For the remainder of the way, they talked about all the other experiences Nik had had so far. Leaving the more traumatic stuff rather vague. Instead informing them about what little he knew concerning skills and stats. That there was an entirely new resource pool he didn’t have access to came as a surprise to Nik. He remembered a mention about energies, but for some reason, it illuded him that people would have access to them directly. Mana, Stamina, and Health just seemed so right to him.

The rest had postulated then that it was most likely a quality of your individuum or randomly assigned by the system. The name Focus of the newly discovered pool had been vague, similarly to mana – which admittedly hadn’t been odd for Nik – though not as bad. The corresponding stats, Concentration, and Clarity seemed rather self-evident in effect, even though nobody had any skills that made usage of the pool just yet. Though that might change soon by what Vera had shared.

As the topics circled they eventually ended up at race skills once again.

“No, it doesn’t look like that is right. I’m level four and I’ve two empty race skill slots. It’s obviously too early to say, but I’d assume that we get one every other level starting at level one. Do you know why we get less than you, Nik?” Timothy inquired.

“No clue, it just says {Extraterrestrial Human} has gained a level and unlocked a new skill slot each time I get a deed.”

“Huh, mine says {Frontier Human}, I think the other’s as well. Is there anything else different between the races?” Timothy asked.

“Ha, I am just stumbling wherever the road leads me. I have literally zero clue what’s going on.”

They discovered that Nik’s race gave him one additional stat point before level eleven, after which Nik’s gain had continuously risen something, the others hoped for as well. The difference wasn’t large, but it could potentially be more significant at a later point in time.

Eventually, after having crossed the small creek both Timothy and Vera got sick of talking about the system. Timothy was primarily annoyed by the vagueness of the system, whereas Vera didn’t like the overall implications and would prefer to talk about other seemingly more relevant items like shelter and food.

They talked a bit about home and what was going on, how people had reacted to Nik’s disappearance. Max postulated that nobody would end up noticing their disappearance for a bit. Joking a bit about the insignificance of life until he was interrupted by Timothy.

“Anything else on anybody’s mind. Vera, you’ve been rather quiet recently. Is there anything on your mind that concerns you?” the man asked. Nik hadn’t noticed the quiet woman being disturbed previously, sending more than a cursory glance her way changed that. Her eyes glistened in the dwindling sunlight.

After some obvious hesitation, the woman seemingly made up her mind and answered.

“I have a daughter, and I want to go back to her. Don’t you want to see your families as well?”

Nik stood still for a moment digesting the news with a horrified expression on his face. She is handling this surprisingly well, don’t know how I would have reacted in her place. But my mother...

“Holy Shit. I’m so sorry this happened to you. I’m sure I’m not the only one who will do his best to figure out if there is a way to get you back to your daughter. Is anyone taking care of her right now?” Max said, contesting with Timothy who had just begun talking as well. “You want a hug?”

To Nik’s surprise, the woman took the offer and seemingly relaxed a bit.

Eventually, Max offered to try his best to find a way for her to get reunited with her daughter. Everyone had agreed with Max’s offer to give their best, yet there was an implied statement in there as well. They wanted to get her home, not home themselves.

The sun was almost behind the horizon as they arrived at Nik’s smithing cave. They breathed the fire back to life, enjoying some of the berries passed around by Nik, which he was certain weren’t poisonous. He wasn’t so sure about mana and stamina berries, so he would keep them for himself for now.

“So how have you been passing time. Just snacking on berries and relaxing?” Max asked as the conversation slowly drifted away from relevancy. “And are you seriously telling me you’ve never tried just like… you know… pushing mana into metal. If someone were to tell this story… I swear…” He tore his hair, lacking words to properly express his frustration.

Nik grinned sheepishly.

“We should definitely try that tomorrow. And we need to build something proper to sleep in or find other people. You should totally make us…” Max began, getting excited.

“Calm down kid. We can talk about all that tomorrow. It might be best if Nik were to show us where he has been sleeping all this time and we can worry about more stuff later. I think we should first consider whether we all should take [Digestive Herbology]. It unlocked for me,” stated Timothy.

“I really don’t know. There are only two types of berries I have found that refill pools. The remaining berry descriptions were less insightful, or simply have no application that would work with the skill. I ate one yesterday that gave me a bit of a stomach ache, even though I have the skill,” Nik informed the group. “I mean there could be a chance that there are focus berries, but non for health.”

“Also, my sleeping place is probably not safe for this many people… It’s on a tree, in… hmm… I guess it is a hammock made from vines. But it has been sagging a lot recently.”

“No unnecessary risks kid. We can just gather a bit of bedding and sleep in the cave, we should fit if we reshuffle some of your stored stuff. We can worry about the rest tomorrow. We will set up a watch, and make sure that everyone gets at least some sleep.”

“I don’t think that is needed. I have not been attacked here for the last week or…” Nik paused then for a moment. Memories of a huge silhouette passing overhead, casting the sky into darkness filled his mind. “Well, maybe it is not such a bad idea.”

Timothy returned a questioning look but noticed quickly that Nik was not going to elaborate on that.

Together they gathered many sticks, twigs, and leaves in the last remaining sunlight and placed them down in the cave to approximate some bedding.

“We’ll need to figure something out for better shelter or blankets tomorrow. We should be fine sleeping in the cold for tonight, but it wouldn’t be smart to do that repeatedly,” Timothy said as they were laying down.

Nik had offered to take the first watch and after being given the wristwatch Timothy had carried decided he would try and see if he could keep it up for most of the night, or at least a good part. The former officer had informed him that it seemed like days were at least three hours longer than what they were on earth, so something similar might be true for night as well, depending on the axis of rotation and such. Now at midnight – according to the watch – he would have to wait a long while until the sun would rise again. Maybe he’d try and do some metal refining meanwhile.

Might as well try infusing mana into metal as soon as possible.

He did a bit of experimentation, asking the others whether his pulverizing of metal-rich stone would be of an acceptable loudness, and began hammering away after grudging acceptance.

Meanwhile, he began stoking a fire in his bloomery – which had seen better days. He had known that it had been of a shoddy construction but would have liked it if it survived a bit longer. As things looked now it wouldn’t survive another two blooming processes.

Instead of using rocks for pulverization as last time, he had the help of his hammer to reduce the size more efficiently. His improved grip, [Lesser Hammer Strike], and the smooth surface of the hammer allowed for much smoother operations. He even managed to only hit one of his fingers once, when he had shattered a stone with a bit too much force.

He was interrupted twice, scuttling in the trees made him pause but he was never attacked. That was a worrying development. Monsters had been sparse and after an initial few sightings, he hadn’t seen any besides the bergams further up the mountain.

As the rhythmic sound of hammering stopped, he glanced at the watch.

Just a bit under an hour for hmm, let’s say around 50 kgs of iron dust. He glanced around the open area, looking for anything else that might need some hitting, and found a target as a snore came from the cave.

Oh, boy. One of them is snoring. Probably not Max right? He doesn’t as far as I know, good thing or I’d have never slept a single night in college. Might as well power through the night if this keeps going.

Refocusing on the task at hand he began putting smashed stone and charcoal into the bloomery, filling it up more than he had on previous occasions, just to see if that would change anything. He had hopes that it would accelerate the overall time the melting took.

His piston – contrary to the bloomery – was still in good shape just not connected to the bloomery. With a bit of scraping on the ground, he turned the piston and connected the reeds to the bloomery intake.

He had been slacking a bit the last time while pumping air, something he would like to remedy this time. He also made sure to occasionally drain slag from the clay door at the bottom. He had some suspicions that a lack of doing so had reduced the quality of his previous bloom.

For the next five hours he used one hand on the piston to keep the airflow going, the other on the bloomery. The idea itself was so simple, he was a bit stifled he hadn’t come up with it himself. [Internal Energy Manipulation] could only do so much, yet it was enough for some external workings. His own prowess in getting mana to do what he wanted wasn’t terrible and though he tried enticing the mana to figure out what would happen if the heat increased even further within the bloomery.

He found the entire concept still rather odd. It made no sense that a type of energy would react that way to mental commands. It implied some things he wasn’t entirely comfortable with. Especially in the light of seeing what had happened to the mana splinters he had created hours before.

Am I killing sentient energy? It is probably stupid to think that. Maybe. Well, he hoped that it was baseless and untrue. The later idea was that it might be something else. That his brain or subconsciousness might be controlling the flow somehow. But that didn’t feel right either. Then again, nothing in his material science lecture had made sense either once they got started with quantum effects, yet it was an accepted and proven theory.

Regardless of theory his trial and error and a frankly ungodly amount of mana berries – he was out in fact – was all it took to unlock a new skill.

New Class-skill unlocked.

[Lesser Heat Control] [Locked] – Influence heat slightly at the expense of mana

Hmm. I expected something else. He had been hoping for a metal manipulation skill, which in hindsight was probably stupid when he tried to get the furnace to heat up. Additionally, the skill seemed to be rather weak and slightly didn’t bode well for any skill. But he was also missing a frame of reference here so maybe it wasn't bad. What was slightly in the terms of a roaring fire, or a hammered ingot, five kelvin or a hundred could both fit that.

It took a bit longer for the charcoal to burn but Nik didn’t mind as he contemplated his new potential skill.

Depending on how things went in the near future he would take the skill, that was if he couldn’t get his hands on better magic, heat magic was still cool magic after all.

What he wanted to get in one of his two remaining class skill slots was [Solidify Energy]. He had unlocked the skill when testing a couple of days ago but wasn’t allowed to learn it due to his soul strength, an endless tease, and simply because he couldn’t take it yet he wanted it.

And he was doing a lot of assumptions, but it seemed like the sort of skill he needed to change – if that was possible – his class to something more magical.

He had theorized with Max earlier, that since there was a race evolution beginning at level 10, the same might be true for his class. He hadn’t received a prompt on any information on his race when it came to that, so he doubted there would be one for his class either, especially since they didn’t have an initial choice in picking a class.

Heat Control would be a decent tradeoff should he still not be able to get [Solidify Energy] at the end of level nine. The others – only Max to be precise – had complained about not getting a single point of experience once they had been together, he had been glad about that. Even more, experience would not be something he wanted until he had increased his soul strength.

With a lot of effort and a broken clay door, he opened the bottom of the bloomery and pulled out a new and larger than the previous piece from the bloomery with his wooden tongs.

Bloom – 13.2 kg, 93% purity, medium-carbon iron alloy.

Durability – Minor, Hardness – Minor, Toughness – Low, Elasticity – Low, Brittleness – Minor

Maybe my new minions can help me get some better stuff soon. He chuckled at the thought, it is good to no longer be alone.