An Unbound Soul

While I was younger than most of the alchemy students, I wasn't that much younger, and managed to refrain from sticking out. There were three other students in the class, which didn't seem like many until I considered how many alchemists a town of a thousand actually needed. Three a year was already excessive. Maybe they were here as a hobby, like I was, or came from one of the surrounding villages.

The teacher apparently wasn't the usual one who took this class, being a visitor from out of town himself.

Vargalas, Elf, Master Alchemist (?/?)

The alchemist who normally presented this class—also the one who kept the delvers' store stocked—was standing at the back. He didn't give the appearance of checking up on the class or anything, more that he was basking in the presence of a rank four master. Perhaps he was hoping to soak up experience by some sort of osmosis.

Unlike the ten lesson series I needed to give later, this was a mere two lessons; the first to unlock the skill, the second to get started using it. There was no need to teach formulas and methods and such when the skill did it all automatically. Around me, the other students added small quantities of powders and liquids to a beaker before heating and mixing. I mixed up my own, dropping in a level one monster core and watching as it turned a bright red and emitted a rather small and pathetic puff of smoke.

It had come as a slight surprise that our magic crystals were produced with alchemy and not runecrafting, although in retrospect I had never seen a rune carved into any of them. Magic crystals were in fact all you could produce with [Basic Alchemy], actual magical potions needing to wait for the advanced version of the skill. Basics like healing, mana and stamina came at rank two, with more specialised recipes not cropping up till rank three.

Fire crystal (Rank 0)

ding

Skill [Appraisal] advanced to level 10

On the bright side, I could now buy [Analysis]. On the downside, nine soul points were eight more than I currently had, and I needed two to complete my school classes. At this rate, I'd need to pick which of the two classes I'd enrolled in to actually complete, although my main aim was unlocking the skills, so it didn't really matter to me if I dropped out after the first lesson.

On another downside, rank zero again. I could happily hold the crystal, and while it felt slightly warm, it was a far cry from what we used to heat our house. Maybe that applied to anything that was produced without a skill? From our lesson, I'd learnt that the physics breaking skill effects of alchemy were incredibly blatant compared to the other crafting skills I'd seen. A health potion created with the exact same ingredients and methods would restore two points of health plus one extra per level of [Advanced Alchemy]. Thanks to health being quantified in one's status, the effects of skill level could be viewed precisely.

Something else I learnt in this lesson, that I'd actually heard in passing a while back then promptly forgotten about, was the existence of alchemic poisoning. If someone drank too many potions too quickly, or drank potions higher rank than they were, they'd start suffering stat penalties. Keep going, and it would progress to drains to all three pools, senselessness, unconsciousness and death. A safe and sustainable rate was no more than one an hour, although over a shorter period two or three an hour would be okay, or even five all at once.

Lesson complete and the skill successfully unlocked, I started to clean up my desk.

ding

Skill [Privacy] advanced to level 10

Huh? Who was that? I looked around to see Vargalas frowning at me, before he turned around and walked off without a word. What was that all about?

Later in the day was enchantment, and there I was by far the youngest in the class, presumably due to the need to have already switched to [Apprentice Mage]. The two other students did their best to convince me I was in the wrong place, up until I poked them in the face with my hands behind my back. The teacher was the [Enchanter] who worked on guild kit, so along with Adele was the second half of the fetish-wear creation team. That was a fact I tried to ignore as I copied his runes from the blackboard onto my small patch of leather. Runes were drawn rather than engraved, using a fine pen and an ink of crushed monster cores dissolved in water.

Unlike alchemy, we couldn't actually make a functional product without the skill, but copying the runes and learning the process was sufficient to unlock it. The next stage would have been to collect the required reagents for the desired enchantment on top of the item to be enchanted and activate the skill. The teacher demonstrated the process for our current set of runes, a simple durability enchantment, before showing us different sets for sharpness and preservation.

I watched the process with [Mana Perception] in fascination, the reagents dissolving into pure mana which moved into the runes and from there saturated the targeted item. The mana produced by the reagents didn't seem to be anything special though, so knowing what I knew about the System, I guessed that these were just prescribed recipes and the exact set of items used didn't actually matter in the slightest. The same amount of mana could have been gathered just by heading down a few floors into a dungeon. That would probably be rather depressing information for any enchanter if I shared it...

ding

For your efforts to experience many varieties of crafts, [Researcher] awards 2 soul points.

What awesome timing. That would pay for both new skills, so I grabbed them.

The next day was the second of the alchemy classes. On walking in, I found Vargalas frowning at me again.

"You've gained two new skills without expending soul points. How?"

Guess I missed a [Privacy] skill up that time... "What do you mean, without expending soul points? They cost me one point each."

"You had one point remaining yesterday, and you have one point remaining now. You haven't levelled. Producing a rank zero fire crystal hardly qualifies as a class achievement."

Huh? Did he just not believe me? What was going on? "The soul points came from my [Researcher] trait, for learning new crafts."

He continued to stare at me with furrowed brows before huffing and starting the lesson. What was that all about? How could he not believe me? Were elves different? No, Lord Reid had been unconvinced too. This started after Erryn messed with my traits. Had she done something? My [Unbound Soul] was missing a description. What, exactly, was it doing?

Shelving that thought, because a classroom wasn't the place to start interrogating people, I got on with producing a variety of crystals. Each simply transformed raw ambient mana into their respective affinities. Fire, ice, water and light covered most of our household items. The waste disposal was apparently based on time, which raised questions about why the whole setup didn't stink to the heavens, and also made me very glad that I hadn't managed to produce raw time affinity with [Greater Mana Control]. Maybe that particular crystal was slightly more nuanced than the others, particularly since knowledge about it hadn't popped into my head with the skill. It must be a higher level thing.

Skill [Basic Alchemy] advanced to level 2

The second runecrafting lesson went more or less the same way. I got a closer look at the process while performing my own enchantments and was unsurprised to find that activating the skill did nothing to me whatsoever. My mana was not involved in the process; on skill activation, the System just went off and did its own thing. It wasn't like it just marked the item and then granted bonuses to whoever used it either; there was real mana in there, doing something. Something I hadn't asked Erryn was what magic had been like before the System. Could it be used freely? Did it exist at all? If it did exist, were enchantments possible? That would imply there was a whole alternate way of doing this.

Along with durability and sharpness, there was one for preservation. There were also enchantments for stats. Could I make my own rings of strength with these? Why were such things not sold at the delvers' guild shop? If they were, our teacher would be the one making them, so who better to ask? I stuck up my hand. "Excuse me, why are hand made stat items not sold in the delvers' guild?"

"They would wear out too fast to be cost effective. Even if you make them from gold, any piece of jewellery would lose its enchantment within days, and stat enchantments can only be used on accessories. Maybe they would last slightly longer for a thick bracelet or torc, but still not long enough to be useful. In general, enchanting is only effective on large objects. That would be weapons and armour, for delvers."

Interesting... So magical items found in a dungeon kept their enchantments forever, whereas handcrafted ones ran out. I knew my armour and weapon would only last a year, but stat items would only last for days? That seemed a bit broken. Why bother with having those runes available at all if they weren't useful? The System was supposed to have been built with practicality in mind.

Skill [Basic Runecrafting] advanced to level 2

Lessons over, I sat back in my dorm room poking my new heat crystal. Everything I'd made today had been rank one, and this crystal was uncomfortably hot to hold, albeit still a far cry from what we used day to day at home. I was more interested in watching it with [Mana Perception], observing the raw mana being twisted into fire affinity. Even if the System wasn't required to do magic, I doubted that I'd ever be able to recreate that trick on my own; if the System controlled which affinities I had access to, it would never have given me what I had, which meant it really must be something more fundamental. But that didn't stop me creating this fire affinity crystal, or enchantments that utilised other affinities. Perhaps there would be workarounds.

I reached into the crystal with [Greater Mana Control] and pulled out the fire affinity mana that was being produced within. The crystal shattered, but for a moment I held the mana in my grasp. If I had these crystals to produce mana of desired affinities for me, then my inability to do so myself wouldn't matter. I just needed the control to pull out mana without damaging the crystal and to do something useful with it afterwards. I tried again with the ice crystal, catching hold of the mana it released rather than what was inside. Separating out the ice from the ambient mana was hard, but at least this way around wouldn't damage the crystal. I found I could shape the aura of coldness that surrounded the crystal, but wasn't able to detach it or stretch it too far.

ding

Skill [Greater Mana Finesse] advanced to level 6

Skill [Greater Mana Control] advanced to level 4

Wow, tonight's experiment was worth it just for that. I'd have to keep going; while large spells were out of sight, I should at least be able to use this method to throw a fireball. Or ball of fire affinity mana, which would hopefully have the same effect. Accidentally discovering the alchemy class was going to be a great benefit, although really I could have done this with any mana crystal. I'd looked at others in the past, but with my rank one mana sense and manipulation skills I didn't get any use from it. I'd only been inspecting this set closely because I'd just made them myself.

What about the other part of what I'd learnt today? Could I get any use out of runecrafting? If I could solve the problem of why enchantments lost their effect so quickly, being able to make stat items would be awesome. I looked at my armour still hanging on the door, but if there was mana leeching out of the enchantments, my senses weren't sufficient to detect it. What about my ring? I could see the runes carved into the silver-coloured gem setting, far finer than anything I would be capable of. Again, no noticeable evidence of mana leaking from it. I knew different materials held enchantments for different periods of time, so what was the red crystal made from? Maybe [Analysis] would tell me once I could get it. Or I could just ask Remous or Richard back in the village.

Unlike the mana crystals, I didn't think there was anything useful I could do with enchantments for now. Back in the village, the dire wolf claws I'd stockpiled could be used as a reagent for sharpness enchantments, so I could improve the villagers' tools and level the skill some more. I could also make up for my lack of cling film invention by making Mum a preserving container of some kind. That would have to wait until I was back home, though, and this time I was going to be in Dawnhold for longer than a week. Tomorrow, the otherworldly science classes started.