The Workshop was buzzing with potential energy when Saul arrived with the usual unpleasant lurch into the crafting space. On the surface, all was as it always was.
The rain beat on the tall windows, the generous fire crackled in the hearth and, at the center of the room, the spell tree, marvelous to look upon, shifted in a phantom wind and glowed with strange, pale-colored lights.
But to Saul, the room was tense, as if both he and it were on the cusp of something and both felt a significant moment had been reached.
Saul had appeared in a corner near the creepy obsidian door. In the corners of his vision loomed shadows and ghostly forms of all the machines he had the potential to unlock.
There were tall things and small things, long things and thin things, things that looked like implements of torture, and things that looked like the tools and tables one might find in a bookbinder’s Workshop. When he looked straight at them, he saw nothing but the neat, rich furnishings of the Workshop room.
But over toward the window was one shadow that did not immediately vanish. It was tall, nearly as tall as he was, with many protrusions and twistings and windings, gleams of polished glass and twists of copper.
Now, when he looked straight at this, it became an amorphous twisting blob of shadow, and yet it did not vanish.
Saul smiled. Whatever the hell this was, he felt pretty sure he was about to unlock it.
He moved to the Resource Table. Here, too, there was a change. The table was larger than it had been before, as if there was space for new resources. The additional area was almost completely manifested. A thick pall of shadow hung around the edges, so thick that Saul could almost see it as a part of the table when he looked right at it.
Almost, but not quite.
Saul examined the Resource Table, picking up and handling the XP coins and running a hand over the Arcane Dust vials. This time, he had more leisure to spend inspecting his resources.
In the normal world, it was night, a few days after the skirmish with the warlocks. The soldiers were on guard, and there was no hurry.
Resource: Experience Points (XP): 1,000
Resource: Arcane Dust: 1,000
The Gold XP coins were showing themselves in denominations of 100, each coin thick and heavy and apparently made of purer, finer gold than any he had ever seen in his life before the Workshop.
If you could have seen these, Baraz, Saul thought, smiling, thinking of Emperor Karak and his never-ending quest to have quality gold coinage minted for the empire.
They had gone through all kinds of difficulties trying to secure good supply lines from the gold mines in the far eastern mountains of Xorn. The mines themselves were not the problem. The trouble came from the bad roads, the flooded fords, the ingrate bedesmen in the merchant towns on the way, and the corrupt tax officials trying to take a cut from the wagons carrying bullion to the great mints in the Riverlands.
Saul ran a finger over the surface of the thick gold coin as he thought about this when something new caught his attention. He squinted at the coin in his hand and frowned.
In the past, the coins had always been utterly blank, free of marking or device of any kind. Now, he felt something under his thumb, a roughening, a texture that had not been there the last time he’d looked at one.
He held it up for better light. Yes, there was something there. It was the faintest of traces, but it was undeniable. There was a shape on the coin.
As he held it closer to his eyes, he saw without doubt that it was the looping, stylized, strange but beautiful shape of a Sigil.
The Gold XP coins were changing, developing as he developed. He smiled, then picked up the heavy coins and moved toward the Crafting table.
He had noticed early on that each level cost 100 more XP than the previous level. Each new level spell also cost 100 more Arcane Dust than the previous one. So far, he was dealing in fairly small amounts of both, but as he grew in strength and power, the levels would become increasingly harder to gain.
He was already at 1,000 Gold XP to craft up to Level 10, and that would just keep increasing.
But he was not too concerned. As he got even more powerful, he would be able to defeat even greater enemies and use even more powerful magic, leading to greater and greater rewards. So far, that was the case. He’d certainly gotten more Gold XP from defeating the warlock thralls than he had, for example, for defeating the forest trolls early on.
Eventually, I’ll be fighting gods, he thought as he placed his XP coins on the Sigil Crafting Table and opened the table’s options. How much XP for defeating a pure Elemental Deity?
The red lightning that accompanied the Sigil crafting process was different this time. Saul watched white flashes within the red lighting storm with rising excitement.
The Level 10 Sigil rose out of the lightning storm spinning slowly, the gold glowing as if it had just been freshly forged from a fire. White light rippled around it and, this time, there were white patches on the Sigil, strips of white laid across the gold bars of the magical item.
Saul reached forward, feeling in that moment the whole System leaning toward him, the depth of power and potential in the room so strong he could almost taste it.
After a deep breath, Saul touched the Sigil and absorbed it into himself.
Saul Kramitz: Level 10 Achieved!
System: New Milestone Rewards Available!
System: New Crafting Options Available!
System: New Crafting Resources Unlocked!
System: Milestone Rewards Unlocked:
Crafting: Cooldown Timer Sigil Unlocked
Crafting: Spellcasting Boost Sigil Unlocked
System: New Options Unlocked:
Crafting: Spell Sigil Creation
Crafting: Potion Creation Unlocked
Crafting: Potion Crafting Sigil Unlocked
System: New Crafting Resources Available:
Resources: Glade XP Unlocked
A shiver ran over Saul’s whole body as he saw the new options. He looked around the Workshop, seeing, as he’d expected, new additions to the physical appearance of the magical space.
Here, by the rainy window, was a tall, strange machine. It was more than a worktable, it was a whole elaborate contraption of pipes and tubes and glass chambers, each bubbling with strange-colored liquid and emitting light and steam.
In front of the strange machine hovered a dark-colored, greenish-blue Sigil.
Saul approached, hands raised. This had to be the Potion Crafting Sigil.
Here, by the window, was the next step in the evolution of his magic.
He reached out and caught the Sigil. Light shimmered around it, and it flowed into him through his hands and forearms in the way he had become accustomed to.
New Spell Unlocked:
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Spell: Craft Potion (ingredients required) (combat viable)
Spell: Search for ingredients (scan environment; non-combat only)
Sigil Crafting: Grant Potion (Locked)
So, this was how it worked. Of course, it would be cumbersome to always have to bring physical ingredients here to the Workshop for crafting. Instead, unlocking this spell gave him the option to craft potions in the real world.
Could he craft any kind of potion, or would they get better the more practice he had at the new skill? He suspected the latter, since that seemed to be the way the System was set up.
He could hardly wait to get out into the world and test the new ability, but there were other things to do before he could do so.
First, and most importantly, he wanted to craft a Spell Sigil and unlock the next School of Magic. There were two spells available to be unlocked. They were both available to be unlocked. This time, he could choose.
One was a dark, rich, gleaming brown like the color of polished wood. This, he surmised, would be the magic of the School of Earth.
The other was a rich, fresh green, like the color of a summer meadow. This would be the magic of the School of Glade, that marvelous magic that allowed the user to access the power of the forest, of grasses, trees, and vines. The Glade School had always been a firm favorite of Saul’s in his old life, and he had looked forward to being able to use it again.
Forests of strangling vines thrown against enemies, or armies of marching tree-demons that smashed their foes to pieces and could be used to bash through siege defenses—all of these things were parts of the Glade School that Saul had known in his old life.
But the School of Earth was also a deep and immensely powerful magic. What other power was there in the world, beyond that of the gods themselves, that was more fundamental to existence, after all than the world itself? The power of Earth was the power of the very world on which they stood, and Saul remembered, even in his last battle before his exile by the gods, using the power of earth to turn the very ground into a weapon against his enemies.
He only had enough Arcane Dust to choose one of them. Of the two, his instinct was toward the School of Glade, but his rational mind told him that in the siege that was sure to come, the School of Earth might be the more useful.
Back at the Resource Table, Saul looked with satisfaction at the new area that had been added since his level up. Now that he had passed the milestone of Level 10, the Resource Table had grown.
The table had the same beautiful black velvet covering as across the rest of it, but there was a distinct greenish glow to an area to the left of the Gold XP, as if the new resource it anticipated displaying was going to be green.
Saul thought back to the details the system had shown him about the new things he’d unlocked at level 5.
Resources: Glade XP Unlocked
Well, the color of Glade was green, but he had not yet unlocked the Glade spell.
He took his Arcane Dust vials to the Sigil Crafting Table and laid them out on the segment of the table with the appropriate symbol on display. Then, he tilted his head, looking with a smile at the next segment along.
In the past, none of the other segments had had any marking at all. Now, that had changed.
On the segment next to the Arcane Dust crafting segment was a symbol of a little pile of XP coins but with a tree behind them. The tree was the symbol of Glade magic.
Saul spoke his thoughts aloud as he ran his fingers over the carving. “This must be the place where I can craft Glade Sigils with the new XP I’ve unlocked. But that’s entirely new. Does that mean there are specific XP types for all the other Schools of Magic as well?”
The possibilities were dizzying, and he had no idea what different things the School-specific XP types would even do. As he had suspected, there was a great deal more to the System’s progression than he’d initially been presented with.
He glanced again at the many machines and worktables that remained hidden behind a cloak of darkness within the Workshop. He felt he’d come a long way since awakening in the depths of winter nearly a year ago, but he saw now that he was just at the beginning.
There was an immense scope for progression available to him through the System. Perhaps there was even more scope for progression than he’d had in his previous life.
“Glade magic it is,” he said.
Though there were practical arguments for choosing Earth first, he was pushed to activate Glade magic by the simple fact that the new XP type was available. It seemed clear to him that doing Glade magic would earn Glade XP, and he wanted to know what that was, how it worked, and what he could do with it.
But as he approached the spell tree with his newly created golden spell unlocking Sigil, he found that the process was not as simple as he might have first thought.
When he crouched and placed the Sigil on the green sphere to unlock the School of Glade, he felt a resistance as if he were pressing two magnets against each other.
Odd, he thought, and then the System flashed up a message giving him the explanation.
School of Glade: Unavailable
Sigil Required: Spell Unlock Sigil (Present)
Sigil Required: Glade Crafted Spell Sigil (Not Present)
Saul frowned. The Glade magic required a Glade sigil to unlock? But that meant that Saul must be wrong, and the Glade Sigils did not need glade XP to craft. He returned to the Sigil Crafting Table and opened the list of options.
There, sure enough, was the new option to create a Glade sigil.
Workshop: Sigil Crafting Table:
Crafting: Glade Crafted Spell Sigil:
Glade XP Required: 500
Glade XP Available: 0
“How does that work?” Saul asked aloud, mystified.
He had hoped the System might present him with the answer to the riddle, but no such answer was shown. As far as he could tell, there was no way he could use Glade magic to earn Glade XP but ,without it, he could not create a Glade Sigil to unlock the spell.
The only answer, he thought, is that there must be some other way of creating Glade XP that isn’t actually using the School of Glade spells.
He frowned, glanced around the Workshop, and then the answer provided itself in a flash. Of course! The potion creation Workshop had been unlocked, and he’d been granted two new spells, spells which would give him the ability to locate ingredients and create potions from them.
These were forest applications of magic, the crafting of ingredients in the forest and from plants. This must be the answer. By creating potions with his new spells, he could accumulate the Glade XP he needed to unlock the School of Glade in the Workshop.
“Well, that’s new, certainly,” he said aloud as he returned to the Spell Tree.
He would use his newly created Sigil to unlock the School of Earth instead. That would help him to defend in the siege, and it might help him prepare the siege defenses as well.
And while he was engaged in preparation, he would create potions and gather glade XP, with the aim of unlocking the next School of Magic.
The School of Earth spells showed up in his System display as he unlocked the new magic with his Sigil, and Saul examined them.
As with the other spells he’d gained so far, the three Tier 1 spells seemed to be focused on non-combat applications, while the three Tier 2 spells were very distinctly combat focused.
School of Earth: Tier 1
Disguise Tracks (Ranger; Stealth) (Non-Combat)
Know the Ground (Ranger; Stealth) (Non-Combat)
Cultivate (Crafter) (Combat available)
School of Earth: Tier 2
Earthquake (Combat; Area of Effect)
Heal (Self; Ally)
Mud Golem (Combat: Summoned Creature)
Interesting. He did not know what Cultivate would do exactly, and again he cursed Sarkur for not providing some kind of description or preview of the spells beyond their titles. But it certainly seemed to be one of the three he’d have expected to be unavailable in combat.
However, it specifically said that it was in fact available in combat. Thinking back, he realized the Potion Creation spell had said the same.
Could they be linked in some way?
Also, there was a healing spell. In the old days, healing spells had been the provenance of specific healer mages, and the School of Healing had been its own branch of magic. Clearly, it was a different picture now in this new incarnation Saul was inhabiting.
Of the others, Earthquake was a familiar favorite from the old days, and he was pleased to see it available again. The ability to summon a Mud Golem in addition to the Rock Troll he already had in his arsenal was welcome.
You never know when a mage might have resistance to a particular kind of elemental magic. It was good to have a variant in reserve.
Saul was about to dismiss the list of new earth spells when something new flashed up: a seventh spell at the bottom of the list.
Earthshift (Builder: Non-combat only: Two Spells per Casting)
“Builder class spells?” Saul wondered out loud.
That was entirely new, but he flashed back to the memory of looking at the troll stone and the rocks he’d conjured with Rockfall back in the battle with the forest trolls. Back then, he’d toyed with the idea of building a village with his magically created stones. He’d never actually considered it a viable possibility, but the System seemed to be saying something different.
Builder class magic. A new innovation indeed.
There was only one more thing to do, but it was possibly the most satisfying. Of all the things he’d gained at Level 10, there were two seemingly small items he had not forgotten and that he was very, very pleased to have.
The two Milestone Rewards that were available at the Sigil Crafting Table to claim, simply for having achieved Level 10. He returned to the Sigil Crafting Table and looked again at the options.
Select: Craft Cooldown Timer Reduction Sigil (Milestone Reward)
Select: Craft Spellcasting Boost Sigil (Milestone Reward)
“Those will do nicely,” he said.
One after the other, Saul selected to craft the two rewards. They appeared as small Sigils, floating up from the red crystal in the middle of the Crafting Table just as the others did, but quickly and without as much of a display as the regular Sigil crafting.
Instead of a storm of red or gold lightning, there was a whirl of white mist around the crystal that fountained like a rapidly blossoming flower. From this, the Sigils emerged, one after the other.
They were smaller, about a third of the size of the regular Sigils and humbler in appearance. They weren’t gleaming gold but dark green, almost black, though they still gleamed with a reflective sheen as if carved from crystal or polished wood.
Their size and darker color reminded Saul of the Control Sigil that had been on the hand of the warlock conjurer during the battle, the control Sigil Saul had tried to grab without success.
These two were all his, however, and he was able to catch them in his hands and absorb them one after the other, just as he did with his level up Sigils.
Cooldown Timer Upgraded:
Old Timer:
Spellcasting: 3 Available per Cooldown Cycle
Cooldown: Eight Minutes
New Timer:
Spellcasting: 5 Available per Cooldown Cycle
Cooldown: Five Minutes
“That’s much better,” Saul said, smiling. “I have work to do and enemies to kill, and the Cooldown Timer is my number one limitation. The more I can upgrade that, the better.”
He took another look around the Workshop. The green light glowed over the Resource Table, where he would soon hope to see Glade XP gathering in return for potion creation.
The Potion Creation machine hummed and hissed softly by the window, granting him the ability to create and use magic potions in a way never before seen in the world.
His new magic gleamed at the edge of his awareness, the raw power of the School of Earth ready to use in combat and in the new, unexpected class of Builder magic. Level 10 was the biggest milestone yet in his journey back to his former power.
Saul had passed the milestone, he was reaping the benefits, but there was still a long way to go.