Select a feat as your reward. Swift Builder Your construction work is 1/4 faster. Schematic Glyph Create a symbolic, wordless drawing that conveys detailed instructions regarding a machine. Blastproof Devices you create resist sudden, violent self-destruction. (Unlocked by surviving an exploding Engineer device.) Laminar Flow Smooth or roughen the flow of fluids. (Unlocked by building a device relying on fluid flow.)

Four choices again. Speed was always helpful, and his efforts at teaching made the Glyph power tempting; he'd seen it before. The other two were something new, more explicitly reacting to things he'd done. Blastproof was a defense to shore up his rickety devices, while Laminar Flow was about making them more capable.

Tricky. He believed he had speed and training adequately covered without special powers. Squeezing any more performance or safety into a device would be great... but what kind of device? For him, fluid flow referenced the wings of an airplane, not even every type of aircraft he'd built. Selen could probably do some kind of chemical mixer using that power. Vonn didn't feel he understood aerodynamics well enough to take full advantage of this one, but he might learn later. Did smooth flow matter much for a crude, low-speed plane, for instance?

What settled the choice in favor of Blastproof was the realization that he could use it for safety and performance. He finalized the decision along with spending those skill points he'd planned on for raising Learning. The silver light of the System's blessings raised him to hover for a long moment before setting him back on his feet, grinning.

He ran out making enough noise to annoy the monks, and headed straight for the Company building, barely remembering to take his textbook along.

"Got it?" asked Birb, sleepily setting tools up for the day.

"Engineer 6!" Vonn said.

Birb whistled. "You're probably one of the best in the whole kingdom, now."

"I just have to prove it to everybody but the System." Vonn's tail flicked as he went to the chalkboard. "You're going to like this..."

#

The System now rated him like so, as of the spring of his second year:

Vonn, Vulin Male

Engineer 6, Mage 3

Physical: Agility 2, Toughness 2

Mental: Learning 5, Wits 2, Sanity 1

Social: Charm 1, Will 1

Feats: Balance, Harmonious Join, Freezing Strike, Crystal Integration, Well of Energy, Enchanter, Chief Engineer, Blastproof

Skills: Woodcutting (Strength), Candle-Making (Agility), Dodge (Agility), Flight (Agility), Staff (Agility), Smithing (Agility), Woodworking (Agility), Endure Heat (Toughness), Endure Wounds 2 (Toughness), Hiking (Toughness), Swimming (Toughness), Clockwork (Learning), Enchanting (Learning), Caster Support (Wits), Dungeoneering (Wits), Gun (Wits), Traps (Wits), Consolation (Sanity), Music (Charm), Storytelling (Charm), Teaching (Charm), Geomancy (Senses), Meditation (Will)

Health (Toughness + Will): 55/55

Mana (Sanity + Will): 45/45

Stamina (Toughness + Sanity): 55/55

The team made their visits to the temple one by one, all coming back successful. He now had more competent friends to celebrate with, all excited by new edges for making their work better.

Tazo was now a Mage 5 and still Engineer 3. She came back whirling her new staff around until she accidentally whacked Ashfall with it, earning a yelp and a glare. She'd built the thing with coaching from Mom and advice from Ralator himself, but it was her own work. The square-carved wooden rod was an earthshaper's staff.

The dungeon had inspired it. A typical town might have a few Mages or specialist Geomancers around level 5, who could make roads in one way or another. Yet there weren't actually very good roads in most places. Besides the bias toward river traffic, until you hit more rarely-seen levels most spells had limitations like only duplicating existing types of stone. A wizard could make a flat path between villages, sure, but it took funding to keep the weeds clear and bring in the right types of material and handle repairs. Tazo had just made a tool to make that kind of spell easier. And because the dungeon had spread large areas of hard, dark rocky ground, she had a sort of focus that let her extend roadways of the same substance out from there. She would basically be paying her taxes this year by walking around improving the dirt paths. Including a new runway.

Another limitation was that magic didn't let people handwave away problems of surveying and drainage. Rare was the Mage who even had a specific feat to help with that. So, Tazo now had one along with the staff: a power called the Royal Road, helping her to adjust any stone-shaping more precisely along the ground. With her actual knowledge to back up the magic, she could be very useful with this one power alone.

Vonn listened to her boasting about it and congratulated her; it was exactly what she'd been hoping to earn. At first he'd wondered why, since she wasn't angling for a full-time job as a road builder. But like him, she'd been thinking about the less obvious applications. Buildings and smelters and walls needed strong foundations, too. So she wasn't simply following him at engineering.

Soon, the talk soon turned to what he and Birb were working out on the board. Tazo asked, "What's hydrogen?"

Selen had isolated it whole seasons ago by the simple method of a lightning spell, to test how well this world's physics matched Earth's. Vonn explained, "The efficiency of our engines depends on the type of gas in them. If we replace the air with this stuff, they'll produce more power. The drawbacks of it include the fact that it explodes, which I now have a specific counter to, and the fact that it tends to leak out or damage the container. Which I also counter somewhat with that Well of Energy effect that makes my energy containers more stable." He tapped his claws together. "We're still relying on special Engineer tricks, but not on antigrav effects we don't understand at all."

Tazo frowned. "But why does hydrogen help?"

Vonn opened his mouth, but paused. "I actually don't fully understand this. I think it involves how this gas changes temperature easily when it absorbs or sheds energy. The 'specific heat'."

One of the apprentices overheard. "Is this one of your strange vision things?"

"Unfortunately, yes. I haven't fully earned this bit of knowledge." His ear linings burned. "So we're going to take advantage of it, but we'll measure the effects carefully and publish the results so others can follow up. And I should also mention that we can fill balloons with hydrogen too, but that's such a firetrap that I'm not eager to try it there yet."

Birb waved one wing. "What's important is, we can get better engines now. Good enough for planes again, or for better airboats."