The Grand Weave

The very next day, I decided to sleep in till noon. Initially, I planned on heading to the guild building early, but instead, I decided to get some extra sleep. I never noticed until I laid my head on the pillow just how tired I was. Mentally, I felt fine after spending most of the evening with Teddy and Celanae. That apparently didn't translate to the physical requirements of my body that I had been ignoring.

After waking up and noticing Teddy was absent, I decided to head downstairs and use one of the private baths. It featured the same sort of setup Bera had in her inn but was on a smaller scale. With familiarity, the enchanted bathtub was easy to use, and I bathed without spending too long relaxing under the hot water.

It was tempting to stay and laze about, especially considering today was an off day and the dungeon was reserved for the group we met during our first visit to the guild building. Ultimately, I decided noon was already late enough that there was no excuse not to start heading out and doing something productive.

The trip to the adventurer's guild was short and uneventful, so I stopped by a food stall selling fried fish pastries and bought enough to feed four people. I kept one bag of pastries out while I waited till I was inside the building and secluded from curious eyes to summon Chomperz. The dragonling swallowed the food and disappeared within seconds. Not wanting to think about the weird avoidance of my dimensional storage, I shrugged my shoulders and continued deeper inside the building.

When I got to the guildmaster's lab, I knocked on the door three times and stepped back. Good thing I did since the moment the door opened, a ghastly blue fog drifted out and disappeared into the ceiling.

After a dozen seconds, Khrem finally opened the door and stared at me with his unblinking shark eyes. Waving a hand, I tossed him one of the fish pastries before stepping around him and entering the room.

It was surprisingly clean. In my head, I expected the room to be covered in random materials and failed experiments. Nobody could blame me, considering how zealous the alchemist pair have been the past week. Ever since I started supplying them with the ghostgoop, they have been locked away in the guild lab almost all hours of the day. I was sort of concerned about their health, but I knew Travis was at least tier two. At that tier, he could go without sleep for a decent while.

Khrem closed the door behind me while munching on the pastry, and I heard him mumble something about lab rules. If he was complaining about me bringing food into the lab, he sure didn't seem to mind too much, considering he was eating the pastry.

When Travis finally finished mixing the liquids he was distilling, he turned around and removed the goggles on his face. As he blinked slowly, he finally noticed me and approached in a quick run. The manic look on his face made me hold up my hands and back up.

"Woah there, cowboy. Back up a sec," I hollered out.

Travis stopped and gave me a weird look. After watching me nonchalantly eat my pastry and see Khrem do the same, he shook his head and moved closer. "Do you have more ectoplasm to sell?

For a few seconds, I debated whether I should mess with the two eager alchemists. Ultimately, it wasn't worth getting on the bad side of the two people who could become extremely important during the festival.

Instead of answering, I found the nearest empty crate and summoned three dozen vials of ghostgoop. The sudden clinking of glass filled the room, and I couldn't stop the smirk from spreading across my face as the guildmaster's jaw slowly dropped in shock.

"Do you think that's too much? If so, I can try to find someone else to-" Travis held both hands over the crate like he was protecting it from me before I could continue.

"No! I mean, it's fine. I'll take them all. But Cyrus, that's a lot more than usual. Did you delve past the first floor?"

"Oh? Yeah, I was trying to accomplish a challenge I set for myself, and I spent some time on the second floor. Didn't spend too long down there, maybe an hour or two tops. Lots of walking in a dungeon, kinda surprised."

I had explained some of my delving experience to the guildmaster as he was literally the head honcho for this branch of the guild. He never asked me to reveal my skills, so I never provided the exact details and instead kept my storytelling vague while informative. Like the others, he would offer little tips or advice to try working on during my next delve.

He lowered his hands and stood straight with his hands on his hip. "The life of an adventurer. The local dungeon is one of the larger dungeons, but it's nothing compared to a tier-four dungeon. Those have floors that could take a week's travel to reach the stairwell. Never been in one myself, but they're well documented in the capital library."

"Huh, I didn't know that. Well, at least this dungeon has plenty of chances for loot. I just wished I could find some more natural treasure. I'm disappointed I haven't found a treasure chest yet. Collecting the ghostgoop is such a pain in the ass at times."

This time, Travis stopped examining the vials in the crate and frowned as he stared at me. "What do you mean you haven't a treasure chest yet? Cyrus, have you been using a harvesting skill to collect the ectoplasm?"

Oops

"Uh, well..."

He shook his head and moved to the back of the room with the crate in his hand. "Never mind, that was rude of me to ask. In return, let me give you some advice as someone with a couple of decades of delving experience. Not all dungeons use chests. In fact, a lot of them don't. Instead, you'll find a lot of rewards or treasures in hidden rooms or sometimes side areas. They come with a challenge of sorts, usually combat but not always, depending on the dungeon itself."

I clenched my fist and narrowed my eyes suspiciously. "Bullshit, I've done that side area on the first floor three times now. I never once found loot outside of what I got from the ghostfish."

Again, he stopped and put his hands on his hip. I was starting to recognize it as his 'lecturing pose.'"I hope you're being careful. I know the room you're talking about, and that spawns a great number of monsters. It would be a shame to lose a promising adventurer before he graduates from a pearl. Don't throw yourself into danger so recklessly, Cyrus. It's not worth it, trust me. I've seen far too many young and reckless idiots get killed for being impatient and foolish. "

He spoke respectfully and appeared genuinely concerned. Instead of dismissing his advice, I acknowledged it with a nod and a slight bow. "I will take your words into consideration," I assured him.

He dropped his pose and smiled while tossing me a pouch full of coins. It was heavy, and when I pulled the strings holding it shut loose, I counted several gold coins inside. I tucked it into one of my pants pockets before looking back at the guildmaster's face. "Pleasure doing business. And now spill on what I need to look for in the dungeon. Apparently, I have been getting stiffed on loot."

During this entire conversation, Khrem was already at work mixing ingredients at the alchemy station. His hands were covered with enchanted gloves that somehow let him touch the ectoplasm without staining his hands. Behind Travis, a cauldron slowly bubbled, and I watched as blue smoke rose into the air.

"Look for where the unnatural darkness is the strongest inside the room. The dungeon likes to undergo a few changes every few months, but that room is a constant. All you have to do is channel some mana into your hand and dispel the illusion. Should be a pile of bones covering the loot."

I was ready to march into the dungeon the moment I woke up tomorrow. All this time, I could have saved some mana and gotten dungeon loot.

Shaking off and letting the frustration go, I thanked Travis again. He looked eager to return to his experiments, so I cut the conversation short and held up my hand.

"Is there something wrong?" he asked.

In response, I summoned the dark-blue crystal with black streaks and held it to the light so he could see the colour. "Yeah, one final thing. Khrem, I was hoping you could identify this. I received this instead of some ghostgoop the last delve, and I've been dying to know what skill it contains. Fingers crossed that it's something I can use."

"A skillstone? That's impressive. Especially considering you haven't been exploring properly. Most adventurers would have cursed you out for having some 'beginner's luck,' as they call it."

"Hey!" I said in faux indignation. "Not my fault. I was too busy being miserable exploring a water level. Can't blame me."

As Khrem put down his tools and came over to pick up the skillstone, Travis looked at me strangely.

"What?" I asked.

"You seem different today. I'm not sure how, but you seem more relaxed than the last time I saw you," he said strangely.

I wasn't sure what to say to that. Am I acting strangely? Teddy and Celanae kept looking at me funny, too. Luckily, I was saved from replying when Khrem returned the skillstone to the table.

"Well?" I asked curiously. I leaned on the desk and stared into the sharkman's unblinking eyes. "What skill is it?"

"Tide Stalker. Passive, water and darkness aligned movement skill. Whenever the user is transversing water, they will naturally be shrouded in darkness, making them hard to see and hear. Secondary effect, the user will move with natural ease through water while having their movement speed boosted while under its effects," Khrem answered. He rattled off the description in a monotone voice, making my eye twitch.

"Thank you, Khrem," I said as I picked up the skillstone and held it up to the light again. "That sounds pretty detailed for a mid-tier skill. I assumed midtier skills lacked the robustness higher tier skillstones have."

"Not midtier."

I looked back to Khrem with some confusion. "What do you mean? It's not clear enough to be high-tier, and its shape tells me it's not low-tier. Am I wrong?"

He nodded and pointed to the stone. "It's not blurry. The dark aspect makes it look less clear than it really is. And shapes are not a hard rule, merely guidelines."

Throughout the discussion, I noticed Travis looking at the skillstone with a pensive look. He seemed to be contemplating something, so I raised an eyebrow and waited. After nearly a minute, he looked up with a serious expression on his face.

"Cyrus?" he asked.

"Yes?"

"Are you able to use that skillstone?"

My eyebrow raised higher, wondering where he was going with this. "I could, yes. Why?"

"Would you be willing to trade this skillstone for another? I have a small collection of skills saved up, and few of them might be of interest to you."

His question slightly took me aback. Beyond the weirdness of having two guildmasters trade me something for a skillstone, I stopped and considered why he wanted the skill. He was a guildmaster, so his slots were filled. And as far as I knew, Khrem, his apprentice, was already tier one, which meant that he wasn't looking to trade for the skillstone so he could help his apprentice.

In the end, I mentally shrugged my shoulders and decided to go with the only logical guess I could make and ask him directly. "Is this for someone in that trio I met on my first day here? Because if not, I can't think of anyone else who would need this skillstone."

"It is, yes. This skill would be perfect to fill their last slot. They've been delving into the dungeon as much as possible in hopes of either saving enough money to buy a skillstone or acquire one."

I noticed he kept the pronouns vague, so I wouldn't know exactly who he was talking about in the group of three. It wasn't an important detail but an idle fact I noticed. If anything, it was nice to see the guildmaster be protective over their personal information. The simple act boded well in my trust that he would keep my looting ability a secret. Even if I never outright confirmed I had one, it was good to know he wouldn't out me to others.

For deciding whether to trade the skillstone, I was perfectly fine with making the trade. While the skill sounded cool, it was rather niche in nature. Sure, my Legacy might evolve the skill into something more general use, but I wasn't that willing to risk it. At the end of the day, I didn't plan on staying around bodies of water. The stay on the island was pleasant, but it wasn't enough to make me swear off on land.

I must have been silent for too long because Travis's face started to fall. He looked defeated behind his obvious disappointment. "Sorry about that, was thinking. I'll make the trade, but I have a question first."

His face instantly perked up before his eyes narrowed again. "What do you want to know?"

"If the skill is for their last slot, wouldn't that mean they could finally tier up? Isn't the festival only a couple of weeks away? Wouldn't I just be making it harder for myself since there's a competition?"

My question was met with blank stares. At least Khrem had the excuse of having a naturally hard-to-emote face while Travis looked at me like I had suddenly grown another head.

"What?" I asked.

"Even if you made the trade and they acquired filled their final slot, that wouldn't mean they would tier up. Ranking up a skill from zero to ten would be impossible in such a short time," Khrem explained.

Ahh, yeah. I completely forgot that my growth was considered outrageous to most people. Woopsy.

I shook my hand and put on a smile. "Ah, yeah, my bad. Never mind my last question, then. So, ready to show me what you have to offer?"

For what felt like the millionth time today, I received strange looks thrown my way. Thankfully, Khrem attended to the bubbling experiments behind Travis while the guildmaster walked out of the room, muttering something about "monster children."

Travis was gone for over eight minutes, so I spent the time chatting with Khrem, who was explaining what he and the guildmaster had found out so far. There was surprisingly little progress, or so I thought. When I commented exactly that, Khrem responded with an angry snort.

My expectations of how alchemy research worked were horribly inaccurate. They were working without a recipe and going off instinct along with structured testing of said material. With the amount of ghostgoop I provided, they could be more thorough with their testing to figure out the material's properties.

So far, they have made one small breakthrough using Drowned Shadenettle, which grew locally. The plant extract interacted with the water-aspected mana inside the ectoplasm and heightened the incorporeal nature of the goop. They weren't wholly positive, but they believed that within another week or two of testing, they'd be able to create the first batch of potions.

When I asked why they specifically aimed for potions, he answered like I was an idiot. And to be honest, I had to agree. An incorporeal effect would be detrimental to most medical uses as a salve. An oil would be too far from the material's nature to work efficiently enough to be useful.

A salve that made detritus and objects sink into your wounds more was a terrible idea. While a weapon that would help penetrate but get stuck easier was only partially useful.

Finally, Travis returned to the room with a small tray in his hand. When he sat the tray on the table, he let me get close and examine the skillstones he was offering.

One was the colour of kelp, which had twin swirls of light blue across its surface. The second was a squarish-looking bright, reflective silver gem that reflected my glowing eyes back to me. The third and final stone on the tray was a pure seafoam blue with no added colours or details.

Travis first picked up the seafoam skillstone and flipped it around in his fingers. "This is a water-aligned skill called Shroud of the Hidden Sea. It's an active that generates a wide-area fog to blanket an area. Those who get stuck in the fog become sleepy and lethargic. I acquired this probably thirteen years ago as a reward for saving an individual's and his family's lives. I didn't think much of it at the time, as I found a traveling caravan that fell victim to a beast attack. The beast was a tier-two predator who used venom to slowly finish off its victims. Me and the group I was with arrived in time to prevent it from eating anyone, and I used my knowledge in alchemy to brew enough antivenom to save the crew."

The story was fun to hear, sounding outlandish to my ears despite having lived solidly in a fantasy world for nearly two months. The skill itself sounded useful, though I kept my excitement reserved until he revealed the other two skillstones.

Continuing, he set the stone down and picked up the one with the mirror polish. "I'll admit, I wasn't sure about picking this one. It's rare to see crystal affinities in our kingdom outside of the dwarven population. Even then, only those who hail directly from the northern kingdoms potentially have a crystal affinity. Still, I would like to offer it as an option. The skill is another active, with its main properties being crystal with a minor alignment in gravity."

My ears perked up at the mention of gravity. Abstract elements like space and gravity were extremely rare, with skillstones having either of the two as their primary alignment being worth several thousand gold. Even if the skill had a minor alignment towards the mana aspect, it was enough to make the skillstone very valuable.

"What is it?" I asked.

"It's called Reflective Parry. Despite its simple name, it creates a plane of reflective glass that absorbs and reflects physical and magical attacks in nature. Most skills of this nature can only deflect one type of hit, and only after tiering up would they gain the chance to deflect more types. What makes this special is it absorbs the damage rather than deflect it. That means any skill one uses against it can be absorbed and returned at will."

It was another contender despite its less-than-amazing sounding ability. I didn't discredit it. I played enough games in my time to know that a reflection skill could be life-saving. Plus, if it evolved into a familiar summon, I would get a tank for my party. And the gravity magic intrigued me on a deeper level than a shallow need for practicality.

I nodded and motioned for him to continue to the final stone.

"And last but not the least," Travis said as he held the stone up the the light revealing smaller blue swirls along the edge of the stone. "Water and nature aligned passive skill. Dance of the Swirling Fronds was something I looted inside a rift. I should have used it, but I wanted to keep it as a memento from my first rift experience. For the longest time, I was so afraid of losing this, but now that I'm older, I'd much rather it be used if it meant I could help out someone dear to me."

I didn't know what to say. The first thought that came to mind was that I wouldn't choose this skill even if it granted me wings. Even if Travis said he had moved on, the pain in his voice was hard to hide. It was plain to see that he still treasured this skillstone, which made me rethink his relationship with the trio I met earlier. One of them must mean a lot to the old-young man.

Travis cleared his throat and set the stone down while looking sheepish. "Sorry, lost myself for a second. The skill is a body enhancement and movement passive. It grants the user greater flexibility while increasing their dexterity. When you jump, you launch yourself higher and faster while increasing your ability to maintain your balance. If you can use the Tide Stalker skillstone, you can use this one. The effects may seem underwhelming, but the change to your physical prowess would be drastic after ranking it up."

The skill was interesting but not overly so. That and the guildmaster's lingering attachment to the stone solidified my choice to disqualify it from the running. I already decided that antagonizing the alchemists who I would be relying on in the future would be silly and counterproductive.

The choice was narrowed between the two actives. Arguments could be made for having an a.o.e. crowd control skill, but I disliked the lack of damage. The sleep and lethargy debuffs would be very useful, but I didn't know how effective it would be against monsters and beasts at the higher tier.

On the opposite end, the reflection skill was focused more on preventing damage. Áine could heal me of everything outside of soul damage, so I was less worried about getting hit and more about killing things faster.

Maybe it was shortsighted, but I wanted something that could protect me more directly than using a control-type skill.

With my mind made up, I reached for the tray and selected the silver skillstone. I didn't miss the obvious relief on Travis' face when I ignored the third skill. With a mental headshake, I thanked the guildmaster and waved goodbye to Khrem.

Khrem at least turned around to wave goodbye, so I grinned and slowly exited the guildhall.

With a pocket filled with coins and a new skill burning a hole in my pants, I was ready to find Arturous and nap.

Surely, the next realm I get transported to won't be nearly as hostile.