle full of amber liquid. “Oh, well, there was this kind of wheat plant that I hadn’t planted yet because I thought the effect was kinda useless, it just makes things turn yellow, but I grew some of it and removed the effect to make pancakes.”

“Oh, that doesn’t sound super useful, how many plants are like that? And aren’t pancakes more than just flour? How’d you make the flour anyway?” Taking the bottle from Colt, I sniff the contents and note that it smells sweet.

Ironwood Maple Syrup

Quality: High

Traits: Ironbark

Description: Sap concentrated from an ironwood maple, boiled and processed into a sweet syrup. The essence of the ironbark of an ironwood maple has remained in this syrup, granting defensive properties.

‘Hm, is this kinda like an ironskin effect?’

Pouring it over the pancakes, I take a test bite and feel the familiar sensation of the ironskin effect reinforcing my skin, but this time it feels strangely… natural? The syrup itself is as sweet as can be, no metallic aftertaste either.

“Well, yeah, I just didn’t bother to grow a lot of the more useless plant seeds I have, they don’t seem useful for alchemy so I just keep them in my bag. I can grow them whenever I need to with Floramancy anyway. Though the effects seem way weaker when I don’t let them grow naturally… they probably don’t absorb enough ambient mana.”

“Hm, that’s true. These pancakes won’t turn me yellow, will they? Also, you never answered me on what these are made of.” Summoning up a small, flat surface of water, I check my reflection to assure myself I’m not yellow.

“They won’t, I cooked them without the effect. I figured the syrup was harmless though, never hurts to be a little more defensive. And for the ingredients, turns out Construct Shops stock all the basics. People need to level up their cooking Talents after all.

“They had this little kit for just 3 Sparks that comes with salt, baking soda, baking powder…

“...Oh and I figured the animal and plant products are what taste terrible from the Shops, so I bought some butter and milk from some lady with a floating cow. Gravity affinity, apparently.” He throws his hands up in the air as if to say “didn’t expect that one!”

Having tuned out most of the spiel from Colt, I notice that everyone else has come to the table. I was too absorbed in finally having something sugary after so long.

While lost in thought, I remember that I still haven’t checked out the Skill Tome from the acid spider.

Pulling the brown and lime green tome out of my inventory, I Inspect it, noticing a bright green arrow displayed on the cover.

Skill Tome: Acid Arrow

Quality: High

Traits: Knowledge Transfer

Description: A Skill Tome containing knowledge on how to use the Skill: Acid Arrow. Uses: 1

“A Skill Tome? I haven’t seen one of those before.” Mary points to the book with her fork, syrup dripping from the pancake speared on it.

Murmurs of agreement come from everyone. Curious about the rarity myself, I check the value, having forgotten I unlocked that ability at 150 Insight. My eyes bulge at the price. “Holy shit, it’s worth 10 Gleams.”

Becky sighs dramatically, taking a bite of her pancake afterward. “You guys haven’t looked at the Shop much, have you?”

“Have you?” I give her a critical eye.

“Well, no.” She gives me the stink eye after I call her out on her bullshit.

“But I found the Skill Tome listing once, all the way down in the S’s. They were so expensive I stopped looking at them though. The cheapest was like, 1 Gleam for Mana Bolt. That Skill isn’t even hard to learn.” She takes an aggressive bite, clearly feeling retroactive annoyance.

“Acid Arrow sounds strong but… not THAT strong, I wonder why it’s ten times more expensive.” Tracing the design on the book, I consider the Skill.

“Well, I haven’t seen anyone with an acid Skill, have you Adri?” Cassandra looks to Adreanell, pulling a lock of red hair behind her ear as she does.

“I haven’t, come to think of it. Maybe acid is higher tier kinda like Floramancy then.” She soaks up some syrup with a piece of pancake idly as she considers. “This pancake is delicious Colt, by the way.”

“Oh, thank you. I kinda just threw it together. Making flour was weird, had to use some really sharp Aeromancy.”

“That sounds messy, did you clean up after yourself, Colt?” His mom gives him a stern look.

“Moooooom…” Colt glances between us, looking for assistance. We all unanimously elect to stay out of this one.

“Colt…”

“I’ll clean up after we eat…” Mary smiles, satisfied with her parenting job for now.

“...So, anyway, Acid Arrow. I’ll be honest, I don’t think I’m a good fit to have it. As much as I want to get in melee range with an enemy coated in acid…” Giving them an awkward expression, I slide the tome to the middle of the table.

“Well, I’d be worried it would melt my plants, so I’m out.” Colt picks up his plate as well as mine and walks back into the kitchen to clean up. The door rumbles a little from sudden wind force.

“...I’d rather not melt my money either, thanks.” Adreanell shakes her head.

“Same situation as you, Lucas.” Mary shrugs, looking toward Cassandra.

“Oh, me? But it’s so expensive… I couldn’t…” She slides her chair back, adjusting her seating as she becomes uncomfortable in the spotlight.

“Why not? Honestly, I don’t have a huge use for money right now and… not to brag but I’m not doing that badly on it. How about this, some of your candy for my tome. Let’s say… five healing candies and five mana candies?”

Both of us gasp in shock as a menu appears in front of our eyes. It has a display for items, money, and looks very similar to the Construct Shop menu setup. There’s even a section that allows us to designate some kind of service in exchange for items.

“What is it, what’s happening?” Adreanell and Mary look between the two of us, confused as they can’t see the menu.

With a thought I allow them to see the transaction menu as well, causing them to gasp in surprise too, but to a lesser extent due to our forewarning.

Colt comes out to observe, looking shocked that a trade menu exists as well.

“Woah, it’s like the Construct Shop menu.” Adreanell goes to poke it but her hand simply passes through it, unable to interact.

“...Should we try it?” Looking at Cassandra, she considers for a second.

“Okay. Five of my healing candies and five of my mana candies for your Skill Tome.” She puts her candies in while I touch the tome to the menu and it disappears.

While inside the menu, I note that under the book it displays my name in green as the owner. As for the candies, I can see that the owner is Cassandra Bell.

The trade window displays the large disparity in price between our two offers and asks me to confirm twice and charges a fee of 3 Sparks as a trade tax. ‘Wow, there are even taxes for this?’

Confirming the trade, I note that Cassandra also puts 3 Sparks into the window. Looking, the candies are nowhere to be found while Cassandra is holding the Skill Tome.

“What gives?! The candies didn’t appear! Oh, wait, they’re in my hold.” My skin flushes as I regret the outburst, realizing that auto-loot applies to trades as well apparently.

Everyone stares at me for a moment before attention returns to Cassandra. She keeps her eyes focused on the tome. Then she looks upward, seeing a menu probably. She taps an option in the air and the book breaks apart into bright green light, flowing into her head.

She blinks a few times. “Wooghf, that was weird, and kind of uncomfortable. The knowledge is in my head now though. I uh… definitely shouldn’t try this inside.”

With all of us agreeing, especially Colt and I as we don’t want our house to melt, we move outside. Colt creates a pillar of stone for her to test on. She points a palm at the pillar.

“Acid Arrow!” Despite the name, it’s more of a long, spear-shaped bolt of acid. Once it strikes the rock, it pierces about halfway in and begins to melt the surrounding rock at an impressive speed.

“Wow, that’s some impressive power for a Skill at level 1. Can you fire it again? I wanna see if I can learn it with Runic Matrix.” She nods to me, raising her hand once more, I activate Mage’s Eyes for good measure to watch the mana flow as well.

As she fires the Skill, it’s like my eyes can’t focus on the mana and the runic setup becomes hazy momentarily. “You see that too, Colt?”

He nods. “Yeah, I couldn’t see the runes or the mana flow at all. Are Skill Tomes protected or something?”

“I guess so, makes sense if the Construct Shop wants to make any money selling Skill Tomes I guess. Everyone would just buy one of the tomes and learn from each other. Come to think of it, why does The Construct want these coins?” Scratching my head, I try to puzzle together a reason.

Adreanell offers a hypothesis. “Well, even with my Numismatist Talent, the coins I can create can’t be spent at the Shop even if they look identical to the real thing, and the real thing is way more powerful for my attacks too.

“Remember when you told us about how experience works a couple nights ago at dinner, Lucas? Maybe Sparks, Glints, and Gleams are kind of the same, and spending them gives The Construct some kind of resource back?”

“That would make sense. When I bought my bottle supply from the Shop, the coins just kinda disappeared once that golem took them.” Hoping that next time auto-loot works for the Shop too, I scowl at the memory of being buried under glass bottles.

“Hey, Cassandra, you paid 3 Sparks as a tax too right? We didn’t see the money go anywhere, so either The Construct hoards money like crazy or it’s a useful resource to it like experience. It did say that defeating Grandis gave it some kind of larger power over this area.”

“Well, it makes sense to me. We’re gonna have to consider this trading tax for our shop. I wonder what it’s even necessary for. Wait, let’s test it.” Cassandra turns to Adreanell. “Buy some of my candy. Just one piece is fine.”

Adreanell gives her a critical look. “Uh, sure, but I’m only giving you one Spark for it.”

“That’s fine, it’s just a test, we’re not gonna use the window. Hand me the spark.” Adreanell does so while Cassandra puts the candy in her hand.

“Now, let’s do that in reverse. I’d like to buy your candy, Adri.” The menu appears, Cassandra likely willing it to appear for us as well so we can watch.

Stepping close, as soon as Adreanell puts the candy into the trade window, it shows that the owner is Cassandra Bell still.

“Just as I thought, trades outside the trade window don’t transfer the system ownership.” Cassandra nods and moves to decline the trade but Colt stops her quickly.

“Wait, what about gifts? I have this dagger Lucas made for me, we never used a trade window for it.” Colt hands Cassandra the dagger, she then puts it into the trade window. It comes up displaying Colton Kaine as the name.

“Well, I did give it to you as a gift, Colt. It might account for items that never had an expected payment.” Thinking into it more, the possibilities with this kind of trade menu make thievery difficult unless someone else is willing to buy stolen property from them.

“Adri could still put the candy into the trade window, so it seems like stolen property can still be sold, but the person will know that it’s someone else’s. There’s only one thing I’m curious about, is it still a two-way tax if only one side is paying money?”

She takes her candy back from Adreanell, hands her the Spark back, and has her put it into the trade window. It displays only Adreanell needing to pay the tax in this instance. They decline the trade in the end, receiving their offers back.

“Well, this is definitely good for our shop, which, by the way, when are we gonna start that?” Cassandra looks at Colt and me quizzically.

“Oh, well, first I need to build your and Adreanell’s house, then I need to build Becky’s house… My mom’s house is done, I just need Lucas to enchant that one. Then enchant the other two houses…” Colt looks at me with an apologetic frown.

“Ahem.” All of our attentions turn to Becky, who’s been standing quietly to the side during this whole discussion.

“Yeah, Becky?” My voice is slightly nervous as she’s glaring.

“What about me?” Her voice comes out sounding hurt, not angry or annoyed.

“What do you mean, Becky?” Adreanell walks up to her to place an arm on her shoulder.

She shrugs it off. “I mean what about me? You’re all making these plans and… I’m not in them.” She glances off to the side, but not before I catch the smallest glimmer of her eyes getting watery.

“Oh, Becky, we never meant it that way. Of course, you have a place in our plans!” Adreanell’s voice flounders as she tries to figure out what that place would be.

“Oh yeah? What place then?” Her tone reaches vicious, her shell coming back into place.

Mary steps forward, smiling. “Let’s find you a place, Becky. You’ve got those scissors, have you ever tried your hand with fabrics? You have a real sense of style, I bet you could make some great designs.”

Becky’s face becomes a bit more hopeful. “...Do you think so?”

“We never know until we try, do we? Come on, I’ll walk to the Shop with you and we can see if they have some fabrics you can try out.” Mary lays a hand on the small of Becky’s back, leading her off. Adreanell and Cassandra elect to go on the shopping trip as well.

As they’re walking away, I toss Adreanell two Gleams to pick up sanding belts and whatever mid and higher tier metals she can afford with the rest.

“Oh, on the topic of tasks for the day, you need to show me where your mom’s house is.”

“Ah, right. I can do that. It’s about time we got to work anyway. I’ll carry us.” He points out a hand and wind starts to gather around us.

The gust picks us up, carrying us over what would have been a ten-minute walk in about two minutes.

The next few days go by in a blur of work. When I’m not enchanting houses for Colt, I’m helping construct the walls around Portland. They’re nearing completion as people get more and more levels and gain more Skills.

Over the course of these few days, I gain a few nice notifications.

Level up! For continuing to reinforce your knowledge, add new modifications to existing creations, and work on improvement in inscriptions you already know, your Talent: Adept Enchanter has reached (7/50)!

For reaching your first Talent milestone in Adept Enchanter, you have been awarded applicable stat points to Intelligence, Attunement, Willpower, Insight and + 30 XP. In addition, you have been awarded one Perk Point! Perk Points can be only spent on a Perk that came from the associated Talent.

Level up! For furthering your practice in magecraft and helping those around you, your Talent: Fledgling Mage has reached (43/50)!

Having been mulling over what to spend my Perk Point on since I got it a day ago, I pull up all my Enchanter Perks once more.

The list is actually quite short, currently, but that doesn’t make the decision easier. It turns out, Inscriber’s Elegance counts as an Enchanter Perk, so the Perk Point will work on it.

On the other hand, Rapid Inscription can be a very powerful perk if used correctly. If I upgrade it, there’s a high likelihood that the Perk will be able to handle more complex enchantments, making it much more readily useable.

The Perk description already states that this capacity will grow with Intelligence, Attunement, Willpower, and Insight levels alongside more Talent levels, but who knows the kinds of enchantments I could reproduce quickly with a Perk Point upgrading it.

The huge benefit to upgrading Inscriber’s Elegance is that it’s a fusion Perk so it would essentially be powering up three Perks at once rather than just one.

The effects of the upgraded Perk will likely make my enchantments stronger overall too, which is admittedly bland but undoubtedly helpful.

The last consideration is saving the Perk Point for a potentially good Perk in the future.

Deciding that upgrading three Perks at once is too hard to beat, I decide to add the point to Inscriber’s Elegance. Increasing the power of this perk might even increase the growth of my Talent in general. There will be more perk points later on anyway.

You have upgraded the perk: Inscriber’s Elegance! Its innate abilities have been enhanced! Inscriber’s Elegance has become Inscriber’s Elegance (+1)!

Checking quickly, the Perk Point did simply upgrade all existing factors of the original Perk. My enchantments will now be stronger, longer lasting, sit deeper within the objects I enchant, and my inscriptions will be even more precise than they were already.

Creating a small stone rod in my palm, I draw a series of durability runes on it and attempt to snap the rod in half. It resists my force heavily for a few moments before the enchantment breaks and the rod follows suit.

‘Hm, with my level of Strength, that’s pretty damn impressive.’

Arriving home, the sun is just dipping below the horizon, alighting the house in the last vestiges of warm amber light.

Opening the door, I step over bolts of cloth, avoid stepping on any pins or tacks, and am nearly tripped by a long strand of ribbon flowing across the floor currently.

Becky has taken her newest Talent: Fledgling Fashionista by storm. Much to the dismay of both Colt and myself, she’s taken it by storm in our home as Colt only just finished hers today.

“Hey, Becky, I just finished up enchanting your place, so you’re all set to move in!”

“Ugh, about time. Total sausage fest here.” She snaps and the cloth in the room comes storming toward her. Apparently she has Pannomancy, cloth magic, now instead of Pannokinesis, having finally practiced her magic enough to gain Elemental Dominion.

This has sped up her clothes production immensely as she can generate most of the cloth she needs, just taking breaks to regenerate her resources.

She declares that soon she will need higher quality materials from monsters though, as she’s plateauing in her growth now that she’s experimented so heavily with normal materials.

The fruits of these experiments have begun to fill both my wardrobe and Colt’s as we’ve been her constantly available muses and fashion models.

“I never thought I’d see you in floral, Lucas.” Colt grins as he looks at the floral pattern t-shirt Becky gave me.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Becky says it gives me a certain je nu sais quoi.” Posing slightly, I allow myself a moment to bask in the rare compliment.

“What does that even mean?” Colt looks to Becky who shrugs.

“No clue, I heard it on TV once.” She finishes packing everything up into her new pride and joy, a storage perk.

Colt looks at her with jealousy, still chained to a bag of holding himself.

She flourishes a hand, putting away the last strip of ribbon into her Personal Boutique. “See you soon boyssss.” She struts out the door, confident and proud with her newfound passion, especially because she can lord it over Colt’s head.

“I think you need to pick up a weird Talent, they’re always the ones that have storage perks.”

“...That’s a good point. I’ll have to figure something out. Can’t let her lord that over me forever.”

Just then, Becky sheepishly walks back through the door. “Uh, where is my house?”