I was bored. I was banished from the dungeon, the institute was combining science and magic in ways far beyond my comprehension, and I had no more interesting side experiments queued up to try. There were no useful summer school lessons this year, nor was I asked to teach again, given that the institute had already overtaken the small amounts I could remember. Even the missing Cluma situation had been resolved, albeit no thanks to me, and not in a way I was particularly happy about.

Out of desperation, the two of us visited the kobold mana field up in the northern part of Dawnhold's territory, but they were no challenge at all to either of us. I did at least get a couple more levels of [Hunting], and Cluma got a bow proficiency level and big helping of tasty meat, so it wasn't a complete loss. The amount of meat consumed by our household had shot up with the addition of Cluma.

The actual effect of [Hunting] was to trickle knowledge into my head about what sorts of wildlife lived in which habitats, which were safe to eat, how to approach them without detection, how best to lay traps, and so on. Not that any of that applied to kobolds, which were monsters and not wildlife. It made the whole thing rather nonsensical.

I spent the rest of the summer tickling Darren with mana, helping out around the house and village, and accompanying Cluma on her day-trips to Dawnhold to visit Clana. In the interests of advancing skills, I was inspecting, appraising and analysing everything I could see, and blasting out my rank one spells whenever I had mana, and by mid-autumn I'd at least gained some skills.

Skill [Minor Strength] advanced to level 14

Skill [Minor Dexterity] advanced to level 14

Skill [Minor Endurance] advanced to level 14

Skill [Minor Wisdom] advanced to level 15

Skill [Minor Charisma] advanced to level 13

Skill [Weft Walk] advanced to level 8

Skill [Item Box] advanced to level 7

Skill [Inspection] advanced to level 11

Skill [Inspection] advanced to level 12

Skill [Meditation] advanced to level 13

Skill [Foraging] advanced to level 5

Skill [Basic Crafting] advanced to level 14

Skill [Clock] advanced to level 6

Skill [Clock] advanced to level 7

Skill [Appraisal] advanced to level 13

Skill [Analysis] advanced to level 4

Class [Spatial Mage] advanced to level 8

Class level increased intelligence by 1

Alas, by this point I was getting restless again. After the continuous excitement of the past year, how was I expected to sit quietly in a village for the next five years? I wanted to be out exploring the world already! There had to be something I could do.

There was indeed something I could try. No doubt it would be a spectacularly bad idea, but nevertheless... I'd gained a mass of mana control levels since the last time I'd tried and failed to generate affinity mana. Perhaps I could do it now?

I set myself up in a patch of scrubland, alone and a safe distance from the village. I'd considered whether to bring Cluma with me, in order to run for help if things went wrong, but I was worried about things going so badly wrong that she would get caught up in it too. Something else I'd considered was which affinity to try for. Which of my four would be safest? I simply didn't know what raw affinity mana would do without the structure of an explicit spell.

I decided body affinity would be the safest bet, as long as I kept it far away from my actual body. With luck, it wouldn't have any physical effect at all, unlike space or time, which, knowing my luck, would wreak some sort of havoc with the fundamental fabric of reality. I grabbed hold of a bunch of mana at long range, then gave it a mental twist. It took a few goes to get the hang of which metaphorical direction I needed to twist it in, but unlike the last time I tried, this time my attempts had an effect. The mana changed colour, or flavour, or something. There was, briefly, a cloud of body affinity mana floating in front of me, before it dissipated harmlessly.

I'd actually been poised to run for it, as well as wearing my lightning glove, half expecting this experiment to go wrong in some sort of horrible way. Summoning up a cancerous ball of flesh that started consuming the landscape, leaving me needing to vaporise it before it ate the continent, or something equally horrific. Seeing it just drift apart with no apparent effect came as a bit of a surprise, and to the same bit of my brain that decided attacking an orc or soloing the tenth floor boss was a good plan, just a touch of disappointment. I ended up hanging around, doing nothing but staring with [Mana Perception] for ten minutes, just in case there was some delayed reaction.

Once it became obvious that nothing was happening, I decided to try with soul affinity. As the paired affinity to body, and given how boring body affinity was, soul should equally have no effects. I grasped the mana again and twisted in the opposite direction. The world, very briefly, turned white.

I came to, laying on the ground and with pain in my arm and head indicating that I'd fallen awkwardly. That had been unpleasant... No, not just unpleasant; my status indicated the loss of ten points of health. That had been dangerous. Dragging myself upright, I also spotted that I'd been sick at some point, and was seriously thankful that I hadn't landed in it. Okay, point made; soul affinity was banned for a reason. Let's not mess with it.

I wasn't even sure what had happened. It felt like I'd been pushed away from the cloud of expanding mana, while my body remained exactly where it was, and I'd momentarily been looking at the back of my own head. [Clock] showed that I'd been out for nearly a quarter hour, which did nothing to reassure me. I hadn't even got any levels from it, although thankfully I didn't get a rank up for [Self-Destructive] either.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

At least that little incident solved my restlessness. I returned to the village, full of fresh determination to make it until next year without doing anything stupid. Or winter. Or next week. At this point, I'd take whatever I could get.

It wasn't until night time that I noticed that my little experiment hadn't actually been completely without gains. There was, after all, one area of the System that never seemed to bother with notifications, and I'd made it a habit to check the skill shop from time to time to see if I'd missed anything.

Skills available for purchase:

0 points: [Soul Sense]

[Soul Sense] - Vaguely perceive the presence of souls in your immediate vicinity. Higher levels increase acuity and range. (Rank 1)

Okay, forget next week. I wasn't going to last until the end of today.

ding

New skill acquired: [Soul Sense]

Thankfully, I wasn't faced with debilitating mental overload, or blinded, or otherwise crippled by any adverse effects. In fact, nothing much happened at all. It was just like level one [Mana Sense]; I could sort of see myself as a hazy light-grey me-shaped cloud, but couldn't see anyone else in the room. The range was likely too limited to see anyone I wasn't touching, and the resolution wasn't good enough to see anything other than a diffuse blob. Or maybe a blob was all there was to see; it wasn't as if I knew what a soul was supposed to look like.

Resolving to leave any further poking till the next day, I shut the skill off and did my best to sleep, up against the background of Dad snoring, Darren crying, Mum trying to comfort him and Cluma purring. Yeah, another thing to do tomorrow; build us a new bedroom or two! Preferably with some form of soundproofing. There was plenty of space between each shack, and we didn't have maintained gardens, so there wasn't anything in the way.

I'd meant to do it in the summer, but at first I'd been preoccupied, and by the time the tournament had finished, I'd got used to our new living arrangements. Darren had been sleeping well at the time, and I'd swear Dad's snoring hadn't been so loud. I blamed the way there were now three people in the household with [Basic Cooking] at level ten or higher. Dad had definitely put on a few kilos, not that I'd ever say that out loud. It needed to be done at some point, anyway; with three growing children in the house, it wasn't going to be much longer until the five of us physically didn't fit.

I broached the subject at breakfast. "Mum, Dad? With Cluma potentially staying here for the next few years, and me and Darren getting bigger, do you think we should extend the shack a bit? Add another bedroom or two?"

"Feel free," said Dad, "but I won't be able to help. We're preparing for harvest, and by the time we're done it'll be too cold and wet to be making structural alterations. We should have done it in the summer."

"Your snoring was quieter in the summer," I said, giving away the second of my reasons for bringing this up.

"I suppose the bedroom is a little cramped, and could do with being a bit bigger," answered Mum, thoughtfully.

"That and privacy," I added, giving my third reason.

"Privacy?" asked Mum. "Is that another Earth thing?"

Yeah... Wasn't even going to try to explain that one. Another Law induced cultural difference. Although that wasn't the only thing I wanted to do today, so I caught Dad as he was heading to the door. "Can I check something before you leave?" I asked, putting my hands on his back and activating [Soul Sense]. Again, there was nothing more than a vague cloud, this time Dad-shaped and in a slightly darker grey.

"What are you doing?" he asked, given that from his perspective all I'd done was walk behind him and touch him.

"Trying out a new skill I got last night, [Soul Sense]."

He didn't respond to that, waiting for me to finish, then leaving the house for work. I tried it out on Mum and Cluma, both of whom had the same diffuse grey appearance. Cluma looked at me with interest as I held her hand, experimenting with how close I had to be to someone to invoke the skill. "What are you doing?" she asked with interest, watching me.

Hadn't I just answered that? "I'm still experimenting with [Soul Sense]," I answered, then let go of her hand in surprise as I saw her eyes briefly glaze over.

"Do you want my help building the extra rooms?" she asked, in a complete change of topic. I wasn't surprised; I recognised that glazed over look. So, the knowledge of [Soul Sense] was banned by Law then, which I suppose I should have guessed beforehand, given that soul stuff in general seemed to be restricted. "I don't have a carpentry skill, but I can carry things for you," she added, completely oblivious to my internal monologue.

ding

Skill [Soul Sense] advanced to level 2

"Yes, there's no way I can do it on my own," I answered, not actually sure if that was true. Thanks to the System, there was a good chance I could do it all on my own. "Let's get started," I added, deciding to put experimentation with my new skill aside for the moment.

It quickly turned out that while I could have done things myself, I wouldn't have been finished before winter. We didn't have a stockpile of lumber, and while our position right next to a forest and my buffed strength stat being high enough to literally drag tree trunks around meant that we weren't short of raw wood, I didn't want to wait a season or two for the stuff to dry properly, which [Basic Crafting] screamed at me was important. Fortunately, a [Carpenter] could solve that problem with a single flex of their [Season Wood] skill, drying out my collection of freshly cut planks to perfection within seconds.

I hadn't realised we had a [Carpenter] in the village. It wasn't as if there was any ongoing construction work, and while shacks did need repair from time to time, I thought it was done by people like Dad who picked up the skill on the side. Alas, the [Carpenter] was as busy with the harvest as everyone else, so while he could stop round to fire off a skill or two, he couldn't help us with anything time consuming.

ding

Skill [Basic Crafting] advanced to level 15

Not that we needed him. Maybe my work wasn't quite up to the standard of someone with [Advanced Carpentry], but it was plenty enough to nail some planks of wood together and make a room out of them, along with window shutters, doors, and a few items of furniture. Add in some light and heat crystals purchased from Henry, and within a couple of weeks me and Cluma had our own bedrooms, neatly solving our space problem. Not so much Dad's snoring problem, though; his noise went right through the walls. Could wood be enchanted with soundproofing? Mythril nails with a silence enchantment? A problem for another day.