As Jeb started his walk home, he thought about how he should prioritize his time. Of course, he’d keep working on Skills with his family, but it made sense to refocus himself. Between learning Brewing and Distilling and learning how to Enforce his lute, Jeb realized he’d unthinkingly slipped back into a thoughtless routine.
High on the list was obviously binding his lute, whatever that meant. The Bard seemed to suggest that Enforcing it would eventually cause it to bind, and Jeb had no reason to doubt that. Increasing his Charisma would probably help him work the Song, so Jeb made a note to try learning some songs.
Increasing his Mana would also help with that. As Jeb looked through his Notification History, he realized that the only Quests he’d done that increased his Mana were the Least Mud Initiate Class Quests and the Quests for Improved Glyph Groking. He’d finished all of the Least Mud Initiate Quests, so that wasn’t an option, and all of the Glyph Groking Quests looked like they’d take far too long.
Jeb pulled up the Quests to confirm.
Grok Glyphs Minor Quest Fourth Tier Learn the six secondary Spells from each First Tier Element Glyphs are not bound to a single effect. Learn the double-effect Spells from each of the four elements of Fire, Water, Earth, and Air to take the next step on Groking Glyphs. (First Tier Elemental Chain Third Quest) Minor Quest Third Tier Learn a Second Tier Spell from all six Second Tier Elements Just as Glyphs are not limited to a single First Tier Element, or First Tier Elements in general, neither are they limited to a single Secondary Element. Demonstrate your Mastery over the Elements. (Upper Tier Elemental Chain First Quest) Minor Quest Second Tier Share Your Work Using what you have learned from the Mana Mastery and Spell Glyphing Quests, share one of your Modified or Original Glyph with another. (Repeatable) (Metagroking Chain First Quest)
As he looked, he realized that the final Quest was available now. That made sense, since he’d Modified all of the Glyphs that he knew. Jeb considered doing that Quest, but he wasn’t sure how he could share a Modified Glyph. He had an instinct that it would require whatever special paper all of the Magic Primers were made of, but Jeb had no idea where he could get that.
Thinking about Glyph Groking made Jeb realize how little time he’d spent thinking about the Glyphs. Given that he had two Skills explicitly geared towards Glyphs and another that synergized with them, Jeb knew that the System had given him the tools that he would need to really dive deeply into the topic. As risky as it had initially seemed to modify Glyphs, the fact that nothing bad had happened when he did gave Jeb more confidence.
If someone had asked him how collapsing from the feeling of losing all his Mana didn’t count as harm, Jeb would have pointed out that he collapsed from using the Glyph, not from modifying it. Certainly he’d plan to use safeguards in the future, but safety checks were an issue for the future.
Jeb was so lost in thought that he hardly noticed he’d made it home. After putting his lute away, he was a little surprised to see his grandfather waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs.
“Jeb, I was just looking for you,” he said.
That was strange. “I thought you said that you needed the day to prepare for me to get Elemental Analysis.”
“I did, but then I remembered why we were working for that Skill at all.” His grandfather grinned sheepishly, “at least no one can say you don’t come by your distraction honestly.”
“Right!” Jeb remembered, “so are we going to work on Smithing today then?”
“That was my plan, yes. I’ll teach you Smithing until you get it and study how to teach Elemental Analysis while you sleep or during parts of your work that I don’t need to supervise.”
“That makes sense,” Jeb said, following his grandfather to his workshop. It remained uncomfortably hot.
“We started to cover this before,” his grandfather said, “but I’ll restart. After all, the goal is no longer getting Metal Identification or Ore Analysis, so we can skip a lot of that content. In the center of the room is the center of the Smithing process, the forge.”
Jeb’s attention hadn’t drifted from the forge, especially given how much heat it was giving out. Still, he focused harder on it.
“With this, you can heat metals. Heating metals can cause a variety of effects, but chief among them is that it makes shaping metal easier and stronger.” Jeb’s grandfather paused, clearly considering something.
“Before we keep going, there is a difference between the way we have been teaching you Skills and the way that I’ll teach you Smithing. I think it’s time that we take the kid gloves off.” Before Jeb could ask what he meant, his grandfather took a rod of what looked like iron off of a shelf.
“Skills, Levels, and Statistics can and should vastly change the way that you interact with the world. Even though I can bend this rod to shape,” he said, looping the bar around itself, “even I will normally heat my metal first. When you shape metal cold, you run into a number of problems. Cold metal wants to keep its shape, so it will show each strike that you give it. More than that, though, if you bend cold metal too far, it will break.” He kept twisting the bar until Jeb heard a loud crack.
“Any questions so far?”
Jeb thought for a moment. “Not yet I don’t think,” he finally replied.
“Then let’s start with your first project. It’s traditional to start with a dagger, but for a number of reasons, we will not.” His grandfather’s eyes hardened. Jeb thought he could hear him mutter something about how “no one in my family will need a dagger ever again.”
His grandfather fell silent. Jeb sat in the room with the roaring of the furnace as the only sound. Just as the silence was growing uncomfortable, his grandfather’s eyes brightened and he continued talking.
“But that’s neither here nor there. Instead, why don’t you make a shovel?” Jeb’s grandfather showed him how to heat a bar of iron up so that he could beat it flatter.
Jeb watched his grandfather grab the hot bar and strike it a single time. Somehow the strike brought it to exactly the thickness he wanted. A few strikes later, Jeb saw the shovel head shaped exactly right.
“I’m not expecting you to have something of this quality your first time through,” his grandfather said, “but as close to this as you can get would be ideal.”
Jeb had been watching for so long that a piece of his bar melted off into the fire.
“Careful,” his grandfather chided, “never forget what’s happening when working with fire.” That just felt like good life advice. “Also, remember to take a break every thirty minutes. I know that you’ve got a high Endurance, but that doesn’t mean you can go indefinitely.”
Jeb pulled the rest of the bar out of the fire and waited for it to cool down. Even without his grandfather’s advice, he had an instinct that it wouldn’t be useful to try shaping it while it was still that hot.
When it had cooled to merely red hot, Jeb began striking it. Even though he knew intellectually that he wouldn’t instantly flatten the iron, it was disheartening how little the bar changed shape. It might have been slightly less round exactly where Jeb struck it, though he wouldn’t swear that it was.
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By the time that the iron had cooled too far, Jeb had turned the round bar of stock into a slightly flat rectangular bar. That was progress, though at this rate Jeb knew that he would be working on the shovel for days. He reheated the bar and pulled it a little too early. A few strikes in, he needed to reheat again.
The cycles of heating, shaping and reheating started to pass by in a rhythm all their own. When his grandfather stopped him for dinner, Jeb saw that he was nearly done thinning the metal out. Stepping out of the shop, Jeb nearly collapsed.
The only reason he didn’t fully collapse is that his grandfather caught him as soon as he started to fall. “Now, Jeb, I have a question for you,” he said.
“What’s your question, grandfather?” Jeb asked, hoping it wouldn’t be anything too difficult. For whatever reason, his head was spinning.
“How often should you take breaks in the metal shop?”
Jeb thought back to the directions he’d been given. “I’m guessing the answer is more often than I did,” he hedged.
“Well, that depends,” his grandfather said. For whatever reason, Jeb felt as though he’d been given a length of rope, “how often were you taking breaks?”
“How long were we in the shop?” Jeb asked.
“Why does that matter?”
“...Because however long we were in the shop is how long I went without a break,” Jeb admitted. “If I was only there for half of an hour, then I would have been taking my required breaks.”
“It was much more than half of an hour,” his grandfather said. “And I could have stopped you, but we’ve been noticing a troubling trend in you Jeb. You don’t know how to listen to your body when it’s telling you to stop. In part, that’s probably due to how high your Statistics are. You can push much further than you could before getting your Class, so your body needs time to adjust. In part, though, it’s that you don’t seem to believe you can really be injured.”
“That’s not true!” Jeb protested, “I take reasonable safety precautions.”
“How long did you wait to try the Song again after you were unconscious for two days?”
“At least a day!” Jeb said. Even as he protested, though, he realized how little time that really was.
“And did you tell anyone that you were about to try it again, so that we could be there to help if you needed it?”
“Well no, but-” his grandfather interrupted him.
“And when you were given an explicit instruction to take breaks while smithing, did you?”
“Well, no.” Jeb saw where the conversation was going and realized he had no real leg to stand on.
“So, moving forward,” his grandfather said, and Jeb felt his heart stutter. What if they wouldn’t let him keep studying? “We’ll be planning your schedule more rigidly. You’ll still be taking the lead on deciding what you want to do and when, but we’ll be here to make sure that you take your breaks, at least until it becomes a habit.”
That was a much better outcome than Jeb was expecting. Some of the surprise must have been showing on his face, because his grandfather let out a chuckle. “I can hardly blame you for wanting to improve more, especially given that we pushed you into it. I also can’t really blame you for not knowing how to take the breaks your body needs, especially given how new you are to your Class. Still, it is a skill that you need to develop sooner than later, especially since I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be able to catch yourself if I let you drop right now.”
Jeb tried to move his legs so that he could argue that point, but his body refused to move. “I think I would too, though I don’t want to find out for certain.”
“Then let’s get you dinner and to bed. In the morning we can plan out your schedule before breakfast.”
When they sat at the table, Jeb hardly noticed what he was eating. His body let him know that he needed food and immediately. After dinner, he collapsed in his bed and fell directly asleep.
Jeb’s Status Sheet at End of Chapter:
Jeb Human Age: 16 Class: Least Mud Initiate Level: 1 Experience: 3744/100
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Total Statistic Load: 252 Physical Load: 124 Strength: 28 Dexterity: 21 Endurance: 30 Vitality: 41 Presence: 4
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Mental Load: 128 Intelligence: 25 Willpower: 20 Magic Affinity: 43 Mana Depth: 21 Charisma: 19
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Mana: 570
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Glyph Attunement: 18 Least Shape Earth (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Earth (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Earth (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Earth (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Shape Earth - Efficient (Modified) Tier 3 Spell Least Move Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Conjure Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Shape Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Move Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Mud (Modified) Tier 2 Spell
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Bard Songs Known: 1 Lute Enforcement
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Skills: Least Mud Magic Meditation Mana Manipulation Spell Glyphing Improved Glyph Groking Gift of Gab Running Identify Soil Savvy Animal Handling Fertilizing Lifting Athletics Lute Playing Singing Musician Pollination Brewing Distilling Bardic Magic
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Achievements: Focused Meditator Student of Magic
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Quests: Major: Slay the Dragon of the West (Progressive)