Linus had finally rolled the last stone sphere he would need for his future garden inside the outpost gates and flopped on the ground next to the group of them as Hanna continued to stare at him in bewilderment.

“Are you okay? Can I close the gate yet?”

“Yes and yes.” By the time he pulled himself to sit up the gate was closed and Hanna once again staring at him.

“What are you doing with all those balls?” She asked once the eye contact began to get awkward.

“I’m gardening.” Linus snippily replied.

“Doesn’t look like any gardening I’ve ever seen. Usually there’s more plants and less stones.”

“It’s a work in progress…”

“Clearly.” Hanna responded with a smirk, Linus was ready to remind her who was running this outpost when she instantly became his favorite person here, other than Archie of course. “Do you want help moving them somewhere that is not blocking the gate?”

"Absolutely," replied Linus with a grin. In next to no time all the stone spheres were rolled behind the crafting hall, approximately in the right place for the garden beds he had planned out. To his surprise Hanna hung around and continued watching as he moved onto the next step of building the beds. Despite her unflinching gaze she remained silent while he peeled thin slabs off of the rocks to form the walls of each bed. The work was straight forward on the edge of tedious and left him fairly drained.

For the next step he needed to figure out how to decompress the stone back into soil. He’d never bothered to actually do this before and was a bit stumped. Compressing into stone was pretty straightforward, take something and keep squeezing it with [Basic Earth Manipulation] until it was as small as he could make it. Breaking off a fist sized hunk of rock he tried using his skill to apply a vacuum around it, pulling in all directions away from the surface, to no effect. Then he started pulling off small pieces bit by bit, only succeeded in making tiny pebbles instead of soil. It wasn’t until he wrapped a vacuum around one of the tiny pieces and applied as much force as possible that it reverted into a small handful of soil.

Clearly his plan was possible but it would be much easier to accomplish with a higher skill level. Unfortunately he was all out of class slots and didn’t see how he could incorporate it into any of his existing classes or upcoming evolutions while keeping its functionality.

"This is going to take awhile and be extremely boring for both me and spectators." He warned Hanna.

"I don't mind, it's interesting seeing someone do magic for once."

Linus just shrugged before turning back to the task at hand, it was going to be a damn long day. The hours slowly trudged by as he converted tiny pebble after tiny pebble back into soil and gradually filled up the stone garden beds he'd raised earlier.

At first him and Hanna only exchanged a few words whenever he was taking a break from the arduous task. Then as she got more comfortable with him and he became familiar with the decompressing technique their conversations grew longer and more in depth.

She expressed interest in magic and told him how it had always been her dream but had never been able to figure it out or afford a teacher, how she'd grown up poor in the woods and was glad her classes were enough to get her a decent, reliable job with the military. She spoke about what the outpost used to be like fully staffed and the different forts she'd been posted at during her tenure.

Linus mostly complained. After all he was looking to pass the time and alleviate the mind numbing nature of this task, not make friends. Still it’d be nice to have someone to talk to other than Archie and Luke…

After several hours and numerous breaks Linus was only done filling half of the 4 stone beds with dirt. Thankfully it was finally lunch time and he could justify taking a longer break. He and Hanna made their way over to the dining hall and started poking around the kitchen to see what was available. It quickly became apparent to both himself and Hanna that he didn’t know the first thing about food preparation.

“We usually make ourselves sandwiches from whatever leftover bread we have, dried meat and cheese.” Hanna helpfully suggested, pulling out extra for Linus.

“Sounds good.” He responded, smiling at the helpful woman while carefully copying her. Sandwiches made, they sat down at one of the tables to relax and enjoy their lunch. A minute after Linus started to eat his sandwich he stopped and opened the roll it was up, exposing the meat and cheese.

"These are normally better warm aren't they?" He turned and asked Hanna.

"Some people prefer them that way. Melted cheese is always delicious and toasting it can help with the older bread but I didn't feel like wasting all the time to get a fire going just for lunch."

"Makes sense. I'm going to try something."

Linus held his hand over his opened sandwich and focused on generating hot energy, imagining flames streaming from his hand and licking his sandwich. He poured more and more energy without any success. While he expected it to be harder to acquire than [Basic Earth Manipulation] it should still be fairly easy.

He wasted a few more minutes trying to adjust his imagery and feel without success until he realized his mistake, he was trying to manipulate what wasn't there.

"Do you happen to have any matches or a sparkmaker on you?" He sheepishly asked Hanna.

"Yeah, where do you want the sparks?" She asked, looking around.

"Anywhere nearby is fine.” Hanna gave him an odd look and a shrug before clicking her sparker on the ground next to the table.

Once more Linus tried directing flames to lick over his sandwich but this time he pulled from the sparks. It took significantly more energy than he expected but this time it worked. A weak wave of flames bathed his meal, held in place by his will and a steady stream of energy until the cheese started to melt and the bread heavily toasted. As soon as he stopped the notification he had been trying for popped up.

New Skill Available: [Basic Fire Manipulation]

Accept | Decline

He happily accepted before turning to Hanna.

“Want me to toast yours too?” She was still staring at his sandwich with a shocked look on her face but quickly nodded in agreement.

“Need more sparks?”

“Yes please.” A few minutes later her sandwich had also been toasted and Linus was relieved to find it was much easier with the skill though more energy intensive than he would’ve expected. As they enjoyed their hot lunch Hanna worked up the courage before finally blurting out what was on her mind.

“Did you really just pick up a mage skill in order to toast your sandwich? I’ve never seen anyone pick up a skill that quickly or that casually? Does it even fit in your overall build?” Linus took a minute to finish his most recent bite before responding.

“No, I didn't pick it up just to toast my sandwich. Since the alchemy equipment here is practically nonexistent I’m going to try to make some of my own. I’ll probably need [Basic Fire Manipulation] for both that and actually practicing alchemy since I don’t think I’ll be able to recreate the burners I’m used to and working over an uncontrolled flame will be asking for failures and complications. As for the speed, I’ve previously acquired multiple similar skills so it was a bit of a cheat on my part.

I really don’t have a well planned out build if I’m being honest, to the great disappointment of my father. I’ve got a class forced on me by him and then another two I took for practical purposes since this whole endeavor started. The rest were more hobby or lifestyle improvement than anything directed.” Linus trailed off as he noticed the look on Hanna’s face.

“What?” He asked.

“I’ve just never met someone who approached their classes so casually. No agonizing over how they’ll interact and support each other or combine down the line. Heck people probably put in more thought into their non-class skills than you do your entire build.” At that Linus at least had the decency to blush.

“I mean you can always drop non-class skills and at least I enjoy the classes I picked undirected.”

“Sure you can in theory but between the pain of the process and having an unnecessarily unmaxed skill people almost never do it. I bet you are one of those people that walks around with class skill slots open too.” Linus briefly thought of the open slots under [Life Mage] and [Noble Progeny] before deciding it time to change to the direction of this conversation.

“So since you’ve spent so much time planning this out, what direction are you trying to go with your build?”

“Well obviously my first class is a variation on the standard [Ranger] class, I actually managed to branch out to it from a farming related class. Then I’ve got a [Tailor] class, it was helpful to be able to make our own clothing and not have to ship the wool we produced elsewhere. Finally I’ve got a [Leatherworker] class, it pairs well with all the creatures I take down as a [Ranger]. My goal is to combine the two crafting classes together into a light armor creating class that will be useful to my main class. Then I’ll pick up either a support style class or a magic focused one if I can manage to learn any of the needed skills. If I manage to advance to Tier 4 with my main class I’m working toward an animal companion one.”

“Do you want to learn one?”

“One what?”

“A magic skill. I know several and the basics for multiple more. I recommend [Mana Manipulation] since that’s a foundational skill and makes it easier to get a lot of the other ones but if you’d prefer a more specific one I’ll help if I can.”

“Are you serious? Because if you aren’t…”

“Of course.”

“Then yes absolutely. When?”

“No time like the present.”