Waking up, I note that it’s still dark out. I don’t feel even the least bit tired, so I slip out of bed, taking advantage of my high Dexterity to not wake Colt in the process. ‘I guess my body really is adjusting to needing less sleep. I’ll let Colt sleep though.’

Quietly stepping into the bathroom to get my toiletries, I head to the guest bedroom’s bathroom so I don’t wake Colt.

Looking at my toothbrush, I get curious. Setting it down, I suspend toothpaste in some water instead using Hydromancy. Giving it a quick swirl, I mix it up. The mana cost increases as I’m forced to focus harder on controlling this impure water source now.

Practicing my control, I “brush” my teeth using just water.

Focusing this heavily gives me a slight headache, so I stop now that my mouth is clean and finish up all my morning tasks. Feeling refreshed, I head downstairs and head out into the front yard.

Fresh dew covers the grass around our house, indicating to me that it’s late enough into the night for dew to be forming. ‘Hm, probably just an hour or two until daylight then.’

Enjoying the cool, wet sensation, I give myself a second to just enjoy a peaceful moment, taking some deep breaths in and out, I feel power fill me through Pranic Breathing.

I’ll wake Colt up if I do any blacksmithing right now, and Ilmarinen is probably still busy filling orders, so I decide to practice some magic instead. I’ve been wanting to lately, I’ve just been too busy to until now.

Making sure I can still do it with the dual casting I unlocked from the Intelligence milestone, I summon an orb of water into one hand by gathering dew and summoning a flame into my other hand.

‘Perfect. Let’s try this.’

Bringing my hands together, I touch the flame to the water. The magically fueled flame hisses as it makes contact with the water, but doesn’t snuff out. Focusing on what I remember from my sauna coat, I focus on the element of heat within the flame.

Integrating the mana of Hydromancy and the mana of Pyromancy together, I push, trying to combine the two effects. A small glimmer appears where the differently attuned mana sources collide. ‘It’s working!’

Pushing harder, I pump more mana into this process and the glimmer becomes a glow.

BOOM!

The next moment, I’m sitting up and my head is spinning. The second thing I feel is pain as my seared skin makes itself known.

Stifling a cry of pain, I focus on Promethean to heal myself up. Colt opens the front door, face full of concern.

“Lucas, I heard an explosion! Are you okay?” He runs to my side. “Here, I’ll help recover you while you tell me what happened. Realm of Spring: Healing Meadow!”

“Uh, just me being an idiot again, I was trying to create steam magic, whatever that will be called. I tried combining Hydromancy and Pyromancy… As you can tell, it had rather… explosive results.”

Colt frowns. “You have Thermomancy don’t you? Why didn’t you try that instead of Pyromancy?” He stops the healing process once all my wounds are completely closed up.

“Thermomancy gives me a headache to control, I was hoping I could manage it with Pyromancy. I think I can it’s just gonna take more effort. I’ll try steam control later though, I have another idea I want to try that might be easier.”

“What’s your next idea?” He pulls a cloth out of his storage and begins to dab silvery-white blood off my face.

“I’ll show you. First, I’m gonna need something.” Taking the lightshaft crystal out of my hold, I activate it with a small flow of mana. The crystal lights up, projecting a beam, not unlike a flashlight.

Focusing on this mana flow, I begin to mimic it myself, far more familiar with this process now that I’ve done it with so many different elements. This one still proves a slight challenge, taking me about ten minutes to begin producing light-attuned mana on my own without the crystal.

Colt takes the crystal to practice it himself while I read through my new notifications.

Congratulations Lucas Creo! For manipulating the elemental force of light and bending it to your will, you have gained the Skill: Photokinesis!

Congratulations Lucas Creo! Your perk Elemental Dominion has caused a Skill Upgrade to occur. Your Skill: Photokinesis has become Photomancy!

Affinity Acquired: Low Light Affinity 1/100!

Happy with these results, I begin the next process I’m going to attempt. Focusing on purely the ignition aspect of my Pyromancy, a glowing orb of heat appears above my palm, flickering with small flames here or there as my control isn’t perfect.

It’s hard to keep the flames suppressed to just their ignition, but I manage with some mental struggles. Creating an orb of light in my opposite hand, I focus on the pure energy of it, the transition from energy to light particles.

Pushing these two energies together, sparks begin to fly. ‘Oh no you don’t, no exploding on me now.’ Pushing down with my will, I force these two components together, the ignition sparks the pure energy of light, creating a small shock that arcs to the ground.

Something clicks in my brain and the two elements seamlessly combine into one. The next second I’m holding a humming ball of electricity suspended between my cupped hands.

The slight scent of ozone fills the air and my hair floats up slightly, standing on end.

Congratulations Lucas Creo! For manipulating the elemental force of lightning and bending it to your will, you have gained the Skill: Electrokinesis!

Congratulations Lucas Creo! Your perk Elemental Dominion has caused a Skill Upgrade to occur. Your Skill: Electrokinesis has become Electromancy!

Affinity Acquired: Low Lightning Affinity 1/100!

Breakthrough! Natural affinity towards lightning found. Recalculating… Affinity Acquired: Medium Lightning Affinity 5/100!

Level up! For acquiring two new “mancy” Skills, one by combining the forces of two other “mancy” Skills, as well as discovering a natural affinity towards an element, your Talent: Fledgling Mage has reached (48/50)!

The message is completely correct, something about this element just feels right to me. I probably could have learned it from my galvanite ingot as that’s lightning-attuned, but creating it felt like a better experience for my own personal growth.

Colt looks over at me, concerned as I hold an evergrowing ball of lightning in my hands.

“UNLIMITED. POWERRRR.” Firing a bolt of lightning at a nearby rock, it explodes into shards from the impact with a deafening thundercrack.

Colt redirects the shards of rock away from himself with Geomancy and glares at me. “Come down from the power trip, Lucas.”

Letting go of the Electromancy, my hair falls back into place. “Sorry. Got a little carried away. Apparently, I have a natural lightning affinity! I’m already 5 out of 100 with a medium affinity!”

His eyes widen in interest. “Oh, that’s like me with my Floramancy! I didn’t have affinities back when I gained it, and it was only a ‘kinesis’ skill at the time, but it just felt right to me. Then the whole Fae thing happened and… you know. Very obviously attuned now.” He shrugs.

Checking my Skills menu quickly, I find Electromancy. “Holy shit, Colt! Electromancy started at level 35! That’s crazy!”

“Yeah my Floramancy was the same way, it started high level too. I forget what level though.”

“Well, I’m gonna try a few things with this and see what I can do.”

“Sure thing, just don’t stop your heart or something. I’m gonna head inside and make breakfast.” He walks into the house as I summon more lightning.

Just like Pyromancy, the sparks don’t shock me while I control them. Using a similar idea to when I created my Tide Shield with Hydrokinesis way back when, I gather lightning around myself.

Using Runic Matrix, I bind the lightning to different joints of my body so it will move with me. The runes work perfectly, creating “nodes” that the lightning conducts itself to. My Palemetal Blood seems to help with this conductance as well.

Finishing it, the effect feels like drinking a lightning reactions potion. Trying a few test punches, my movement is faster and I feel like I can keep up with it easier. To make it easier to set this Skill again, I name it Lightning Cloak.

My arms are always occupied by Argo during a fight, so for my next experiment, I focus a larger charge of lightning around my feet, attaching it with more runic nodes.

Jumping up and performing a front flip, I slam my heel into the ground. Lightning sparks out and thunder sounds off from the attack. ‘Jeez, this element sure is noisy. Hmmm, what to name this one…’’

Unable to pick a name of my own, I auto-name this one. ‘Thunderclap? Works for me I guess.’

Using Runic Matrix once more, I augment the runes for my Plot Course Skill, mixing in some elements from Lightning Cloak and Thunderclap to create a high speed lightning dash.

Activating this newly set up Skill, I shoot between beacons at high speed, coating myself in electricity and leaving lightning trails behind me. ‘I’ll name this one… Circuit Jump.’ The lightning trails remain hanging in the air for a few seconds, which I see as a good kiting ability.

Level up! For practicing further with Electromancy and developing several Sub-Skills for it using your creativity, your Talent: Fledgling Mage has reached (49/50)!

‘Oooh, nice. Why do I feel so low? This must be an expensive element.’

Checking my mana supply, it’s steadily dropped throughout my practice, so I decide to give it some time to replenish. ‘Oh, right. There’s that quest board now, I should check it out.’

Poking my head inside, I tell Colt where I’m going and he tells me to be back in ten minutes for breakfast.

The board is pretty close, so I walk the distance while using Pranic Breathing to restore my mana faster.

As I come closer, I realize there’s a golem standing next to the quest board. It looks mostly the same as the Shop golem, just with a slightly more slender form. Jogging up to the board, I greet the golem.

“Hi there! I came to check out the quest board.”

The golem focuses its glowing blue eyes on me. It has a strangely friendly aura to itself. “Welcome! Please peruse the quest board at your leisure. I am here to answer any questions you may have.”

It stands at attention once more, so I look at the board. As soon as I do, a menu similar to the Shop menu appears, except it has tabs for various types of quests.

At a glance, it looks like there are the typical quests one could expect from an RPG game. There’s actually even a place where people can set their own quests by submitting a small fee and reward for completion.

Grimacing, I vow to never even look at the escort quests tab. ‘Fuck that noise. Escort missions fucking suck. Oooh, crafting quests?’

Tabbing over to the crafting quests section, I’m surprised to find a few weapon related ones.

‘Hm, craft five steel shortswords? I have the ingots for that and it shouldn’t take me too long. Let’s see here… Huh, that reward looks like it would pay more than I can typically sell the swords for. 500 XP reward too, so 100 XP per sword?’

Deciding this is a good starter quest to try and get myself acquainted with the quest system, as I only did the really vague quest for Ilmarinen forever ago, I accept this one.

Quest Obtained! Craft 5 Steel Shortswords of Medium quality or above.

Requirements: 5 Steel Shortswords of Medium quality or above.

Reward: 50 Glints, 500 XP (Optional, costs 5 Glints).

‘Oh, the XP costs money? That further supports the theory that The Construct needs resources from Restruct. That’s nice though, I can just not pay and hold off leveling up longer then. Makes it nice for people who don’t want to fight but still want to level up though. Seems like it’s 1 Glint per 100 XP?’

As I have five dark steel ingots in my hold as well, I search for any crafting quests relating to that. Currently, there’s only one that seems immediately doable. It seems more challenging, but I decide to take that quest as well.

Quest Obtained! Craft 1 Dark Steel Battleax of Medium quality or above

Requirements: 1 Dark Steel Battleax of Medium quality or above.

Reward: 35 Glints, 350 XP (Optional, costs 50 Sparks 3 Glints).

‘Hm, that’s a better reward than the steel swords even though it should only take two ingots to make this one. Guess the rarer materials influence quest rewards. Hey, what’s this counter?’

The quest board displays a counter that shows “2/3” for me currently. ‘Huh, guess I can only take three quests from this quest board? I wonder if that limit can change as the city progresses.’

Shrugging, I don’t see any more quests I immediately want to take. Besides, I’ll try to leave most of the simpler quests for new people in case they’re not renewable.

Walking back to the house, I make it just in time for Colt to poke his head out the door looking for me. “Oh, you’re back! How was the quest board? I was just about to go looking for you.”

“Pretty much what one would expect. There were even escort quests. I don’t know how those work and I don’t wanna know.”

“Ew. Everyone hates escort quests, who would do those?” He walks up the staircase and I follow him, finding a lovely breakfast arrangement laid out on the table.

“Mmmm, food. There might be cooking quests, I didn’t check, you should go look after we eat. I got some blacksmithing quests myself.”

“Really? I wonder if that could provide me with some new ideas for meals.” He taps a finger on the table while in thought.

“Yeah, I just took some basic ones so I wouldn’t complicate things for my first quests. I should be able to finish it all pretty quickly and turn them in. It’ll be nice to fill up my funds again. Hey, did you feed the slimes?”

“Yup, there was another egg in there, I named it Slim. I set up the second pen too so I separated them out. There’s three in each pen now. We’re gonna need more food soon, the carton is almost empty. I think Adreanell and Cassandra overfed them.”

“Good, that’ll give them room to grow, probably. I want to give one of the slimes a healing aspect crystal and another a mana restoration one. I’m thinking their slime might make a good potion base, we’ve really been plateauing in our number values for those potions lately.”

“Hm, true. Good idea.” Colt finishes eating and stands up from the table. “I’m gonna go check out the quest board and see if there’s anything interesting. Be back in a bit.”

“Alright, see you after then.” He gives me a peck on the lips before leaving.

‘Hm, I guess I could put off blacksmithing a little longer and try to reach Adept Mage.’

Finishing up my own breakfast, I clean up quickly, putting an emphasis on using my magic to do so. Dumping all the trash into the trash chute we attached to the kitchen, it’s sent to be converted into mana.

Frowning when none of those acts gave me the level, even though it wouldn’t have been deserved anyway, I head outside to practice more.

‘Hmmm… try for another combo element maybe? I do have an idea…’

Summoning water into one hand, I focus on using Thermomancy on it while maintaining control. Dropping the temperature as much as possible, my control over the water lessens as it begins to shift to ice.

‘I guess the different structure of the molecules makes it so I can’t control it unless it’s liquid water? Maybe it’s because it’s so tightly packed and organized.’

Redoubling my efforts, I focus on the critical point at which the water shifts to ice. It freezes into a sphere of ice and drops into my hand. Losing control of it in the process, I grumble and summon another orb of water above my hand after throwing the ice sphere.

Colt returns while I’m still creating ice spheres and hurling them. There’s a small pile of ice building up under the tree in front of our house as I’ve thrown every failed attempt at it.

“Don’t hurt my tree because you can’t learn ice magic.” He tsks and heads instead.

“Fine. But you need to come out and build us a fence so no one builds on our property.”

“Sure thing, I’ll finish up a few things and come out.”

Settling down, I decide to try a different method this time, especially because this heavy use of Thermomancy is giving me a headache. Breathing deeply in and out, I use Pranic Healing to restore my mana once more.

The calming effect also helps to reduce my headache, which is a nice side effect. Turning my mind elsewhere while I focus on the deep breathing techniques, I focus all of my mental effort on the idea of cold.

Pumping my mana through my body as I do so, I bring myself back to memories I have of the cold. Seeing as I’ve lived in Maine my whole life, winter gives me plenty of them.

The first time I built a snowman, feeling the cold bite at my nose and the tips of my ears, the cutting winds that freeze you to your core, even the gentle drifts of snow settling on to my face as I try to catch a snowflake on my tongue.

Laughing at the memory of a time Colt stuffed a snowball down my pants, I recall the feeling of the immediate chill and my recoil from it.

Opening my eyes, I focus all of these feelings into my mana and create another orb of water. The quality of my mana changes and frost gathers over the outside of the orb, freezing it cleanly.

Focusing on this new quality within the mana, I even see new runic formations holding it together. Grasping at this, I attune myself to it immediately. The rest of the orb freezes, creating a perfectly smooth and clear sphere of ice.

Congratulations Lucas Creo! For manipulating the elemental force of ice and bending it to your will, you have gained the Skill: Cryokinesis!

Congratulations Lucas Creo! Your perk Elemental Dominion has caused a Skill Upgrade to occur. Your Skill: Cryokinesis has become Cryomancy!

Affinity Acquired: Low Ice Affinity 1/100!

Level up! For continuing to use the runes at your disposal in a clever fashion and attaining new Skills with visualization techniques, your Talent: Fledgling Mage has reached (50/50)! Talent upgrade will now occur!

Congratulations, Lucas Creo! Your Talent: Fledgling Mage has evolved into Adept Mage (1/50)! For reaching the Adept Talent Tier, you have been granted 5 unused stat points, double the original stat points given upon Talent milestones, and appropriate Perk power has been attained. Perk fusion in progress!

The Perks: Elemental Dominion, Mage’s Eyes, Modular Mana, and Runic Matrix are now fusing.

Fusion Perk granted: Aetheric Supremacy

“Yes!” Pumping my arms in the air, I let myself fall back on the grass. It surprises me when I notice how cold it is.

Looking around me, a fine layer of frost has gathered over the previously dew-covered grass. The sun finally rises over the horizon after that, indicating to me that I must have been in deep meditation longer than I thought.

The ice glistens and melts slightly as the sunlight hits it, giving off orange and yellow glimmers of light.

‘Hm. Let’s see what this new Perk does… it feels powerful. Perks.’

Perks:

Aetheric Supremacy

Description: You have several perks relating to the control and perception of magic and the elements. The perks: Elemental Dominion, Mage’s Eyes, Modular Mana, and Runic Matrix have fused to form this new perk. Your control and creation of the elements has increased immensely, the associated costs are reduced as well. Your perception of magic and the runes that control it has increased, granting you higher insight and understanding into these mystic forces. You can fine-tune your mana input even more than before, allowing for extremely precise control of your power. Bonuses from the original perks have quadrupled. MP Regen increased by 0.8, Intelligence increased by 20, Willpower increased by 12. +0.8 MP Regen, +20 Intelligence, and +12 Willpower per level up.

‘Woah.’ Summoning the ice-attuned mana once more, I find it much easier to create than it was just moments ago. Creating some water for comparison, the costs are cut down, bringing it ever closer to a manageable cost in combat.

Arcing lightning around myself, it hums and makes my hair rise. The cost has been reduced as well, fully assuring me that not just the basic elements have their costs reduced.

‘Damn I feel great.’ Firing another bolt of lightning into the sky, I relish in the sheer power I can unleash now, feeling the thunderclap boom through me.

“You done over there, Darth Lucas?” Turning around, Colt is staring at me with a quirked eyebrow.

“When did you get there?”

“I’ve been here, you were meditating for like an hour and a half or so on the grass and it was slowly getting frosty, so I figured I wouldn’t mess up your mojo and just started building the fence.” He gestures behind him to a series of wood and vines enclosing what will be our property when he’s done.

“Fair enough. To answer your question though, I think I got it out of my system.” Raising my hand up to the sky, I fire another bolt of lightning. “...Starting now.”

He shakes his head at me, smiling, and returns to creating a fence with Floramancy.

‘Hm, coldsnap steel is a thing… I wonder if I can…’ Summoning Cryomancy in one hand and Electromancy in the other, I attempt to fuse the chilling cold aspects of Cryomancy with the excited sparks of electricity.

The result begins to glow brighter and brighter. Frost forms over my hands and sparks arc out, hitting the ground and leaving patches of ice. ‘I’m doing it!’

The mana begins to rampage out of control and nothing within my will can stop it. “I’m not doing it!”

BOOM!

This time I don’t go flying, but find myself sealed in a Lucas-shaped ice sculpture. Panicking slightly, I burst flames around myself with Pyromancy, melting my icy prison. Using Promethean, I heal myself of frostbite.

Colt runs over to check on me, but sees me handling the situation and turns on his heel to keep working on the fence. “Don’t kill yourself, okay? You’re important to me.”

“I was close! I think I can do it!” Resummoning both elements, I focus my mind on the visual of the sweetkiss chime. It’s resonating properties always seem to increase the synergy of aspects that don’t fuse well.

Imagining this resonation, I bring the two elements together once more. The mana begins to rampage once more, but once I imagine it resonating, it calms down, letting the two elements slip together with less trouble.

The process still takes me about fifteen minutes of slowly nudging the two aspects together before I finally feel in control of them, but the visualization helps immensely.

Congratulations Lucas Creo! For manipulating the elemental force of frozen lightning and bending it to your will, you have gained the Skill: Cryelectrokinesis!

Congratulations Lucas Creo! Your perk Elemental Dominion has caused a Skill Upgrade to occur. Your Skill: Cryelectrokinesis has become Cryelectromancy!

Level up! For creating a higher difficulty elemental “mancy” Skill on your own merit, your Talent: Adept Mage has reached (3/50)!

‘Hm, no affinity message. It must just scale off Ice and Lightning affinities. This feels… interesting. It’s definitely a step down in the outright power of lightning on its own, but the freezing aspects of it are certainly useful in their own right.’

Testing several shots of the powdery blue lightning on a nearby rock, it ices over from the shocks that land but doesn’t break. Just like normal lightning, it’s hard to aim accurately against less conductive objects.

‘Yup, definitely less power, and it’s kind of costly to use, but I guess that’s because it’s a fusion of two higher tier elements. I don’t feel as attuned to it as I do with regular lightning either, but the Skill looks to be level 10 so I guess there’s some carry-over.’

Noticing how drained I feel now magically-speaking, I decide to give my brain a break and head inside to finish some mindless blacksmithing. I’ve done swords already when I was practicing at Ilmarinen’s house back in the dungeon, so this should be easy.

Walking into my forge, Ilmarinen is just coming through the portal door himself. “Oh, hi, Ilmarinen, I was just about to forge some steel swords for a quest, wanna help me?”

“Ye can do it on yer own, I trust yer skill, but uh, what happened to ye?” He gestures up and down my entire body.

Looking down, I note that my clothes are singed, there’s still frost in places on me, and in general, I’m looking a bit worse for wear.

“Oh, I was practicing magic, speaking of, you still need to show me that diagnostic magic.”

He nods to me. “I can do that lad. Might as well smith in those so ye don’t ruin more clothes.”

Just then, the front door opens and Becky walks in with Adreanell and Cassandra in tow. “Hey, Lucas! How’s my favorite model- What the fuck did you do to my outfit I made you?”

“Oh no.”