The Factory Must Grow - [Book 1: The System Must Live]

Clark missed his magic.

Not that he didn't like what he had now, of course. Any magic was good magic, and he wasn't going to say that he didn't have good magic just because he missed his magic, but it was real weird not having any of the things he was used to.

"But nooo, you just had to get the giant dragon-wolf to crush my furnace, didn't you?" Oliver loudly complained as he slapped another handful of mud onto his project, "Never mind that you'd killed half of them with your sword already, this one needed to die in fire."

"Smith!" Henrietta shot back, "Veeran already acknowledged his error and apologized. You don't need to keep raising the point every five minutes. Be professional."

"The boy is simply a complainer, Commander," Jacob added, in a lower voice such that Oliver couldn't hear him, "He doesn't actually have an issue with me, he simply feels better while fixing his thing if he can bemoan why he's stuck doing it."

"I know that," Henrietta hissed back, "But that doesn't make it better. And it's getting to the point that I'm sick of it. Ride is enough of a handful without her skills to keep her busy, I don't need Oliver causing problems too."

Clark had so many cool spells at his fingertips back home. He could make dazzling displays of dancing light and water, calm the nerves of a panicked crowd, talk to basically anyone at practically any time, conjure tasty but nutritious snacks with the click of his fingers, and send monsters flying with blasts of pressurized water.

The hazy blend of magic shimmered around Clark's fingertips as he [Unblemish]ed the warrior's broken-or-sprained shoulder. Which one didn't particularly matter, because neither was that easy to heal, but so long as he didn't just heal the bruising, he could [Unblemish] the deeper problem away. It wasn't something he was very good at, but he was getting better.

"I'm sure he's sick of it too," Jacob pointed out, still whispering, "That thing has been nothing but trouble for him since he first made it, and we've hardly found enough copper to properly justify its creation."

Henrietta sighed, "I know. But having something actually useful was only half of why I had him make it. Smith was getting stuck in an unproductive loop and it was the best option I could think of to get him out of it. It worked, and getting copper tools has been legitimately useful."

The spell that Clark really missed, though, was [Dazzling Smile]. People were always surprised when they found out it was his favorite skill, because they never realized how useful it really was. A blindingly brilliant grin on someone who was dirty and disheveled, malnourished and ugly would just be off-putting, so [Dazzling Smile] was comprehensive, with each use slowly refining your overall body into a true pinnacle of handsomeness, in addition to being an all-purpose disarming and confidence-inspiring spell. If he'd kept that spell, he'd look great even in the black robe Inq had made him, and his body would have that extra little pep that made every movement feel absolutely great. Its subskills would have also been really useful right now, because ⟨Triumphal Grin⟩ helped heal all wounds in the wake of accomplishing something impressive.

But he didn't have it, and it was kinda sad. Not super sad, just kinda sad. It made things harder, but he was figuring it out!

"Would it not be better to stop him, then? If this is no longer particularly useful?"

"It's still useful. We do objectively need copper, and with his staff made, he doesn't have anything else that would be as beneficial. From my understanding, it doesn't truly require anything to keep running, and the longer it goes the more quirks he'll get used to regarding working with raw clay."

Clark started listening to the conversation again, now that he'd come to a conclusion about how he felt. It was a shame that everyone around here was feeling dour in their own ways. That was the sort of thing that [Dazzling Smile] was really good at minimizing. A bright smile could lighten up any day.

"Agh, fssss…" The sound of metal clattering across stone accompanied Oliver producing some noises that were either incoherent expressions of pain or a spell incantation, and Clark looked over to where the guy was to figure out which one it was. He didn't need to look for very long, because Oliver got ahold of his voice and asked in a high voice, "Could I get a hand?"

Clark stood up, patting Jacob on the shoulder and saying as he did so, "Take it easy for a bit."

He meandered over to Oliver, who was currently standing rather awkwardly and tightly holding one hand in the other. "Show me?" he asked with a relaxing grin.

With a grimace, Oliver twisted his palm slightly, revealing a fairly nasty gash along the palm, running next to his thumb. It wasn't bleeding thanks mostly to the fact that it was also burned, the smell of roasted human flesh wafting from it and the already-blistering fingers around it.

"I wasn't expecting the metal to be sharp. Or that hot, really. It…" Oliver talked a lot, but Clark pushed past it to focus on the healing.

"This will only take a few minutes. You might feel a little pinch."

Clark didn't know exactly why medics usually said that something might feel like a pinch, but it seemed to be pretty effective, so he always made sure to include it when treating people.

[Unblemish], Clark pointedly thought, twisting his mana around his finger without needing to say anything.

First, he ran his finger down the gash lengthwise, cleaning it out of anything that might cause issues. Golden Hero mana seeped into the entire hand, blue Water mana filled the wound, and white Light mana surrounded it, stripping away what shouldn't have been there. Surprisingly, that included a bit of the burned muscle that Oliver was dealing with, and blood began to flow.

Clark hid his uncertainty about whether he'd done things in the wrong order, and simply used the skill again, making sure to keep a very clear image in his head about how the final result should look.

His skill was already a bit tired, but this was very much within its normal uses, so it should be pretty easy all told. It was just the blood that was confusing him, [Unblemish] wasn't a surgery skill so it shouldn't ever make a problem worse.

"Here comes the pinch," he told Oliver, and pressed the two sides of his palm together with one hand while he set two fingers near the top of the gash with the other. Maybe that's why medics always said to get ready for a pinch, so they could pinch you without being impolite?

Oliver was breathing deeply and calmly, not looking at the wound, but it was obvious that he was in a fair amount of pain and just holding it in, so Clark didn't bother checking to see how he felt. Instead, he just used his skill again and wiped downwards. Golden-white and blue mana spilled across Oliver's palm, and when Clark released his grip holding the cut together, it stayed together, with only an angry-looking red line left as a sign of the wound afterwards.

With the primary wound taken care of, he extended the skill usage with a twirl of his hand across Oliver's palm, wiping away the red and angry burns scattered across his fingers.

While he had the opportunity, Clark also ran an [Unblemish] across most of Oliver's hands, cleaning them and wiping away the newer nicks and scratches he'd accumulated. Anything too old didn't go away, but those were already scabbed over so it didn't matter.

"There you go!" Clark happily returned Oliver's hand to him, "Good as new. Just take it easy for a day or so."

"How am I supposed to take it easy when I need to rebuild the furnace?" he demanded.

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Clark shrugged, "Just don't hurt yourself again, is all."

"Whatever," Oliver grumbled, but he did seem to be treating his hand a bit more gingerly than he had been a few minutes prior as he turned back to his repairs. "Stupid circle. You know what? Screw it, you're not going back in there. How do you like that? I'll scrap you for parts and replace you with the brazier."

Yeah, that was pretty successful, Clark deliberated as he walked away. Everything is working just the way it should be again.

"So how's the arm?" he asked Jacob as Clark wandered back to where their expedition's leaders discussed things. With how much people had warned him about how they might act, Clark had expected that Henrietta and Jacob would be totally unreasonable, always yelling at people and making them do all kinds of crazy stuff, but he hadn't noticed that as all. They were less bossy than Dad, and got mad way less as well. Maybe they'd just misjudged the duo, Henrietta especially?

"Still somewhat sore." Jacob answered, "Did you not expect that?"

"Oh, I guess yeah," Clark nodded, "Let me know if it starts to get worse again or anything like that. Is there anything else you wanted?"

Henrietta and Jacob shared a glance, then the Commander answered, "That will be all for now, Haleford."

Clark replied with his best blemish-less smile, sad that even the way he could mentally describe it wasn't as nice as a proper [Dazzling Smile], and to the cookfire to work on their food.

Cooking was one of those skills that Clark had never really thought would be useful, but when he'd been growing up he'd just spent so much time in the kitchens that the cooks sort of took him under their wings – not literally, they were all human or at least humanoid – and taught him how best to cook things. At least, they had until his father had forbade him when he was old enough to learn how to be responsible, though he still used what he'd learned for himself fairly often. Adjusting to not having access to anything as basic as a stovetop was weird, but the cooks, especially the household baker Nana Pan, had taught him their 'traditional' methods alongside the 'foreign spell nonsense' as she liked to call it. He missed her sometimes.

She'd probably be proud of him that he still knew how to cook hot-rock style, heating up dry rocks in a fire, then dropping them into a pot to heat up the water that way. Though it wasn't really a pot, just a bowl that Oliver had made out of clay and fired for him a couple days ago, but it still worked. He just needed to be careful to not let it spill over while boiling.

It had issues, of course. He'd broken three bowls already doing perfectly reasonable things, like trying to boil water by putting it in a bowl over the fire. As it turned out, it hadn't just been a defect with the first one.

Really, this whole Jump was an enormously fantastic learning experience. There was just so much stuff that he'd never been able to do, or hadn't been able to do in years, and it was so cool getting to do it all now! Like, he'd never known that some rocks were perfectly fine to put in the fire, and others would explode. That had been neat to learn, and even though it supposedly had something to do with whether he got them from the creek, he hadn't been able to see any true pattern in what did or didn't work, but Alyssa had been able to figure it out in three seconds flat just by picking up the rocks and feeling them for Water mana. He was supposed to be able to tell if there was Water mana present just by looking at it, but that needed them to be actively magical.

And that was another thing! It was also fun seeing the ways that commoners used their own mana senses. He'd always been given the impression that the only reason why someone wouldn't go with Sight or Intuition as their mana sense would be because they couldn't manage it, but Alyssa especially was really impressive with how she used her touch-sense. She could directly feel mana types that she wasn't attuned to!

Clark had always been told that was just the nature of mana senses, if it wasn't one of your three attuned mana types, you just had to figure it out from context. Like sensing Shadow because of the way Light didn't act around it, or Fire from the complicated spiral it formed when interacting with Water. And if your mana types weren't present, then you'd need to cast a spell to help make everything else visible, like a fog machine making a laser grid visible. But Alyssa had a workaround because her body, being attuned to her elements, was also where she was sensing the mana, so she never had to cast a spell to augment her mana sense, because she always had plenty and could feel how it reacted directly in her body.

They were so clever. It was great being around such clever people.

The food could be better though. Fruits and fish and droopnose and random other game were great and all, but there was a certain lack of flair to the basic soups and jerky that they ate all the time.

Also, it would have been a lot more fun if the Jump had gone as expected, probably, and they could be doing awesome things like blasting demons with [Water Cannon]s and inspiring failing soldiers to keep up the fight with his [Dazzling Smile].

Not having shoes could sometimes be a bit of a pain, but right now Clark thought it was great because he could easily sit by the pond and dip his toes in the water. The pond itself sparkled with so much water mana, obviously. It curled around itself, parting for the fish and nourishing the life around it, and the ripples he could see in the Water as Force in the currents eventually brought it out of the pond and downstream to where the ocean was.

Clark stepped out of the pond to drop a couple more cooking rocks into the soup he was making, then returned to his appreciation of the nature they found themselves in. The sky, such a brilliant azure, and the trees such an emerald tapestry, and the cliffs such an imposing ocher, how could anyone not be amazed at the sights?

"Haleford," Henrietta said, pulling him out of his personal reverie, as she entered the shelter behind him, "New clothes for you."

"Did I do something wrong?" he asked, turning to see that his Commander had shed her normal ink-based outfit for something made out of scaly hide.

"You didn't do anything. I'm still not entirely content with the quality of the leather I can make, but these are at least wearable, and I want to regain the ink I'm using on our outfits. With the five of us in full dress, I don't have much design space left for other inklings. Given that will soon be stretched even more by our impending clay-harvesting site, I decided to downsize in preparation. So, new clothes."

She tossed him a crudely-bound piece of leather that didn't smell too great, and Clark took a moment to look at it, "A kilt?"

"We'll go with that. If it makes you feel better, I'm still working on the refining process, figuring out something that can withstand more tailoring. Though I might skip to cloth, if I can find a suitable material for it."

"Oh! What about the reeds?" Clark felt really clever. The reeds were long and fibrous-y, so they should make for an excellent thread.

His enthusiasm momentarily wavered when Henrietta nodded absently, "Yes, that's what I plan to try first."

Aw, it wasn't a cool and unique idea. Though, Clark supposed, that just meant it was probably a good idea, so that worked out in the end anyway.

"Anyway, change then give me back your current tunic."

"Oh. No shirt?" he realized.

"Do you think you'll be cold?" Henrietta paused as she left the shelter, looking back at him. "I've found the temperature here to be fairly comfortable, all told. Outside you can stand in the light, and in here it's far warmer thanks to the wards."

"What about at night?"

Henrietta looked at him a bit oddly for some reason, as though she didn't understand why someone might get cold at night.

"I think we'll be fine."

The next several days, maybe a week passed pretty quickly for Clark. There was lots of food to be made, lots of minor injuries to fix up, and plenty of vinebeasts for Jacob to fight. None of the fights seemed to be very difficult for the warrior, but he seemed really worried about them for some reason.

Maybe he was worried about hogging the experience? That was a nice thought of him, but it was actually a myth that killing things gave experience, and besides none of the rest of them had any offensive skills that they could use. It was way better for Jacob to be the one to deal with all of them. Clark had tried reassuring him that it was alright at some point, but Jacob hadn't seemed to understand because of how tired he was, so Clark hadn't tried to push to convey his reassurances.

Oliver did a lot of grumbling, but he managed to make a few more clay utensils and containers for him to use when cooking, as well as getting the hut warded with an enchantment that could block out the light, meaning it actually got dark inside.

Everyone here was so impressive! It was really great to watch and be a part of.

Henrietta's attempts at making cloth hadn't really been successful, but they also hadn't really failed either, according to her. She was still working on ways to get the reed fibers separated from one another reliably. She'd tried beating them against each other, grinding them in a bunch underneath rocks, soaking them in water and letting them dry, and multiple combinations thereof. She'd even gotten his help a few times, [Unblemish]ing some damage the reeds had taken during transport and her attempts at manufacture, but [Unblemish] just put it back the way it was supposed to instead of breaking it apart into smaller fibers.

Well, Clark was confident she'd figure it out eventually.

Clark was outside, [Unblemish]ing away a handful of small burns from Oliver's hands, when the bush rustled.

Everyone froze. It was too soon for the vinebeast attack again, it had only been a few hours, had the scalewolves come back?

A moment later, a moss-covered, disgruntled-looking, and incredibly exhausted woman stumbled out of the foliage.

"Oh hey guys," Alyssa tiredly said, "Did you miss me?"

Then she passed out.