I was forced to spend the night in a hole again, while down there I realized I may have overreacted a bit, when he figured out she was an ant I just panicked due to a sudden spike of fear for her life. Hopefully by me exiting instead of attacking him it made him stay at least neutral-ish. Once I woke up I stretched out my newly developed magic sense and I could feel residual magic energy in the dirt I moved last night, it's not organized into any shapes just vague feeling of the fact energy once flowed through it. Once I turned on dirt magic I gained a splitting headache, moving raw magic energy while the sense was active didn't cause this reaction but having an active magic enabled at the same time did.

I did my best to fight through it and I was rewarded with a level up to magic sense and my headache getting worse as I gained more detail. I forced the vision range down to about only a single meter around me and that seemed to take most of the edge off. With that done I realized why it reacted like that, when I turned on my magic I lit up like a christmas tree, so I basically magic flashbanged myself. Grabbing hold of the dirt while looking at it magically I could see my energy flowing into it and then just flowing right back out. I tried to force the energy to stay in the dirt ball and for a couple seconds it did, then the ball exploded and my headache came back with a vengence and some dirt got in my mouth.

I stopped the experiments for now, kept magic sense at a meter, dirt magic set to foot support mode, and took off back towards home. Every time I took a step I saw how the magic rushed out of my foot to meet the dirt and form it into a stepping stone. I could see how the energy was wasted, but just holding it in the target seemed to be the wrong move, once I got back I could see how the worker's compression worked. I met back up with the river and turned to follow it up stream, and I'll know when i'm home by seeing my charcoal mound. It's still going to take me over a day to get there, and I'll need to eat something on the way which will slow me down a bit more.

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The dawn of day five away from home was upon me, so I started moving right away. Using magic sense while magical got me another level in both, I could see what happened to the magic as it leveled and it was bizarre. The amount of energy I was pumping into it was identical but somehow the output was greater, and I couldn't see where it changed, it just somehow got stronger as it left my body without an interface point. To be fair, trying to look at my body while using magic was like staring at the sun so the interface could be somewhere inside of me and I couldn't see it.

Eventually I reached my destination, I find my charcoal mound and nothing has happened to it, none of the soldiers or workers knew what it was, just that I wanted them to make it. From there navigating back to the entrance tunnel was a piece of cake, right before I got down one of the soldiers jumped out and wiggled at me to identify myself. I just thought 'it's father' at her and her expression instantly shifted from wary to happy, and she welcomed me back and apologized for potentially scaring me. I told her she didn't do anything wrong, if it was a real intruder she acted exactly as she should have, I gave her a headpat and continued down.

I barely let out an 'i'm back' before Victoria had her arms around me and was kissing me like her life depended on it, which, in a sense, it did. It was all I could do to just hold on for the ride for the several minutes the surprise makeout session lasted. Eventually she broke the kiss and it took another minute for us to catch our breaths.

"I take it that means you missed me?" I said once my breathing was under control.

"Yes it does, and you had better have learned something from that or else!" She threatened, I could tell it was mostly bluster, luckliy I didn't need to call her bluff.

"Yep, I got the basics of enchanting down so I can start working right away" when I noticed her look of 'you are not disappearing again' I hastily added "when i'm not giving you cuddles."

"Good, you nave avoided punishment, for now" she said before giving me a smirk.

It was at this time I noticed the rock that was to one side of the room with five wood carvings on it "oh, what are those?"

She looked over "hmmm? Oh yeah, I made those while waiting for you to get back, I was so excited to see you they slipped my mind." She led me over to the, and she pointed to each one as she described them "I made my little sister, my mother, Fighter, my father, and one of myself" she grabbed the one she said was of her "what do you think?"

I examined the carving and was amazed at how accurate it was, she even got the creases on top of her head perfect."this is amazing, I think you have a real talent when it comes to this."

She blushed at the compliment "thanks, knowing I have a talent outside of egg making feels nice... I really do have a talent and you aren't just being nice cause you love me, right?"

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

I had to chuckle for a moment before I smiled at her "yes, you are actually really good at this, if the other races weren't so hostile we could sell them. Obviously not these personal ones but if you make some normal things they could be valuable." I handed the statue back to her.

She was positively beaming as she took the statue back and put it with the others "well, get out of here and do your thing, but I expect you back here tonight for the real celebration" she finished with a wink before sitting next to some small logs, grabbing one, and getting a look of concentration as she stared at it.

It looked like she took my compliment to heart and was going to make some normal things, having a talent unrelated to babymaking was apparently super important to her. I just smiled at her again before heading back up to find the workers, I needed to see exactly what happens when they use compression and what the difference between a level one and a level two compression is. I grabbed two balls of dirt before I head down a path and find three workers busy working on a new larger than normal room. I asked if any of them recently unlocked earh compression and one did, so she would show her stuff first. I put a dirt ball in front of her and had her compress it while I focused on it as intently as it could manage with magic sense.

The spell energy came out of her hand like a laser, it was clearly a tightly focused spell with only a single possible use, it also clearly contained far less energy then mine did but because it was so focused it was still denser. As it struck the dirt ball it coated it in a shell of energy that then contracted, the shell getting denser as it contracted, thus strengthening it, which let it then apply more pressure in a feedback loop until the dirt turned into stone and when the stone became harder than the energy shell the compression stopped. I think I knew what the difference would be between level one and two, but I had to see it to be sure.

I placed the second ball in front of the higher level worker and had her do the same thing, right away I could see the interface point between energy in and action out, but that was all I could see of it. There was a spot embedded in her hand where her magic was focusing and somehow more energy was coming out of the spot than going into it. The laser of magical energy had identical density to a level one, but was slightly thicker so it's total energy was higher. The initial coating of power on the dirt ball was thicker, so the final coating when it hit maximum compression was also thicker, thus it could compress more before it hit equilibrium.

I thanked them and let them get back to work before I headed topside to see if I could use what they did to improve my own magic. The thing I attempted to do was to tighten up the energy stream, I grabbed hold of as large a mass of dirt as I could maintain comfortably while keeping magic vision active, I would say I made a ball about as big as my head. Next I focused on the energy wave leaving my hand and flowing into the ball of dirt, it was wide and fluffy, just a loose collection of energy flowing towards the ball. I grabbed hold of where it was coming out of me and tried to make it thinner, I felt a headache coming on as soon as I started but I kept at it, the pressure in my skull slowly built as the energy stream got thinner and thinner.

A sudden twisting sensation coursed through my body right before the energy snapped into a stream, it still wasn't laser like but it was a lot more solid looking instead of a lumpy cloud. While thinking about the new look I noticed I got a message from blue box blinking in the corner of my vision.

You have gained trait "Magic Compressor 1"

Due to compressing the magic of a spell by one phase without help

Earth Magic: Dirt Control mastery level changes from "Beginner" to "Intermediate"

You have gained trait "One In Ten Years Genius"

Due to improving one spell's mastery to intermediate without formal instruction

What the, that was a LOT more verbose then blue box had ever been before. I focused on that genius trait, that seemed to be the most likely culprit and it worked.

"One In Ten Years Genius"

A rare trait awarded for performing a minor feat of intellectual prowess

Grants acress to more detailed information on skills and traits

That was rather incredible, I quickly scanned through everything I had for any strange new tidbits. All my traits still say the same thing as before but are more verbose or specific about it, like darkvision didn't just say "grants limited ability to see through darkness" it now said "grants ability to see ten meters further than normal based on light level" so it confirmed I could see thirty meters when a normal person could only see twenty rather than some kind of only seeing some distance without light at all. The new one, magic compressor, made my magics a little more dense than normal, so I was using something like one point one times more compression. Most interesting thing was the changes to dirt magic's screen.

"Earth magic: dirt control"

Mastery: Intermediate

Level: 25

Allows freeform control over earth particulates

Speed is based on Int and level

Volume is based on wis and level

Mastery bonus: lowered cost for materials half step removed from dirt

So, level was hidden behind a verbosity enhancement, that is kinda stupid, but also made a weird sense when only people that try to break things would care about knowing how things work. I was so distracted I didn't notice the time, I had only snapped out of it because a soldier came to get me since Victoria was laying her eggs. It was nearly sunset, I knew looking at the screens didn't take that long so I must have entered a trance while focusing the magic stream. I thanked the soldier and headed back down to see how she was doing, as I walked I passed by four workers, each holding one of the eggs. Once I entered the room I could instantly tell just from the way Victoria was staring at me she needed it NOW.