Jeb and his grandfather chatted as they finished cleaning the glass off of the floor. When they finished, Jeb realized that he was about to see the sun for the first time in a few days. As he reflected on the number of times he had gone to sleep, he readjusted that number to a week, two at the absolute maximum. To his surprise, the leaves on the trees were beginning to change colors.
What had been primarily green as far as Jeb could see had changed to the feeling of harvest. Even the air was different. The warm and humid taste of summer had given way to the cool breezes of early fall. He could taste the first hints of winter on the air as he paid attention.
“Are you doing alright there, Jeb?” his grandfather asked.
Jeb realized that he had stopped as soon as the door opened. He had just been standing at the frame of the door staring at the changed scenery for at least a few minutes. He gave a sheepish grin, “sorry, I just hadn’t realized how much time had passed while I was working on Glassblowing.”
His grandfather grimaced, “That’s partially on me. I forgot how invested you used to get in projects. Coupling that with the focus that I’m sure Meditation helps you reach, it shouldn’t have been a surprise to me that you never needed a break.”
“Not that I think I needed one,” Jeb wanted to proactively clarify, “but why didn’t you stop me if you thought I would need a break?”
“It’s good to teach younger Classholders that, even if your body and mind are technically capable of working for days on end with breaks only to eat, drink, and sleep, you are not. Everyone needs to socialize and give their minds time to work on something other than the specific project at hand.”
Jeb stared at his grandfather, waiting for the reason why he would need a break.
Seeing Jeb’s confusion, his grandfather rolled his eyes, “Either the amount of time I spent teaching you the basics of Glassblowing are as much human contact as you needed, or you are far more able to ignore the passing of time than a normal First Tier person is.” As the words came out of his mouth, his grandfather chuckled, “what am I saying? Of course you’re better able to ignore the passage of time.”
Jeb nodded. He still remembered the way that he had unlocked his first Skills as a Classholder. While it was absolutely the fastest progress he had made, it wasn’t worth how concerned his family had been.
His grandfather redirected the conversation. “Well, now that you’ve finished learning Glassblowing, are you ready to help with the harvest?”
Jeb nodded. Even before he had a Class, everyone helped with the harvest. When he was thirteen, he had asked his family why everyone needed to help. As he saw it, there was almost nothing he could do that someone with a Class couldn’t do far faster and better.
His grandfather explained to him that some Classes benefited from leading others. As a Farm Manager, the quality and quantity of harvests were on some level based on how many people helped to harvest the crops. That was one reason that the entire town made a path through each farm.
A secondary benefit of having a Farm Manager leading the harvest was that everyone received temporary Statistics boosts as they worked. They did not show up in the System, so Jeb had no way of monitoring how much faster or stronger he was, but he always remembered the days passing in a blur as he worked with his family and the rest of the community to bring everyone’s harvests in.
This year, Jeb knew that he would likely be working in a different role than normal. His grandfather’s next comments only served to confirm that suspicion. “Jeb, do you think that you could help your Aunt Esther with drying? I don’t know how good your Fire control is, but it would be incredibly helpful if you would be able to.”
“I should be able to!” Jeb confirmed. It was a little disappointing, but he supposed it was the most rational choice. After all, even after having his Statistics boosted, he would still be far less effective at harvesting than any of the Farmhands or Harvesters in the town. He knew that his aunt often struggled to keep up with the amount of corn and wheat that they needed to dry.
“Where is she now?” Jeb asked, ready to help as soon as he could.
His grandfather chuckled. “The harvest isn’t for another few days. Do you have something that you can do during these next days to better prepare yourself for your role of dryer?”
Jeb considered asking about Tiering up, since he knew that he would absolutely be more useful as a Higher Tier Classholder. Before he did, though, he thought about the fact that his grandfather almost certainly would have suggested that he Tier up if it was a good idea. Thinking back to the first conversations that they had after he was given his Class, Jeb remembered why he was waiting.
His grandfather and the rest of his family had recommended that Jeb spend a year laying a foundation for his future Class progression. It was hard to believe that more than a quarter of the year was already gone, but he supposed that was the nature of time.
Once he’d given up on the idea of Tiering up, Jeb considered what he could do to be a more effective dryer. Two ideas came to mind almost immediately. “I think that the two most useful tasks I could work for are learning more efficient Fire Creation and Move Air Glyphs or increasing the size of my Mana pool. I don’t know whether Aunt Esther will want me to be heating the grains or moving the air as she heats it, or both. If it’s only one, then I suppose I really only need to learn the single Glyph.”
“Those both seem reasonable, though I would suggest prioritizing increasing your Mana pool more.” Seeing Jeb’s look, his grandfather continued, “how many times have you lost days to learning a new Glyph?”
“That’s a good point,” Jeb said. Privately, he thought about how much faster he had gotten at learning Glyphs. Still, it was worth seeing what his aunt would need help with first, so he made his way over to the brewery.
“Good morning, Jeb,” his aunt said. “What can I help you with?”
“Grandfather said that I would be helping you to dry the crops for storage this year,” Jeb said, “and I wasn’t sure what I could do that would be most helpful.”
His aunt let out a sigh of relief. “Oh thank goodness. It’s wonderful that the town has been more and more productive every year, but it is a little overwhelming. Do you have an idea for what you would like to do?”
“I thought that either making fire to heat the room or pushing air to circulate heat would be the most useful thing I can do.”
His aunt looked at him for a moment, clearly considering her next question. “Do you think that you could just pull the moisture out of the harvest?”
That stopped Jeb. He hadn’t even considered that as an option. “I’m not sure,” he said.
His aunt tossed him a grain of wheat. “Try pulling the water out of this,” she said.
“How much should I take?” Jeb asked.
“We can worry about doing it correctly after we see whether or not you can do it at all.” That made sense, so Jeb nodded and focused on Least Shape Water.
He visualized the water within the grain, thinking about how it would normally lose water to either forced or natural evaporation. That was no different than what he was doing, just with extra steps. As he slowly fed Mana into the Spell Glyph, Jeb was surprised to see the grain shrink as a small bead of water began to form on its surface.
Wordlessly, his aunt tossed him a handful of wheat. Once more, Jeb focused on pulling the water out. It was somehow easier for him to do with the entire handful than it had been to focus on a single grain of wheat.
His aunt took the handful of wheat from him and looked it over, nodding. “That will make this much easier,” she said, “especially if you can do this at scale. You pulled the water somewhat unevenly, though. You have both Brewing and Pollination,” his aunt reminded him, “pull enough water from the seeds that you can store them but still plant them in the spring.”
Jeb picked up another handful of wheat and tried again. The moment that he reached for his Brewing and Pollination Skills, he felt them sing out to him. The water came up even more easily, and this time Jeb knew before his aunt said anything that he had pulled the right amount of water from each grain.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“To answer your question, it would be most helpful if you could do that,” his aunt said.
“Where should I move the water to?” Jeb asked.
His aunt considered the question for a moment. “If you can put it into a well, that would be ideal. Otherwise, I trust your judgement.”
Jeb spent a few more minutes catching up with his aunt before he made his way back to his room. It took a moment of searching, but he did find his Water Primer. I wonder if there’s a Lesser Shape Water that I could learn, he though to himself.
Though he hadn’t reached the limits of his Least Shape Water, Jeb could tell that it would be limited in how much it could move. He wasn’t sure if its limit was more or less than the amount that he would need to pull out of the crops, but he wanted to be prepared for the worst case scenario. As he paged through the Primer, Jeb quickly found the Glyph in question.
Feeding a tiny trickle of Mana into the page, he saw the difference between Least and Lesser Glyphs. The first five points in the Glyph were identical, which made sense, since they were just Attuning the Mana to Water. The final ten points, which he still didn’t know the use of, also were the same.
In the middle, though, where Least Shape Water had ten points, this Glyph had twenty. Also unlike Least Shape Water, Lesser Shape Water didn’t have each point flowing from one to another. While there was clearly some underlying pattern to the web of connections for Lesser Shape, Jeb could not make sense of what it was.
Admitting defeat, he started paging through the book once more. He would come back to Lesser Shape Water when he did not have a deadline. For now, he would look and see if Least Shape Water -Efficient was already a Glyph in the book, or if he would need to craft it himself.
To his relief, it was in the back of the book, in a section labeled “Efficient Versions of First Tier Glyphs.” He was tempted to start learning all of the Efficient Glyphs, but restrained himself. He fed a small trickle of Mana into the Least Shape Water -Efficient Glyph, watching the way that it traced through the connections on the Glyph.
In a matter of minutes, he had learned the Glyph. It burned into his soul, and he saw that his Status had updated with the new Glyph and point of Magic Affinity. Setting the Water Primer aside, Jeb looked at the stack of Waterweave that his grandfather had given him. He got ready for his soul to burn and called Least Shape Water -Efficient to mind.
Jeb’s Status Sheet at End of Chapter:
Jeb Human Age: 16 Class: Least Mud Initiate Level: 1 Experience: 6515/100
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Total Statistic Load: 357 ->358 Physical Load: 127 Strength: 29 Dexterity: 22 Endurance: 31 Vitality: 41 Presence: 4
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Mental Load: 230 ->231 Intelligence: 47 Willpower: 54 Magic Affinity: 56 ->57 Mana Depth: 39 Charisma: 34
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Mana: 1080
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Glyph Attunement: 28 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 Shape Water - Efficient Tier 3 Spell Least Hold Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Water 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 Glassblowing
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Achievements: Focused Meditator Student of Magic
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Quests: Major: Slay the Dragon of the West (Progressive)