Part 26 - Trial and Error

  New skills!

  Predictably, not so fast.

  As usual, the fun police were on the beat. Liz had more bodily issues to sort out first.

  She carefully removed the backup suit of Runeweave, dumping all her formerly stored small items that had fallen loose out onto the ground.

  Losing [Earth Manipulation] had come with a bevy of problems and weirdness. Foremost, the stone of her former racial modifier was gone without a trace. Not even a speck of dust remained. She quirked an eyebrow and mentally cast some words vaguely heavensward.

  Literally heavensward, actually.

  Hey, Seira, did you take away some body parts while I was out? I could’ve used some forewarning about that.

  She paused a few moments as she sensed the goddess turned away at that exact time, then felt the reassuring presence over her shoulder, so to speak.

  Love! Er-

  Liz! Ahem. Yes, that stone didn’t actually belong on Pallos, and I was getting some complaints from a few of the others about it. I kindly put it back where I got it from when you stopped using it. Sorry, it was a whole thing, and I realized I had a moment there.

  On the other hand, it also would’ve been an incredibly nasty experience for you to carve it out and replace it with your skill. Saved you the added mental trauma. For now, at least.

  Liz chewed her lip, wondering what the slip-up had been about at the start of the message. The ending was ominous as well.

  I appreciate it, then. The new class seems really perfect, so thanks. Do you control the names of the skills, though? [Hardness] and [Cleavage] in particular. Why?

  Seira failed to stifle a laugh, somehow.

  Yes and no. My [Tenets] are my own handiwork to start with, then the system adds weight and carries them forward. I have some control over the contents of the skills in the class, but it’s easier to allow the system to have a lot of authority in the process, and it takes less investment on my part. Anyway, I have some things to work on. Talk more later.

  Elizabeth let out a long breath, then started planning.

  Her first order of business was to get some food and water handled. She could tell she’d been out for a while during the class-up.

  She got a better look at her stump below the knee of her right leg. The scar line from the gateway that had split her leg was impossibly straight, without any wrinkling or signs of having had the flesh mended. It was like the skin ended and the thin layer of simple quartz began. Quartz had been the first thing she’d thought of when using the skill, but she badly needed to choose a better material.

  She knew just where to start.

  Comparatively, conjuration of gemstones was extremely expensive on Pallos. At peak efficiency, a person got about one gram of material for every point of mana spent, but this broke down fast as image quality went down. A renowned example hearkened back to the ancient Medical Manuscripts which were rumored to improve healing efficiency by leaps and bounds.

  When it came to gemstones, the system hadn’t been lying when it credited her with the most advanced knowledge on the subject out of everyone on the planet. Diamonds were an option she knew quite well, but if her estimations were correct, she’d fall short by a wide margin if she tried to conjure a diamond replacement calf and foot. Corundum—often known as ruby or sapphire based largely on coloration—was the next step down. Even at a weight of about three grams per cubic centimeter, corundum was simply too heavy to conjure the material needed.

  She had a substance in mind for a sturdy material she knew well enough to get close.

  Pooling all of her mana into the skill, she used [Crystallize] for the first big effort of the new class. The substance she had in mind was a bit complicated, however.

  Originally two different minerals grouped into one by history, she had a choice to make. If she cared about appearances, she would choose the more vibrant of the two, but instead, she chose the duller, more hardy option of the two. A fibrous matrix of crystals composed from calcium, magnesium and iron heavy amphibole. Uncommonly known as Nephrite, the mineral was once grouped in with jadeite for what the Chinese had called Jade.

  Nephrite was the tougher, more durable of the two, and Liz wanted that tough material for the core of her new, somewhat temporary prosthetic leg. Part of the complication was keeping similar substances out of her mind with [Mental Partitioning]. Actinolite was similar, and was a form of asbestos. Not something she wanted in her leg.

  Thankfully, [Gemstone Manipulation] worked the same way in her mind as the older version of the skill had, allowing her to peel back the quartz layer before the new crystalline structure formed and grew before her eyes. It was beautiful to see, and much faster than staring at the gemstones being grown with heat and pressure over the course of months back on Earth.

  Jade was the ideal category for her to be making body parts from within the limits of her mana pool. It was strong and durable without being too easy to fracture. On the other hand, it was also getting the full effects of her Vitality, which would make the prosthetic into a similar quality of tool as her leg had been before the class-up.

  [*ding* [Crystallize] has leveled up! 128 -> 129]

  [*ding* [Crystallize] has leveled up! 129 -> …]

  Problem was, Nephrite’s heavy stuff. Her mana pool, if at a perfect image of the material, could generate roughly seventy-five thousand grams of the stuff. That was a surprising amount of material, and her efficiency was apparently slightly lacking. She hadn’t worked with jades much in her previous life, and Jadeite was a much more valuable stone for the vivid coloration it had.

  [*ding* [Crystallize] has leveled up! 134 -> 135]

  Sweet, sweet, easy levels. Much easier to level than the Earth counterpart had been. Complex and novel work was such a treat for the system.

  She had enough mana to generate down to her ankle, then to her heel, then to the balls of her feet, and finally her… Nope, missing the tips of her toes. It was enough to walk on.

  She guessed, based on a weight estimate and her handy [An Eye for Detail] to attach a measurement to things she could see, that she’d gotten to about ninety percent efficiency. She’d not studied the exact crystalline form of the substance, which made the right amount of sense. By her estimation, her new leg would weigh close to two hundred pounds. Nearly a full seventy or so kilograms when complete.

  She didn’t have any intention to make her whole set of prosthetics from Nephrite, but she’d instead wait and see what she could liberate from the samples in the lab eventually.

  Ideally, a majority of her body would be corundum in the end, but she needed the mana or the raw material for it. Sturdy, almost as much as diamond, but not so clear and flashy as to be seen as anything more than a skill to thieving eyes.

  It was time for destination number one. Food. Or so she hoped.

  She poked her head out of the doorway, hopeful nothing had randomly been missed while she was exploring earlier, then grabbed her Runeweave and darted across the hallway and into the kitchen area. Not a speck of dust was anywhere to be found in the entire complex, which made the effort of cleaning up a total breeze.

  She did not trust the water in the sinks, though. Not with moss growing in the closet nearby.

  She put a few of her skills to newfound work, feeling slightly like a lonely housewife or something.

  [*ding* [Purify Water] has leveled up! 1 -> 2]

  [*ding* [Washing] has leveled up! 1 -> 2]

  The new skills worked out wonderfully. They did exactly what was written on the tin. She purified the water from the faucet—unsure how the faucet actually worked—and then tossed her clothing in. The second skill was perfect, and the Runeweave looked brand new.

  She then quietly made her way back to the drying rack she’d made before, collecting her more heavy-duty suit and doing the same thing to the blood-soaked outfit. The young Basilosauruses had gotten blood caked into the whole thing. It was gross, even when it had been dry.

  Liz then wondered if she could use [Washing] on herself somehow. Then she recalled the bathroom with the slime-toilet in the room she’d classed up in. There had been a shower there.

  She prioritized clean over fed. Bonus, hydration was an option in the shower.

  [*ding* [Purify Water] has leveled up! 2 -> 8]

  [*ding* [Washing] has leveled up! 2 -> 5]

  [*ding* Congratulations! Your class [Survivalist] has leveled up from level 8 to level 9!]

  [*ding* You have gained the following stats per level! +1 Free Stats, +2 Strength, +2 Dexterity, +4 Vitality, +1 Speed, +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regeneration, +2 Magic Power, +2 Magic Control from your class! +1 Free Stat for being Partially Human! +1 Dexterity from your element!]

  A shower did her soul a lot of good, and allowed her to tentatively try out the shampoo she’d been stashing away since the not-plague disaster. Fortunately, it wasn’t deathly acidic, and Liz got her hair washed thoroughly for the first time in months.

  It had been growing longer on its own and the work of the stylist for the big diplomatic party had extended that slightly, but it hadn’t made her feel as clean as a shower did. The Pallos-style cut, she decided, could stay. Still, another piece of her old life was gone. Another wave of memories stifled.

  She got out of the shower, realizing that she officially had no clothes to wear while both suits hung up to dry. [Survivalist] wasn’t a [Mage] class—it was most likely [Laborer]—so it hadn’t come with a fancy skill to suck the water back out of her clothes.

  Nudity was on the menu.

  Liz finally caved and labeled the whole place as ‘most likely uninhabited.’

  She had a huge explosion in stats to worry about, slime to consume, and a room full of test sample gemstones to inventory.

  She pushed her Speed and Dexterity to the limit and bounded to the kitchen again, ready for her next meal of savory pudding. The trip was barely worth mentioning, and soon after, she was headed back to the lab room she’d mentally dubbed “Treasury.”

  The room was split into two sections, as most of the labs had been. The first area was a storage room, and the inner room was full of work tables and heavy tomes. She decided the books could come first, after some organizational effort was put in.

  The more she swept through the storage room like a human tornado born of stats, the more she tried to absently identify the various gemstones on the shelves and recall information from her previous life about each one. After a while—really just a few minutes experienced in high Speed mode—she received a notification.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  [*ding* You have unlocked the general skill [Enhanced Recall]!]

  It seemed that the system had deemed it time.

  Time for her to fix herself little by little.

  She dropped [Merciless] for the new skill. The nausea of losing a skill almost at level one hundred was brutal. It was actually her first ever dropped skill, and losing her slime lunch was somehow so much worse than losing solid food. She’d have to bring a bucket and use [Washing] liberally.

  The irony was not lost on her that she was rapidly leveling a skill she didn’t think she’d need in the first place, though.

  [Enhanced Recall: Your memory isn’t perfect, but you’re getting there. Remember it all a little more clearly with this skill. Just don’t remember anything you’re not supposed to. No spoilers, Oracle.]

  So many questions, and yet a warning not to look for the answers. Moving on.

  The shelves of the gemstone storage room were soon immaculate, and every stone was organized carefully by element. Some samples were tiny, while others were numerous, likely based on the commonality of the stone itself.

  A frankly shocking amount of unprocessed quartz was making Liz a little too excited, so she finally made for the books she’d organized and shelved near the entrance to the lab itself.

  She cracked open the first volume and began with the introduction of Book 1. Elements and Materials, by ‘Professor Henry White.’ It was entirely in English.

  “Introduction. This study of the elements and materials on Pallos will require many volumes of notes. My field of expertise is Biology, so I warn you not to expect a perfect account of variables outside my speciality.

  When studying the elements of the system, I prefer to start with Water. A primordial element on Earth. One which births life. Not so, on Pallos. Life on Pallos was precisely fabricated with intelligent intent. The issue becomes the chicken and egg conundrum. Which came first? The world, or the gods? The answer here is, functionally, the gods. But just as the thing that laid the egg wasn’t originally a chicken, the gods of Pallos likely came from somewhere else. My best guess is they split from another pantheon elsewhere, and made Pallos their own.

  These suppositions come from parsing the basic theology of Creation from a number of races, largely the Dwarves and Elves. The Khazad Dwarves in particular—who keep records deep beneath their mountains—have extensive systems of records dating back to the original Remus, a nascent empire that gets as close to the year zero as any record I’ve encountered.

  Evidence aside, back to Elements. The core ones, Water and Fire, Earth and Wind, Metal and Wood, Light and Dark. Their numbering eight is yet another fascination of the system. Base eight being another recurring question without an answer, so far.

  Listed:

  Water: Dexterity

  Fire: Strength

  Earth: Vitality

  Wind: Speed

  Metal: Magic Power

  Wood: Magic Control

  Light: Mana Regeneration

  Dark: Mana (Reserves)

  Each core element is fundamental. A prime example tied to one of the eight stats of the system. Water, tied to Dexterity, is the fundamental on which Ocean expands. Then it blends out with the other elements to create the likes of Steam, Ooze, Mist, Acid, Sylvan, Mirage and Ice.”

  The book went on to list all the elements and how they were related back into the system, then devolved into rants.

  Rants about gemstones not making scientific sense.

  Rants about the ‘locals’ not having any inquisitive nature towards the questions he had.

  Rants about how little information he could dig up on things that should’ve been easily proveable.

  Liz went hunting for a notebook of her own, then began taking down her own bullet points to keep in mind.

  She did find some common ground with Professor White on one major topic, though.

  Ruby and sapphire were both the same gemstone. Corundum was somehow the gemstone used for storing skills of Fire when it was a ruby and Ocean when it was a sapphire. She began to feel her eye twitching slightly as she read the notes on that subject in depth.

  The only notable difference to White’s eyes between the two was color, and yet one covered a fundamental element, while the other covered an advanced element.

  She was very tempted to take up his same pitchfork ideology about the subject before she sighed and continued reading.

  Scientifically, as best as the professor could test things on Pallos, all gemstones retained the exact properties they had from Earth with a handful of oddities that just made the man rant further.

  Huayne was another interesting tangent. The gemstone was attached to the element of Poison. Professor White had labeled samples from a total of nearly a dozen countries around Pallos, and all of them were the same composition.

  That particular gemstone, like many others on Earth, was unique because of where it came from. Regional differences made the gemstone only available when they formed naturally within that region. And yet, Pallos had equal access to them from anywhere.

  Like the professor, Liz felt close to convinced there was a grand conspiracy.

  She gave up on the good professor’s notes and tapped her chin thoughtfully.

  “Another person from Earth. How very intriguing.” She was inclined to like the man, if not for his nearly insane rants.

  Liz strode out into the storage room and began to count through the samples.

  The largest quantities of gemstones in the room were quartz, corundum, topaz and emerald.

  A separate shelf had held a large supply of three types of stones, some clearly charged with skills.

  Turquoise, Olivine, and Jasper.

  Liz felt her eye twitch again at the sight of Jasper. Again with Olivine, too.

  “Can I file a complaint?” She muttered dark thoughts under her breath.

  Regardless, the elements on the shelf were Ooze, Lava and Sand. A revision of her earlier count had Olivine being nearly as common in the room as quartz was.

  She’d have to do some tests on the skill-infused stones later, but she wagered those were Professor White’s chosen elements, making him at least level five hundred twelve to get three classes.

  Liz began arranging the gemstones into a rough outline, mapping out details in her notebook of how she would use each stone.

  Then she laughed to herself as she squatted in front of the quartz pile. It was truly a huge haul from all different colors and varieties around the world. Common, rapid to form and very valuable for her.

  Quartz had a lot of inclusions inside of it that made Liz very excited. One of the inclusions was a gemstone formation that looked like black or red needles inside the crystal. These needles were commonly known as rutile. Quartz with rutile inside was referred to as rutilated quartz, and what made rutile so very useful to Earth was that it was titanium oxide.

  A literal titanium gemstone. The perfect gemstone for her own purposes.

  She set [Gemstone Manipulation] to work right away, stripping the rutile from the unprocessed quartz and melding it together into a long, flexible thread using her skills.

  She had planned to try and use the material for her armor in the past, but with so much made available to her, she decided to steal from the missing occupants of the lab and take her sweet time replicating her Runeweave outfit with the more interesting material forming a second skin, then layering the wealth of corundum, emerald and topaz into plates over the woven rutile.

  She planned to make herself a bit of a tank. If she could learn to sew first.

  Liz had spent the next couple of hours spending mana to use [Gemstone Binding] to patch the rest of her body back together with the natural gemstones. They all readily accepted her mana and the process was surprisingly efficient. She kept her leg as conjured material, though. She wanted to test how it felt and how it would degrade over time.

  She marched back to the residential area while flexing her new ruby fingers on her fixed left hand, having given up on her crusade over the word corundum early.

  She rounded the bend of the hall to notice… the lights were on in the kitchen.

  She bit her lip as she realized she was both not wearing clothes and had never been offered a [Stealth] skill. She was heavy and loud, even with her high Dexterity, so she winced as she realized there was no way she was finding out who was there without them hearing her coming.

  It was the voice that caught her by surprise, despite knowing the jig was up before it had even started.

  “Go get dressed, dear. As great as you look, I’m not just here to stare.”

  Liz sighed, then popped into the bedroom to grab one of her suits, both of which were miraculously totally dry after only a couple of hours. She was already counting her blessings, so why not add another?

  She returned to the kitchen and saw Seira warming a teapot over the rune-powered stove.

  “Welcome, dear. Aren’t you glad to see me? With you being my [Oracle], I can visit and have tea a lot more often.”

  [*ding* [Stunning] has leveled up! 59 -> 60]

  Liz smiled as she took in the sight of divine perfection given form once again.

  “I am glad to see you. Just how much did you have to rig the game to get me down here? Could’ve done with less sea monsters, though. Just for future reference.”

  Seira winked at her, then took the pot off the heat and brought it to a table that had been decorated with flowers and a tablecloth that hadn’t been there before.

  “I know you prefer your tea just slightly below a boil, otherwise it takes forever to cool enough for you to drink it.”

  Liz frowned. Seira wasn’t omniscient. She shouldn’t have known that, really. Liz hadn’t been drinking things like tea often on Pallos, and she’d never mentioned it.

  “How do you…? Actually, on that subject, why me in the first place? The real reason, I mean.”

  Seira gave a sly smile and closed her eyes. Then the smile blossomed into a full, authentic laugh.

  “You really do get people sometimes, don’t you? Even me, even now. It is one of your best qualities. That said, a certain someone decreed ‘No spoilers’ and that decree is something I try to adhere to.” Seira opened her eyes and they seemed to sparkle with light that wasn’t in the room.

  Liz sucked in a sharp breath as she couldn’t help but stare. She quickly distracted herself by pouring the tea for them both.

  “I’ll leave it at that, then. What is the tea today?”

  “I brought one of your favorites. Peach rooibos tea. This is all to celebrate your new class and progress. Have you noticed yet?” Seira gestured towards her own face, saw Liz shake her head while tipping her head inquisitively, then waved her hand in the air, causing a small mirror to appear in her hand.

  Liz caught on and looked into the mirror, only to suck in a sharp breath.

  Her eyes glittered like dazzling emeralds, still the green of her normal eye color, but faceted and beautiful. Then, within the depths of her eyes, the slight subtle hints of her blessing were now visible, appearing as needle-like slits in the emeralds.

  Her eyes were truly unique. No other green-eyed person would have the same effect in their eyes just for having Gemstone as their element. Her eyes looked like rutilated emeralds.

  “I can’t believe I hadn’t been more excited for this. What do you think of them?” Liz turned the question to the goddess and found herself unusually hopeful about the response.

  “I was waiting for you to ask! They’re beautiful. The most gorgeous eyes I have ever seen.” Seira was beaming at her with so much passion in her eyes. It was hard to imagine they’d only recently gotten to know one another.

  “Thank you.” Liz sipped at her tea, though it was still a bit hot. Warm tea didn’t steep well, after all. “So, to what do I owe this visit?”

  Seira seemed to deflate a little.

  “Nothing, truly. I’m checking in, seeing how you’re doing and making sure you’re not in this place alone too much. Plans? Tell me what you’re going for next.”

  Liz blew on her tea a bit before setting it down.

  “I want to make armor from the gems here. I think I’ll also take the time to learn these runes that are all over the place. They’re different from the ones Sorana used in her clothing so it would be good to pick up what I can while I’m here. Professor Henry White seems-”

  Liz trailed off when Seira made a sour face at the name.

  “That man is part of why you’re here now. You need to know. He’s the man I brought you here to fix the messes from. He left holes in space all over the world. He’s even responsible for that ugly city falling in the ocean. He’s the worst thing to happen to Pallos since… Well, that one dragon incident was nasty, but this might actually take the cake for world ending cataclysms since Creation.” Seira seemed to be biting back her anger.

  Liz stood and moved to rub Seira’s back reassuringly. It felt like the right thing to do, and Seira seemed to relax quickly from the strokes of her hand.

  Their relationship felt so much less tense during this visit. Liz felt at home by Seira’s side and it felt like… fate. The mystique and reverence she’d felt in the baths when she’d received her blessing was suddenly long gone.

  “Sorry. Just keep in mind that he’s not someone to take knowledge from lightly. Ask me if you’re in doubt, any time, and I’ll tell you if something is safe or not. Now, tell me about your armor.”

  Liz nodded, returning to her seat across the table.

  “Actually, first. Can I file a complaint? The system. I just can’t make sense of these gemstones. This is really unbelievable. Surface level knowledge, right? Ruby and sapphire are for Fire and Ocean. But both stones are corundum, and it just makes no sense. But then I noticed jasper being the stone for Sand, which is just a type of chalcedony, but then chalcedony isn’t even used at all. The one that irks me most is olivine! Olivine is a stone found in space, and a mineral at best, and peridots are made from it. It all makes no sense and it’s horribly inconsistent. It chafes my soul!”

  “Ferie… Liz.” Seira had a wistful smile on her lips, like she was reliving old memories. “I’m sorry, but there’s no complaint system. If changes could be made so easily, I doubt we’d be having this discussion at all. The system has a lot of quirks, and these are a few of them. You might just know more about gemstones than whoever made those choices in the first place. Take comfort in that thought.”

  Liz sipped at her tea again, realizing it had already grown a bit too cold. Then, she suddenly felt like an idiot.

  [*ding* [Minor Adjustment] has leveled up! 1 -> 2]

  She took a sip—skill having warmed the tea just enough—then moved to sit beside Seira again.

  “Thank you. For always listening. I’m not doing the greatest here on Pallos so far, and I know it has been a bit of a disappointment. You’ve been patient with me, and I want you to know that I appreciate that.” Liz put her left arm around Seira’s shoulders and gave her a hug from beside her.

  Seira made a face like she had bit down on a peppercorn. Then she replied.

  “You’ve been through a lot, and I wish I could’ve helped more, but one day you’ll know there are rules about these things. Just know, I’ll never be disappointed in you. That’s just one thing that isn’t possible.”

  Liz felt something in her chest loosen up as she experienced relief she hadn’t expected.

  The tea cups sat side by side on the table as both of them stared into one another's' eyes, rutilated irises meeting ones shining with divinity.

  Their shared time remained like that for a while, until Seira had to return to her work.