Ambrose had told the Enrick’s to not worry if he wasn’t back at the tavern for the next few days. He had packed some supplies and made sure that they had enough meat around in case the noble arrived earlier than expected, but was planning on camping out in the dungeon until then.
Over the past week, Ambrose had learned all he could from each of the books and from observing the townsfolk, he had most of the content of each book memorised and no longer had anything to gain from them. He had managed to get far more out of the Skill impartment that the Skill books offered than others normally would, getting more information from the books than the words written in them provided, learning about several subjects each of the authors had been focusing on when writing. This was somewhat of a double edged sword though as Ambrose was able to recognise certain sections that had been biased by the author, their inherent preference for certain techniques and materials had filled Ambrose’s mind seeping in until they became hard truths like any other. He had managed to first notice the issue early in the week when he looked at the materials he had bought from the merchants, only to reflexively scoff, wishing he had something called 'Mageweave' instead, a material Ambrose had never even seen or heard of.
Ambrose then had the gruelling mental task of combing through the information in his brain, shifting through it to find any possibly biased detail. Removing that which was obviously just an opinion, and began to ignore anything that he couldn’t be sure was objective, making notes of all the biases he found so that he could test them somewhere down the line, this way he wouldn’t lose out on any information if it turned out to be correct and not just a personal preference. The task was naturally rather difficult without being able to prove every interaction. In the end only hard numerical information, instructions on how to perform techniques, and how to use several relevant devices was left behind, all other information had to be shoved into his notes to test in the future.
The process became even harder once the Skill books crumbled to dust, the first to go had been the Sewing book, once he had read through all of it the magic faded out of the book, sucked out by Ambrose's additional learning gaining random additional insights, largely about the development of moving Sewing from common into some Uncommon Skill, a topic that the author was going to broach in a follow up book. Normally, there would be magic left over in the book so that someone could get back to sections that found difficulty with, gaining the insights over again until they consumed all the magic and only then would the book crumble away. Clearly between the book sitting locked away for many years, Ambrose's enhanced learning, and the book only being for a common Skill, there simply wasn't much of this extra wiggle room in the mana which Ambrose consumed faster than he was able to read.
The Skill book vanishing had prompted Ambrose to begin coping the words over as he read them, tracking as much of the information as he could to backup copies in his glass panes. Fortunately, he only lost parts of the Sewing books, he already had his own version of the book, summarised into his understanding as he sought to understand the content, but the original author’s words had been lost, making it harder for Ambrose to find the biases without being able to reference the exact wording.
The process, while difficult, was rewarding. Examining all the information in detail helped to understand it, forcing Ambrose to figure out if there were specific reasoning that may not have been mentioned, for something being better than a different process or material. Skill levels were not the only reward he found, another Skill was added to his repertoire, this one helping to protect from mental influence.
Ambrose recalled pulling up his glass pane after he had gained the Skill, when gaining it he suddenly felt his strange wounds lessen, and it had been the first time he had bothered looking at Skill unlocks since starting to read the Skill books.
It was good to see his efforts at learning from the townsfolk had been useful, though not all were happy to share anything more than the smallest overview, while others wanted him to try out their Skill of choice, proud to show him how hard it could be, and how far they had come.
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CONGRATULATIONS OUTWORLDER, YOU HAVE MANIFESTED NEW SKILLS
You have gained the Skill Mining at Level 15 (Common): Hitting a rock to get a rock isn’t that complicated.
* Increased understanding of how to best mine for the desired result while using Mining Abilities.
* Improved ability to locate metals, gems, and minerals in the environment.
You have gained the Skill Metallurgy at Level 15 (Common): Understanding how to turn ore into metal and how that metal will function is the foundation of all metal work.
* Increased understanding of the effects of metals when using Metallurgy Abilities.
* Increased understanding of how to best process metals, minerals, and gems to gain the desired effects.
You have gained the Skill Potion Making at Level 10 (Uncommon): Potion Making is for healing wounds, illnesses, and diseases or improving what is already there. It's not for making you high.
* Increased understanding of how to create potions.
* Increased understanding of how to create aids related to potions.
* Improved quality of potions created with Potion Making Abilities.
You have gained the Skill Appraisal At Level 2 (Common): What’s the point of finding piles of shiny loot if you don’t know how much it's worth?
* Increased understanding of item value when using Appraisal Abilities.
You have gained the Skill Smithing At Level 2 (Common): Horseshoes and nails.
* Increased understanding of how to create tools and basic metal objects.
* Improved understanding of metal working techniques.
You have gained the Skill Pottery At Level 7 (Common): Bowls and busts.
* Increased understanding of how to create basic clay objects.
* Improved understanding of clay working techniques.
You have gained the Skill Glassblowing At Level 5 (Common): Breath life into the ancient dead.
* Increased understanding of how to create basic glass objects.
* Improved understanding of glass working techniques.
You have gained the Skill Gardening At Level 10 (Common): Grow your own food.
* Increased understanding of the needs of plants.
* Improved understanding of the environment while using Gardening Abilities.
You have gained the Skill Cognitive Confirmation at Level 5 (Rare): Inure yourself to the truths of another.
* Increased ability to recognise another creature's truth while using Cognitive Confirmation Abilities.
* Increased resistance to other creature’s truths.
By gaining these Skills you have gained the following Abilities.
* Detect False Truth (Cognitive Confirmation): Find that which does not belong to you.
* Remove False Truth (Cognitive Confirmation): Remove that which does not belong to you.
* Harvest Metal (Mining): Recover ore from the ground.
* Harvest Mineral (Mining): Recover minerals from the ground.
* Harvest Gem (Mining): Recover gems from the ground.
* Process Metal (Metallurgy): Turn ore to metal.
* Process Mineral (Metallurgy): Purify and empower.
* Process Gem (Metallurgy): Make it shiny, or turn it to dust.
* Create Potion (Potion Making): Healing and strengthening.
* Create Alchemical Aid (Potion Making): Okay these ones can you make you high but that's not what they are meant for.
* Appraise (Appraisal): Is someone trying to rip you off?
* Create Tool (Smithing): The first part of becoming a smith is creating the tools of success.
* Shape Metal (Smithing): Turn metal into something you desire.
* Create Clay (Pottery): Any quality crafter can create their own materials.
* Shape Clay (Pottery): Turn clay into something you desire.
* Create Glass (Pottery): Any quality crafter can create their own materials.
* Shape Glass (Pottery): Turn glass into something you desire.
* Create Plant (Gardening, Herbalism): Growing plants takes time and effort.
Your new Skills have also affected the following Abilities in some way.
* Assess(Assessing, Perception, Herbalism, Metallurgy, Cognitive Confirmation)
* Create Recipe (Cooking, Bomb Making, Potion Making)
* Deconstruct Recipe (Cooking, Perception, Bomb Making, Potion Making)
* Derive Conclusion (Observation, Cognitive Confirmation)
* Harvest Plant (Herbalism, Gardening)
* Identify (Identifying, Perception, Herbalism, Metallurgy, Cognitive Confirmation)
* Inspect (Inspecting, Perception, Herbalism, Metallurgy, Cognitive Confirmation)
* Maintain Plant (Herbalism, Gardening)
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The Skill was what Ambrose had been looking for after figuring out Whesker had some Skill affect his belief, subtly shifting his understanding of the value of the objects he was buying, and the gems he was trading. It seemed that you could assert something as true, whether it was something you believed or something you assigned to an item, if his Inspect and Identify Abilities gaining a bonus from the Skill were anything to go by.
After unlocking the Skill Ambrose had had another chat with Prism, revisiting one of their first. During their initial conversation, Ambrose had inquired into how Prism knew his name. The answer at the time had been because she had a powerful skill and he didn’t have defences. Now that he had more knowledge, and the orb was more able or willing to share more information, they discussed these types of Skills in more depth. The topic was complicated and largely went over Ambrose’s head still. The basics of the topic was that you could make something true through certain Skills, whether this was making other people believe something to be true in the case of charisma type Skills, or certain magic Skills actually changing reality in some way, like an illusion magic spell telling your eyes that there is an extra zero at the end of your level.
Ambrose added working out how to get a disguise Skill to his growing list of tasks. He would need to be able to change the appearance of his character sheet if he wanted to hide his Sponsored status from anyone with better Assess Skills, a task Prism had confirmed wouldn't be classed as Magical somehow. He would have also loved to get a Skill that he could use to disguise himself, but seeing as actual magic was largely off the table he would need to discover makeup.
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His study of the Potion Making Skill book had brought another set of ideas with it. The art of using Magical ingredients to create Magical effects, was still Mundane. He wouldn’t be barred from using a high ranked healing plant for example, he just wouldn’t be able to use magic to enhance his creations directly. The discovery was going a long way to change Ambrose’s outlook on his future, while wielding magic with his bare hands wasn’t allowed, nothing was stopping him from creating a magic flamethrower.
This was actually what the Enchanting Skill was all about, the runes that made up the scopes of Skills could be created by anyone, and as long as you could put mana into them to power them in some manner, you could replicate some of the effects of Skills and Abilities.
Ambrose was getting ahead of himself once again. He still had plenty of work to do on his current Skills, and it was going to take months before he could gain the other Skill books that Whesker had, unless he could provide something else of value to the town.
By the time the full week had ended, all his books had turned to dust and the theory work had stopped gaining him any Skill increases. This was why he had told the Enrick’s not to worry, he was heading to the hotel, and this time he was going to get stuck into crafting, not planning on leaving until he had evolved his Sewing Skill and while he was confident it would take less than a week, he couldn't be sure by how much.
First of all, he wanted to know his starting point, he had saved up several days worth of Skill gains but needed to be able to gauge how much progress he was making with each of his planned Sewing activities. This would tell him when he should move on to the next portion, building up until he approached the maximum level as he started actually creating clothing, only using the patterned merchant cloth once he was ready to force the Skill to evolve into Tailoring.
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CONGRATULATIONS OUTWORLDER, YOU HAVE NURTURED YOUR SKILLS
* Your Cognitive Confirmation Skill has increased in level: 5 -> 7
* Your Metallurgy Skill has increased in level: 15 -> 26
* Your Mining Skill has increased in level: 15 -> 25
* Your Potion Making Skill has increased in level: 10 -> 20
* Your Sewing Skill has increased in level: 10 -> 34
* Your Studying Skill has increased in level: 4 -> 10
* Your Cooking Skill has increased in level: 1 -> 31
* Your First aid Skill has increased in level: 2 -> 10
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“Okay, that's better than expected, exhausting the books definitely gives a set amount of experience. The extra metallurgy would be because of Studying increasing after the Mining section. Potion Making is definitely a surprise, I guess it’s focused on healing so Fuel the flame must have boosted it like it did with Cooking. Okay so directly contributing to survival includes buffs and heals, not just the stabby stabby and basic necessities.”
Messages cleared out, Ambrose set to work. He was focussing purely on Sewing for this next week, though the thought of working on more Rage Bombs was enticing. His goal was to reach Tailoring and make himself a basic set of clothed or something before the noble arrived, confident that he could make all the preparations well before, only the final piece of work was up to question. He wanted to make something from scratch if he had the time, rather than using some of the materials he had purchased, though he would use them as a visual layer on top of his planned creation.
First up was processing all of his wool. He had ended up with quite a lot of it, having looted two large portions from his first Dungeonese Sheep kill, skin and all. Later he had taken another three pouches worth of the stuff from the destroyed Loobin camp. The total amount was quite large, forming a massive Ambrose sized heap. It wouldn't be needed this time, but Ambrose was looking forward to testing out the large club when he ran out, admiring the sceptre he had brought into the hotel now that it was more secure from monsters, and now knowing that the townsfolk couldn’t get in.
Cleaning out all of the wool was the first part of the process and took most of the first day on its own. The stuff he had harvested himself was from the less bloody part of that particular sheep, but still had skin attached. He had to separate the two off, finding that the task was made simply through the use of his dungeon shears, as if that's what they were designed for. The Loobin wool was usually in a worse condition, having sat in the large pile of food the Loobins had collected. This led to Ambrose finding half rotten meat, bone fragments, and other nasty bits throughout the wool which needed to be painstakingly picked out before he could then actually clean it all by bringing his cauldron to the river, washing the wool in water that he had boiled to sterilise and to assist the cleaning. Once cleaned as best as he could, the wool was then hung out to dry on his drying rack, the loom, the spinning wheel, and when all else failed, various other surfaces.
The process wasn’t perfect, knowledge of far superior ways rattled around in his head, taunting him. Ambrose absolutely would look to upgrade in the future, the immensely durable wool was hard to deal with by hand, and thanks to his book, Ambrose knew of magimated machines designed for that very purpose, which was basically just a washing machine.
Once everything was washed and drying, Ambrose had then switched over to using the practice materials that Whesker had sold him when he bought his initial tools. The idea was to start with the basic hand tools before moving onto the proper spinning wheel and full loom. He told himself that this would give him more of an appreciation for the tools and the history of the craft. The real reason was it would give him more experience.
Using his little hand spindle was an interesting experience. He knew how wool was spun using more advanced devices but the Sewing Skill book hadn’t overly touched on the most basic, being that the author was on the richer side only having started with the manual tools like the spinning wheel Ambrose had briefly for experience before using the magimated tools to assist him, and later do all of the grunt work.
Fortunately, while hard to perform well, the task of hand spinning wasn’t that complicated to understand, and he was quickly able to improve at the job as his Skill levels kicked in properly, improving the quality of his thread with each spin.
Ambrose didn’t have much of the wool Whesker had sold him available, quickly running out, only managing to fill a single spindle. The wool was also inferior to the dungeon born wool, still soaked and filling the room around him, and while it was useful for practising, it would be useless in combat. Unless one found a basic wool beanie useful in combat.
The end result was thick enough to knit with, and not nearly thin enough for what he wanted to work towards. Nevertheless, he continued on, taking out the small hand loom and working that device out next.
He quickly found out just how much thread he was going to need to do anything, and found himself spending the next day working with his thread, practising various weaves in order to create different patterns, confirming along the way the various biases he had found towards various patterns. The experience was rather enjoyable and relaxing, the boredom one would expect from spending hours upon hours weaving out a square, only to painstakingly undo it all so you could make a different square, was driven off by his quickly growing Patience Skill. His Work Mindlessly Ability was able to turn his slow deliberate movements into speedy proficiency as it merged the minutes together, quickly making it seem like only a couple minutes from start to finish as he grew more proficient in both Skills with each square.
Once he had tried out each of the patterns, and then each of the patterns mixed with each other, Ambrose picked the one he felt would fit the best and moved onto making an actual item. He didn’t have enough cloth to create prototype clothes just yet, so Ambrose instead cut out four hand outlines and worked on sewing them together into a comfortable pair of gloves.
The Sewing Skill book was not about Tailoring. Ambrose had never sewn an actual item before. Ambrose didn’t make extra room for the stitching. The end result was actually pretty well made, all things considered, and wonderfully comfortable on the skin. Except for the small issue of it not fitting him. It wasn’t something that could be fixed as Ambrose, in his eagerness, had trimmed off the excess before considering that he needed to test the fit.
Too disappointed in himself to bother finding something else to do, he offered up the gloves to the altar built into the wall. He watched as they turned to dust as the item was sacrificed to the dungeon. Ambrose then went to bed, to speed up the wool drying process.
When he awoke an unknown amount of time later, he found the wool dry. The Tailoring crafting wing was assisting him in small ways. Or he had over slept.
Ambrose was forced to move on to the spinning wheel when he began trying to spin the Dungeon Sheep wool, finding that its durable fibres made it difficult to pull it out by hand. The upside of this was the fibres wanting to stay where they were make spinning the wool out thinner, didn't reduce its strength. The spinning wheel, unlike his hand spindle, was an item made from magically improved materials, and was a device relying on mechanics to assist the pulling of thread rather than his own strength.
This was how Ambrose spent his next few days, an endless cycle of spinning and weaving as he processed all of the wool, his time was only interrupted by the occasional nap and snack.
“Alright I have a whole bunch of cloth, and a whole bunch of thread, but how the heck do I make pants and a shirt.“
Ambrose didn’t know how to properly measure himself, instead decided that awkwardly laying on the fabric and trying to draw his outline was the best course of action. He even learned from his previous mistakes and added an extra inch of space all over.
Days later, and many prototypes sacrificed to the altar, Ambrose had done it.
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CONGRATULATIONS OUTWORLDER, YOU HAVE RAISED A SKILL TO ITS THRESHOLD
You have raised the Skill Sewing to its maximum capabilities! A choice lies in front of you.
* Push the Skill beyond the maximum, pushing it in a new direction to evolve it to the next rarity.
* Merge the Skill with at least one other compatible Skill also pushed to its maximum, and push them together in a new direction to create a confluence Skill of the next rarity.
As you come from a world without Skills you have been offered a free hint about Skill Evolution. To push an ability to the Magical tier, you need to merge magical concepts into the Skill using either method.
Additionally, Skills can be moved in many different directions, be sure to move them in ways that fit you best.
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YOU HAVE COMPLETED A DIVINE QUEST
Goal: Reach the maximum Level with any skill to reach the next stage in your path.
Reward: Path increase, Path points unlock, Sponsor request.
Path Increased. Your path: Path of the Divine Loser has grown in strength.
* Mundane Skills are easier to Evolve or Create Confluences of.
Path points unlocked. Each time you Evolve or create a Confluence Skill you will gain points equal to the rank of the resulting Skill. Discuss uses for these points with your Sponsor.
Sponsor request available. Call to your Sponsor at any time to gain methods of spending your path points.
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“Oh nice, let me get right on that. I call to… oh what a shame I can't remember his name, oh well.” Ambrose flicked the pane of glass away with only his middle finger, and was glad that another didn’t replace it. It appeared that he couldn’t get to the next quest stage without talking to the murderous asshole, something he simply wasn’t going to do.
He had far better things to do, like literally anything, but mainly creating an outfit.
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CONGRATULATIONS OUTWORLDER, YOU HAVE EVOLVED A SKILL
By pushing your Sewing Skill beyond its limits, and pushing it in a new direction you have created Tailoring level 5 (Uncommon)
Effects maintained.
Additional effects gained.
* Increased understanding of how to create garments.
* Improved quality of items created with Tailoring Abilities
By Evolving your Skill you have gained the following Abilities.
* Create Clothing (Tailoring): Turning the cloth you painstakingly made into clothes is your first true step on the path of a crafter.
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"Oh come on, I worked hard on those bombs too." Ambrose yelled out to the dungeon. He had not.
Ambrose ventured out of the dungeon wearing his new adventurers outfit. It was a fairly basic outfit created from double layers. The outer layer was made from the beautifully dyed but regular cloth that he had purchased from the merchants, creating a colourful and tropical look from the mixed patterns. The inner layer was the important one, created from the wool he had been working on for the last week.
The result was better than he hoped for, creating an insulating and heavily protective layer that would stop him from taking slashes across his chest, a habit he was looking to break.
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Dungeonese Sheep Shirt (Uncommon)
A shirt lined with an extra durable weave of Dungeonese Sheep wool.
Durability: Tough.
Quality: Refined.
Properties: Slashing resistance (This item is heavily resistant to regular slashing damage.)
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Dungeonese Sheep Pants (Uncommon)
A pair of pants lined with an extra durable weave of Dungeonese Sheep wool.
Durability: Tough.
Quality: Normal.
Properties: Slashing resistance (This item is heavily resistant to regular slashing damage.)
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The set had turned out great, both pieces making it to normal quality or above, really proving the efforts he had made in the last week, or however long it had been. Ambrose also knew that he could greatly improve his weave given the time, potentially creating a double layer version of pure Dungeonese Sheep wool, if he could get his hands on some dyes.
As he approached the town, Ambrose found the gates closed and unguarded, a resplendent sail could be seen in the distance. Ambrose was late.