After Matt's shaper tier went up and he got used to the new growth in his connection, he quickly fell asleep. The change in his energy was just taxing enough to be the final exhausting thing for the day, luring him to a much deserved slumber. When he woke up the next morning, he felt like he was literally and figuratively brimming with energy. Not only did he feel well rested, but the amount of connection that was now beating just beneath the surface also felt vitalizing. He noticed it a bit when he was a first bond shaper, but it was even more apparent with more energy.

Feeling both the increased level of energy and the new power of his scale, he could almost feel the core in his bag vibrating with reaction to him. Passing his bond over to the pack, he grabbed the large core and floated it over to him. With his increase in power, levitating took less connection to maintain and he was soon holding the new core.

It was still as impressive as he had remembered, and now he could feel how its natural resonance was aligned and brimming with an almost need to feel his energy. Getting up with a satisfied grunt and stretching out, Matt brought the core over to his desk and looked over his equipment. He had a lot of core to work with, but he was not quite sure where to start. Reaching out his bond, Matt was startled for a moment as he discovered what it truly meant to be a second bond shaper.

Before, he could extend his connection and bond to objects in a sort of limb, a specific stretched out mass of his connection and will. In combination with his material sense, he could move his bond towards his equipment and shape it. Now, since he already had a bond focused on the core and it’s resonance was high enough he didn’t need to focus on maintaining the connection, when he tried to reach out towards his bat he discovered he could manifest a second mass of connection.

Matt played around with the feeling of moving two different bonds around and interacting independently, getting used to how he needed to split his attention. It was certainly more strenuous to focus on two entirely different objects at once, so the importance of resonance just became even greater.

If he didn’t need to focus on maintaining the bond with something while still being able to shape it, then that opened his attention up for way more important shaping or just focusing on the world around him. He also figured out how he could merge the two bonds together and while focusing on a single object he could shape properties at the same time as the material. He also discovered that while his efficiency at fusing material that qualified for multiple of his awakened materials was just as efficient as it used to be, if he used both parts of his bond to shape each part at the same time it was even more efficient.

Smiling at the discovery, Matt focused back on his gear; mainly his bat. He has already fused several cores into the wood, making the weapon more resonant, but it could always use more. Taking the core, Matt severed a large chunk out of the side, maybe three times the size of a regular stalker core and started fusing that into his weapon. Watching as the veins spread though the weapons surface, Matt noticed how the more core he added to the weapon the more of the ‘connection cap’ that he had discovered increased, meaning he could shape more of its properties, including its resonance.

Shaping that until he could passively keep his bond attached to the weapon, Matt smiled at the bat and set it down. First part down, Matt moved on to the rest of his gear. He did the same with his gauntlets, using two normal sized core chunks on each glove and shaping until he could passively stay connected to them. He also discovered that if he left his bond attached to something, it was very easy to move it out slightly and shift his bond to whatever the object was touching. So if he left his bond attached to his bat, he could touch the batt to something else made of wood for a moment and shift the bond to the new object. It was easier than moving his bond to the object manually, but it took Matt a moment to get used to the technique.

Adding six stalker core chunks to his helmet, he shaped its resonance to also be passively bonded. He wasn’t sure how necessary that might be, but it felt like it might be important at some point in his adventuring career. If his helmet got stuck in something while he was wearing it, Matt wanted to be able to free himself as easily as possible. Moving to the rest of his armor, he fused the core throughout its entirety until every part had what he would describe as halfway to passive bonding.

It was still much easier to shape and he was able to increase its properties more, but after all of his armor he had maybe a quarter of the wood fiends core left. If he wanted full passive for all of his outfit, he would need to use almost all of the remaining material. Deciding he was satisfied for the moment, he stored the rest of the core with the ivor and fiend wood he had stacked in the corner of the room.

Satisfied with the use of his rewards for a job well done, Matt was reminded of his recent monetary income and recovered the new bundle of gold coins he stashed away in one of his belt pouches. Holding the stack of gold coins strung together on a leather cord, Matt felt the smooth metal beneath his fingers and felt the novelty of his situation. He would never have been able to hold a gold coin back on earth, but now it was a regular currency and he would presumably be making way more.

Taking his remaining silver, he removed the leather cords that held them both and replaced them with wood twine, capped at the ends with disks of wood. Since he couldn’t shape leather yet, he would get more utility from holding his money this way. Matt hasn’t spent much time exploring the town, and so he decided that today's mission would be to navigate his new home and maybe find something to spend his money on.

Going to his wood pile, Matt quickly turned a bit of the regular ivor wood into a side bag to accompany him on the excursion since his pack would be a bit much for a shopping trip. He doubted he would need much with him for the markets, but he still got dressed in his full armor besides the helmet. While he could just strap it to his back or bag, he decided that just leaving it was the better choice. Leaving the inn, Matt watched as other pedestrians and adventurers moved through the busy morning streets.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

There were two different parts of the town that could be considered the market area. Down the main street and square near the adventurers guild was a wide street with stalls, carts and blankets set up with all manner of merchants and merchandise. The majority of the stalls looked like they were more geared to adventurer clientele, but the further away from the guild the street went the more commonplace the wares became. At the end of the street was a few blocks of different regular storefronts, all ranging from medieval to the fantastical to the mundane. Since his inn was fairly close to the guild, he decided to start at that end of the street and see what he could find.

“Arrows, we’ve got arrows! Piercing, barbed, tethered and more; if you’ve got a bow, you need arrows!”

“Night vision potions for sale! Just two gold a bottle lasts you five hours! If you are going into the forest or the caves, vision can save your life!”

“Roast horned rabbit! Fresh from the forest! Horn included!”

“Golem geodes and cores! The mountains are full of treasures, no more so than the living rock! Golem geodes and cores!”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Matt walked down the street as peddlers shouted about what they had on offer, and his interest was piqued by one particular stall. He stopped at a slightly worn down booth that was mainly a wooden cart with what looked to be a fold out counter and canopy. The cart was filled with roughly round chunks of rocks, a bit smaller than the core he had recently received. Some of them were solid, but most of them were cracked open revealing the white quartz geode within, small spikes around an inch long at the largest..

On the counter were several different gemstones and crystals. The crystals were more of the white quartz that was in the geodes, but these were larger formations that were five inches long at the minimum, seven inches at the biggest. The gemstones were small inch long stones that looked kind of like tigers eye or agate, with waves of orange veins on its smooth surface but there were also rings of white intermittent between the orange.

As he moved to observe the stones in more detail, he was surprised to feel the gemstone in his material senses. He couldn’t feel the stone itself like he could wood, but he could feel the waves of intent the stone had, and when he passed his bond over the rock he found it reacted the same way a wood core did. He couldn’t actually connect with it, there was a barrier that prevented his connection from settling properly, but he could feel the resonance and how it would listen to his will, as well as the constant understanding of how it was ‘stone.’

“Well hello there! Either you know or are a shaper by the looks of your outfit there, which means you have found the right place!” The salesman greeted Matt with a wide grin, showing off a gold tooth, as he held his hand together. He was a shorter human man, maybe in his forties, slightly paler than the average but still more tan than Matt, a thin mustache with a slight curl at the ends and thin dark hair that was smoothed back with some kind of hair gel equivalent. He had a leather apron over a simple tunic, and had several silver rings and a silver necklace with a gold coin as a pendant.

“Uh, yes, I am a shaper. Are these cores?” Matt asked while pointing towards the strange gemstone, to which the man nodded enthusiastically as he picked one of them up.

“Why yes, a keen eye! These are stone cores harvested recently from the golems of the mountains. Not every golem is guaranteed to have one however, but I pride myself on being a purveyor of only crystalized golem material. Low tier energy crystals, geodes and cores are my guarantee! Are you interested?”

Matt thought about it for a second. He couldn’t shape stone or rock yet, but cores were supposed to help in understanding of unawakened material. He reached out and as he touched the stone with his gauntleted hand to examine it, he flinched back in surprise as a window popped up.

Would you like to consume the core to awaken an understanding of “Stone?”

0/2

YES/NO

Recovering himself, he set down the core and the window disappeared. If he could use cores to also awaken a new material, then he would need to find as many new cores as he could, and that would potentially become expensive. But it would be a huge boon if he could save his points for more properties or leveling his skills.

“I am interested, how much?”

“Hmm, for the cores they are three gold each. The energy crystals are one gold.” Matt didn’t have enough money to buy both of the cores he needed to unlock the material, the best he could do was one core and need to wait on the second. He was about to apologize and leave, before remembering that he was a shaper and they were supposedly better at bargaining.

“That is a bit much for me, but maybe there is something we can work out.”

“Oh? And what did you have in mind?” The merchant asked with an almost hungry grin, his greed peeking out of his friendly facade.

“I am a wood shaper and can’t help but notice that your cart is a bit worn out, obviously from a long career of loving use. While it is still in good enough shape to use, it could be good as new, or even better than new.” Matt offered as he demonstrated his ability by holding up a gauntleted hand and making the wood on the bracer ripple slightly. He could see interest in the merchant's eyes as he very expertly kept his expression under control. Smiling as he pretended to consider the offer, he leaned forward on the counter and addressed Matt.

“Tell you what. If you can fix up my cart and make it tougher, I can sell you cores for one gold each. Whatta you say?” He asked while holding out a hand. Matt thought about it and while the deal was almost definitely in the salesman's favor, Matt decided he was fine with it and by taking the man's hand and finalizing the deal with a shake, he got to work.

Reaching out his bond, he started work at repairing all the damage. The majority of the damage was superficial that was easy enough to just smooth out by bringing the wood back into place, but there was a lot of internal, structural wear that he needed to address. Thankfully, it is incredibly easy to just rejoin any break or stress and soon that was repaired. There was a part of the cart where it had been repaired normally, and since he was a shaper he just fused the break back and used the extra plank that was holding it together in other parts where he could use a bit more material. He even repaired any of the frayed edges or slight rips in the canopy

While he was making repairs, he used his new bond to start enhancing the durability and reducing the weight of the rest of the cart. It was a bit hard at the beginning to work on material and property at the same time, even when he merged his bonds, but he quickly got the hang of it. He would still need a bit of practice to do it with the bonds separated, but together it was manageable.

Stepping back, Matt observed his work and smiled. He couldn’t do anything about how clean the cart was, but besides that it looked brand new. Seeing the merchant who had been watching him work stand next to him and observe the cart, he whistled impressed. “Dang kid, that sure is a good job. If I didn’t see you work, I would’ve thought that you just replaced the cart with a new one. Whelp, deals a deal. How many cores you want?”

“I will take two if you don’t mind.” Matt said and by taking two coins from his stack, he handed over the gold and received the two gemstones. Smiling and walking away with the cores in hand, he looked at the window that had reappeared,.

Would you like to consume the core to awaken an understanding of “Stone?”

0/2

YES/NO

Matt confirmed his intent and as the window disappeared, he felt the barrier of the cores disappear and he was able to fully feel the stones in his hand. As he did, he also felt the resonance and intent that the cores quickly begin to disappear into his bond, and as the cores began to crumble apart in his grip into dust, his understanding of stone was awakened and he could feel all the rock around him with his perception.

The cobblestone paving the street, the pebbles being kicked by unknowing feet, the stone bricks making up the walls of buildings and walls, even the geodes in the rest of the merchant's cart. He could also feel the crystals with his perception, but there was a slight layer of disconnect that happened when he felt something that wasn’t quite the material he had. So while he could shape crystal, it was not as efficient as regular stone and rock.

New Achievement!

You have consumed your first core to awaken an understanding of a new material! While you and other shapers can both use a core to awaken an understanding normally, this takes a long time. You can instead consume the core to unlock it’s material immediately. The number of cores needed can vary, but any new core can be consumed.

Reward: Medium Level Progress

And a new achievement, Matt was already very happy with his shopping trip. Turning away from the merchant who had already managed to attract another customer, Matt kept moving down the street to investigate the rest of the stalls.