Zoe wandered through the streets as she looked for the inn that Eliza was staying at. From what she saw, Gromp was just a little ways from the eastern gate of Flester. She found the street and wandered down until she found The Chipped Mug.
They were a stone building, made from a somewhat shiny gray stone. A dark brown wood ran up in pillars along the walls, and around the windows that peered into the dimly lit tavern. Above the door hung a sign with a slanted mug missing a part of the rim carved into it.
Inside was a pretty normal tavern, for as far as Zoe could tell. Chairs and tables set up around the floor with a small bar to one side. A meaty, earthy smell wafted from the kitchen and mixed in with the boozy scents from the front and a hint of woody smoke.
Patrons sat at the tables, chatting with each other and laughing as they drank. A musician stood on a small platform near the entrance and played a wooden string instrument Zoe didn’t recognize. It looked like three sticks tied together with strings, and the musician strummed on the strings like a harp. Beautiful, folky notes bounced around the room as he played and Zoe smiled at the sight.
A bald woman stood behind the counter laughing with a large man sat at one of the stools. Zoe walked up to the bar.
“Oh hello dear, what can I do for you?” The woman asked.
“Is Penny around?” Zoe asked.
“Hah! You’re talkin’ to penny.” The man next to Zoe said.
Penny smiled. “Is there something you need?"
“Uh, is Eliza around? I was told to ask you for her.” Zoe asked.
“Eliza.. Hmmm.” Penny pondered.
“Is she that weird mage who’s been helping Ian?” The man asked.
“Ah! Yes, I think that’s her. She’s out right now, I can let her know you were here if you like?" Penny asked.
“Yes please. Could you let her know Zoe stopped by and that I'll be at Kaira library?” Zoe asked.
“Of course dear.” Penny smiled.
“That's an awfully long way to make her walk. Just come back later tonight and see her.” The man said.
“I will but she might be interested in catching up earlier is all.” Zoe said, feeling a little annoyed.
The man waved his hands in a defensive gesture. “No need to get so worked up. Just trying to help is all.”
Zoe rolled her eyes. “Could you tell her please?” She asked Penny.
“Of course. I'll let her know for you.” Penny said.
“Thanks.” Zoe said and left.
Zoe made her way to the library and spent some time reading about the country she was in. It was a small country, on the northern tip of the continent.
The cities were left to their own to run, but there were taxes each city needed to pay to expect certain support from the capital. Many cities, Flester included chose to forego the support entirely and thrive on their own. Some of these succeeded, as Flester had. And others were forgotten to time.
Zoe continued reading through for a while before she noticed Eliza walking through the air on a wooden platform of her own. She waved to her, and Eliza smiled back.
“Hey,” Eliza said when the platform brought her closer. “I thought you weren’t going to show up.”
“Yeah, you said you were here for a few weeks so I thought I had a bit of time to catch up with some other stuff first.” Zoe responded.
Eliza laughed. “Fair enough, fair enough. So, what did you want to talk about?”
“Ah, honestly I mostly just wanted to watch you use the magic and see how it worked? Also how did combining them work? Was it just instant like with feats?” Zoe asked.
Eliza shook her head. “No. I’m not sure how Richard combined them, but I still just have the two skills themselves. But lets go somewhere more private before we get into the details.” She smiled.
Zoe nodded.
“So how have you been then? Still off exploring the cave?” Eliza asked.
“No I finished that a while ago. I’ve been at Moaning Point recently. Just made it to the top a week or two ago maybe and pissed everybody off.” Zoe said.
Eliza grinned. “Did you kill the abomination?”
Zoe rolled her eyes. “Did everybody know about that but me?”
“Haha! No, it’s mostly kept a secret really. It’s fun to grill the newbies when they get up there. Oh you killed it? We had to figure out how to trap it.” Eliza cackled.
“That’s so mean.” Zoe scowled.
“Yeah. But it’s fun. Maybe one day you’ll get to pester somebody new for killing the abomination. Frankly, I think the only reason we even trap it is just for the farce of pestering new climbers.” Eliza said.
“I went through all that effort for a joke?” Zoe asked.
Eliza shrugged. "Maybe others actually like having it trapped. I never found it much effort to fly over though.“
When they got outside, Eliza summoned a platform of earth and stepped on it. “Ready for another flight?"
Zoe stepped on and summoned earth of her own to keep herself secured to the platform. “Sure. Y’know, actually I’ve never even tried to just fly on earth I’ve summoned. Do you have some special skill for it or something?”
Eliza looked at her for a moment and then smiled. “Wanna try?”
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Zoe shrugged. “Why not? What do I do? Just stand on a platform and move it around?”
Eliza nodded. “Yup. Lets get out of town before you ruin something though.” She laughed.
Zoe smiled as the platform lifted off the ground and rocketed up into the sky then out of town. The ride was much more comfortable than it was the first time. She saw the buildings far below flying by, the people walking down the street. She saw the trees in the distance grow closer, felt the wind rushing past her and pushed it along with her Wind skill.
When they landed not far north of town, Zoe wasn’t even winded. Let alone almost crushed like she had been the first time. The difference all of her stats and new skills made was mindblowing to see so clearly.
“Alright, try flying.” Eliza grinned.
Zoe smiled and summoned a platform of earth to stand on. She tried to pull it up towards her while she stood on it and it lifted off the ground. The mana drain was noticeable, but her passive mana regeneration was more than enough to keep it running for a while. The platform was stable to her magic, but to her feet felt like standing on a rope bridge that somebody was breakdancing on.
“Before you do anything stupid,” Eliza shouted from below. “Expect to fall! It’s harder than you think and I’m doing a lot to keep us standing.”
Zoe pushed the platform forward a little and felt her body tense as she tried to maintain her balance with the moving platform below her. She bent down and grabbed a handle of earth she formed on the platform and tried pushing it forward again.
The strain on her arm was manageable, and the extra support she had kept her feeling more comfortable on the flight. She flew around at a low altitude for a while as she got the feeling of it, and then started trying to speed up. It worked for a while, but at a point it was too much for her to hold on as the platform flew out from under her.
Her hand fell off the grip she made for herself, and she fell a few feet to the ground behind her with a groan.
Eliza laughed. “Told you!”
“That was fun!” Zoe said.
“Yeah. Flying is great.” Eliza said. “I use a few different techniques to keep it all together though when I do it. I float the platform we’re standing on, but I also push away the wind in front of us to keep it from knocking us over. I increase the platform’s gravity to keep us standing on it comfortably, and pull us forward as the platform moves with space. It’s really quite a complicated ordeal, but it’s plenty fun.”
Zoe nodded. “Yeah I think I could do a similar thing. I have Wind so I could try and mix that in, and maybe if I made a suit of sorts to push me instead of having to hold on I’d be able to fly without too much issue. I’ll give it some tries later, I don’t know why I hadn’t tried it until now honestly.”
Eliza shrugged. “Sure. So you wanted to see me use the skills?”
Zoe nodded.
“I’ll show you them, you tell me how you view mana. Fair?” Eliza asked.
Zoe nodded again.
“Also what other skills do you have? I have Space, Time, Fire and Water.” Eliza said.
“Wait, they didn’t combine into Cosmos?” Zoe asked.
Eliza shook her head. “Nope. Not sure what’s up with that, but maybe I need to do something else. Maybe Richard already had the hidden achievement because of his race or something else he’d done.”
“Huh. So then we could have other skills that combine into more complicated skills and just not know it?" Zoe asked.
“Sure could. I bet there’s one for all the martial skills. Get enough of them and it upgrades into something. I bet all the knights just keep it hidden from us for no damn reason.” Eliza scowled.
“That’s interesting then. Uh I have Water, Fire, Frost, Wind and Earth myself.” Zoe said. “The hard part really is getting the manipulation skills for me.”
“Really? Why’s that? I found the manipulation skill to be much easier.” Eliza said.
“Uh, I spent a long time studying my Frost skill that I got from killing an elemental and the system’s mana seems pretty formulaic to me. So once I get the manipulation skill I can just kinda swap in the mana signature for the element I’ve discovered and get the generalized skill pretty easily.” Zoe said.
“Really? That’s interesting. I found it was really messy, but if you say it’s formulaic then I might have to spend some time studying my own. How do you see mana anyway?” Eliza asked.
“It’s like little wisps of light that float around. They’re colourful but I don’t think the colours mean anything really. They take really intricate patterns as they move around, though.” Zoe said.
Eliza hummed as she summoned a packet of mana that Zoe could barely see. “Is this good enough for you?" She asked.
Zoe stared at it for a bit. The mana was unlike anything she’d worked with before, weaving in and out of itself. Wisps of light floated around and then vanished to reappear somewhere else in the pattern.
“Yeah, this is great. That’s so different to what I’m used to though, wow. It almost seems like you would need to be able to affect space to do that without mana.” Zoe said.
“Maybe. Upgrading it to Space was a tricky one, Fire and Water were both much easier.” Eliza said. “How do the wisps of light move around for you?”
Zoe described the motion of the wisps, and Eliza described the thick liquid that she had to fill. There were some similarities, as slight as they were. Eliza’s vessel that she filled with mana took on a similar shape to the pattern that Zoe saw with the wisps of light, but remained almost completely stationary compared to Zoe’s frantic movements.
“So if you can convert manipulation skills to generalized skills easily, why do you have so few?” Eliza asked as the space warped in front of her.
“What do you mean? It’s still hard to get the manipulation skills.” Zoe answered.
“No I mean, why wouldn’t you just go through your list of classes and get all the manipulation skills available, then copy down their formulas to grab later?" Eliza asked.
Zoe’s looked at her in shock. “Oh my god I’m so dumb. My current class has cinders manipulation! Why haven’t I done that?!"
She swapped out her Adaptive Cinders for Cinders Manipulation and summoned some cinders to study. The cloud of ash and flame appeared in front of her and moved around to her will.
Zoe pieced apart the mana that made it work and separated the bit that defined the cinders. She summoned her sheet of paper explaining to herself how the mana should work for the generalized skill, and replaced her Cinders Manipulation with Adaptive Cinders again.
After a few tries of forcing the mana to form the pattern she wanted, she succeeded.
*DING* You have unlocked the Cinders general skill.
“I can’t believe I never thought of that. There should be a few more classes I can get with similar skills too, I think.” Zoe said.
“Oh?" Eliza questioned.
“Yeah I have the Seasoned Frost class, but there’s also apparently the Seasoned Cinders class. I bet there’s one for every season.” Zoe said.
“Probably. You never checked in any other season?" Eliza asked.
“No. Wait, I did take a class in other seasons. I spent a while resetting my class on Moaning Point and I just set it to Seasoned Cinders over and over. It wasn’t summer every time though, I don’t think that should have worked?” Zoe said.
Eliza shrugged. "Maybe it’s just always unlocked now for you?"
“But Seasoned Frost isn’t. Why would Seasoned Cinders be unlocked.” Zoe asked.
“It’s autumn right now, can you switch to Seasoned Cinders now or is there something else there?" Eliza asked.
Zoe pulled up her stat sheet and looked for the Seasoned Cinders class but couldn’t find it. In its place was a Seasoned Gales with a similar description.
“No, there’s Seasoned Gales though.” Zoe said.
“And you’ve switched to Cinders in the Autumn before?” Eliza asked.
“Mmm. Probably? Definitely the Winter and the Spring. I’m not sure about Autumn.” Zoe answered.
“How were you doing it when you reset your class?” Eliza asked. Zoe felt the excitement growing from her with each question, even without her Vampyric Empathy.
“I just kinda urged the system to take Seasoned Cinders when I wanted to reset it.” Zoe said.
“You didn’t look at the class selection?" Eliza asked.
Zoe shook her head. "No, I wanted to wait until I was done what I was working on to see what I had unlocked.“
“Could you do that now? I get it if you don’t want to lose your stats but I’d be really interested to see if you could take a class the system says you don’t have access to right now.” Eliza asked.
Zoe thought about it for a moment and decided she was curious enough about it as well. She urged the system to replace her Seasoned Cinders class with Seasoned Cinders, as she’d done many times prior now. The system’s power rushed through her body and ripped out her stats and she was left with a level one Seasoned Cinders class.
Eliza stared at Zoe in shock. “Your level went down. Did it work?"
Zoe nodded.