As I descended the mountain, I looked over at my quest log. I still had a quest that required me to find someone who knew how to use the scrap metal that we’d been picking up pieces of, and if the other two quests had been any indicator, the experience would be no joke.
Then there was the quest I’d got for looking at an ore vein—one to mine and smelt some ore. I didn’t have it on account of the 3-quest maximum, but surely approaching another ore vein would give it to me? While I had no intention of becoming a smith, I had to wonder: were there other context-sensitive profession quests? I had plenty of skill points, and had wanted to train the better part of them in town, once we had time and space to go over that system—in fact, our encounter in the caves had made me realize that even this, sensible as it had seemed, had likely been waiting too late.
I tried thinking on some other things that might trigger introductory skill quests. If I touched some gearworks, or papyrus, or an empty potion bottle, would these things trigger some quests that could help me get to 4/4 in a dual class?
I didn’t meet Cuby on the way back, and she wasn’t at the fountain, so I returned to Laida’s shop, surprised to find her still there after all the time I’d spent climbing the mountain, but then I saw why: she was building something, head down over a corner desk in the workshop.
“I see you found something you wanted,” I said, looking down at the strange metal frame she was building.
“Oh!” she said, looking up. “You’re back! I was worried you’d abandon me on account of your moral discomfit. I have good news!”
“Okay,” I said, unsure of how to respond to all that. “What is it?”
“First of all, there’s a quest for all of the crafting skills,” she said. “Remember when we approached the ore vein?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Normally I’d rather be out adventuring than in here crafting while we still have time on our clocks, especially this close to initialization,” she said. “But the experience gained from my first craft will more than make up for it. Between this and the turn-in for the metal scraps, we’ll almost be level six.”
I smiled. Levels cost progressively more experience, and being close to level six was probably enough to be a dual-classed level four, considering level one required 0 experience points.
“Did you take scribe ranks yet?” she asked.
“Not yet, but I was thinking about it.” I opened up the skill selection menu, looked at scribe:
Scribe Training
Type: Profession, Magic, Scribe
Cost: 6
Learning this skill allows you to write common scrolls, spell cards, and some common spell books. You learn three such recipes from the starter scribe list upon buying this skill, and can learn other recipes by encountering recipe books or recipe cards out in the world.
“Huh,” I said. “I suppose I can pick some of the spells not sold in town.”
“Sure,” said Cuby. “Or just save yourself some gold. Anyway, the real good news is that Laida gave me enough materials for both of us to make grapple hooks.” She said the word with such enthusiasm that I felt like a child she was trying to make excited.
“Grapple hooks?”
“Grapple hooks,” she said, nodding. “Now you may be thinking: that means I’ll have to take mechanist training with my general skill points. But trust me, it’ll be worth it.”
“Sure, I trust you,” I said.
“You do?” she asked, looking genuinely confused for a moment in one of her more human-seeming expressions
“About this, yeah,” I said. “I don’t have any mobility powers, and have you seen the terrain around here? When you say grapple hooks you’re not just talking about a rope with a grapnel on the end, right? You’re talking about something powered?”
“Yes,” she said. “Here—” she pulled a chair from the nearby desk and put it next to hers. “Sit.”
First, Cuby sent me to the counter to examine an item that lay beneath the display:
Uncommon Equipment — Cell-Powered Grappling Gun
Crafted by Laida
Power Cells: 4/4
A heavy, one-handed grappling gun which must be firmly secured to the arm in order to be used. Consumes power cells.
A cell-powered grappling gun with the following properties:
Reinforced Derunium Grapnel — Can penetrate materials made of stone or weaker, but also hook onto any protrusion strong enough to support your weight
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Reinforced Derunium Cable — Range of 15 meters
Uncommon Prime Mover — Motor will struggle beyond 80 kilograms. Consumes ½ a power cell to launch or retract.
Steel Casing — Grappling Gun has capacity of 4.
“Looks good, right?” she said, eying me.
“Yeah,” I said. “Especially since we’re surrounded by mountains.”
“Good,” she said, smiling softly.
Then she spawned a sackful of metal items—rods, gears, a chain, and some other things—onto that half of the desk, where they clattered down into a heap. “There’s your stuff.”
I added all the items to my inventory, then looked them over:
Common Item - Thin Steel Rod x 8
Common Item - Steel Plate x 2
Common Item - Power Cell x 3
Uncommon Item - Reinforced Derunium Cable
Uncommon Item - Cell-Powered Prime Mover
When I was finished this inspection, I saw a new notification from the system:
Quest Unlocked - Mechanical Aptitude
Create an uncommon item using the mechanist skill.
Reward: Common Power Cell x 5
“All right,” I said. “Here goes.” I opened up my skill selection and found Mechanist:
Mechanist Training
Type: Talent, Mechanist
Cost: 6
Buying this skill grants you the ability to make things using the mechanist skill. You gain access to all common mechanical component recipes, along with two other component recipes and one uncommon equipment recipe of your choice.
Note: mechanist recipes invariably require access to large, sophisticated machinery that can be found in workshops.
I bought the skill with 6 of my 20 General Skill Points. A prompt appeared for me to make my component and equipment recipe selections. The components were as follows:
Cell-Powered Prime Mover
Cell-Powered Heating Element
Hermetic Seal
Pressure Vessel
Fitted Nozzle
Reinforced Cable
But since I didn’t have to make my choice now, and I already had all the ingredients for the grapple hook, I didn’t choose. The list of equipment sounded far more interesting, even if I was already set to pick the gun:
Uncommon Recipe — Cell-Powered Grapple Gun
You create a cell-powered grapple gun that you can use to pull yourself to a grappled object, or a grappled object toward yourself. The capabilities of the grapple gun depend on the quality of the materials you use.
Ingredients:
1x Grapnel — The quality of the grapnel determines what materials it can latch onto
1x Reinforced Cable — The quality of the cable determines how far away your grapple hook can fire
1x Cell-Powered Prime Mover — The quality of the prime mover determines the force your grapple gun, as well as its rate of consumption
2x Metal Plates
4x Metal Rods — The gun will use the lowest quality of metal used to determine its power cell capacity.
“Interesting,” I said. “So instead of multiple recipes, you upgrade by using better stuff. All right, let’s get to work.”
It was a strange experience, crafting something I hadn’t known how to make a minute earlier, and it was made stranger by my sneaking suspicion that the physical objects we were making wouldn’t actually function as advertised in my world—that the game rules, not physics, were what made them work.
But as I shaped the grapnel out of four steel rods using the hand-operated machinery of the workshop, I had to marvel at how easily the system could fill my mind not just with new knowledge, but seemingly with muscle memory as well. I moved through the workshop confidently, with purpose, as if I’d been making these my whole life.
It took us probably two or three hours to finish, with Cuby helping me put the casing on mine once she was finished with her own. When they were both done, we spent a little time admiring them:
Uncommon Equipment — Cell-Powered Grappling Gun
Crafted by Alatar
Power Cells: 4/4
A heavy, one-handed grappling gun which must be firmly secured to the arm in order to be used. Consumes power cells.
A cell-powered grappling gun with the following properties:
Steel Grapnel — Can penetrate materials made of wood or weaker, but hook onto any protrusion strong enough
Reinforced Derunium Cable — Range of 15 meters
Uncommon Prime Mover — Motor will struggle beyond 100 kilograms. Consumes ½ a power cell to launch or retract.
Steel Casing — Grappling Gun has capacity of 4.
Quest Completed — Mechanical Aptitude
Reward: Common Item – Power Cell x 5
I watched this quest put my experience bar up to just over 75% with a smile. Cuby was right—the experience was well worth the time traded for it, especially since our adventuring clocks were counting up, not down.
“I want to test it,” she said. “But I also don’t want to waste power cells.”
I, too, wanted to go pretend I was batman. But my mind was firmly fixed on my end goal: unlock a second class and keep it hidden with a Supercharged False Identity spell.
“All right,” I said. “We should find a turn-in for our scrap metal quest, then, and go after any other crafting quests we’re going to pick up.”
“Which for you is scribing,” said Cuby. “But for me… rogues get lots of skill points. My choices are alchemy training, poisoner training, explosives training, and maybe even blacksmithing training. I gotta shop around.”
“I’ll go see if the rest of my gold can complete whatever the scribe quest is,” I said. “Also–if you’re going to craft for two professions and I’m only going to craft for one, that could give me an extra hour or two to fill. If I went back to the cave and fought some monsters, tried for some added experience, would you mind?”
But Cuby broke out into a radiant grin. “Of course not, Alatar!” she said. “Your clock will wind up with less time than mine, but only because you used it properly. I’m glad you’re taking leveling so seriously.”
“Uh, good.”
“Meet by the fountain when we’re done?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Meet by the fountain.”