I need volunteers to test. Names and requirements mean so little compared to effects. Quality levels matter? Levels matter? How much?

Ernesto Gomez, notes (recovered)

Yesterday’s production had been all sorts of specialization sets, as Johanna had expected. She’d seen a lot of different, newer specializations with lots of names, but the parchments all followed the same model, a four-fold Level, quality, specialization, and Talent, followed by five combinations of talents and qualities. The starting quality was not always the same, even for the same specialization, but each set covered the same six-quality spread. A pair of scavengers had helped put those sets in one of the wagons. They already had a few crates of food that were empty, and they were intended to store the parchments or whatever books Gomez wanted for his Academic library if there was room.

The activity was not tiresome – the strange cold sensation was not painful nor tiring – but she could already see how it would be boring. Based on the time to get to Washington and the expected slightly faster return, they had around two weeks of that, unless they filled the wagons before. She doubted it – the parchments were thinner than their strength suggested, and they had lots of room.

Petra and about half of the expedition had gone out immediately after breakfast. They intended to scout the ruins of Washington, find if there were dangers, and more importantly, check for Artifacts, starting with the mana plume Johanna had spotted and ignored yesterday. As no one else had Mana Sight, Petra would be the one leading them to the potential riches of the ruined Ancient capital.

It was a bit strange to see the former bartender turned Earth Shaper go at it solo – well, not entirely solo – but the four of them were needed at the Library of Congress, and that was not something they could delegate.

She sighed and picked the first book. She expected a new build, but, once again, the Ancient surprised her. The parchment was just a single Talent, called Abomination. She put it aside, passed the book to Tom, and got an almost-destroyed one handed by Laura and converted another single Talent, Accelerated. Then Acting Up. Active Armor. She was going to pick a new book when she stopped, realizing what the names looked like. She looked up at Gomez who was watching carefully.

“It’s a catalog,” he said.

“You’re sure?”

He pointed to her set.

“You’re making ‘A’ Talents. In alphabetical order. Mr. Milton has already four ‘B’. Ballistic Curve, Base Mass, Base Size, Batter. Mr. Donnal is making ‘C’s. And Mrs. Donnal is doing the ‘D’ list.”

“All the Talents that exist,” she realized.

“Probably. That one’s going to be so good…”

There was a lull in conversion. For almost a minute, none of the four could convert more books into parchments, and Johanna wondered if the Ancient did suffer from mana limitations too, and had exhausted his capacity for the day. If that were the case, then conversion would take a longer time, and they would probably have to carry more books and fewer parchments back. Although they’d made a good start yesterday.

But then cold seeped, and blue lines sprang again above the book under her hand, and she realized the Ancient was simply marking time. Zoom had been the last Talent of the catalog.

The sets of parchments that came out were more varied. Tom and Peter produced “beginner sets”, as Johanna quickly called them. A Level plus specialization, then each parchment included a Level, quality, and Talent, culminating with a Level, a different specialization, and the cycle started again. The big difference was that they were making about ten Talents per set instead of the usual six. Whereas she and Laura were producing qualities and Talents without associated Levels and started with what sounded like more advanced specializations, with no last specialization. Whenever the books were too thin, a simple Level or quality – or usually both – dropped instead, and that was it for that book.

Unsure if these were merely filler or associated with the Talents that came next, those parchments were carefully placed along the rest of each set.

Seeing as there were no notable set of parchments produced, Ernesto Gomez retreated to a reading table moved out of the Library, with strong instructions to call him immediately if it looked like the pattern changed.

The slow conversion of books into parchments continued. Miles stopped by to check on them.

“How is it going?”

“Honestly? Boring. I mean, okay, we’re making all kinds of weird-sounding Talents. Like this one,” she said, pointing to the Succor parchment she’d just made for a Fast Fixer set.

“What it’s for?”

“It’s one of Laura’s. Based on the name, it’s what she uses to teleport to someone wounded.”

“It must be a bit frustrating to see all those Talents.”

“Most of them, we don’t even know what they do. Something like Split Stone sounds obvious. But Domain of the Forest? What does that even mean?”

“Sounds like it’s for Ulrich one day,” Miles smiled.

“You’re right, I made it as part of a Wood Shaper set.”

At that moment, the cook came over, asking if they were ready for lunch, and Johanna realized she was getting tired of sitting there. She looked at the rest, and all nodded in unison. The last three hours had flown like the wind.

The afternoon session began differently. She did not start with the usual specialization, making directly a Talent triptych instead. Level, Strength, Slam. Tom, she checked, had produced a Level/Close Wounds/Empathy/Fixer similar to what he’d done before.

Johanna shrugged as she picked up the book handed by Peter.

Level, Mana Sight. Then, Level and Gauge Stamina. Then another simple skill. She looked curiously at Tom, but it looked like he was still making a set of Fixer Talents similar to the one they’d done this morning. Both Laura and Peter’s pile were also similar, a Water Shaper set and a Battler.

“Weird? No specialization? And mixing Mana and Stamina?” Gomez noted.

Level, Empathy, Bestowal.

“It’s a mix of whatever? What it’s for?” she wondered.

Then surprisingly, Level, Authority, and nothing else. Gomez looked at the book’s spine, and she gauged its thickness.

“Seems plenty. No Talent?”

The next scroll was Level, Authority, and Flame Handing, she noted. Then she got another simple Level, Authority, and then a Level, Agility, Tremor. A few parchments later, she had to wait for two basics until she got a parchment with a Talent.

Level/Authority, Level/Perception, Empathy/Slow Poison increased her confusion.

“I think I know,” Gomez said.

“Know what?” she asked.

“Requirements. We just got a full list of all Talents this morning. Your patron is now listing levels and qualities that you probably need with those Talents.”

“It’s not in alphabetical order… the number of requirements?” she wondered.

“Yes. That’s why you got Flame Handling and Mana Sight first as Talents. They required one or two Levels only…”

She looked in wonder at her latest.

“And he’s considerate. The rest seem to make some basic sets, but he only dumps the information through you. That makes it easier to take notes.”

He nodded politely, and she realized he was thanking the Ancient, not her.

“Thanks a lot.”

Moore might have had a memory that worked a lot better than before he died, but keeping track of four distinct lists was hard. Using letter-based lists proved complicated enough. Thankfully, with the slowdown, he could peek at what he’d just done before building a new Settings scroll.

He suspected if he still had an organic brain, he’d probably have gotten a headache juggling four tracks in parallel. Doing it just through Johanna made it a lot easier to keep track of what he was doing.

At least, the interface was consistent in its ordering when sorted by rank, even if it wasn’t alphabetical within the same one.

“It’s getting impressive,” Gomez said as Johanna kept churning out more and more basic parchments. “Thankfully, I took lots of pencils.”

Johanna looked up at the slowly setting sun and realized several hours had gone by. It was easy, at least for a while, to set into a rhythm of taking a book, waiting until the parchment dropped from its formation space, and moving to the next, but it was also horribly boring at the same time.

She sighed, stood, and stretched.

“Time out.”

“Don’t overdo it,” Miles said from the edge of the stairs where he’d taken watch. “We have around 12 more days before we need to leave or ration.”

“Then let’s stop here?”

The other three nodded back, and she looked at Gomez.

“I don’t think we’ll have time to finish this list of prerequisites today. You’re making, what, a hundred thirty parchments an hour. That’s big, but I counted…”

He checked.

“… 411 Talent names in the catalog. With more and more time spent on each pre-requirement.”

“Okay. I may have overestimated how easy this would be.”

“Hard for you, but impossible for everyone else,” Gomez said.

“True.”

Moore finally focused on Laura as they broke down for dinner. As he’d expected, XP flowed in massively. He’d gotten close to 29k XP for the day, although it had been far longer from his perspective than from theirs, thanks to the acceleration that occurred while he was designing each Settings Scroll. Not sleeping had its uses.

Laura was the obvious target for that next level 8, as Fixer specializations were closer to sorcery. So, he raised her Level, Empathy, and Dexterity for good measure.

Bingo. Combat Minister is a thing.

He spotted also Deep Minister for the Agility-based specialization, but there were no hybrid specializations visible, even with 21 Empathy.

Well, duh. Specialist Fixers keep some access to their other domains, so they don’t really need to get those back.

Combat Minister seemed to boost only skills that used Dexterity and/or Empathy. There were a few skills that originally got boosted by Combat Fixer, albeit with a different or third stat, and those did not increase their multipliers. Maybe there would be a hybrid of sorts later? Given how stupidly inconsistent the System was, it would not surprise Moore if that happened at level 13. Or 12. Or whatever that stupid design called for. For now, it was going to be only two of them upgraded, since he intended to keep Field Resilience as her new skill, as announced, despite it requiring 16 in Perception. But First Aid was getting upgraded, and that’s what mattered the most.

Peter and Tom would have to wait until tomorrow, he noted. Based on the XP per day, he should be able to raise both. If the 8/20/18 scheme stayed true, then he would be able to open both specializations, if not the potential hybrids he suspected would not be there as well.

Laura Anna Donnall (Vogel)

Female human, 19 years, 9 months

Combat Minister

Level: 8 (34000 XP needed)

44/331 mana (+33 per hour)

0 unallocated skill points

XP: 0 + 17414

STR: 16 (2078 XP needed)

Succor (40)

AUT: 17 (2590 XP needed)

Falter (42)

AGI: 18 (4428 XP needed)

Cleanse Toxins (26)

PER: 17 (4976 XP needed)

Regrow (25)

(ENTER TREE: 119)

DEX: 18 (3000 XP needed)

First Aid (62)

Field Resilience (44)

EMP: 21 (8000 XP needed)

Close Wounds (92)

(WATER WALKING: 76)

(FROZEN BODY: 76)

Reduce the extent of wounds by 92%

Wounds clot 124% faster

+8.6 Authority for skill checks

LD50 increased by 260%

Instinctive knowledge of the gravity of a wound

(Water needs per day lowers by 95% - capped)

(Bodily immunity to cold, down to -280°F / -173°C)

“Gotcha,” Hank muttered as he crawled along the edge of the building.

This time, he had a clear path skirting the sentinels, who were a bit further away from the camp. The Tallers watched for Beasts trying to attack, not someone trying to get into their wagons. They did not expect the Mooneyed to be there. The rest all slept in tents, clustered next to the large building they were using as a source of those books.

They’d taken turns watching and sleeping during the day, having found a good place to tuck in not too far from the Tallers’ camp, hidden in the heavy overgrown wood to the south of the rectangular stretch. Right now, he was going to infiltrate the camp, get some of those papers that were extracted from the books, and avoid detection. Helena was keeping watch, while George made sure the mounts were not too bothered.

He wished he could get mount-skills, like the one that their scout had. This would make everything easier. Because in addition to the sentries keeping watch over the camp, it turned out there was one person sleeping just on top of the carriage, in front of the entrance. The contraption was much bigger than what the Mooneyed used to carry food from the handful of orchards and fields surrounding the Camp, and it was obviously large enough for someone to do that. His joke about sleeping over the papers was a bit less funny now that he was trying to get in.

He snuck to the side of the wagon that faced away from the camp, a foot away from the wall. For a Taller, that would be impossible, but for a Mooneyed, it was just a tight fit.

Peering in, he was relieved to see no additional guard inside the wagon itself. He moved in carefully, making sure no noise would betray him. The interior of the wagon might be pitch black for a Taller, but he saw well enough with the starlight coming in from the front to get around.

Of course, the first crate he’d looked into was full of bags of what he thought was food stock. This painfully reminded him that they needed to hunt and scavenge because their own stocks were dwindling fast, and if they stayed longer, they might run out. The three mounts, in particular, needed to hunt some critters because the meat was becoming scarce, and they liked fresh stuff.

He finally found stacks of paper squares. He quickly grabbed a dozen of those, before carefully putting the crate top back in place and retreating. The lone guard hadn’t moved, and nobody had spotted him, so he made his way across the darkness until he was far enough that he could cross the ancient road and circle back to their own camp.

“This is it?” George asked as Hank dropped the stack.

“Yes.”

The hunter pulled the first, square, noting that the blue ink was still visible even in the night. Even with their night vision, colors were hard to distinguish. He looked at the four corners drawn. Level, Authority, WaterShaper, FrozenBody. The last two had no spaces between the words.

“It’s bizarre. What is it for?” he asked.

None of the other two seemed to have any better idea.

Hank picked the Agility, Split Stone that was next.

“That one’s different. Only two sides.”

“This…” Helena said, then stopped as both men turned to look at the light.

The square she’d picked, labeled Level and Strength, had strange lights playing across the ink. A pair of lights crawled over the blue-ink circle around which the two words were written.

“It looks… a bit like the lights those four were making,” George said.

“You can’t have their mount-skills, do you?” Hank whispered.

“I don’t… but it feels weird,” she replied.

“Like what?”

“Like… it’s waiting for me somehow.”

“It? The paper?”

“Yes.”

She handed him the square. The light vanished briefly, then reappeared as George held it.

“I… see what you mean.”

Hank lighted it as well, making all three hunters metaphorically scratch their heads.

“Do we try? I feel like I can accept. Whatever it is I’m accepting,” he said.

“It’s… it’s your choice. It might be risky.”

Sparks jumped, and the paper suddenly turned into a fine ash that vanished almost instantly.

“Whoa.”

“Anything, Hank?” Helena asked.

“I don’t know.”

“It seemed to suggest getting Strength. Do you feel stronger?”

“Not particularly,” he replied. “I still have no idea what they want them for?”

He looked again at the papers he’d grabbed with the next one being Strength and Water Walking. Then he turned it back for another Level and Strength, but this one did not light up in his hand.

George held his hand, and Hank gave it. It lit up in his hand.

“It’s not broken?”

“No. Looks like you can use only one, maybe?” Helena noted.

“Do I?” George asked.

“I don’t think we should,” she replied. “I think we should keep them and discuss them with the Elders first. You’re sure they won’t notice?” she asked Hank.

“They already had hundreds in there. And I’m guessing they’ll make more tomorrow? They might have an inventory, but they won’t notice it until they’re back wherever they came from, I’m betting. They won’t miss those.”

“Okay. Let’s store these. And maybe they’ll say more about what they are.”

She turned to her half-asleep mount and whispered “sorry to disturb you,” as she patted the Canid to find the best place to slip the paper in since the sheet was too large to fit in the bags.

The paper square flashed brightly and spewed ash, as Mists jumped fully awake.

“What???” both men exploded, before turning fearful glances toward the Taller camp.

“It vanished without warning. Are you okay?” she asked Mists.

The Canid whiffed a little, seemingly startled.

“You’re good. Yes?”

Helena’s mount opened his mouth and breathed. But instead of cold, dense mist as he could do, she instantly felt the immense heat coming from the Canid’s maw and backed up precipitously.

“Holy Shit!”