The Way Ahead

Chapter 72b: Training Wills

Chapter 72b: Training Wills

Almanac wasnt the only Skill that Edwin was working on improving. Firestarting had been a consistent problem for him since he first realized the Skills limitations. It affected something like a thirty-foot radius around him whenever it was enabled, which was great for keeping all his fires going at full blaze, less so when he wanted to make something specific burn, and nothing else.

Like, for instance, if he was trying to make incendiary grenades.

Hed figured out how to make what mostly amounted to firebombs through use of Firevine extract- two rocks inside a clay ball, along with a small measure of the ivys oil and a number of the same plants leaves would break apart into puffs of fire. He didnt have enough extract to make anything like a Molotov cocktail, unfortunately, but if he could find some lamp oil or something he could remedy that.

It didnt hold quite the same punch that he would have wanted, though. Sure, fire was great and all, but he was skeptical that setting someone on fire would really cause lasting harm. Actually, he had evidence that it would, given how often he did set people ablaze as a finishing move with Firestarting, but he still wanted something with more force.

So, he turned to pinecones. If he soaked them in a mixture of sap and firevine extract, covered up the stickiness with firevine leaves- leaving a stem poking out to function as a fuse- then covered that with a thin layer of clay, he could set the fuse on fire with normal Firestarting, and it would reach the main body quickly enough that the entire pinecone would be on fire mid-flight. Testing in non-flammable areas showed that if he managed to apply Infused Firestarting to it, the grenade would detonate violently, resulting in an explosion of burning smoke and shrapnel.

He had two major obstacles to that goal. Firstly, that trying it anywhere other than on barren ground would probably set everything on fire. Secondly, he could only apply Mana Infusion to things he was touching, or nearly touching.

The former he was slowly making progress on. Hed managed to bring the area of effect for Firestarting down from a sphere to a hemisphere through a colossal effort of will and Visualization, and he was confident he might be able to shrink that into a narrow cone in time. It was just a matter of accomplishing it. In the meantime, he could offset the problem by just pulsing Firestarting, kind of like how it was originally intended to be used, but it wasnt perfect as he still ran the risk of starting unrelated fires. At least he was able to shrink the radius it applied in, so he didnt have to worry about a stray ember sending his garden up in flames.

The second was a much bigger problem. Infusing the grenade beforehand actually proved detrimental, the mana from his Infusion presumably washing out some of the natural fire mana in the Firevine. Infusing the sap just made it stickier, and Infusing the pinecone had no apparent effect. No, he needed to Infuse it through Firestarting, the Skill apparently making his mana fire-attuned.

Eventually, he came across a mostly workable solution.

As it turned out, he could Infuse Bomb Throwing. It had been an utter nightmare to figure out, and was the result of many, many days of doing nothing but trying to make the two Skills work together, but the results were mostly worth the effort and complexity, and when the explosion actually worked, the result was always super satisfying.

However, even just doing the Infusion itself was tricky. He needed to Infuse whatever his bomb was first, then feed it through Bomb Throwing- specifically instead of Throwing Weapons, the two felt very similar- then back into the Bomb. In that last bit of feedback, he could slip Firestarting in as an effect. What that meant was that after a semi-random amount of time, Firestarting took effect and ignited whatever his bomb was. Even then, it usually wasnt Infused Firestarting, just the basic Skill, meaning that after all that work, a good 3/4th of the time it wasnt a proper explosion so much as it was just a tiny fireball with a bit of clay shrapnel.

He had more work to do. He always had more work to do.

It took even more work to figure out how to sustain two Infusions at the same time, and even once he did it still took intense concentration to actually pull off- and thus not terribly useful under pressure- but when he did manage it, he was treated to the wonderful sight of his makeshift grenade exploding midair. Or on the ground. Or right after it left his hand.

.So he still had some work to do. Well, as the end of summer rolled around and the biting chill of autumn set in, he was happy to be playing with fire.

While Edwin had originally expected that he would need another trip or two into Vinstead to get supplies, he hadnt accounted for two- well, really three- variables.

The first was Survival. He could go a week without feeling so much as a pang of hunger so long as he wasnt too active. The second was his activity level. Once he finished building up Obairlann, he just wasnt as physically active as before. Sure, he still went for runs- and always took his stick with him, just in case- but those were rapidly becoming almost trivially easy as Athletics and Walking boosted his physical efficiency to incredible levels. The third was how much food he and Inion managed to grow in their tiny little garden.

All in all, it meant that with the addition of a few deers worth of jerky slow-roasted over his fire, Edwin had plenty of food as fall slowly drew to a close. There were a few minor things, like yeast, that he could benefit from, but nothing was critical enough for him to take the multi-day trip it would take to get there and back. Plus, he didnt want to put Inion through that ordeal again. Shed steadfastly said that it wasnt so bad that she wouldnt go with him again for whatever reason, but Edwin couldnt believe that literally losing color was good for her.

Inion wouldnt tell him what her plan was when he finally left for good, whether she was staying back at Obairlann or tagging along with him somehow, and he didnt press the issue. Odds were decent she hadnt made up her mind yet.

Yeah. On one hand, she stays here and is bored, the other way she has to put up with me.

Another part of Edwin said that it wasnt that bad, and that she did like him well enough that traveling with him wouldnt be putting up with him. Edwin hoped it was more the latter. Hed been in this position before, where a friend was just trying to humor him because they were nice and he wasnt sure that Inion wasnt in a similar position. He was willing to try, though.

He had many flaws, but a lack of social persistence wasnt quite one of them. Or so he liked to think, anyway.

Inion would most likely abandon him as soon as she had a viable alternative, but he didnt want to think about that. He was probably just worrying over nothing, anyway.

Where was I? Oh, right. Trips to Vinstead.

There was no real rush to return to civilization, not with all he already had, and enough reasons to avoid it that Edwin figured he could just buckle down and try to survive the winter. It had actually rained a few times over the summer and fall, wispy clouds forming and sprinkling water across the land, but he could still count the number of times on one hand.

So, probably not going to be a harsh winter. At least, no snow. It might get chilly, but nothing like Edwin hadnt dealt with many times before. Honestly, if he wasnt trying to be productive, he could most likely legitimately hibernate, just sleep the winter away with a use of Sleeping, Survival, and Nutrition.

He had something much better to spend his time on, though.

He wanted to fly.

Now, while the ideal case would be to unlock a Skill for it once he succeeded, letting him improve magically, he couldnt accept it before he finished his tier-up. So, hed have to figure out how to unlock the Skill now, then dismiss it and re-earn it once the year was up, then train it up until it hit level 60 or more, evolve it, and then level its evolution up to whatever level the rest of his Skills were at by that point.

Yeah, he wasnt looking forward to that. There was a reason he needed to be so selective about his Skill choices, now more than ever. He wanted higher-tier Skills, darn it, no matter how much every Skill ever might give him something amazing once it evolved. Something that was amazing from the start would just keep getting amazing. Thats what everyone told him. Even Lefi, for that matter.

But he was getting ahead of himself. First, he needed to learn how to fly. And to do that, he would need to level Packing.

So far as he was able to tell, Packing currently reduced the weight of whatever he carried by about 95%, so he had to actually carry 1/20th of whatever he lifted. Air was about 1.2 kilos per cubic meter, and humans were slightly more dense than water, putting him at a thousand kilos per cubic meter.

That meant he still had some ways to go before he could properly lift himself with Packing and potentially fly (or rather, swim through the air), but if he was able to assemble a backpack that was about 80 cubic meters in volume, so long as the average density of the backpack and him combined was less than 7 kilos per cubic meter, he would be neutrally buoyant in the air.

Hed tried assembling a really big backpack by making a canvas-covered cube and strapping it to his back, then jumping off the cliff above Obairlann and trying to see if it slowed his fall at all. It wouldnt be enough for buoyancy, sure, but if he could lighten the air he should at least feel the effects as he fell.

It seemed like it couldnt be cheated like that, sadly. Hed plummeted to the ground about as fast as he should normally, once you adjusted for a massive wooden-framed backpack/parachute on his back anyway.

Edwin reached down and grabbed a log to work on, tugging it free- hang on, it was caught on something. Ah, it was embedded in the ground, and Packing never helped with anything even partially buried for whatever reason. Most likely, trying to lift the entire planet was beyond the scope of its weight-reduction capabilities.

Edwin freed up his other hand and wrapped it around the wood, yanking on it. Oh come on, was it stuck on something as well as being buried? He gave it one last giant pull to try and clear it, and as he wasnt expecting it to actually work, he was knocked off-balance as the tree trunk switched from being not carried to being firmly affected by Packing, shedding several hundred pounds all at once.

He most definitely wasnt expecting the action to save his life, as a crossbow bolt whizzed right towards his throat, only intercepted by the massive chunk of wood, striking and embedding itself up to the fletching in the bark.

Edwin reacted in the blink of an eye, mass-Identifying everything in the direction the bolt had come from, suddenly thankful for Inions tutelage in that matter. Amidst the flood of meaningless Almanac popups, a single notification caught his eye.

Darkshadow Contract Hunter

Level Up!

Skill Points 10651279

Progress to Tier 2: 1362/1770 (Avg level: 66/77)

Alchemy 69 78

Athletics 64 69

Basic Mana Sense 57 68

Bomb Throwing 17 31

Breathing 61 66

Construction 61 68

Firestarting 68 77

First Aid 52 71

Flexibility 47 63

Harvesting 59 66

Identify 53 62

Mana Infusion 7173

Mathematics 53 65

Memory 4349

Nutrition 4959

Outsiders Almanac 102 111

Packing 58 73

Polyglot 52 55

Purify 58 63

Seeing 44 58

Sleeping 51 61

Survival 61 65

Visualization 61 67

Walking 55 62