Fundamentally, words were cheap. Clint could talk till he was blue in the face, but without any sort of concrete proof to back up his claims, he doubted he would be able to drum up the amount of belief needed to make his [Role] truly useful. He had the beginnings of a plan–a specific lie he wanted to sell, one that could potentially net him an interesting set of abilities, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to pull it off without the right set of supplies in his back pocket.
That’s why he had sought out a store that sold magic artifacts, items, and relics. This one just so happened to be the first he had stumbled upon.
He didn't have enough money to buy anything seriously powerful like the skull in the center of the shop that bent the shadows around it, its reach extending to the building's exterior, casting it in an ominous shade. But he doubted he'd need anything like that. He could make up for a lack of raw power with showmanship. No, rather than anything powerful, Clint narrowed his search to a cheaper selection of items, ones that, if used correctly at the right times, could help convince one of his marks that he had supernatural powers.
Clint wandered through the empty shop, browsing assorted shelves of items that had been forged in Greenway and others that had been scavenged for the old ruins that were scattered across the Frontier. He stopped in front of a worn old journal; something about it spoke to him. He picked it up and carefully flipped through its yellowed pages. It was written in a foreign language. He squinted down at the text.
“You can read Molin?” a short man with a top hat and a monocle said from behind him. His footsteps had been silent, possibly an effect of an artifact.
Despite being surprised, Clint forced himself to turn slowly to look at the man so as not to let him know that he had almost given him a heart attack by sneaking up on him.
“Some. I’ve forgotten most of it.”
Clint pulled up the man's [Status] and used [Semblance] to enhance the information displayed on the page.
[Collector - Level 10]
A collection has no value to a man with no room in his home.
Traits: Discerning Eye, ?,?...
"A common conundrum. I suppose the world is like that too–most of what was once known has been forgotten," the [Collector] said. He shook his head. "Unfortunately, the man who was supposed to translate the text was delayed on his travels–his caravan was attacked by bandits. I doubt he'll arrive till after the blood moon passes, so we'll have to wait in suspense till then to find out what the book is about."
“A month is a long time to wait.”
"For us, maybe, but for the truth, it's a blink of an eye. Even if the translator never arrives, I'm confident that the truth will find its way to the light one day–it always does."
Clint nodded. “That it does.”
“I apologize. I haven’t introduced myself. I am Ciro, the owner of this establishment.”
Clint nodded. "Clint. Clint Abner," he said somewhat dramatically for no reason other than that he thought it sounded cool and that he somewhat wanted to match the store owner's level of theatrics.
“Well, Clint, what can I help you with today?”
“I’m looking for items of the minorly magical variety. I have a hobby of tinkering with them, so things that you wouldn’t mind breaking.”
“Yes, yes, come this way. I have a few things you may be interested in.”
He spent the next hour listening to the [Collector] happily ramble on about the various items he sold. Clint nodded along, listening carefully. By the end of it, his head had been stuffed full of more useless trivia than he would ever need, but he hadn't had the heart to interrupt the [Collector] when he looked so happy talking about his passion.
Clint ended up purchasing four items. A rigged deck of cards. A ring that could generate small flames. An inverse privacy rope that blocked outside sounds from entering the area but didn't block sound from the inside going out–a significantly more useless and cheaper cousin of the privacy circle. And a single-use tag that could change the color of a piece of clothing.
The magic inside each of the items was perishable, meaning that they only had a limited number of usages contained within them before they would fade, and like most other activatable magical items, they required some amount of magical talent to use, requiring the user to be able to interface with them.
As Clint was now, he doubted he could even activate any of the items, but no one else knew that, so he hoped he could change that fact with a bit of work.
With the unique set of options [A Stranger In A Strange Land] presented to him, a simple solution presented itself. If he wanted to be able to easily wield magical artifacts, all he'd have to do was dawn the guise of a wizard. Hopefully, then, if the act was convincing enough, he should gain some measure of the requisite powers.
Carrying a bag full of minorly magical items, Clint thanked Ciro, then left the store, continuing on his quest to pick up all the required items to become a wizard. His first stop was a clothing store with a large hat collection. There, he was asked a strange question he had never considered before.
"What size head do you have?" the shop's owner, a crotchety old woman, asked as she led him through rows of hats.
“Normal? I think. I’ve never measured.”
Clint, despite being quite the analytical type in the other areas of his life, slipped the trend when it came to himself. He hadn’t measured himself in years, just knowing that he was taller than most. And the last time he had weighed himself had been at a doctor’s appointment a little over ten years ago.
She shook her head, baffled as if it was almost inconceivable that someone wouldn't know their skull size. "Try this on." She passed him a black wizard hat with a spiky tip, almost shoving it into his hands.
He tried it on. It fit perfectly. Looking in a mirror, he liked to think he looked quite wizardly with it on. At least enough so to fool the average on-looker from a distance.
"I like it," he said. Despite the shopkeeper's icy disposition, she was quite good at her job.
“Yes, you should. It is a good fit,” she said, turning to walk toward the counter.
Clint blinked and followed behind her. “Out of curiosity…” He coughed into his hand. “In terms of foreheads, what would be the right unit of measurement.”
"Length. Width. Arc Length, if you want to be specific. If you don't want to be specific… if you can fit four fingers in the area between your eyebrows and hairline, you have an average forehead. More fingers than that means you got a big one." She reached the counter. "Now, stop asking all these useless questions, and pay me, or get out."
Clint stifled a chuckle, knowing it would only serve to further rile up the woman, and paid her. As he walked out of the shop with his wizardly hat atop his head, he used [Semblance] to enhance the information displayed on her [Status], his mana reserves being drained near empty to activate the Skill. He felt an intense wave of fatigue for a brief moment before it disappeared entirely. Perhaps the one upside of having poor magical perception was that he couldn't sense his own exhaustion in that regard.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
[Demolitionist - Level 10]
Most tragic is the explosion that never went off.
Traits: Quick Fuse, ?,?...
It was interesting to note that both the shop owners he had met today were stuck at the Bronze bottleneck. He guessed that starting a small shop was a reasonable next step for older adventurers who were tied to a certain town or otherwise unwilling to venture deeper into the Frontier.
Clint took off the hat, shaking it upside down, checking to see if the old lady had stuffed any bombs into it. After confirming that she wasn't trying to assassinate him, he continued on his quest, searching through multiple shops until he found a completely mundane replica wizard staff. The store attendant had said it was a children's toy, but that didn't matter much to him; it'd serve his purposes well enough.
He briefly considered returning to grab a wizardly robe from the old lady's store, but he thought better of it. Firstly, he'd look ridiculous in it. The robes would look totally out of place without a wizened white beard, at least in his opinion. And secondly, he'd already bothered her enough for one day; there was a definite risk of her throwing things at him if he went back.
At least those were the excuses he told himself. The truth was, he just didn't want to wear a robe. It was hot as hell outside, and they looked uncomfortable to move in, not to mention tacky.
Now that he had completed the outfit, he felt a faint resonance from [Semblance] and his [Role], indicating that he could activate the Skill to change his Identity. However, he held off for now, fearing that he wouldn't have enough mana left in reserve to safely complete the process and wanting to further solidify his Identity first before committing to it.
To pass the time while he waited for his mana to regenerate, he ventured back to the center of the market, where he found a large notice board with what looked like at least 100 posters nailed to it.
He browsed the listings, reading through the jobs posted there. One of the posters detailed a job requiring the taker to search through the desert for a rare type of crystal that grew exclusively on giant cactuses. Another detailed a reward for the bones of a cursed desert mole. There were multiple job listings by the various trade companies looking to hire protection details for the caravans. He stared at those for a while, reading through them twice with a blank expression, noting down their details.
Other jobs were posted on the board, but he seemed satisfied with what he had seen.
He made his way to the market's outskirts, where he found a cafe with outdoor seating that had a clear view of a neighboring store that bought and sold monster parts and other rare resources found in the desert. He watched, sipping on a cup of ice water and nibbling on some sort of cactus-themed desert he had ordered blindly from the menu as adventurers would come and go, dragging behind them the remains of the monsters they had slain.
He had heard rumors about the store, making it a potential target for one of his scams for a variety of reasons, none of which he had yet to confirm. Calmly, he sat across the street in the shade, eyeing the building–staking out the location.
Idly, he noted that from the outside looking in, some of the jobs he pulled probably looked rather glamorous, but he doubted if anyone saw all the legwork that went into them–all the walking around town, buying random items, scoping out locations, waiting, practice and research that was involved, well, they probably wouldn't think they were very cool anymore. Reality was often more disappointing than fantasy.
Of course, the question remained of why he had even come to the Frontier and why he would risk pulling a job so quickly when he wasn't in any particular need of money.
"What brings you to Greenway," a blond waitress asked as she refilled his drink. She sounded bored out of her mind, making her the perfect mark to convince that he was something he was not. Most importantly, she was an Unawakened, so she didn't have access to his [Status], meaning she couldn't easily disprove what he was about to say.
Clint looked up at her and tilted his head, visibly considering his answer. "I'm on…" He searched for the correct word for a moment. "vacation," he finally said in an altogether not-too-convincing tone, leaving room for her to jump to her own conclusions.
She took the bait, her eyes lighting up as she perceived what he had said as a lie; her interest peaked now that a mystery had presented itself. "We don't get a lot of tourists coming round here this time of year." She lowered her tone to a conspiratorial whisper. "So, what type of secret brings you to the end of the train line?"
With a smile, he shrugged, shifting his wizard staff slightly. "The boring type."
“How boring do you consider murder?”
Clint blinked slowly, then gave her a strange look, furrowing his eyebrows. "Not very. I hope I didn't give you the impression that I was here to kill people."
"Ok, ok, I was just checking. You never know with you wizard types. One of y'all is always plotting to call down a meteor and blow up the town or something equally ridiculous."
“You know not all wizards can do all that, right? Most just have to settle for fireballs instead of meteors.”
“Are you saying you can’t call down meteors?”
He looked at her plainly. “Yes, sorry to disappoint. I wouldn’t be here if I could.”
She glanced around at the other mostly empty tables and then smiled. By this point, she was almost entirely convinced that he was actually some sort of mysterious mage on a secret mission despite him providing no actual evidence of the claim.
She, like most people Clint had met, only saw what they wanted to see. For some reason or another, she had wanted to believe that he was something more than he was, so, in the end, he hadn't actually had to do much to convince her. If anything, she had done most of the legwork herself, shooting down any logical objections as to his Identity that surfaced in her mind before he could even get the chance to address them.
"How long are you here for, or is that a secret too?"
He chuckled. "Unfortunately, I won't be here for long. I have a long overdue meeting out in the Frontier that I can't put off any longer."
From her facial expression, he assumed that she had taken his vague statement to mean that he had some sort of dramatic wizard duel in the middle of the desert on his schedule, assigning meaning where there wasn't any. He didn't bother to correct her, though he did feel slightly bad about misleading her–a hang-up he had never seemed to be able to overcome, no matter how many times he did it.
[Semblance] churned within his soul, sparking faintly at his attention, some condition for its activation further fulfilling itself as the conversation progressed.
Across the street, a burly bouncer roughly pushed a middle-aged woman out the door of the trade shop, the whicker basket she carried slipping out of her hands and tumbling down across the street as she stumbled.
"But, I thought we had a deal," she said, tears welling in the corners of her eyes but refusing to fall.
"The deal's changed. Pray that it doesn't change further." the owner of the establishment, a man with a seriously dislikeable face, said.
A crowd began to gather, but after retrieving her basket, the woman stormed off, cutting the scene short.
Clint motioned with his head in the direction of the shop. “What’s the deal with them?”
"From what I've heard, they're jacking the prices up on certain ingredients used in medical alchemy since trade is going to be shut down for a month once the blood moon begins. As you can imagine, it hasn't gone over well with some of the people who need and make their living off those ingredients."
Clint narrowed his eyes in distaste. Price gouging. A quick way to make a buck off the less fortunate.
"Are you going to hit their shop with a lightning bolt? You can do that much, right?" she asked, more out of curiosity about his powers than distaste for the shop owner. Which was saying something because her distaste for the man across the street was evident from her tone.
The shop owner shooed away the crowd with a dismissive motion of his hand, then disappeared behind the doors of his store, not seeming very bothered by the encounter, rather a bit enlivened by it, like he had enjoyed it. Clint had seen his type before–a small man who coveted and misused their small fraction of power, lording it over others.
Clint was hesitant to jump to any conclusions; he hadn't heard or seen what had transpired inside, or even the actual details of the man's business, and he knew he was seeing through biased eyes, almost wanting the shop owner to turn out to be an evil caricature of a human being so he could scam him without feeling any guilt, but even knowing all that, he had seen enough.
He wouldn’t feel bad about evening the score with the man a bit.
"In my experience, lightning bolts are easily identifiable, and the damage they cause easily repaired. No, I think this problem requires a different solution."
Clint activated [Semblance], letting the currents that gathered within the Skill wash over his [Status], changing his [Role] from [A Stranger In A Strange Land] to [Wizard]. Unlike last time, where there had been a lack of genuine belief behind his change in Identity, the waitress was fully convinced that he was a wizard of some renown, and such, his [Role] and [Semblance] synergized with each other, unlocking within him a new well of power.
Congratulations! Semblance has reached Level 3.
Clint grinned. To his mild surprise, on his [Status Page], he had unlocked an entirely new Stat.
[Wizard - Lvl 1]
…