Looking out the window, it’s just beginning to get dark. The smells of nearly-finished dinner reach into the forge room.

Wiping my brow more for the effect than any actual sweat being cleared, I admire the fruits of my labor over this afternoon. Two swords, one made with cardarite, and another made with cryonite.

Both have handles made from dark steel, which I’ve enchanted to prevent the heat or cold from leaking through to the user.

Level up! For creating more swords with new materials, your Talent: Adept Blacksmith has reached (3/50)!

Level up! For applying specialized enchantments to compliment weapons you make, your Talent: Adept Enchanter has reached (11/50)!

These weapons don’t feel special, and I don’t exactly want to name every single weapon I sell, so I simply Inspect the end result.

Cardarite Shortsword

Quality: Medium

Traits: Fire, Durable

Description: A shortsword made of cardarite with a dark steel hilt. The properties of cardarite give this sword burning strikes and minor abilities to conjure fire. Enchantments on the hilt of this blade prevent the heat from burning the user when wielded.

Cryonite Shortsword

Quality: Medium

Traits: Ice, Durable

Description: A shortsword made of cryonite with a dark steel hilt. The properties of cryonite give this sword freezing strikes and minor abilities to conjure ice and cold. Enchantments on the hilt of this blade prevent the cold from freezing the user when wielded.

The cryonite shortsword looks especially… cool… to me. The blade is somewhat transparent and the metal actually looks like ice. Fortunately, shaping it was no problem as I simply deactivated the cold effect and the metal was forgeable after heating like any other metal.

Unfortunately, dark steel doesn’t hold enchantments well so it was somewhat of a struggle to get them to stick.

The neutrite-based metals are another story and hold the enchantments quite well. Giving them enchantments to not only improve the durability and sharpness of the blades, I also added further fire or ice enchantments to enhance their innate effects.

Just then, Adreanell walks over to me, showing me that she was able to cut the ice aspect crystal. It’s some of her first work so it’s not perfect, but she has it set in one of her moonlight silver rings.

Moonsilver Ring

Quality: Low

Traits: Ice Enhancement, Moonlight Recharge, Enchantment Empowerment

Description: A ring made of moonlight silver. An aspect crystal with an ice attribute has been cut and set into this ring. The wearer of this ring will be granted enhanced capabilities with ice magic such as MP cost reductions and control increases. Use of this capability will consume Stored Power within the ring that must be recharged in moonlight. Stored Power: 24/24

“Wow, mind if I try it out?”

“Sure thing. I was hoping you might enchant it for me too?” Adreanell looks at me pleadingly.

“Wouldn’t it be better if Ilmarinen showed you how to enchant? He’s a really good teacher after all.”

“...Good point. I was just hoping maybe your enchantments could salvage the Low quality.” She bows her head slightly in disappointment.

“Improvement comes in stages, just keep at it. This is like, your first complete ring, isn’t it? Sure it’s a little rough around the edges but you’ll get there.”

She brightens up slightly at that. “You’re right. Ilmarinen! Think you can teach me enchanting now?”

He looks up from consulting with Becky on what looks to be an 8-armed pastel purple shirt. “Aye, lass. That I can. Do ye have an inscriber?”

“I do! I bought one when I bought all this other stuff!” She indicates behind her where she has amassed a large number of various blacksmithing and goldsmithing tools.

“...Why did you buy so many blacksmithing tools anyway, Adreanell?” Picking up a large pair of tongs, I find myself happy to know I won’t need to apply heat resistance enchantments to my arms every time I want to pull something out of the forge.

“Hmm… Good question. I guess I just got a bit overzealous. Anyway, you wanna try the ring quick before I start enchanting?” She offers it to me.

“Sure. I’d like to see how it works anyway.” Equipping the ring, it appears on the middle finger of my right hand, a perfect fit. Like with my MP, I can feel the resource, Stored Power, within it waiting to be used.

Activating Cryomancy, I begin to create a chunk of ice above my hand. Getting a feel for how much mana it consumes to create it, I activate the power of the ring.

The cost drops somewhat, probably taking out somewhere around a tenth of the overall consumption. It feels easier to control the Cryomancy as well.

Keeping my eyes on the SP, I find that it seems to decrease at a rate of 1 SP every 3 seconds. So using this ring would give me a little over a minute of enhanced Cryomancy use.

For being both one of the first rings Adreanell made from moonlight silver and using the first gem she’s ever cut, it’s still a fairly impressive effect despite the quality.

“Wow, this works well! From what I can tell, one Stored Power is equal to three seconds of functionality, at least for this particular ring. Who knows what it will be once you add enchantments. For your first go at this, it’s really impressive!”

She smiles, taking the ring back from me as I slip it off my finger. “Thanks. I’ll see what I can do with enchantments. Maybe there’s something that can up the capacity a little bit.”

Happy to have encouraged her some, I nod and walk out of the room to find Colt. Dinner smells delicious.

Opening the door to the upstairs kitchen, I find Colt putting the final touches on some kind of roast chicken. He’s arranging vegetables around the chicken to make it more aesthetically pleasing.

“Oh, hey, Lucas. Dinner is almost ready, can you go get everyone?”

“Sure. But first, those vegetables reminded me of something I keep forgetting to give you.”

“Oh?” He stands up from leaning over the chicken and wipes his hands off on a small rag.

Reaching into my hold, I find the growth crystal I made during my alchemical excursion. “Tadaa! I was wondering if this might help us grow the pranaleaf so we can actually start cultivating it.”

He takes the crystal, Inspecting it most likely. “Growth and nutrition aspects? Hmmm… I could see it working. Why not? I’ll try it.”

“Perfect! It’s crazy to me how much effects can vary based on what they’re in. Nutrition and growth from alchemy made that growth crystal, but it makes voracitite, those blood eating scissors I made Becky, when used in neutrite.”

“That is weird. I blame you for Becky asking for some of my blood by the way. Anyway, dinner is gonna get cold. Go get everyone.” He shoos me out of the kitchen.

“Okay, be right back!” Taking the stairs, I walk into the forge and gather everyone for dinner. Adreanell looks happy to take a small break from enchanting.

Ilmarinen elects to join us as well, surprising me that he doesn’t immediately want to head home.

‘He’s really starting to like all of us. I guess it’s a mutual benefit though because it’s been helping his blacksmithing inspiration.’

Becky hones in on the scent of dinner like a shark.

Dinner passes by pleasantly, Cassandra even stops by for a bit, and everyone finishes up the final touches on their projects before leaving our house.

Feeling restless after everyone leaves for the night, I decide to go out and start working on the city-building quest by helping reinforce some walls with metal. Colt elects to do the same by helping to build more houses.

Arriving at the walls, I find Gabe, the fireman I saved before, supervising the wall reconstruction. It seems to go on no matter the time of day. Everyone is enjoying the benefits of needing less sleep due to stats.

“Hey, Gabe! Long time no see!”

He approaches, smiling, and shakes my hand. “Lucas! Good to see you. You here to help out with the walls?”

“Yeah, actually. I see you’ve gathered a ton of metal.” Off to the side, there’s a large pile of scrap metal that’s being magically shaped into supports for the walls.

“Yeah, we send out collection parties every once in a while to restock. Some mages have this one Perk that lets them create metal out of nothing though.”

“Oh, yeah, Elemental Dominion. I have a fusion Perk that has that in it.” Holding my hand up, I generate a small orb of iron, frowning internally as I recall how expensive it is to create metal.

“Well, we could certainly use your help in restructuring this metal for supports, think you can do it?”

“Sure thing, I can even enchant the supports when I finish them to make them extra sturdy.”

“Enchanting, eh? I’ve seen a few people with those silver books and their fancy pens. I prefer the more direct methods myself.” He smirks and hefts his battleax onto his shoulder.

“I have a Perk, I don’t even need the inscriber. Oh, and by the way, who’s… organizing all of this?” Gesturing around me, I imply the city as a whole.

“Ah, well, fortunately, a good portion of Portland’s police force survived. They have a bunch of Skills and Perks to help keep the peace here. Some people are trying to form a council of sorts, but it’s a slow process. There are some groups that want you and your friends on it.”

“I’m only 22, I think I’ll leave the government work to others more suited to the job. I’m happy to defend the city, not run it.”

He laughs at that. “Maybe when you’re older then. I’ll have to let them know you’re not interested.”

“Yeah, the girl in the witch outfit, Cassandra, might be though. She’s… crazy organized.”

“Ah, yes. She’s been around plenty. Her candies are far better tasting than potions. She’s healed some people after monster attacks. I think she’d make a good council member. I’ll ask her next time I see her.”

“Sounds good to me. Oh, if you wanna let people know. I’m starting a shop with the other… heroes... “ the term feels strange to say myself “so I just wanted to let you know that once it’s all set, we should have some cool supplies.”

Taking the time to explain my plans, such as making affordable weaponry and supplies for the general public, he nods. “That sounds great. Aside from the Shop, no one has any use for the coins we get from monsters. Maybe I’ll have to stop by and purchase something.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty excited to start. It’s gonna take some time to get everything together for the grand opening though.”

“I’ll make sure to get people excited about it.” He pats me on the back. “Now, you have some metal shaping to do.”

“That I do.” Chuckling, I walk over to the person coordinating that effort and spend the rest of the night until I head home to sleep shaping metal into supports and enchanting it to be durable and defensive.

It’s a lot of repetitive processes and I end up using Rapid Inscription to speed up production, the safety of the city comes first after all, so I don’t gain any levels by the end of the night.

Colt arrives home a few minutes after me, looking slightly pale.

“You end up using too much Wild Magick?”

He nods, sitting down on the bed looking haggard. “It’s regenerating. I’ll be fine. I built like, ten houses on my own. Small ones, just enough for single families. There’s gonna be a lot of similar-looking houses made of evergleam firs. I had to teach the families Florakinesis so they can turn off the lights.”

My own mana pool is fairly empty, but regenerating quickly with the boost from 500 Attunement. “Well, nothing wrong with making the same house over and over as long as it’s functional.”

“True. I’m exhausted now. Oh, I learned a new Skill from Pasivier though. He’s started to teach me ‘practical spells’. Watch this, just… focus on allowing me to do it.” He holds up a hand to my mouth. “Clean.”

Letting the magic happen, I feel a swirl of cool, refreshing energy flow through my mouth. Running my tongue over my teeth, they feel completely clean, as if I just brushed them.

“Okay, I totally get why he taught you that. Think you could teach me?”

“Sure. It’s an intent-based spell, so whatever you focus it on, it will clean it. It kind of works like the deconstruction runes we use to dispose of stuff, just with a refreshment spell mixed in.”

He spends the next few minutes explaining the runic setup of the Skill and showing me several demonstrations of it. Finally, after a few failed attempts, I get it right.

Mana flows over the shirt I destroyed while practicing magic and the dirt, sweat, and ashes clean off of it.

Congratulations Lucas Creo! For properly performing the correct runic setup and mana flows, you have gained the Skill: Clean!

“Well, the name is certainly simple. I’ve focused so much on elemental magic I forgot there are so many other options.”

Colt shrugs. “Same here, honestly. Pasivier says life gets a lot easier when you can do stuff like this though. Hmm, do we even need that washing machine anymore? Clean just seems like a more efficient solution.”

“Good point. Oh well, it was good enchantment practice for me. You know any other practical spells yet?”

“Nah, we just started. He said he’s teaching me Telekinesis tomorrow though!” He seems excited at the prospect.

“Oooh, no more lifting things inefficiently with Aeromancy then.”

“Mhm. Anyway, I’m exhausted so I’m just gonna…” He lays back on the bed, falling asleep instantly.

Cuddling up to him, I fall asleep quickly as well.

Waking up, I cast Clean on myself, happy to see I can do it for my entire body. It feels like I’m fresh out of the shower. Finishing other extraneous… duties… I head downstairs and find Colt in the alchemy room.

He’s just finishing putting the growth crystal into the soil for the pranaleaf. The soil glows slightly and the leaves of the plant stand up a little straighter.

“That looks like it’s working.”

Colt turns around, floating the dirt off his hands with some Geomancy. “Yeah, we should have enough soon to start making some potions. Oh, also, I don’t have Refining Touch, think you could convert these into aspect crystals for me?” He offers me samples of all the different plants he’s grown so far.

“I don’t mind at all. We need to feed the slimes though so I’ll convert them while we walk.”

Doing just that, we arrive at the slime pens and I take a few moments to finish converting the aspects, shifting my visualizations for each one to give it the highest quality I can manage.

Handing them all back to Colt, he stores them away and we turn to address the slimes. “Oh my.”

There are several new eggs in both the pens, totaling five more in all. Four are neutral eggs but the fifth is a purple egg. Moving over to the pens excitedly, Colt and I name all of the new slimes, causing the eggs to hatch.

Slime Pen reaching capacity, would you like to upgrade to Tier 2 for 50 Glints? Yes/No

Colt and I look at each other. “Here, I know you’ve spent a lot already, I’ll cover this one.”

Colt taps the “Yes” option and the cage shimmers with light before expanding across the floor. There’s a new panel with some kind of slot on it in the pen.

Colt turns to the other pen and selects yes to upgrade that one as well. Both pens are far more spacious now and easily fit the 6 slimes we have in each pen.

Checking out the new slot, I find that it’s a feeding system. We can use magic to attune neutral food pellets here to different elements and it even has an auto-feed system.

Testing it, I put a neutral pellet inside the attunement chamber. Considering for a moment, I send a wave of Hydromancy mana into the slot. It disappears into motes of light that settle inside the food pellet, shifting it to a clear, light cerulean.

Taking it out. I offer it to a one of the slimes Colt named. Noting its name, I raise an eyebrow at him. “Really, Kane?”

He laughs, just barely blushing. “Yeah, these eggs were somehow kinda stuck together. I named the one on the left Heru and this one is Kane, kinda like a hurricane, except also like my last name.”

“...Okay, that’s pretty cute. This water food is probably perfect for it then. Attune one of these pellets with wind. We’ll give it to Heru.” Kane takes the water pellet in what I assume is a happy jiggle.

It’s body shifts for a moment before it takes on a more liquid form than it was moments before. Producing some water with Hydromancy, I feed it more. Kane happily slurps up the water, growing slightly in size before sloughing off some water-slime.

Attaching a bottle to the pen, it collects the slime into it, filling to about one-third of capacity. That collection reminds me, and I check the bottles on the other pen and find that each is full of red and blue slime.

Feeding both Mr. Squishels and Jello, more slime collects in other bottles I had attached that have a little excess healing and mana restoration slime in them.

Turning to the new purple slime I named Cuddles, I offer it both prana and mana. It sucks up both, jiggling happily as it does. It sloughs off some purple slime once I overfeed it, which collects in another bottle.

The last two slimes I feed are the new ones that I leave neutral for now, Rex and Randy. We end up gathering some neutral slime in a bottle as well, enough to fill it by the end. Examining the three slime bottles, the results are what I expected but still interesting.

Red Slime Bottle

Quality: Low

Traits: Healing

Description: Slime from a red slime. This slime has innate healing properties on its own but is commonly used in alchemy to enhance healing potions.

Blue Slime Bottle

Quality: Low

Traits: Mana Restoration

Description: Slime from a blue slime. This slime has innate mana restoration properties on its own but is commonly used in alchemy to enhance mana potions.

Gray Slime Bottle

Quality: Low

Traits: Neutral

Description: Slime from a gray slime. This slime has no innate properties of its own but can be used to increase dosages of potions.

‘Nice, this is just like those slime chunks from forever ago. I should be able to make a few more potions using this. I wonder if it still being viscous rather than hardened will increase the effectiveness.’

“So, Colt, what are your plans for today?” Dusting off my knees, I stand up and smile at him.

“Well, Pasivier is gonna show me Telekinesis, and I forgot to say earlier but I think he’s gonna show me some kind of Repair spell too. I think it only works on non-magical things, but it should be useful anyway. Oh, and he said him and Ilmarinen have almost fleshed out their plans for Fate training. So far, us just leveling our Talents is supposed to be good training on its own.”

“Hm, I’m excited then, I think. I’m gonna spend today doing some more alchemy. Don’t tell Ilmarinen, but I need a break from blacksmithing.”

“Ye need a break from what, lad?”

‘Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.’