"I guess we can start your lesson a little early." She then goes closer to the box, and a green boxy thing appears in front of her. 'Oh! Those are called Books!' I remembered suddenly.
"What's this? Do I get to eat it?" I asked looking at the book. The book had a green cover with vine and leaf patterns all over it. There was something written on it, but I couldn't read it. "No! This is a Flora Compendium. This is the mundane version but it should give you the herbology Skill. Hm.. Don't accept the Herbology Skill; just read the book, and then we will try to get you the Botany Skill. That would be better for you."
"How do I not accept a skill? Don't they just pop up whenever I meet their requirements?"
"No, normally the System sends you a message saying 'Do you wish to learn X skill?' then you accept or decline. Did you not get those messages?"
"No?" I replied in confusion and pulled up my status history and I couldn't see that message. Then I got a message from the System.
> You have discovered a Hidden facet of your Gift Jack of All Trades: You will automatically learn the Skills you meet the requirements for.
"Um... I just got a message saying that I discovered a hidden facet of my Gift. It says 'You will automatically learn the Skills you meet the requirements for.'"
Lily bobs a little in thought and says, "Hmm... This complicates things a little. Right! You can fuse Skills, that would make it easier. Read the book and get Herbology; after that, maybe Gardening would work. We will see that in future."
I agree will her about not giving it much mind and opening the book with telekinesis. Inside were a lot of words that I now realized I couldn't read. "Lily I can't read this!" I cry out in anguish as my opportunity to gain knowledge is ruined!
"Right, you wouldn't know Gilbies. Ok, I think I had that alphabet book somewhere." Then, a thin, colourful book popped up in front of her. Sigh. "I guess I will now have to teach you how to read. Come hear and look."
Then she taught me the language until I could read almost fluently only stuttering on some words. But I didn't know a lot of words so she gave me a dictionary for me to find the meanings in. At this point, it had been around 4 hours, and my mana had regened somewhat, so I planned on going back to making the swamp and Lily's place. But first I opened my skill tab to see my progress.
> Skill updates—
>
> Insight 10 > 17
>
> Identify 11 > 16
>
> Self-Discipline 12 > 13
>
> Meditation 25 >27
>
> Visualization 20 > 22
>
> Interface Modification 4 > 7
>
> Mana Sense 20 > 26
>
> Mana Manipulation 17 > 21
>
> Domain Manipulation 15
>
> Observe 17 > 19
>
> Inspiration 1 > 8
>
> Sculpting 1 > 8
>
> Earth Manipulation 1 > 13
>
> Telekinesis 1 > 6
>
> Absorb Knowledge 1 > 5
>
> Spatial Sense 1 > 3
>
> Terraforming 1 > 3
>
> Reading 1 > 11
>
> Language proficiency (Gilbies) 1 > 8
I even got a skill for the language! I looked over at Lily and saw she was doing something on her phone, so I left for the spot where the swamp would be built. When I got there I saw drops of water falling from the sky. My perk told me that this phenomenon was called 'rain'. It also said that if I needed surface water I could use the clouds to summon water over a prolonged period and a larger area. I saw that this was not taking mana from my capacity but reserving my regen.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Nice! I can focus on the building more! Wait, when will the rain stop? I then got a feeling that my Ecosphere perk would handle it. I shrugged and dove into the ground.
I went about 3 meters underground and started making space by absorbing the dirt and packing some of it so it wouldn't collapse. First I made a 3-meter cubic room. I wanted to make it bigger but it kept collapsing. I then made a short tunnel to one side that led to another room. This time I made it to a 5-5 meter room! That happened because I figured out pillars! I found that I could put a pillar about 2 meters away from the walls while still maintaining stability but I put them about 1.5 meters away from walls or other pillars. That meant that this 5-5 room had a total of 5 pillars, 1.5 meters away from the corners and one in the centre. I made them squarish with a side being about 50 cm in length.
Then I went to the left wall and dug a 5-4 meter room with four pillars. This will be the alchemy lab. I then went back into the lobby room and went to the opposite of the entry tunnel to make the storage rooms. Right, I have to make two rooms! I made one of the tunnels one meter out of the side walls and the other 1 meter from the previous tunnel. Then I made the rooms 3-4 meter rooms with a pillar in the middle of both. Then I thought it would be weird to go all the way to the lobby to get to the other storage room I made a tunnel that connected them.
Satisfied with that I went to the 3-3 entry room and added a pillar for fun. After that, I made an extra long tunnel on the opposite side and made a 3-3 meter room for my experiments. I then give a final look around the base and came to a conclusion, 'This looks like shit...'
I summoned a bit of strange stone and tried to cover the walls with it, but a sheet of 1-1 meter cost me 50 mana, so I could make like 2 of those per hour, and completing this would be impossible in a good time frame. Sigh. 'I should ask Lily if she has any ideas. '
With that in mind, I got out of there and went to my core to find Lily. I found her floating on top of my core doing something with mana. I watched her carefully and saw that she was swirling the mana in her in a steady rhythm. I wanted to try it, but some part of me told me that doing that with my core would not be good, so I tried it with the mana all around my core, nudging it along with my mana like she was. After a bit, I got a hang of it and created a ring of swirling mana around my core.
Suddenly I saw Lily startled and teleport away from my core to the edge of the clearing. “What did you do!? “ Suddenly, I found that Lily had teleported back to my core while I was looking at the ring slowly coming apart. “I just copied what you were doing! I just did it outside my core as I thought doing it inside was a bad idea. “ I was happy that I got a perfect circle around my core but was a bit sad that it was falling apart.
“Did you get the Mana Circulation skill? “ I checked and found I got it, and it was at level 6! I told her excitedly, “Yeah, it's already at 6.“
“You should not be able to get that skill as you didn't do it inside your body. Did it consider the mana around you inside your body because it's inside your domain? Huh, interesting! Well, I guess I should tell you what the skill does now. This skill should help with any sort of mana manipulation and channeling inside of your body but its main use is in constructing mana veins or circuits that mana would use as pathways in your body. For you, this might let you create your own ley lines or such. “ As she explained, she got more excited; in the end, she was bobbing pretty fast.
“Wanna check out the base I built? It's just packed dirt as the strange stone panels were very expensive. Oh, do you have something I could use instead? Like wood, marble or something!“ I got slightly excited at the idea of something new to make things with. “Ok, I have some things you could absorb.“ She then floated to the box and a handful of stones appeared near her. “Try to absorb these. “ I didn't waste a moment after the signal and absorbed the pebbles. Immediately, I got hit with the knowledge and got a slight headache with notifications.
> You have gained the following patterns—
>
> Quarts, Granite, Sand, Limestone, Terracotta.
“I got five new things! Quarts, Granite, sand, limestone and terracotta! Do you have anything more!? “ I looked at her expectantly. “Here, but this time don't just absorb it all blindly! Look and identify them first! “ Then some more things appeared in front of her.
This time I controlled myself and looked at one of the things first. It was a big blob of wet slimy gray earthen thing. I identified it; huh, this was the first I identified an inanimate object.
> A wad of wet earth
“What! I already knew that!“ I looked at Lily for an explanation and found her laughing! “Hahaha! If you had a face, I would have wanted to see it this moment!“ After some moments she calmed down and said, “Identify gives you a result based on what you already know of, so as you didn't know what this was it gave you something that you thought it was. What did it say? “ I looked at her and said, “Wad of wet earth. “ Hearing that she burst into another fit of giggles. “Ok, now absorb it, not all of it. “
I did that and found I could parse through the influx of knowledge slightly better. And found that it was clay. I then identified the leftover clay, and it displayed just clay. Now a bit intrigued, I asked, “Does the skills I have affect the results of this? Like that Herbology, Botany or Measurement? “ She bobbed and said, “Yes, if you have that kind of skills, you don't have to know something to get basic info about it. Like if you had Herbolgy you might get a name for a herb you had not seen before. As you get a higher level of those lore-type skills, more info will be shown. Measurement skills might let you get an estimate of the thing's weight, height, etc. Or use an Identipedia, many people use those as most phones have a built-in one. “
After hearing her explanation I resume inspecting and absorbing the things. In the end, I gained three more patterns: Sulfur, Glass and Copper. I was very excited about using these! Oh, I still didn't have the wood I wanted. I asked, “ Do you have wood? I wanted to use that. “
She just told me to absorb one of the trees for its material and I got to work. I was just about to eat the closest tree but then remembered that it could be a mutated tree, so I asked the hive mind to point me to a tree that I could eat without causing problems. I got a feeling of acceptance, and suddenly, I got a feeling that pointed me in a direction. I followed the feeling and found a tree; I then absorbed it and gained four new patterns: Oakwood, leaves, bark and roots.