“Ya have a death wish?” The man asked.
“No,” Solace replied.
“Are ya stupid then?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well seems like it!”
“Why do you say that?”
It was three days later, and in between working for Edison and teaching Xu Wei, Solace had spent a majority of the time reading up on the rift that he would be delving. Fortunately, the Public Resources document had provided pretty much everything he needed or gave enough context for him to look up what he was missing without paying a single credit. It was a Tier 1 rift, of course, located inside a building designed to control who entered it, and populated by an old foe…
“This may only be a Tier 1 slime rift, but ya can’t just enter it without any real gear!” The man — Carter, according to an earlier greeting by someone else — crossed his arms. “I refuse to let ya in, it’s basically assisted suicide.”
It was a valid concern, but one that Solace had taken the time to think through. Now, he merely vocalized his reasoning to the man responsible for allowing entry into the rift.
“The slimes are extremely and particularly corrosive towards metal, so any steel weapons or armor I bring in wouldn’t last very long. I don’t have much money right now, and can’t afford that kind of waste.”
“So ya’re going in with nothing but a mop because ya’re cheap?”
“Poor,” Solace corrected as he waved his wooden “weapon” around for effect. It was an old mop that Edison had wanted him to throw out. “But, essentially, yes. This is all I’m going to need to deal with them. Also, what I’m wearing now covers most of my body and, according to the person who gave it to me, prevents stuff similar to the slime from actually touching my skin. Most of the risk will be from weak blunt force damage rather than the usual dangers this rift can present.”
Carter began to look less livid and more unsure. Solace decided to add in his final point.
“Besides, if it gets too dangerous, I can always leave the rift at any time,” he reminded the man.
“Ugh,” Carter’s face scrunched into displeasure. “Fine! Ya can enter.”
Solace nodded. “Thank you.”
Carter stepped to the side, making way for Solace to cross the entryway into the thick, smoggy, glass dome that surrounded the rift. Now that nothing was obscuring his vision, he took a close look at the thing for the first time.
Visually, it was like the photos, merely a colorful but tiny distortion like the way heat could make something look hazy. To his spiritual senses however, it was much more.
A jagged tear in space. Glowing brightly for its Tier and viscerally riveting in the way that fragmented glass was. He spent several moments taking in the sight before walking into it.
There was a familiar bending then blurring of his senses, and then he was through. On the other side, he found himself in a small room with plaster walls stained with yellow streaks. Across the terrain, scattered junk was littered; cigarette ends, broken glass, plastics of all shapes and sizes, and more. Filthy, stagnant water pooled in areas on the uneven floor. The lighting overhead was sourceless, seemingly emanating from the equally dirty roof above, dim and flickering.
Solace immediately hated it. The place reminded him of his first adventure all those years ago, one of the worst ones.
And like that first adventure, the room he was currently in was a safe room of sorts. There was a doorway at the far end of it, and he carefully navigated the first room to peer through.
As he expected, among the piles of trash and puddles of water, there lay a single slime beyond. It was shin high, a blob of greenish, mostly clear liquid with neither eyes nor any other distinguishing features. It “stood” unmoving in the center of the room, waiting for him to cross the threshold. Tier 1 and 2 rifts had defined bounds within which a monster would detect him and attack.
He took in the terrain, the piles of garbage and water that would be hazards to movement, and carefully reviewed his next actions in his head.
This really is too much like the Spire, he thought bitterly. But worse.
Taking a deep breath, he readied the mop in his hands so that the head was between him and the slime, and then he stepped through.
The slime reacted immediately, though almost imperceptibly. A shift, a slight scrunching. He knew what was coming.
It leapt through the air at him, in a predictable arc which allowed him to swat at it hard with the mop. The moment he hit it, the slime burst like a bubble, splattering its acrid smelling contents as its outer membrane was destroyed. Most of the slime was stopped by the mop itself as the stuff stuck to the head, and Solace quickly flicked the slime off of his “weapon” as he felt a rush of essence from killing the monster enter his spirit. It was a modest amount, but better than nothing.
At this Tier, these types of slimes were easily killed and didn’t regenerate fast enough for it to matter in a fight. The main danger was when their sticky remains attached itself to him or his gear, weighing him down as it ate away at whatever he was using. Fortunately, he was excellent at spacing in a fight and could avoid the splattering, his clothes were capable of wicking away anything he couldn’t avoid, and the mop he was using was made of Tier 3 materials. It was durable without being excessively strainful on his spirit due its physical and metaphysical lightness.
The next room was much the same, save for the fact that there were two slimes waiting within. He quickly swept through them like the first fight. The room after that had four, and the one beyond that had eight.
In that fight with the eight, he had to actually exert himself a bit. As the blobs of disgusting fluids flew at him in the air, he jumped backwards without hesitation, having already scoped the room out for the floor's hazards.
He swept the mop to catch the highest leaping slimes while the ones who had more shallow jumps merely hit the floor without splattering. Before they could move again, he dashed a bit to the side and then forward to mess up their aim and then began to swing at them with just the right amount of force that they didn’t erupt when hit but were killed when they struck a wall.
Once he was done flicking the gunk off of his mop. He moved into the next room where a single slime was waiting. There was a sizable increase in its volume compared to the ones he had already dealt with, but still below knee height.
Like he had read, the rift had a pattern of doubling the amount from a single all the way up to eight before increasing the sizes of the slimes and starting over. The amount of essence was the same regardless of size.
The rooms began to blur together in his memory as he fought in a flow state. The increments of difficulty weren’t tough to handle, as it really came down to avoiding much bigger splatters. It was only until the fifth rotation of slimes that a new, but expected, behavior was introduced.
At this point, their size had ballooned up to be several inches above his knees in height. As he walked through the entryway, the lone monster immediately spat a ball of slime in his direction. Solace dodged the first projectile with a neat sidestep, and then the second one after that by ducking as he mentally counted the seconds between and confirmed that there was a predictable interval.
He spent several minutes practicing his dodging against the lone opponent, internalizing the timing until the hefty creature shrunk down from its use of projectile attacks. Once it reached a volume similar to the slimes from before, it leapt at him and he promptly killed it.
It’s going to get harder now.
Positioning and repositioning would be much more important. He would have to take the fight to the slimes when there were multiple of them, otherwise they could just shoot at him from a safe distance in a way that he couldn’t reliably dodge. Between that fact and the treacherous terrain, any slips would be more punishing and potentially lethal.
But Solace could handle it. There were things that he could and did exploit; the rooms could be scoped in advance, he could rest between each fight, and the slimes did not lead their shots while often getting in the way of each other in their attempts to attack him.
He quickly completed the rotation of slime rooms.
And then another.
But then on the next one…
He was getting tired, he knew, as he rushed into the room of four, quickly killing the blob on the furthest side with a powerful swing. The movement put him in a spot that messed up the remaining monsters’ “vision” of him. He dodged the sole projectile sent at him from the front most slime and ran in to kill it. With only two remaining, the fight ended quickly as he easily maneuvered between the last two’s attacks to finish them off. As he cleaned the mop once more as best as he could, he mentally cursed at his situation while breathing heavily.
Solace could rest all he liked between fights, but his physique was still skinny, and he hadn’t brought any food or water to properly refuel. He wasn’t endless, and for all of his lives he was painfully mortal in the way he made errors when exhausted.
He began to debate continuing the delve. There was almost no chance that he was going to die if he tried to finish it, he was sure, but incurring a serious injury would place him in debt if he had to pay for the healing. He took a moment to look inside himself, to see how much he had left mentally, and came to a conclusion.
I can safely go a bit further, and then I’ll see.
Because of course putting the final decision off was the best immediate decision.
The next room was eight slimes, and though Solace had an idea on how to conserve stamina, it was unsafe to test it with so many enemies. It involved taking hits on his chest and upper legs instead of dodging, because the slime wouldn’t be able to stick to his clothes. He wanted to take a single controlled shot to see the actual damage it would do if he got hit, but that wasn’t possible with eight slimes.
Well, that’s not strictly true.
Thoughtfully, Solace stared through the doorway at the slimes as a new, much better idea occurred to him. He checked the length of the actual entry — his wingspan — and then turned to double check the terrain of the room he was still in. Once done, he took a step past the threshold.
And then quickly stepped back.
As he had hoped, the slimes immediately began to spring into action. But because of their size, they were only able to reach him in pairs of two as they tried to squeeze their way past the doorway. Now, the slimes were unable to attack him from a distance as their single minded fighting style quickly put them in a highly disadvantageous position. Solace easily killed them in their pairs.
Pleased with himself, he forged onwards. With his new strategy, he was able to clear out another two rotations of slimes, their gradual increases in volume actually working against them as it soon became a single slime at a time filing through the entryway. The only issue at this point was that their now waist high forms needed two to three strikes to be killed.
On the tenth rotation, the last one according to the information packet, Solace breezed through all of the rooms except for the final one. Now, he stared at much, much bigger wooden doors leading into what was to be the boss fight.
There were several variations possible, he knew. Eight of the waist high monsters, sixteen of the knee high ones, or, most commonly…
He opened the doors, confirming the last possibility.
Within the room sat a lone slime taller than Solace and dozens of feet in circumference. He tried to analyze his surroundings once more, but the boss immediately leapt to attack without waiting for him to cross the entryway.
Solace took a couple steps back and to the side. Like the other monsters, he merely waited for the monster to come to him.
And it did.
But through the wall instead of the doors.
The force of its jump caused the massive slime to smash past the cover, sending powdered plaster flying everywhere.
There was no hesitation in what Solace did next upon seeing that his strategy had failed. He immediately began to quickly retreat to the previous room and then the one beyond that. The boss followed in great bounds, smashing through more walls, but it gave Solace a few moments to think.
It had strong leaps and a lot of volume to use as ranged attacks. He was going to need to be fast to win.
He continued running, but slowed his pace down to use the extra rooms as a way to observe the slime. He began to get a feel for its average leap and internalized the dimensions of its volume. Once done, he sprinted several rooms ahead. There, he planted a foot on the head of his mop and began to unscrew it off from the handle. When it came free, he took a few strides forward and planted the handle on the ground at a tilt. Then he waited.
One second.
Two.
Four.
The slime finally came crashing through, and its own force and momentum stabbed Solace’s “weapon” into itself. With the makeshift spear half a foot deep into the monster, Solace took a step back to lift the handle to be parallel with the floor without removing it from the slime’s body, and then began to run in an arc around the boss. The “weapon” began to cut a deep gouge into the monster as he moved, spilling its acrid smelling, slimy guts onto the ground.
Because it had no true face, the slime began to fire a volley of projectiles at him point blank without needing to turn. But like its smaller brethren, it did not lead its shots so Solace just kept running in a circle, tearing it more and more with his mop handle. He had to keep the speed up by sprinting to his limits, but he pushed through the fatigue.
At last, he completed a full circle and withdrew the mop handle to run away to another room. Looking through the opening in the wall, he watched as the slime tried to follow with another leap, but only had its top portion above the cut move. The rest just spilled out onto the floor.
After that, it was only a matter of a few heavy smashes with the “weapon,” and then he felt a rush of essence nearly equal to half of what he had already collected enter his spirit to indicate that the boss was dead.
Absolutely exhausted, he wandered a few steps away from the monster's remains towards a relatively dry spot on the ground, pushed the few pieces of trash aside, and then sat to rest. He took stock of himself. He was fatigued, starving, and incredibly thirsty, but otherwise uninjured. A good first attempt, and he already had a few ways to improve his delving habits without thinking too hard about it.
Eventually, he stood up and retrieved the mop head, reattaching it before making his way back to the boss room. There, he saw with his spiritual sense the exit rift, as well as a distortion in space nearby which emanated a blue color. It was the rift reward.
Sending a portion of his essence into the distortion, it promptly faded away as several shards the size of his pinky knuckle in the hexagonal bipyramidal shape fell to the ground. Though he had never seen one in person before, he knew that they were mana stones, near indestructible things that stored a set amount of mana that scaled with tier. The stones had several more properties, if he recalled, but they weren’t relevant to him in the immediacy. He had no use for mana yet.
He picked them up, six in all, and exited the rift with the slimy, disgusting mop slung over a shoulder.
“Welcome back, I trust that—oh,” Carter said. “Finally gave up, huh? It only took ya two hours before ya decided to call it quits. I hope the essence ya managed to get was worth it, because that’s about the only thing ya can get in this rift.”
“And these,” Solace said as he opened his palm to reveal the mana stones.
“Wha— Ya actually beat the boss?” The man demanded.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“Yes,” Solace replied. “And I read that I could exchange the stones for credits?”
A hundred per stone, according to the information packet.
Carter just stared at Solace, as if trying to look at something.
“Where would that be?” Solace asked.
The man blinked, and then responded. “Err, yes. Ya can exchange them at any bank, there’s one a block down from here on Pax Street.”
“Thank you,” Solade said.
With that, he left the facility that the rift was in and made his way towards the bank. The midday sun was quite nice on his skin after spending a good chunk of time in a cold, wet place.
—
After exchanging the mana stones for credits at the bank, he had gone to a nearby restaurant to eat and drink. The pork — he was pretty sure it was pork — was decently cost effective in terms of its calories to credits ratio. He should have bought cheaper food items, but sometimes convenience was worth a bit more. When he got back to the living complex, he had showered and then cleaned the mop as best as he could in the restroom.
Now, he was back in his room, having stowed away the mop underneath his bed and reviewing a guide on how to properly cultivate the essence sitting in his spirit. Turning away from the screen, he leaned his back against the wall and focused inwards.
Looking at his spirit, he felt the essence swirling around and in the center of the sphere. With minor mental effort, he grabbed it and felt instinctively how to feed it into one of his two cores. Without hesitation, he moved all of the essence into the core linked with his physical body to start.
When done, he opened his eyes to quickly check the monitor for the time. The guide had said that it would take six to ten hours to cultivate all of a Tier 1 rift’s essence, but he ended up finishing in less than one.
Maybe it has something to do with my Talent?
The thought made him close his eyes again to experiment. This time, he concentrated on only the physical core. Within his mind's eye, the essence existed in a way that was hard to describe, seemingly beyond three dimensions. It was solid, and yet swirled like some kind of ball of living yarn.
Solace concentrated on the essence, and found that he could still move it. He also sensed that the essence, though one homogeneous sphere, was also evenly distributed into seven distinct groups. With some effort, he gathered all of the essence up and forced it into only one of the locations picked at random.
But what does it do?
Opening his eyes again, he tried to find out. The current guide his browser was on didn’t explain it, but it did reveal a potentially related term: directed cultivation. He quickly searched it up and found that the details were restricted information for those below Tier 3. He sighed before clicking off the browser.
Trial and error then.
He stood up and moved around, not quite feeling anything. After a moment, he tried to open the door. It opened much easier. He smiled.
So, this pool makes me stronger?
A pause.
Wait, but doesn’t standard cultivating do that too?
Solace quickly closed the door and then manipulated his essence to return to an even distribution across all seven areas. This time, when he opened the door, it was still easier than before he had cultivated at all, but there was a marked difference between his efforts with the specific and general allocations.
He shifted the essence out of what was probably the strength section of his physical core and did another test. He found out that trying to open the door took almost as much effort as when he hadn’t cultivated any of the rift’s essence at all.
Now I have general knowledge about one of the possible areas, but what about the other six?
He proceeded to spend the next several hours experimenting. He found that moving all of the essence from one area to another took 15 minutes according to his estimation. The results were less than ideal.
He was only able to determine the general aspects of two other areas. One being a place that governed the five senses and the other stamina recovery. The other four were things he wasn’t able to test in his cramped room.
I’m going to need somewhere bigger, with things to test on, and with privacy.
The answer was obvious. Solace quickly pulled up the rifts schedules and selected the soonest slot he was allowed to — a week from now at the same slime rift. It looked like that particular one was unpopular and thus more open than not.
When finished, he focused inwards to try the last thing he could think of: exploring the other core within his spirit, which governed mana.
In this reality, mana was an energy created by all life that was used as the fuel for both technology and spells. In order to use mana for a spell, or a [Skill], he needed something called a [Skill Shard], which rarely dropped from rifts as a reward at Tier 1. They would only become more common at Tier 8 and beyond. And, while that was a pretty far away Tier for him at the moment, he didn’t see a reason in not exploring the core and experimenting with his mana when he had the time. So, he moved all of his essence from the physical core to the mana one.
Or tried to.
Solace frowned as the essence moving between the cores trickled from one to the other extremely slowly. At the current rate it was going, it would take half a day. It felt wrong, like there was a literal bottleneck. He inspected his spirit.
The two cores nestled within his soul were distinct and separated by a bit of cloudy space. Connecting the cores, he saw, was a tiny, thin bridge no bigger than a needle.
He frowned and focused on the bridge itself. Staring at it intently, the thing quickly transformed in his mind's eye from a miniscule, three dimensional strip to something two dimensional and familiar.
This is…
It was a blue feather. It was his blue feather, the gift that had fused to his soul from his first adventure and which imparted increased healing under certain conditions. He had thought it gone or dormant when he joined this reality, but was pleasantly surprised to see it now.
Solace suddenly recalled that his Talent had a secondary effect which he had glossed over. He pulled up the document with the information once more to review it.
Tier 1 Talent:
Primary effect: Allocated essence can be shifted to other attributes at will.
Secondary effect: Can store memories within the spirit.
He read it once, twice, and then looked within his spirit again. He had a sneaking suspicion about how to expand the bridge.
Mentally, he conjured up the first memory that came to mind, his recent meal at the restaurant, and tried to shove it towards the feather. It seemed to hold onto it for a second before the memory frayed and became strands. There was a repelling sensation as the strands were spat out by the feather, rejected.
So it’s not just any memory? What kind then?
He began to rifle through his mind, shunting the ones with the most clarity at the feather.
Cleaning—no. Fighting—no. Watching—no. Ah.
At last, the feather accepted one. It was the memory of his first time seeing sunlight. He could still remember it as if it was but a moment ago. The rosy fingered dawn as it illuminated his surroundings and glinted off of the morning dew. It was one of his happiest memories, something he cherished dearly after spending what felt like an eternity in the dimly lit Spire.
He felt the bridge expand just a fraction as the memory crystallized and entered the feather. Once the process was finished, he began to feed it similar happy memories.
Unfortunately, he only had seven. And once they were all stored, he frowned again in thoughtfulness.
Do they have to be happy memories, or just extremely emotionally charged ones?
He tentatively gave the feather the memory of the beating he received from that one guard from a couple days ago. It almost worked, he felt as the memory was rejected, so he began to feed the feather all of his memories which were highly charged with negative emotions. Moments of pure anger, spite, frustration, helplessness, and, of course, his deaths.
His many, many, violent deaths.
The feather accepted them all, even the ones so bad that he repressed and only gave the faintest hint of attention towards before shoving them away towards the bridge.
My baggage is finally useful for something.
The end result was a connection between the cores much larger, more like a thin pipe than a needle.
Solace took a deep breath when the last memory was crammed in. The process was mentally taxing. He checked the time and saw that it was late into the night, and decided to turn in for the day. Testing with his mana core could be done tomorrow. He flicked off the lights, turned off the monitor, and went to sleep.
—
On the first floor of the tower, the bottommost step of the Spire, the forever-lit torches dimly illuminated the room. Shadows flickered in the light, clumping and dispersing at random. All save for a portion in the corner.
A dark figure began to emerge from that portion, as if clambering out of a hole. The shadows clung to it, tendrils of darkness trying to drag it back into oblivion.
Moments passed until the figure tore itself free. With one arm, it grabbed the last of the darkness covering its eyes and pulled it off with a grunt.
At that motion, he unceremoniously collapsed onto the floor.
Alive. He was alive.
The thought was an anxious one. He was fearful that it was another trick to let his guard down and make him relax into the embrace of death.
But after several minutes of waiting, of gasping on the cold, hard cobbled floor, he finally let himself accept the situation.
He was actually alive, even though he fought that thing and—
His mind briefly spasmed as he remembered the after. The feeling of the shadows which grabbed him in the darkness, numbing wherever they touched as the things whispered for him to join them in nothingness.
He quickly shut away the memories. They were too much for him right now. He clutched at different parts of himself to make sure that the shadows hadn’t taken anything.
He was here, he was all here. He was alive now. He was in one piece.
He could find solace in that.
“Solace? Solace!” Edison’s voice cut through his thoughts.
Solace blinked. “Yes?”
It was the day after the delve, and he was at Edison’s workshop doing his assigned tasks in one of the back rooms. At the moment, he was cleaning a heavily dented metal chestplate, scrubbing out the dried blood and other effluvia.
“Is everything alright?” She asked.
He looked at the chestplate, and then a number of other already cleaned but obviously damaged pieces of gear ranging from weapons to mail sitting on a nearby rack. “Yes, I should be done in an hour or so.”
“No, not the work, you.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
She tapped her lower eyelid, and he quickly checked his reflection in the chestplate to see what she meant. There were heavy bags underneath his eyes.
“Oh,” he said. “Those. I just had a bad night of sleep.”
Crystallizing and storing bad memories in one’s soul led to unpleasant side effects, who could have guessed? It didn’t bother Solace too much. His rest would get better once he got used to it.
Edison eyed him with doubt, but didn’t say anything as she silently walked towards the rack, inspecting his work. She picked up a dull broadsword that had etchings in strange waves from the acidic gunk that had once been on it. “You’ve been here for only a couple of days now, and are almost done with everything I assigned you.”
“Yes.” He wasn’t sure where this conversation was heading.
“The work was meant to be done over two whole weeks, Solace. ”
He shrugged. Throughout his lives, he had come to realize that there was no such thing as multitasking. Doing something single-mindedly meant better focus which meant superior speeds and results.
“Is there something else you wanted me to do after?” Solace asked.
The pay was by estimated time per type of task, so doing more was better as long as the job was done well.
“Not right now,” she replied.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I don’t want you to burn out.”
Ah.
He had initially assumed that, based on how the contract was set up, that he would be working like a dog to complete heavily underestimated jobs. But Edison had actual concern for the employee, that was good. A stroke of fortune.
He gave her his best reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, I won’t.”
Shockingly, she didn’t seem satisfied with that. With a sigh, she placed the sword back on the rack and then grabbed a nearby towel soaking in the room’s sink. She tossed it at him as she spoke.
“Clean your hands and then come with me.”
He caught it. “Where?”
“We’re going to get lunch. I know a place with really good ribs.”
Solace looked down at the incompletely cleaned piece he was working on, before giving another shrug. “Alright.”
He quickly wiped off his hands before giving them a proper wash in the sink with some soap. When finished, he moved to the doorway of the room where Edison was waiting for him.
After that, she led him out of the room and then the shop, only pausing for a brief moment to lock up and place an “Out For Lunch” plaque on the door.
“You do this enough that you have a sign,” he noted.
Edison laughed. “I guess I do.”
Together, the two walked down the street and several blocks away. Solace smelt the place before seeing it.
The Be No
A barbecue place, or the like, judging by the smoky scents wafting onto the street. The interior was a simple place with a bar and wooden tables. It was that twilight time between breakfast and lunch, so there weren’t many people actually inside. Solace and Edison were swiftly seated.
When the waiter came, Edison ordered quickly and without the menu.
“What about you, Solace?” She asked when finished.
He looked at his options for a moment longer before shrugging. “The same as her,” he said to the waiter, who promptly nodded and left.
“So,” Edison began when they were alone, “what do you do outside of work?”
Solace thought back on his time in this reality. “Nothing much. Eat, sleep, read.”
Practice my Talent.
“Reading can be nice, do you enjoy fiction or nonfiction…?” Her voice trailed off.
“I’ve only read nonfiction since coming here,” he replied.
“What have you been reading?”
“A lot of things. Corporation customs, terms, rules, laws, and turns of phrase.”
“You must really enjoy learning about cultures then.”
“Not really, no.”
Edison frowned. “Then why bother?”
“I need to,” he said. “I’m trying to live here, after all.”
A pause.
“So what do you do for fun then?” Edison asked.
Solace raised an eyebrow. “Fun?”
Her frown deepened. “Things you like to do.”
Solace thought about it for a moment. He couldn’t remember the last time he had done something “fun.” So he just gave another shrug.
“Solace, your whole life can’t possibly be just working.”
“It isn’t,” he replied. “I said I ate, slept, and read things too.”
The conversation continued on, with Edison trying to have a conversation with Solace about his personal preferences for anything. Passions, hobbies, and even just his favorite food. To each, he merely gave another shrug or a non-committal response.
After several minutes, the food was brought out. Solace was impressed at the speed as he looked at their plates laden with steak, ribs, eggs, and sausage. Grabbing a knife, he was about to start eating when he suddenly remembered to double check something.
“You are paying for this, right?” He asked. “This is the contractual meal for the day?”
Edison placed a hand on her face and gave a sigh. “Yes. Go ahead and eat.”
He tucked in, chewing each bite as much as possible to aid the digestion. With the sheer amount of calories and protein in front of him, he would be able to do some kind of workout tonight and try to rebuild a bit of muscle.
This job was such a fortunate find.
He briefly entertained different things to work on before putting them aside mentally to focus his attention on Edison. His employer was picking at her food instead of eating properly.
Solace wasn’t socially inept, he couldn’t afford to be, so he knew that his replies bothered Edison. It was kind of her to care, and good for him as her employee, but he genuinely didn’t like lying about parts of his identity lest it come back to bite him later and didn’t have concrete answers for her questions. Over his lives, he had come to just focus on the tasks needed to be done to achieve his goal of searching and attaining the Token. Anything else was secondary, because everything else was fleeting.
Looking at Edison slowly cut away at her steak with that frown still on her face, he decided to try to change the topic.
“You know, I’ve been getting interested in something since coming to The Corporations,” he said.
The frown lightened a shade. “What is it?”
“Crafting, but I haven’t really been able to read much about it online without paying for rather expensive guides.” It was true, though interest was more of a fib compared to his minor mental note on learning the process for cheaper, private applications.
“Well, I happen to be a craftswoman,” Edison said, perking up significantly. “You can ask me questions and I’ll answer them if I can.”
“How do you get things to do non mundane effects?” He asked. “Is it because of the materials that you make it out of? Or…”
“That’s part of it, yes, but crafting is a fair bit more involved than just that. It’s the creation of something while taking into account the base materials, the way said materials interact with each other on a physical and spiritual level, and the processes you do to them such as enchanting which come with their own rules and properties.”
Solace spent a moment processing the statement before asking more clarifying questions. With only her words, he wasn’t quite able to grasp any of the explanations.
“Maybe it’s better if I show you,” she said after a few moments, probably noticing that he wasn’t understanding her completely. “I’m starting a commission today. You can see how I prepare the materials through enchanting and carving. It should help you grasp the basics.”
“That would be very helpful,” he replied.
After that, the two ate in companionable casual conversation while Solace tried his best to steer the subject of conversation away from himself until their meal was finished. Once done, they headed back to Edison’s store.