Time passed, and before I knew it, two weeks had gone by.

I was busy during that time. Every day was devoted to trying to train my usage of Aetherial Melding. If I wasn’t trying to refine my control, I was trying to understand the Profession deeper. Typically, if I wasn’t working with Grey on this, I was working with Azarus out back in the forge. If I wasn’t working with either of them, I was in town working with Bleddyn. After our first session, Bleddyn had insisted that I visit him at least twice a week. It was pretty exhausting, but in a rewarding way. I didn’t mind it so much. Hell, when I wasn’t working with anyone else, I was experimenting with it myself.

It was interesting work, as well. I felt like I understood Aetherial Melding much better and how it functioned. Especially so after I had worked with both Azarus and Bleddyn, considering I’d had some interesting breakthroughs with both of them. With Bleddyn, I’d discovered how the Profession functioned with flesh. When working with dead flesh, we’d found that I could essentially do whatever I wanted to it. I could part it out, I could skin it, I could even remove entire portions of it like bone. I wasn’t breaking the meat down to pure Aether like I had with alchemical ingredients either. Out of curiosity, I'd attempted to refine a hunk of deer flesh into an individual Essence like I had with Alchemical ingredients, only to be immediately knocked out. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't seem to do it. It was like I was getting an immediate drain of everything I had in me, followed by the mental equivalent of an error message. I don't think it was possible for me, at least at my skill level. For Fleshcrafting, It was more like I had a guiding mental hand that was doing the work instead of my physical one. There was a large skill component to it though, as Bleddyn had told me that my ‘cuts’ looked like someone had given the world's sharpest knife to a complete amateur.

When it came to live flesh though, we had discovered that I had limited ability to influence it. It was much, much more difficult for one thing. With flesh that was already dead, it didn’t have Aether actively flowing through it anymore, so it was a simple matter to synchronize with its stable nature. Not so with living flesh. We’d found that it was a constant struggle to synchronize my Aether with the Aether of something still alive, as living Aether was constantly in flux. Bleddyn had a small rabbit farm out back of the butcher’s shop, so we’d experimented on them. I couldn’t use the Profession to slaughter the animal outright, strangely enough. It didn’t feel like I could deliberately cause harm with the Profession. The Aether pulse would just completely destabilize every time that I tried. On the other hand, we had actually tried to do some minor first aid on another visit, which lay in the realm of my long-gone Profession Surgery. It was exceedingly difficult, but I had actually managed to ‘meld’ some fine linen thread into a small cut on Bleddyn’s arm to form an impromptu stitch. I’d been pretty happy about that because it meant that my old desire for the Surgery Profession wasn’t completely dead. It was just going to be monstrously difficult and involve a ton of practice.

On the other hand, smithing with Azarus had revealed some interesting things as well. On our first session, we discovered that I could break down metals, ores, and woods into raw Aether like I had the alchemical ingredients. I'd even pissed off Grey fiercely for some reason, when I had presented him with an Essence of Iron Ore. He'd glowered at me and snatched the vial he called an 'impossibility' out of my hand and retreated to his room to study it for the rest of the day. For now though, they didn't seem very useful for smithing though, at least at my skill level. However, when I tried to recombine them into a usable form like a small cooking knife, it hadn’t worked. The process failed intrinsically. We’d been puzzled by this, and after some trial and error hadn’t produced any results, we had gone to Grey to ask his opinion. His mood had improved at the question actually, and pointed out something that in retrospect had seemed obvious.

“Does it not stand to reason,” Grey had said. “That you need to involve fire in the ‘meld’ in order to produce a blade?”

Somewhat sheepishly, I had pointed out that I hadn’t needed anything extra in order to make a potion.

Grey had smiled at that. “Ah, but you did have something extra. Remember that the bottle you added the combined Essences into possessed a quantity of water inside? By now, I believe that the ritualistic act of combining those Essences into water is the act that actually produced your potion during the meld. You simply had to correctly combine the Astralized ingredients first.”

So, we tried adding fire to the ‘meld’, as Grey had called it. Since I couldn’t exactly stick my hand into the forge’s furnace unless I wanted to lose it, we tried with a torch. First, I ‘Astralized’ an iron bar and a lump of charcoal that Azarus gave me with one hand. Then, once I had the Astralized raw materials, I Astralized the fire dancing on the head of the torch with my other hand. Slowly, I had combined both of these two ‘Astral Essences’, as I started calling them afterward, I tried to shape them into a small blade. I succeeded in creating a small, warped steel blade before shortly passing out again. Just like with the potion, it had been too much effort at one time and I had drained my Stamina.

The individual Astralization process of both the materials and the fire had been pretty clunky though. So, the next time that Azarus and I had met up to work on smithing, he’d surprised me with something. He’d designed and made a custom type of crucible for my use. I’d been touched and grateful, but also pretty amused because it reminded me of a bullet grill from back home. Just instead of meat or vegetables, I was grilling smithing materials. I’d used it a few times, and it had been much easier to use.

I was deeply tempted to try and make a smithing apron with the words 'We Be Grillin' stitched on it.

For once though, today wasn’t about testing Aetherial Melding. Since we’d discovered that performing any kind of meld was impacted by my Stamina pool, we’d been planning to do another monster ‘hunting’ trip. Getting me some more levels was still likely to be an important part of whatever plan we used to escape, after all. We’d had to wait around until we could go into the forest though, since Magnus limited the amount of times that Azarus could level himself. I was looking forward to it, actually. With a class under my belt, I felt more confident in my ability to fight monsters. We’d already been in the forest for about an hour, clearing out whatever monsters we could find.

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After killing another warg and collecting its core, I held it up to the light to let it shine through. I eyed the rainbow light it gave off thoughtfully. “So, what are these used for again? We haven’t used them once in our experiments.” I said, turning to face Azarus and leaning on my new spear. Azarus had given me a new one before we had left since my first was both broken and lost somewhere in this very forest.

Azarus pushed off of the tree he had been leaning on while I had fought. “Mainly used in enchantment.” He said idly, walking up to me. Taking the core from me, he examined it for a moment before grunting dismissively and handing it back. I put it into the pouch I’d taken along for just this purpose. I fingered the necklace I was wearing in thought, a frame that held my first tiny monster core from my first kill. Azarus had made it for me a while back, and I’d just never felt comfortable wearing it out of the house until now.

“Enchantment, huh,” I said. “I have to admit, I’m surprised Grey and I haven’t touched that yet.”

Azarus shrugged. “Same reason you and me haven’t done anything with Engineering yet, yeah? We’re trying to make sure you understand how your mumbo-jumbo works with each Profession before jumping into another. But,” He said, leaning in. “I know Grey has plans there, so expect to be diving into Enchantment soon.”

I snorted. “I wish he’d tell me his plans. Why does he do that, anyway? We’re all in this together, why does he keep trying to play everything so close to the chest?”

We started to make our way deeper into the forest during our conversation.

“Eh, the man is older than dirt,” Azarus said. “Those Magi, the older they get, the cagier they are. I think it’s just habit, so try not to take it personally.”

“How old is he, anyway? He looks about sixty-ish to me.” I asked curiously.

“Sixty.” Azarus snorted, amused. “Way off the mark there. I think he’s somewhere around seven hundred? I ain’t too sure on the exact year, so don’t quote me on that.”

I stopped walking in pure astonishment. When Azarus heard me stop, he turned around to face me, puzzled. When he saw my face though, he snorted in laughter. I paid it no mind.

“Are you shitting me?” I said in disbelief. “Seven hundred? How does that happen? Is he…immortal?”

Azarus outright laughed. “Gods, no! Ain’t no-one immortal, at least on Vereden. Well, maybe the Mad God.” He corrected himself. “Who knows? The man is just pretty highly leveled. I thought we’d told you that a high-level Status gave you more years?”

“Yeah, but…” I trailed off. I didn’t think that meant centuries. I shook my head and started walking with Azarus again.

We walked in companionable silence for a bit, not finding any monsters yet. Azarus broke it first, surprisingly.

“So, you gotten any levels yet?”

Casually, much more confident in its usage these days, I mentally pulled up my Status.

“Huh,” I said, surprised. “That’s odd.”

“Hmm?” Azarus said.

“I haven’t checked since I got out of the forest, and when I did was level fourteen. It’s saying I’m level eighteen now.” I answered.

This time it was Azarus who stopped walking in astonishment. “How the bleeding hell did that happen?” He sputtered. “I know ya haven’t been sneaking out to hunt, so how did you get four bleeding levels?! The only Aether ya should have been getting’ was…from…crafting…” He trailed off before a look of realization stole across his bearded face.

“Wait yeah, you guys mentioned you get level Aether from Professions. Why the hell are we out here?” I asked confusedly.

“Because normally, crafting Aether is shite,” Azarus answered brow furrowed in thought. “S’well known that you only get a seventh of the Status Aether ya would from crafting something compared to hunting. That’s per Profession, mind. Even then, the amount of Aether ya get from making, say, a dagger is tiny compared to even the lowest-level monster. So, someone with two Professions would get two-sevenths of the level Aether ya should get from crafting, and crafting anything has low amounts of Aether released from it already. But…”

I caught on. “But I have a Profession that deals directly with Aether already. Something completely new. So…”

“So, who knows how much Status Aether you’re getting just from crafting.” Azarus finished for me. “Damn! Why didn’t we think about this? If you’ve already gotten four levels since ya were in the forest a few weeks back, it has to be pretty damn good Aether gain.” Azarus abruptly turned around and started marching back the way we came. I hurried to keep up with him.

“What, are we done?” I said once I caught up.

“No point being out here now,” Azarus said with a frown. “Want to get Grey’s thoughts on this before we go any further.”

……………………………………..

“Excuse me?” Grey said, confused. He set down the mug of tea he was holding. “Would you mind repeating that?”

When Azarus and I had gotten back to the house, we’d found Grey in the middle of his lunch. We’d interrupted him, and told him about my mysterious levels gained since Magnus’s ‘hunt’.

Patiently, we explained our thoughts about my Aether gain to him again.

Grey’s eyebrows rose. “Well. Hmm. I should have thought of that. It does change things, doesn’t it?”

“How so?” I asked him.

“Well, for one it should speed up our rate of testing, now, shouldn’t it?” He said with a smile. “If you don’t need to risk leveling expeditions in order to raise your level, that just means our work itself will contribute to your Statusial growth. It’s curious though. I can’t say I’ve ever gotten more than a handful of levels through pure Professional creation in all my years.”

I sat down in a chair across from him, while Azarus helped himself to some of the extra lunch Grey had made in the background. “You know, we were talking about that. Your age, I mean. How old are you? Azarus thought you seven hundred.”

“Does he now.” Grey snorted into the tea he had picked back up. “Unfortunately, Azarus is incorrect.”

I relaxed. I knew it. Humans just didn’t get that old.

“I’m actually in my nine hundreds. He confused my level with my age.” Grey continued with a slight smirk, visibly enjoying the shock on my face.