Noem summoned a towel from his mess of things and dried himself as he watched The Artisan stand perfectly still and stare at a wall. Her statue held no more Qi than the rest of the room, which meant her main conscience, or whatever was closest to that, was somewhere else in the massive stone expanse.

He tousled his hair with the piece of extremely absorbent cloth, then tied it around his waist and let it hang down to cover his crotch. There was a change of clothes available, but it was nearly as dirty as the ones he’d been wearing thanks to all the smoke, so Noem chose not to dirty himself right after he’d gotten clean.

“I’m ready whenever you are.” He said out loud, and tried to use his Qi to activate his interface. An itch rose to the surface of his skin under the screen, followed by a stain of Qi and a connection akin to what he assumed controlling a prosthetic felt like. Unfortunately, he had no idea how to control an artificial body part. “Huh. Well, don’t push any skills into that. Unless I want to destroy the glass with a misplaced Dash.”

Clattering stone and a rise in ambient Qi announced The Artisan’s return. Her statue shuddered for a moment, then shattered parts of itself so she had full mobility inside of it. She took in Noem with a quick glance, and he could’ve sworn he saw something like disappointment cross her strangely expressive animalistic face. But it was gone before he could confirm, so he ignored it.

“It looks like I won’t have to teach you not to play with fire. That’s at least two days worth of lessons I can skip over.” She pushed off the floor with her back legs, which left a small indent where she had been sitting that closed up almost immediately after. “To clear up any questions before you ask; my influence only gives you the ability to use your Qi in place of digital signals, and it lets you connect wirelessly just as you would with… well, a digital signal. So what you did with Heavy Blow to an arrow, if you made it out of my programmable matter, you could trigger it from a distance and only when you know it will connect.”

The Artisan circled around Noem’s feet, then brushed up against his leg. A small circle appeared around him, shone with her Qi, and then he felt himself falling as the world shifted to darkness. Panic didn’t even have time to set in before the stone opened itself into a small cliff that jutted out over a massive canyon, all of which was made of the exact same stone.

“Summon your bow, but not your arrows.” She instructed, then sat back and waited.

Noem blinked and registered her words, then did as she asked. His bow appeared in his hand, and it took a small mental effort not to summon the quiver along with it. He’d gotten so used to thinking of them as a pair that it was strange using one and not the other.

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A wall of stone jutted up half a meter to Noem’s right. The sharp crack of something shattering sounded off in the distance, and a thin mist descended from the ceiling far above to fill the huge space with a layer of Qi that not only obscured Noem’s vision but his ability to properly sense Qi. He could barely tell that there was something flying at him extremely quickly, and he couldn’t tell if it carried a skill or exactly how large it was.

“What now?” He asked as he sidestepped the thing, which sailed over his shoulder with a quiet but distinct whistle. “Am I supposed to dodge those things?”

The Artisan’s form was the only thing completely unobscured by the mist. She leapt at the wall of stone and scampered up to the top, then took a sitting perch atop of it to stare slightly down at Noem.

“There are three types of projectiles; harmful, benign, and helpful. The mist obscures them from you until you need to make a snap decision. Your job is to dodge or block the harmful ones, destroy the benign ones, and let the helpful ones strike you.” She explained. “I’ve locked away your ability to summon from your inventory until you decide to take a break. If you’re in need of ammunition, all you need to do is make it for yourself.”

She swept a paw over the stone, and an arrow shaped itself out of the plain rectangle. “Since this isn’t some symbolic trial, I’ll tell you exactly what you need to do to succeed; shape an arrow. Form a connection to it using your Qi and the system. And force a skill into it at some point after that, but before it strikes a benign projectile. They all have different fields around them that only certain skills can pass through, but you’ll get a good feeling for that once you fire your first arrow.”

Noem blinked, shook his head, and tried to focus on the stone wall. The Artisan let the arrow fall to the ground, where it joined the rest of the stone in uniformity. He hadn’t been able to make the programmable matter shift at all, but now she wanted him to shape it into something complex like an arrow? And with the right weight, balance, and form to fly straight enough to hit his target?

“You have very high expectations, little miss.” Noem noted. He stepped out of the way of a projectile that felt slightly different than the one before, but still dangerous enough that he didn’t want to get hit by it. “If I couldn’t do this an hour ago, why do you think I can do it now?”

“I don’t. But I’d like to see you try.” The Artisan said confidently. “Look down at your feet. There’s a ring around them that’ll deactivate the launchers when you step out of it, so you can have some time to stop and think. And I’ll bring you back up to your room whenever you want to eat, sleep, or take a bath. There’s no pressure at all to succeed.”

The Artisan smiled and leaned over to rest her head on her front paws. “Well, no external pressure, that is. You’re making more than enough of that for yourself, aren’t you?”

“Guilty as charged.” Noem readily admitted. He pulled his fingers away from the wall, envisioning taking an arrow with him, but all that followed was a small lump of stone the shape of half an apple. “It’s not mentally or Qi straining, so it has to be my skill. Do I need a skill for this? Hm, I could probably make a skill for this. But I’d have to make it variable enough that I could force it into any shape I wanted, and that’ll take a lot longer than two weeks…”

Noem hummed in thought and forced his Qi to his fingertips. “Maybe I’m looking at this wrong. Hell, if I’m not, then I’m only going to waste a few minutes. But if I am, then I’d waste days working up a skill the hard way.”

The Artisan watched as Noem shifted his Qi around his hand, forcing it to move in different ways and take on forms he wasn’t quite comfortable with. “Remember; I’m here to help if you need any advice.”

“Thanks. I’ll definitely need it in a little while.” Noem said through his concentration. His Qi swirled and mixed into a mess of shapes and sensations he’d never quite put to skills before, and he pushed that mess into the stone. It burbled and shifted along to what he felt, but with so much more resistance.

Noem wiped some water that had dripped from his hair to his brow, then set his mouth into a thin line of concentration. “I’m going to need more Qi.”