By the time Jeb made it back to the raised beds, his grandfather was nearly finished harvesting the Watergrass they had grown from the second generation seed. It felt even weaker to his Magical senses, which didn’t seem to surprise his grandfather.
“Since your Charisma is so much lower than your other Statistics, why don’t you spend some time learning a few songs?” his grandfather suggested. “I’ll come by the hive with the two new sets of Waterweave when your uncle finishes with them.”
As his grandfather walked off, Jeb was left to consider why it was not an issue for his grandfather to monopolize his uncle’s time, but it was a problem if he did. A number of reasons immediately came to his mind, chief of which was that his grandfather was ultimately the one responsible for making sure that everyone paid their taxes. Shrugging, he went back to the house.
“Happy noon,” his mother said, “how are experiments with your grandfather going?”
“I think they’re going well!” Jeb replied happily, “I’m going to learn some songs while we wait for Uncle Frank to make new Waterweave!”
His mother was clearly confused about the non sequitur, but Jeb left before she could ask. In his room, he grabbed his lute, Lute Method Book, and realized that he left his flute near the hive. “Hopefully nothing happened to it,” he said, rushing with a little more emphasis.
At the hive, he was relieved to see a small contingent of bees guarding his flute. “Thank you all!” Jeb said. They danced an acknowledgement and dispersed.
He flipped to the next page of the Lute Method Book and began to work on the song inside of it. It was a song about the glory of adventuring, which didn’t sit right with Jeb. From everything that his family had told him, adventuring was far from a pleasant time.
When he got to the bridge of the song, it mentioned the joys of dispatching goblins. Jeb had slaughtered a few animals on the farm during harvest season. He tried his hardest to think of a way that doing any similar activity could be considered joyful in the slightest.
By the time that the System told him he’d learned the song, Jeb hoped that he would never need to use it again. If he was being honest with himself, he wasn’t even sure that the two points of Charisma were worth having sung the piece, let alone committing it to memory.
Congratulations! You have completed the Minor Quest Lute Playing First Tier “Learn a Piece for Lute” Go forth and serenade. Rewards: 1 Charisma, 19 EXP
Congratulations! You have completed the Minor Quest Singing First Tier “Learn a song” Go forth and serenade. Rewards: 1 Charisma, 19 EXP
Paging through the book, the next songs all seemed to have similar topics. By the time that he found one that didn’t glorify killing or living as an adventurer, it was well above his own skill level. Jeb was saved from the dilemma of working inefficiently or learning a song he actively despised by his grandfather’s arrival.
“Before you push Mana into this,” his grandfather said, handing him the new sheets of Waterweave. “I think it would be good practice for you to guess what result you will see.”
Jeb cocked his head, “how so?”
“It’s a good way to build intuition, though it does come with some risks. Once you’ve stated the reality you expect to experience, your perception might warp until that’s all you can see. Still, since it doesn’t seem like you’ve been able to manifest changes in Waterweave’s Mana capacity before, it seems safe enough to try now.”
Jeb considered the idea for a moment. “I think that each sheet will hold fifty Mana,” he finally said.
“Why?” His grandfather probed.
“The drop from the first to second generation was by fifty percent. Since this feels weaker again, it would make some amount of sense that the trend would hold for each generation, especially since the other reasonable answer would be that this will hold no Mana, which I don’t really want to be the case.”
“That’s a reasonable enough logic,” his grandfather said, “try it out.”
“Do you think that I should use Attune Water Mana or Least Shape Water?” Jeb asked. “Least Shape Water is what I’ve used in all of our tests up to this point, but since it seems like we’re going to need to keep seeding the fields of Watergrass to keep them from degrading, it might be worth just preparing Attuned Mana.”
“For the first sheet, keep it with Least Shape Water,” his grandfather advised. “That way you don’t accidentally introduce any new variables.”
Jeb nodded, glad that he had come to the same conclusion as his grandfather. With a brief effort of will, he began pouring his Mana into the sheet of Waterweave. As he expected, it stopped accepting more Mana after he put in fifty points.
“Well?” his grandfather prompted, somehow sensing that Jeb was finished moving Mana.
“On the bright side, I have good intuition,” Jeb replied, grinning a little.
“Interesting,” his grandfather said. “That really means that whoever wants to grow these would need to buy fresh seeds for each crop so that the Mana capacity stays the same.”
“Is there something wrong with that?” Jeb asked. At first glance, it didn’t seem like a problem. If anything, that could be a benefit, since the farmer wouldn’t need to store the seeds and make sure that they didn’t die or sprout prematurely from a rainstorm.
His grandfather considered the question for a while. More than once, he held up his finger as though he was about to speak, only to shake his head and lower his hand. “Assuming that the supplier is trustworthy, it is not a major downside,” he finally said, “but it does mean that the Farmer would need to trust the supplier. From the supplier’s end, it also easily leads to corruption. After all, if someone absolutely needs the seeds you have to sell, what’s to stop you from charging them more than they can comfortably pay?”
“I’m confused, don’t we buy our flower seeds from another farm every year?” Jeb asked.
“That’s different,” his grandfather replied, clearly having already thought of that objection. “The flowers we grow from those seeds are strictly for our own benefit and the benefit of our pollinators. If we ever had to start paying tax in flowers or flower seeds, we would absolutely begin propagating our own seed lines. As it is, though, it’s nice having someone else who actually enjoys breeding flowers doing the work on our behalf.”
“What makes Waterweave something you think Farmers would have to pay their taxes in?” Jeb asked, unsure if he was following the argument.
“Hmm? Oh, Manaweave is a not uncommon tax product,” his grandfather said.
Jeb nodded. He remembered that discussion when he had first started growing it.
“Waterweave, though more limited, has a lot of benefits that Manaweave does not, right?”
The realization hit Jeb suddenly. “Oh! The fact that non Mages can use Glyphs through Waterweave is what makes it useful?”
His grandfather didn’t legitimize the question by answering.
“Well, now that we know what happens with Waterweave, what should we do next?” Jeb asked when the silence grew too uncomfortable.
“First, how much Mana can this set of Waterweave hold?” his grandfather prompted, gesturing to the other pile of Waterweave. As expected, it held one hundred Mana.
“What do you think we should do?” his grandfather asked.
Jeb considered the question. “It seems like it could be beneficial to see if we actually can improve Watergrass so that it doesn’t decay between generations.”
His grandfather nodded at that suggestion. “Good idea.”
“Since we know that the second generation seeds will produce Waterweave with fifty Mana capacity without any intervention, that seems like the better set to start with, since we’d only need to use half as much Mana.”
“That makes sense to me,” his grandfather agreed, “do you want to prefill sheets of Waterweave or...?” he trailed off, letting Jeb suggest other options.
“I think filling Waterweave makes the most sense,” Jeb replied. “That way I know exactly how much Mana is going into the plot.”
An idea suddenly struck him. “Oh, before we do this, I think it might be a good idea to make an Efficient version of Attune Water Mana.”
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Go on.”
“One immediate benefit is that the Attune Mana -Efficient is a Second Tier Glyph, which means that I gain ten Mana per inscription, rather than none. Another benefit is that the conversion is slightly better, so it will take me less time to replenish the Mana needed to fill the plot.”
“How long do you think that it would take you to make the Efficient form of the Glyph?”
Jeb considered the question, thinking about how long Attune Sand Mana -Efficient had taken him to craft. A lot of the work he’d done on that Glyph had been setting the foundation for making other Glyphs Efficient, so he thought he could do it far more quickly. “Probably a few hours at most,” he said.
“Ultimately, it’s your decision,” his grandfather replied, “but it sounds like that might not be the worst idea.”
Jeb nodded and closed his eyes. Visualizing Attune Water Mana was easier for him than Attune Sand Mana had been, though not by much. Without any delay, Jeb began making the second layer of connections.
When he had finished looping the fifteenth point to itself fifteen times, he saw how strained the flow between the points was. Adding the third level of points, as minor as they were, seemed to relieve a lot of the pressure, though it did highlight how constrained the straight lines were. He quickly forced the overall shape of the Glyph to change, making the straight lines curved to let the Mana cycling through them flow more efficiently.
When he had finished, he felt the Glyph burn onto his soul. As it did, he accepted the Quest Notification that popped up in his vision.
Congratulations! You have completed the Minor Quest Glyphmastery Fourth Tier Glyph Chain “Create a Second Tier Glyph”. Like a true Glyphmaster, you were not bound by others’ Glyphs. Rewards: 78 Experience, Mana Depth +4, Willpower +4, Mana +25
He looked up to see his grandfather staring at him.
“How long was I working?” Jeb asked. As he looked at the sky, it didn’t seem like it had been that long.
“What do you mean?” his grandfather seemed confused.
“I just made the Glyph, and I was wondering how long it had taken. I hope you weren’t waiting for long,” Jeb said, mirroring his grandfather’s confusion.
“You just closed your eyes barely a minute ago,” his grandfather said, “your bees hadn’t even settled down yet.”
“What do you mean my bees hadn’t settled down?”
“Whenever you get deep in your work, your bees also tend to settle down, as though they’re Meditating with you. We asked your Aunt Esther about it, but she didn’t seem concerned. She, like us, assumed that it was something you had trained them to do.”
“If I did, it was only by accident,” Jeb replied, “but that’s beside the point. It’s time for me to make the Mana we need to improve the second generation seeds.”
He picked up the sheets of third generation Waterweave. Now that he knew for a fact that they only held half as much Mana, Jeb felt like he could see the difference. The weave didn’t seem weaker, per se, but it did feel less confident. Doing the math quickly, Jeb realized he wouldn’t have enough sheets of Waterweave to fill the plot if he used the third generation ones. There were only nineteen sheets left, and he would have needed all twenty to double the Mana.
Setting the pile down, he picked up the second generation Waterweave and filled the first few sheets with Attune Water Mana -Efficient. When he ran out of Mana, he accepted the Quest Notifications that had appeared.
Congratulations! You have completed the Minor Quest Glyphmastery Second Tier Scribe Chain “Scribe a Second Tier Glyph”. You have engraved Attune Water Mana -Efficient onto Waterweave (Quality: First Degradation). Rewards: 39 Experience, Mana +10
Accepting the Quests was interesting for a few reasons. First, the Waterweave was now classified with a Quality. The fact that the System agreed it was degraded was interesting. Other than that, Jeb learned that his Mana pool partially refilled when he added more Mana to it.
Jeb’s Status Sheet at End of Chapter:
Jeb Human Age: 16 Class: Least Mud Initiate Level: 1 Experience: 6341/100
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Total Statistic Load: 339 ->350 Physical Load: 127 Strength: 29 Dexterity: 22 Endurance: 31 Vitality: 41 Presence: 4
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Mental Load: 212 ->223 Intelligence: 47 Willpower: 48 ->52 Magic Affinity: 54 ->55 Mana Depth: 33 ->37 Charisma: 30 ->32
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Mana: 915 ->1050
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Glyph Attunement: 26 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 Shape Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Conjure Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Move Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Move Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Mud (Modified) Tier 2 Spell Attune Earth Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell Attune Water Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell Attune Water Mana - Efficient Tier 2 Spell Attune Air Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell Attune Fire Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell Attune Sand Mana Tier 0 Spell Least Create Sand Tier 1 Spell Attune Sand Mana - Efficient 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 Smithing Wood Identification Woodworking Soil Improvement Enchanting
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Achievements: Focused Meditator Student of Magic
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Quests: Major: Slay the Dragon of the West (Progressive)