The Way Ahead

Revelations about how Almanac worked and what it could accomplish aside, as summer carried on, it was Edwin’s other projects which began to bear fruit. Literally, in some cases. Sadly, he most likely would never get berries from his hispera bush, simply due to its slow lifecycle and it wasn’t old enough to flower or bear fruit yet. However, that didn’t apply to the rest of his plants, even the other ones he’d gotten on the same day as his talsanenris berries.

Sunstalk, after his initial problems getting it to grow, was one of the few magical plants which actually responded positively to using talsanenris as a fertilizer. The large patch of strange golden grass sparkled and glowed in the shade but turned almost invisible in sunlight. Edwin used it to make a window for Obairlann. A waste of the substance? Perhaps, but Edwin mainly wanted to see how long it would retain its magic. He was still waiting.

According to Inion, Harvesting helped, and he didn’t have a reason to disagree. If he could figure out how to somehow magically grab the property he needed, then Edwin might have an ingredient for an invisibility potion. Actually making one was still well beyond his grasp, though not for lack of trying. He just didn’t even know where to begin, and the Grimoire offered no help in that regard- not even a list of ingredients. So, his trying basically amounted to trying to grind up the grass and put it in a potion with other ingredients. He found some interesting reactions in his experimentation, but nothing usable yet.

Firevines grew at a pretty decent rate, especially with the rising temperatures that accompanied the warmer seasons. The Grimoire was more helpful in figuring out what he could do with them as compared to Sunstalk, though that wasn’t terribly useful. Matches and what more or less amounted to magical, essentially nontoxic (from what he could tell anyway) kerosene- highly flammable amber-colored oil that instantly combusted when exposed to heat, mana, particularly strong light… it was basically liquid Firestarting, and thus mostly superfluous to Edwin.

That said, combining the Skill and the oil netted Edwin a few levels in Bomb Throwing, which was appreciated. Putting it on food made it act a bit like liquid fire, scorching what he put it on if he wasn’t careful or cooking it if he was, and even the freshly-picked leaves of the ivy burned quite well.

His sinbalyne flowers were among his most promising experiments in terms of usefulness, though also his most challenging by far. Eating the flowers themselves very, very slightly- to the point where he was pretty sure it was just his imagination- made his tongue and lips feel numb. Mashing the petals into a paste, straining out the liquid, and distilling it in a smaller, more precise still than the one he used for his water gave a slightly lavender liquid that definitely made him feel faintly drowsy when he tasted it.

Inion found his resulting slurred speech hilarious, which… fair enough. He tested the distilled sinbalyne by smearing a drop of the liquid onto a thoroughly cleaned and sterilized knife, then pricked his finger to try and ‘inject’ it into his finger. It had no effect. In fact, it wasn’t until he accidentally sniffed a still-cooling vial of the drug did he realize that it was an inhaled anesthetic, which he… probably should have realized. Most likely, it was usually burned and that helped reduce sensation.

His stoppered vial of distilled sinbalyne, one of the few he had from Niall’s laboratory, was one of his most potent tools and constantly kept on his person for a while. Just a whiff was enough to make him decidedly woozy for a good five minutes, and if he heated it slightly that time could go up to half an hour.

It didn’t affect Inion, not that he really expected it to, but it was still very useful for disorienting pretty much any mammals, something he confirmed in his hunts. It worked alright on birds, though not quite as well.

Molai was kind of boring. It did its job, sure- applying juices from its stalk quickly neutralized the knockout effect of the stronger knockout potion, though not that of the weaker one for some reason. So far as Edwin could tell, it negated or weakened the magical aspects of potions, whereas mundane portions were left unhindered. Was it absorbing the mana? Was it destroying it? If it was the latter, did that mean mana didn’t follow the laws of thermodynamics? Further testing was required.

Glowleaf continued glowing even after it was picked, for a day without Harvesting or about a week with it. Well, other than lighting. Mixing the ground plants into distilled water resulted in glowing liquid which seemed to keep glowing at the same intensity more or less indefinitely. Thus, the glowing potion bottles on his shelves just ended up providing some really cool ambience. Depending on what else was included in the mixture, he could get the normally purple or green elixirs to take on gold, red, or white tints by utilizing sunstalk, firevine, or sunstalk and talsanenris.

All in all, Edwin had magical kerosene, windows, nitrous oxide, and glowsticks. Truly, he was a force to be reckoned with. May all tremble before him as he glowed at them, then tried to pour lighter fluid over them. Was he regressing? Throwing rocks at people had worked just fine for him until now.

What he really needed was to integrate his Skills into his combat style. He needed more Alchemy stuff. He needed to really double down on his training…. Which mostly amounted to the same thing he’d already been doing. Inion claimed she had ‘ideas’ for once he stalled out, which filled him with dread, though he wasn’t sure why.

As time progressed, marching on in its inorexible advance, Edwin found his patience slowly being eroded by the Zosiman Grimoire. There were only so many times he could read about how the Three Attributes could be seen in all of creation, describing certain experiments which had been demonstrably wrong on Earth as self-evident.

Some things never changed, it seemed, and Alchemy on Joriah was just as flawed as alchemy had been on Earth. Oh sure, there was a core there of truly fascinating magic in there, but it wasn’t actual science.

Edwin hadn’t given too much thought to his long-term goals. He wanted to find a place to permanently settle down that wasn’t in the middle of nowhere, he wanted to find friends- Inion didn’t really count, she was contractually obligated to be his friend no matter how much fun she might be to be around and how well they got along- and he wanted to be strong enough to feel in control of his own life.

The question of what he wanted to do with his life had always been a bit of an annoying question for Edwin. All he really wanted was to be comfortable, to not be stressed, and to have friends. The quickest route to that had been to get a well-paying job, and engineering paid very well. He’d taken quite some time determining which route exactly he wanted to take, before settling on Physics because of its increased emphasis on peeling back the mysteries of the universe in comparison to Engineering.

He’d essentially settled for mediocrity because there weren’t any other options, and he had been genuinely content with that. But some dreams never really died, and the desire to make some game-changing discovery in science was one that any scientist ought to have had at some point. There was just no way on Earth it would ever happen.

Fortunately for him, though, he was no longer on Earth, and he could make a difference. Just like Newton had his Principia, there was nothing stopping Edwin from making his own series of books to revolutionize science and alchemy as a whole!

Was that what he wanted, then? Maybe. It sounded cool and grand, at least.

Edwin made himself a deal. He wanted to travel to see the world anyway. He could help out people, he could try to make his own Alchemy guide! Starting from base principles. He didn’t have that much paper, but that was fine. He’d just write the first draft in his Almanac…

Edwin stopped. Outsider’s Almanac. How had he never connected the dots before now? Probably because the Almanac had been his first-ever skill evolution, so it had never been something he had thought about. He’d never needed to think about it, never needed to really push the limits for what the Skill was capable of because of how fast it leveled, but this was what it was meant for, wasn’t it? It was right in the name.

The System was trying to get him to come in and revolutionize things, wasn’t it? The Outsiders of the past had come in and done things of all sorts. One had built a flying city. Another was the pioneer of alchemy. There was apparently a race of machines running around that an Outsider had made…

The sudden realization in turn of the absolute crushing expectations he’d stumbled into slammed into Edwin. That… that was why Tara had been assigned to him, why the Empire was trying to be nice to him. They thought- no, they expected Edwin to change the world. To them, he’d stumbled out of myth and legend, with thousands of years of aggrandization on the side of the bar he would need to clear.

He closed his eyes and breathed slowly. Here he thought that he might be able to escape some of the high hopes people had for him back on Earth, only to stumble into something ten times worse. Before, when people joked about him curing cancer, it was indeed just a joke. Here, though? How could he possibly live up to those standards?

No. No, Edwin. No sliding into depression. There’s only one thing you can control. Just like before, people will always have high hopes and expectations for you. There’s no point in stressing over it, you can’t help that. All you can do is your best, right? Not that that’s much better, at least for stress management.

It took a few minutes, but he eventually got his emotions back under control. So what, if people literally expected the world from him? He’d just… well, not be himself. Nobody wanted that. But he could still be the Alchemist. He was going to wander, he knew that much. If nobody knew what to expect, he couldn’t disappoint them.

But the System? The System clearly wanted something from him as well, namely his thoughts and observations. Well, he could at least do that. He Identified the plants he was tending to, and a word abstraction later, he was writing again. A bit of finagling got a sketch-picture of the plant’s leaves inserted inside the entry, just like any good almanac should have.

Firevine.

Hedera Inflammare

This ivy-like vine is, true to its name, usable in alchemical formulae which can utilize fire-based effects. See FirevineUses, FirevineFormula.

On their own, the leaves function as excellent tinder, and if the leaves are crushed and the juices extracted and distilled, the resulting liquid combusts when exposed to a number of different stimuli. See FirevineUses, FirevineStimulants and FirevineHarvesting.

Native to the Rhothos and Verdant regions.

Related entries: FirevineUses, FirevineFormula, FirevineStimulants, FirevineEcology, FirevineFamily, FirevineHistory, FirevineGardening, FirevineHarvesting

It wasn’t perfect, but it was a start, and that was what mattered. Hedera was the classification for ivies, and while the tree of life was no doubt radically different on Joriah, Edwin imagined it was similar enough for cross-pollination of ideas. Half of the ‘related entries’ didn’t even have an Almanac post when he started off, but subdividing everything made it easier to update when he found something new, and kept him from having to redraw the picture every time. Hmm. There was probably an edit function, wasn’t there? It would only make sense. He made a quick Almanac note to look into it.

“That’s what you want me to do, isn’t it anyway?” Edwin asked the air. He’d never gotten any indication that the System moderators and admins could hear him, but it didn’t hurt, “Fill in information about everything ever?”

“Did you ask me something?” Inion perked up from where she lounged on a rock.

Edwin waved her off and continued with his work.

Sunstalk

Poaceae Solaris….

......

So, Edwin thought to himself that evening while working on his latest batch of brick, Almanac on his mind. If I were an immortal System with an interesting individual whose thoughts I want to record via a Skill, what features would I put in that Skill?

“What’cha thinking about?” Inion dropped down next to him.

“Almanac. I finally got to thinking about it, and now I’m wondering if I can figure out what its other functions might be based on what the admins and mods might have tried to give me. I figure its fast leveling speed is part of that, and they clearly want my thoughts on some matters… but am I supposed to be able to share it? There’s got to be an editing rather than rewrite option. I store data, what are the limits? Can I store audio? Videos? Can I just straight-up take pictures of things? Is there a search function I can access somehow?”

He thought for a moment, “Have you gotten any Paths pertaining to me explaining science stuff to you, by any chance?”

“Uhhh… lemme check. I don’t look that often.” Her eyes focused on thin air, “Uhhh… Nope. Doesn’t look like it.”

Edwin hummed to himself softly, “Interesting. I would have suspected something like that. I wonder if there’s some clever thing I need to tell you about to get it to unlock?”

He tapped his chin, “Or maybe…. Inion, I give you permission to access my Almanac.”

She blinked, “Huh. That actually worked. ‘New Path! By receiving appropriate permission, you have gained the Outsider’s Student path!’”

Edwin blinked, “That was easy. Also nice to know that I don’t need to worry about someone getting access to it by accident, if you need permission. How many points is it?”

“Sixty. I’ll have to take it, see what it does,” she stuck her tongue out at him, “Maybe I’ll finally get to see all your random thoughts you leave everywhere.”

“Oh, shoot. You know what? You don’t have to take it. In fact, you should forget you ever unlocked it.”

Inion just laughed, and Edwin smiled. Life... life was going well.