Lindle and his mom were gathered around a series of small pots in the living room they had gathered from his mom's storeroom, some of which had small herbs and saplings growing in them, and the others holding nothing but dirt. Nothing watched from their spot in the fireplace, lounging lazily in the flames. The homunculus didn’t share in their enthusiasm for experimentation, so they just took the opportunity to laze about. They were always happy to assist if they had questions, but it was unlikely considering how absorbed they were in their tests, not wanting to gain any biases from outside information.

Mundane plants were difficult to grow in the Glacial Reach and space inside the grove was limited, so most of the plants that could be grown in the Reach were done so using druidic magic and managed by the circle. Magical plants were hardier but required much more energy to grow domestically so they were gathered from around the Reach by adventurers and hunters instead. Everything else was brought in and sold by traders.

All of which is to say that his mom didn’t grow most of the plants she used as an apothecary herself, but she did keep a few around out of habit, and those were the plants they were going to run some experiments on the Hungry Trowel with.

Lindle had a notepad ready in hand as he observed a pair of pots as his mom held the Hungry Trowel, one empty and the other with a small sapling. She might not have been a spellcaster class, but just by virtue of her stats and levels, she had many times more Mana Points in her pool than Lindle to use the trowel with.

Lindle activated his Ethos sense and nodded to his mom. “Ready.”

She nodded back. “Now testing using 10 Mana Points.” Lindle couldn’t directly observe his mother's mana, but he could see the Trowel’s Ethos become a bit more active as its magical effect was activated. His mom dug out the small sapling and repotted it in the other plant pot. He could see as the trowel carried the sapling and load of dirt a small bit of Ethos from the trowel flowed into the mundane plant. Once the plant was securely planted he could see the Ethos expend itself as the sapling grew slightly taller until it was mostly gone, now the tiniest bit more magical but for all intents and purposes it was still a mundane plant.

Lindle called out and wrote down his observations in the notepad. They had been experimenting with the various effects of his magic items all morning, trying to see how they all worked. Just like when his mom was experimenting by herself, there didn’t seem to be a common throughline by which they all operated in order to achieve their various effects that they could find, the only thing they learned when using Lindle’s Ethos sense was that they used Ethos in some way, which was just as vague and unhelpful as it sounded. Whenever the Ethos in the object moved or activated, the effect that the description said would happen just happened.

That wasn’t unexpected, no one fully understood exactly how Mana or Aura achieved the effects they did in its entirety either when Techniques or Spells were used, only that they did. But Aura and Mana at least had consistent patterns and structures that could be mapped to various effects when observed, whatever instructions Lindle had given the Ethos when he made the items using his intent were invisible from the outside except for the various aspects, at least for now. It was a bit of a moot point considering the items had status windows, but Lindle still wanted to be able to gain a deeper understanding of Ethos if he could.

“How about we use a bigger jump in Mana points this time?” His mom suggested. “I want to see the upper limits of how much we can make it grow.”

Lindle tapped his chin with his pencil. “Hm… 50 points?” So far they had only been testing in increments of one.

They both agreed and went ahead, watching as the sapling grew noticeably up into the air, a few inches taller and more mature. His mom used a measuring stick as Lindle recorded the change in Ethos used.

“Did it grow 5 times as much?” He asked.

“A little less than that. Diminishing returns?” She theorized.

Lindle noted it down. “That would be a shame if correct. It looks like we probably won’t be able to grow giant crops just by putting the trowel in the hands of one of the elder shamans or druids, but for the amount of mana that would cost they probably could just cast higher-tier spells that would be more efficient.” He also wrote down some notes on his theories for what the difference between the ring and the trowel was when it came to their ability to scale up.

His mom seemed to consider for a moment, the look in her eyes told him she had an interesting idea. “The trowel does use Mana Points… almost like an infusion… We should see if the trowel has any other limits. I’m using 500 points and a skill, stand back.”

Lindle blinked before slowly sliding back. He saw a flash of Ethos coming from his mother’s personal Ethos as the trowel also flared with energy. As she repotted another sapling, the plant started glowing before growing rapidly, vines bursting out of the bottom of the pot and vines spreading over the lid before the pot exploded. His mom also stepped back before Lindle’s view of her was obscured by the small tree now in their living room. It grew for a few more seconds before thankfully stopping, to which Lindle gave a sigh of relief.

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Lindle had a basic idea of what the skills his mom's journeyman class gave did, so he knew that if it the trowel did scale linearly with the amount of Mana used on top of the skill she used they would probably have a full-grown large tree sticking out of the top of their house.

His mom peeked her head around the tree and gave him a thumbs up. “Skills work!” Lindle returned it before he underlined his note about diminishing returns and then wrote down another note about skills working through his magic items.

What was really interesting was the amount of Ethos coursing through the tree now. There was a lot, but it seemed thin, the majority of it escaping and dispersing away once the tree stopped growing, a small fraction left over. He was about to tell his mom about what he saw before out of the corner of his eye he saw someone step out of the entrance hall.

“Lindle? Miss Kyte? Are you okay? I heard some-” Thalia’s sentence cut off as she rounded the corner, staring at them and the tree.

Lindle froze and stared wide-eyed back at her, but his mom recovered first. “Hello Thalia, what are you doing here?”

Thalia snapped out of it, blushing guiltily. “I’m sorry, I came to see how Lindle’s first level had gone, but the store was closed. I knocked on the door but no one answered.”

Lindle and his mom exchanged glances, they had probably been too absorbed in their tests to hear her, and opening the store had completely slipped their mind. He looked at Nothing, who was trying to stay as still as possible and hiding in the logs for the fireplace to not catch Thalia’s eye and ignore him at the same time, pretending that they hadn’t missed Thalia’s knocking too even though they had even less of excuse then Lindle and his mom did.

His mom quickly composed herself and smiled warmly at Thalia. "We’re sorry for missing that, just a little distracted. Thank you for the concern though.” She shot Lindle a look to be polite.

“Oh! Yeah, thank you.” Lindle hurried to comply.

Thalia stepped forward, observing the tree with curiosity written all over her face. “What’s with this tree? It’s so strange… Was it just grown? How did you guys…” She put a hand on it’s trunk, likely casting a druidic spell of some kind. Considering that she knew today was his birthday and being able to put two and two together, Thalia turned to look at him. “Did your new class let you grow a tree? I thought you were a crafter?”

Lindle started to reach for an excuse before he stopped himself. Did he really need to lie about his class to her? The only reason he was keeping Artificer secret was in case it brought trouble when the Dungeon Raid happened and he drew attention from any unsavory Soarians. Thalia was nice, and while they hadn’t been particularly close growing up, they had been hanging around each other a lot more recently, and she had never done anything to make Lindle distrust her in any particular way.

His mom saw his contemplative look and gave him a shrug, leaving the decision up to him. Thalia looked at him confused as the seconds passed, before he made up his mind.

“Well yeah, it is a crafting class, but it’s a bit different.”

Thalia raised an eyebrow. “Different? What kind of crafting class lets you grow trees?”

“It doesn’t exactly let me grow trees. I can tell you, but do you mind keeping it a secret?”

The other eyebrow went up, Thalia turning back to look at his mom, who gave her the go-ahead gesture. “Why?”

“It’s something we don’t want public when all the Soarians arrive for the raid.”

She tilted her head, curious again. She thought about it for a second before nodding. “Now I really want to know. Fine, I won’t tell anyone.”

“Okay, good.” He thought about how he should try to explain it without delving into all the minutiae of Ethos and everything else. “Um… to put it simply, it’s called Artificer, it lets me make magic items.”

“Magic items? Like what? I’m still not seeing how that led to the tree or why it’s showing up so weirdly on my spell.”

“Well, I made a magic item that let me, or I guess my mom in this case, grow a sapling into a tree.” He pointed to his mom, who held up the Hungry Trowel and showed it off.

“So you can make magic gardening tools?” Normally it would be easy to take that as dismissive, but considering how suddenly interested she looked, he bet the idea appealed to her more than it would to most people.

“Yeah, but a lot more than just that. I can make lots of different things. Like this.” Lindle lifted his sleeve to show the Hotpond Band to her. “Or even crazier things, like Nothing.”

“You can make… nothing? What?” Her face scrunched up in confusion.

“Wait, no, I mean… Nothing why don’t you say hi.” Lindle gestured to Nothing behind her in the fireplace, who had relaxed once they realized Thalia was being let in on things. In a moment that reminded him of when they met the adventurers, Nothing raised a pseudopod and waved.

Thalia, who hadn’t seen Nothing in the fireplace behind her the entire time she had been there before turning around, still confused for a moment, before looking down and seeing a small black creature waving a pseudopod at her, shrieked.