The Way Ahead

Chapter 18: The Left of Bare Arms

It took Edwin three days of throwing rocks at the wall whenever he could and five levels in the skill before Edwin’s complete lack of talent was offset by whatever bonus he was receiving from Throwing Weapons and he was able to start juggling. Once he did so, he swiftly confirmed his suspicion that constantly keeping three balls in the air did help him level his Throwing Weapons skill, and the near-constant use of his skill (juggling was fun when you could actually do it!) meant it rose steadily. By the time he hit level 24, he could keep four rocks in the air or juggle two one-handed. That wasn’t the only benefit, either.

Congratulations! For reaching level 12 in Throwing Weapons you have unlocked the Warrior path!

Attempting to juggle rocks while working hadn’t gone well at all, which slowed his practice down some, but Edwin found that he could toss things from one hand to the other without his attention getting mad at him. Integrating his skill training into his every movement had paid dividends, and after several weeks, Throwing Weapons, once his lowest-leveled skill, was now at level 47, which, while not quite as high as Almanac, which had hit level 61 two days ago, was nonetheless quite respectable. Yes, his initial idea had been to just raise it high enough to afford the Bomber and Polyglot paths with it, but further reflection had him doubting if that was a good idea. It was, after all, easier to improve a lower-leveled skill’s level, and if he wanted to evolve all of his skills eventually, that meant he would similarly want to level all of his skills to the 60-90 range. That realization made him want to bang his head against the wall for trying to advance Basic Mana Manipulation at level 9, and that he had only been at level 14 and 22 for his other evolved skills. Gah!

Well, that was all in the past and there was nothing he could do about it now. Hopefully, Edwin would be able to get Throwing Weapons and Language up to that range before he had to break out. His last audience with Lord S’Fashkchlil (hitting level 24 in Language had gotten him to the point of being able to barely pronounce the tongue-twister of the name, though most of the time Edwin still preferred to use whatever insult came to mind when thinking about his captor) had been even rougher than usual and overhearing the chatter of other dwarves made him realize S’tinker was under pressure due to… something. He hadn’t caught the details. Research seemed to combine well with his Language practice, and he was able to at least catch the gist of what was being said in dwarven most of the time, even if his ability to speak it was rudimentary at best.

Hmmm. Actually, if he wasn’t mistaken, Edwin would probably be getting an audience with the ‘esteemed’ head of Clan Blackstone today. It had been a few days, after all. He wondered what insults and threats he’d be subjected to today. Would he stick with the digs against humanity, or would it return to the tirade against extraplanars? He couldn’t wait to find out.

Almost on cue, the door opened and his guards- the same two Blackstone Sentries as always- entered, then stood aside for a third figure to enter. Rashin, for his part, stepped past the two mostly-alert figures and swept into the room. Edwin raised an eyebrow. That was different. As Rashin snagged Edwin’s notebook from the bench, he got very suspicious. The dwarves had always been careful to not make it obvious they were disturbing his stuff in the past, what changed?

As Rashin left the room, notebook in hand, Edwin shrugged and followed along. He knew the whole song and dance like the back of his hand by now, no need to rock the boat. To his surprise, the Sentries barred his way with their spears.

“Wait,” one of them said in dwarven, and Edwin looked at him dumbly.

“What’s the holdup?” he asked, in English naturally. No point letting his captors know he could understand them. It was, after all, the only way he had caught what little information he had from them. He merely grunted in response, and Edwin shifted from one foot to the next impatiently.

After about a minute, they uncrossed their spears in perfect unison (was there a Skill involved in those sorts of coordinated movements?), turned, and led Edwin out the door and down the hall, through the (currently empty) mess hall, up the stairs, up the other stairs, and into the throne room. There, flipping through Edwin’s notebook, was S’Fashkchlil, wearing the perhaps most displeased expression Edwin had yet seen on the man.

“For the longest time, Outsider,”

Ah, so it was an Earthling-insulting day. Good to know.

“I have allowed your behavior to slide. I believed you indeed had some form of reasoning behind your endless repetition and inane work. You recorded so much in your journal, which I had believed held countless insights and notes to the process you seemed so insistent would provide results,”

The dwarf was half-yelling now, and Edwin’s eye itched. It was really annoying, he wanted to rub it but figured his Blusteriness wouldn’t be amused. Oh, he was still talking,

“-that whatever you were writing was unreadable even by Magistrate Rashin due to poor handwriting,”

Well. That was a bit harsh. In his defense, the quill and inkwell they apparently expected him to write with were impossible to use. He would have to make a fountain pen as soon as he had the chance and remembered how to…

“-find out that you have been writing nothing but actual nonsense interspersed with insults towards not only myself,”

In hindsight, it may not have been the smartest idea to actually write his thoughts about lord S’fishkill down, especially as his quill-work was actually half-legible at that point, but he had really needed to vent at the time. The drawing may have been a bit much, though. Hm. Did he have a skill pertaining to volume? Could Edwin go deaf from overexposure to this loud of a voice? Could S’houter go deaf? Was that why he was always so loud?

“-so you have three days to give me something I can actually use in this Gor’kcha-damned war,”

They were at war? Interesting. And was Gor’kcha a god? Were there gods on this world? He probably should try to find that out.

“-swear to you, I will have your head cut off and mounted upon a stake. Do you understand me?”

Edwin nodded vaguely, then caught what exactly was said, “Wait, what?”

The dwarf’s face somehow grew even more thunderous, which Edwin hadn’t thought possible, “I said, your Task is to, within three days, show me the results of your work, and they had best be impressive, or I will cut off your head and mount it upon a pike.”

Edwin was taken aback. Well, beyond the fact he had never promised anything, what was more surprising was the direct threat to his life. Sure, ominous-sounding warnings and insults were par for the course, but never before had he been actively threatened with death if he didn’t produce results. This was probably serious, then. Darn it. He was nowhere close to ready, but it sounded like he was out of time. This would be a few very busy days.

Edwin was snapped out of his musings by his notebook impacting his shoulder with a very painful smack. Gah, that hurt. It didn’t feel like it broke anything, but it would probably leave a welt. He tuned out something about “getting out of my sight” as he picked up the slightly battered notebook. Flipping open to a random page, he checked to make sure it still was working properly.

Identify

No noticeable variation between plaster made of Infused powder and made of nonmagical powder, Infused following mixing it with water. Namely, higher mana content stiffens the plaster slurry, allowing it to be set quickly.

Okay, that was a relief. The damage to the notebook hadn’t affected his Almanac entries at all, not that he had really expected it to. Sure, he had most of his critical notes saved on other things- materials or generic items, generally- but the notebook’s pages were where it was most organized.

Sure, his advisor would probably throw a fit about these records being editable, but he didn’t need to sign and date the pages to deal with possible patent disputes anyway, and there wasn’t a Carbon-12’s chance of decay that he’d write out everything using a feather quill. So, he had just used Almanac and Identify for his notes. His skill levels loved it, and he was at 273 characters these days, so he could actually get most of a paragraph in a single entry.

As his cell door slammed shut behind him, his feet having walked him back to his room nearly on autopilot, Edwin caught himself absently tossing his notebook from hand to hand. With a sigh, he tossed the slightly-tattered tome onto a small patch of empty counter. Checking the kiln, he found that his latest batch of lime was done, so he scraped out the rubble and replaced it with fresh limestone. The next few days would be crazy busy, but he needed to start slow. He had done enough odd things that making a few spheres out of mortar wasn’t that strange, but if he was too blatant, the dwarves might notice what he was doing and that would be Very Bad. Also, he’d have to work around his Task’s compulsion, which…. Wait.

Edwin had gotten pretty good at recognizing and dealing with the limits imposed on him by his command to ‘make Blackstone/concrete,’ but that was completely gone. What had… oh. OH. His task had changed! It wasn’t “make concrete” anymore, it was “show me something impressive that you’ve been working on!” Edwin couldn’t help but chuckle as a smile spread across his face. Oh, he could absolutely do something impressive. Just you wait.

It was time to get to work.

Knowing in advance that he was likely to get some kind of skill which benefitted bombs had led Edwin to develop a sort of grenade casing made purely from mortar. The trick was finding some setup which wouldn’t go off or crack on its own but would quite easily once thrown.

For most of his arsenal, the answer was two hollow hemispheres of M-N-N mor- no, sandsculpt- which he would fill and then fit together with a tiny coating of M-N (magical lime, nonmagical water) plaster. The plaster kept the seemingly-loose sand from being rubbed away and the two halves together, and the sandsculpt helped keep the plaster in shape and prevent it from cracking open. The trickiest part was just keeping the sandsculpt from becoming magically infused when he insta-cured the plaster, which would harden it and make it almost unbreakable.

Some of his grenades, though, required more delicate treatment. His steam bombs, which would be the deadliest of his entire arsenal, were entirely encased in a full (if thin) supermortar casing. Those he made by carefully pouring a bit of Infused lime inside, coating it with a tiny, tiny amount of plaster, and filling the rest with water, once the plaster was cured. It was a nerve-wracking procedure, and the first few times he did it, he was worried that the moisture in the plaster would react hyper-explosively with the Infused lime it was covering. Then he realized he had been an idiot and he could just wait to Infuse the lime until he was ready to use it. It would still be dangerous before then- even mundane lime’s reaction was exothermic enough to boil water- but the casing should keep it from detonating. He made sure to test that he could prime the lime even through its coating- he could, but doing so also Infused the water inside the grenade, which should be alright. Sadly, he wasn’t able to test his grenades for obvious reasons, but there wasn’t an alternative.

The next two days passed in a blur, as Edwin set casings, mixed mortar, and entertained himself via tongue twisters and juggling, managing to net one last level in each of the skills. Actually, he realized, I don’t need to fill out my Linguist path right now, just Bomber. If I encounter more people I can just complete the Path then. Sure, Polyglot will be a lower level, but I doubt it would level much before then anyway.

Edwin also managed to rework a couple of discarded sacks, brought in with loads of limestone. When he had first seen the burlap-looking bags, he was stunned at the fact they held up to what must have been two hundred pounds of rock while slung over the shoulder of a Blackstone Laborer. Close inspection with Mana Sense had shown the fabric was interwoven with some kind of magic, present but barely noticeable. Infusion hadn’t done anything, but some experiments had shown nothing short of his full weight behind a knife could tear the material.

A few attempts at improvising them into a form more conducive to carrying yielded sad-looking, barely functional backpacks and a couple of somewhat-better bookbag-like containers. Sure, he didn’t have Improvisation anymore, but his Alchemy, its evolution, was level 41. He should have had no problem altering them into a better shape. Unless an evolved skill didn’t continue to give the benefits of its base skill? If so, that was concerning. His Basic Mana Manipulation was only level 9, and if skills were ‘meant’ to be raised to level 30 or 60 before evolving, he might well have not only wasted a bunch of skill points, but also crippled his career as a wizard before it could even begin. Maybe it could still increase somehow? Gah. Another worry that he’d have to deal with another time.

In any case, there was one last pleasant surprise waiting for him as he packed his arsenal into one of his two bookbags (his backpack was filled with food, a metal flagon of water, and some other odds and ends). As he placed a gingerly wrapped explosive inside a rag and packed in some excess space with sand, a notification popped up. He almost ignored it, not really caring about a level-up, but it wasn’t formatted like one.

You have unlocked the Packing skill!

Accept Skill? Y/N

Most skills Edwin had been offered in his time with Clan Blackstone- baking, sand sculpting, shaving, small blades, geology, writing, and mixing, among others, he had rejected with… varying degrees of regret, not wanting to clutter up his skills too much. They’d provide skill points, sure, but they would also make it harder for him to evolve all of his skills, which from what he had gathered, was important. Unlocking a skill just let you do something you were already capable of, just better. Evolving a skill would let you do something new. So, he had just pushed off the decision- a rejected skill could still be offered again, if the number of times he had to decline Rock Breaking was any indication- to future-Edwin. The nice thing about future-Edwin was that he was older and therefore wiser, so automatically more qualified for this kind of decision than present-Edwin.

Packing, though. Packing was immediately useful and probably useful long-term as well. Edwin could probably haul around some 50 pounds of stuff over extended periods of time, and his arsenal, being mostly more or less solid rock, weighed far above that. Hopefully it would help his carrying weight so he wouldn’t be quite as slowed by all his gear. His straining while he lifted his mostly-full bag settled it in his mind, but first Edwin decided to complete his Bomber path, just in case something strange happened.

Packing

Useful when trying to bear the weight of the whole world on your shoulders

Carry heavy loads easier

Strength when carrying objects increased

Bomb Throwing

You’re the bomb. Not quite completely literally, but close enough

Throw explosives

Effect of intentional detonations increases with level.

You may evolve your Throwing Weapons skill into the Bomb Throwing skill!

Accept Evolution? Y/N

Done!

…

Calculating Rewards…

Class Change!

Outsider Chemist → Alchemist Outsider

You have completed the Bomber path!

Your way has taken a fairly explosive turn. Fortunately, you have survived, yet those who stand against you may not. You are beginning to show some of your potential, though you still have a long way to go before you are a true force to be reckoned with.

Perfect.

Name

Edwin Maxlin

Age

22 years

Race

Extraplanar Human

Class

Alchemist Outsider

Attributes

Mana 5

Skills