Franklin lets out a yawn and stretches out his back, having spent the night on the cold, hard cavern floor. His neck feels stiff, his muscles ache, and he makes a mental note that a bed of some sort is sorely required in the near future. Then calling forth his Stats screen, and upon noticing that his AP has replenished to full, his crystal blue eyes light up with excitement. This is because he can now set into motion his plan of counterattack against the treacherous slimes of Paradosa Swamp, to hopefully gain some EXP for leveling.

“Let’s see,” he says, tapping a finger to his chin, “I’ll need some wood for the fire and some… clay should do. Yeah, let’s go with clay.” Both he should be able to obtain with Transmute, or so that is his hope, and thus he begins his attempt first with the latter.

Based on his prior usage of Materialize, Franklin has made the supposition that all Materialize commands will manifest elements in their most naturally occurring form. This stems from the fact that when using Materialize on iron, he has observed hematite (Fe2O3), or iron ore, produced rather than pure iron (Fe). Using this information then, he can work backwards and hypothesize that to obtain clay, all he needs is to Materialize one of the elemental components of it. The reason this should work is that, given the abundance of naturally occurring clay, any elemental component chosen should favor clay as its manifest product.

“Clay. Kaolin, earthenware, stoneware, ball clay, fire clay,” he says, reciting the different variants of the material, “Well, I guess fundamentally, they’re all some mix of aluminum (Al), silicon (Si) and water, 2SiO2·Al2O3·2H2O to be precise. Silicon’s the cheapest, material-wise, so let’s try that first.”

Plan in place, Franklin pulls up his Transmute menu, first navigating to the Decompose command, which he uses on some loose limestone in order to generate some elements into his reservoir. Then he performs an Exchange on the calcium, converting it to silicon at a 14:2, that is, at a 7:1 rate, in favor of the silicon. Finally, with bated excitation, he activates the Materialize command, using silicon as the base element. A message appears, asking him to confirm,

Materialize 1 gram of silicon. This action will consume 1 AP. Proceed?

“[Yes],” he says, and as he holds out his palm, a small lump falls into it with a plop! sound. Franklin looks down, inspecting his haul, and as he does so, a slight frown tugs on his lips, for what is in his hand is clearly not clay. “Semi-opaque with a white hue, jagged with crystal-like striations…” he mumbles. He tosses the rock into the air a few times, catching it in his palm. “Definitely denser than water… twice? Thrice? Hm. Silicon, white rock…” Then it hits him. “Duh! Silicon dioxide!” Also known colloquially as quartz (SiO2).

How did I overlook that? Then again, is quartz a more common form of silicon than clay? They’re about the same, I should think… So how does the system decide which one? Is it random?

He tries again, just to test, ordering another gram of silicon to Materialize. And again, quartz is the result, as is the third and fourth attempt. On the fifth, out of curiosity, Franklin tries something different.

“I wonder what happens if I don’t hold out my hand. Where does the manifested material go then?”

When he attempts this, he finds that the material still manifests in the same position it would have, had his hand been there. Only since it is not there to catch it, the rock simply falls to the ground due to gravity. Seeing this, Franklin’s eyes light up, an idea coming to mind. “Oh, this’ll have lots of devious uses…”

Completely sidetracked at this point, he tries something else. Having noticed that the materialized product tends to appear about a foot in front of him, he wonders what will happen should that particular space not be air but something solid instead. To test this, he stands close to the cavern wall, then uses the Materialize command.

Will it find the nearest available air pocket to manifest in? he wonders with anticipation.

To his surprise though, nothing appears to happen. If a rock had materialized, he would have heard it fall to the ground. Instead, there is only silence. Franklin pulls up his Stats menu, just to confirm that the AP for the procedure has been consumed, and indeed it has.

“Weird. Did it manifest inside the wall? Wait… that’d be a pretty wicked effect…” He ponders the issue a moment longer, but then spotting his rapidly declining AP value, realizes that he needs to get back on track. “Right. Clay. Silicon bad. Aluminum then? Al-oo-muh-num,” he says, emphasizing the last word, for it is clearly the correct pronunciation and no one can convince him otherwise.

Franklin calls up his menu, selecting aluminum (Al) as the source before executing the Materialize command.

Materialize 1 gram of aluminum. This action will consume 1 AP. Proceed?

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“[Yes].” Again, Franklin holds out his hand, hoping for clay. Again, he is disappointed, as a hard, grayish rock with pink splotches manifests. Clearly not clay. “What in the world…?” he wonders aloud, and he closes his eyes, trying to compare the image of the rock in his hand to the extensive collection in his mind. As to why he has an extensive rock collection stored away in memory… don’t ask.

It takes him quite a while before he thinks he has a match. “Aluminum… corundum? Maybe? Aluminum oxide (Al2O3)?” He opens his eyes, inspecting the rock in his hand. “If this is corundum, then there’s definitely something more going on than just abundance. I’m 100% sure clay is more abundant than corundum…”

He again falls into thought, wondering if it has to do with the complexity of the material, in addition to its natural abundance. Certainly, he reasons, clay (2SiO2·Al2O3·2H2O) is far more complex a material than corundum (Al2O3), despite the former’s greater abundance.

Perhaps that’s why the system chose it? But if that’s the case… This is kinda going to be a pain in the you-know-what…

What Franklin means to say is that, given the blackbox nature of the system, wherein the decision making process is hidden from the user, he has no way of knowing what algorithm or method of weighting is being used to determine the relationship between input and output. Meaning that, even with extensive knowledge, he can only at best guess what might result from a new Materialize. In order to actually know, he’ll have to actually request the material itself and observe what manifests.

“Well, at least the same input always gives the same output,” he remarks. If the system had employed a fuzzy algorithm instead… he lets out an involuntary shudder.

For the sake of completion, Franklin does one last test, this time with carbon (C) as the base. Originally, he had thought he could obtain wood this way, specifically, cellulose, given how abundant it is in nature. But having failed experiments with both silicon and aluminum now, he isn’t so sure.

“[Materialize].”

Materialize 1 gram of carbon. This action will consume 1 AP. Proceed?

“[Yes].” Having done so, Franklin awaits the material with an open hand. What he receives a moment later is a somewhat shiny black rock with a smooth exterior. Immediately, he recognizes what it is, “Graphite. Well, that makes sense, I suppose. It’s simple and abundant.”

He sighs, “Well, that was a complete failure.” But not one to stay disappointed for long, he perks back up, reenergizing himself by saying, “On the brightside, glad I had the foresight to find an alternative source of materials. Haha!”

Foresight or luck, it isn’t clear, but he is referring to the preponderance of tupelos he has found in the swamp, which will make collecting fallen branches an easy task. As for the clay, this is the slippery, reddish-brown substance he has already identified just prior to being attacked by the slimes. A new plan in place, Franklin makes his way east, to the room with the portals, then enters the middle one, off to collect the materials.

****

It takes him several trips.

During one, he has a near-fatal encounter with a Pack of Swamp Slimes after trying to quantify their movement speeds and allowing them to get too close. During another, he nearly gets trapped attempting to collect samples of the creatures’ ooze for later investigation. Despite having already “died” once, despite not wanting to lose all his AP, he simply cannot help himself. In the end, however, he is not punished for his reckless curiosity, managing to somehow complete the task without further destruction of his avatar, a bundle of tinder and several handfuls of wet clay to show for his troubles.

Materials in hand, Franklin first turns to the branches he has collected. He uses a sharp rock he has found to imprint a quarter-inch wide hole into a stick before creating a notch that transects the hole he has just dug. He then takes a second stick, whose end he inserts into the hole of the first, creating a “T” shape, and begins to rotate it rapidly along its long axis. According to a video he has seen, featuring a nearly naked man, this is apparently the way to start a fire, not that he has ever done so himself (he dislikes camping for its lack of internet), and his dearth of experience shows through, for in the first ten minutes, literally nothing happens, save the start of some blisters on his palms.

“Hm, I wonder,” he thinks to himself, taking a pause to open his System, “A fantasy world like this, surely there is some sort of magical solution, right? I mean, we’re not cavemen…”

He looks up, his eyes scanning around.

“Okay, figuratively.”

He calls upon More Options, his eyes keying in on a submenu labeled Spells. Selecting this, a display appears:

Spell Points Available (?)

0

1. Abjuration

2. Conjuration

3. Divination

4. Enchantment

5. Evocation

6. Illusion

7. Necromancy

8. Transmutation

He selects the question mark first, to get more information. A help prompt fades into view, reading,

Spell points are used to learn spells. Each level up confers a single spell point.

“Ah, hello, level up requirement, my old friend... ”

Switching away from the help prompt, Franklin then spends some time navigating through what he assumes to be types of spells, eight in total. He finds the Identify spell mentioned previously under Divination, and he even finds a spell that’d aid in his exact situation, one for specifically creating campfires in fact, under Conjuration. Not that he can learn it at the moment anyways, having no spell points. But even if he had the spell point right now, he isn’t so sure anymore he’d want to spend it on something as mundane as fire magic. For in his perusing of the spells, a certain one has caught his attention, under Enchantment.

Reading the description, he smiles. “This might just solve ‘The Outside’ limitation,” he muses, though he’ll need quite a few more things before he can test it out, not the least of which is to get the fire going...

He returns to the task with new determination, the stick spinning once more.

****

“-Yes! There we go!” Franklin exclaims as he spots a whiff of smoke finally starting to rise from the punk, that is, the now smoldering stick. It has been a good hour later, and he has finally made progress. With haste, he proceeds to the next step, tapping loose the hot ash, freed by friction, onto his nearby pile of leaves, then gently blows into it, nurturing the glow until it becomes tiny embers. From here, he begins to add tinder atop the pile, small twigs at first, and when the flames become large enough, he transfers the whole setup to a loose tipi of medium-sized branches.

A campfire in place, his cavern now glows in an orange hue, shadows flickering across whitewashed walls, and as Franklin stares into the flames, he waits in anticipation, thinking that a message should appear to commemorate the occasion. Nothing does, however, and so he takes the task upon himself.

He stands, hands on his hips as he announces, “Dun dun dun dun! Franklin has discovered Fire!”