With summer approaching its end, Vlad and I doubled down on getting him maxed out. The other whaloids had migrated away for winter and I was worried about the cold, even with the mild winters around Mirut. I hoped that evolving would give him the strength he needed to survive nearby for the winter, although a steady diet of high-level meat surely gave him an edge over the rest of the local wildlife.
I could almost certainly have fed him some draconewt meat to power him through to max level, but I was keeping that in reserve. Slow and steady would win the race just fine.
We avoided the darkest depths since our run in with the giant squid, but after the shieldback eggs hatched and hit the sea, they grew rapidly and offered up a fairly reliable source of experience. I worried about the local population taking a hit, but I had more or less outgrown hunting them myself. I had a large collection of magic crystal and pearls and could take a year off slaughtering turtles once Vlad evolved. Now that I had regular shieldback meat, I could sell that to Bosh instead, and leave the next generation of rocky shieldbacks alone.
Once Vlad was ready, I had two questions to ask myself.
Did I want to try evolving him on land, or in the sea?
Did I want to feed him a magic crystal, or try feeding him a deepwater pearl?
I had yet to see any evidence that beasts could evolve into different forms based on different conditions, outside of dungeons, but I hadn’t done anywhere near enough experimentation to conclude anything either way. It didn’t make sense to switch to using a deepwater pearl at this juncture, as I had no idea what a magic crystal caused a whaloid to evolve into. If I wanted to experiment, I would need to evolve the same beast I had already tamed and raised before with the new method.
As for evolving on land or sea, doing so in the water was the obvious choice. As Vlad was, technically, a beast of the sea, he was more likely to evolve into something meant to live in the water. If I triggered evolution on land, and he grew too large for me to move but couldn’t survive out of water, I would doom him. Conversely, if he evolved into something that could walk on land while in the water, he could just walk out of the ocean.
I waded into the surf, until the water was neck-deep for me, and pulled out a crystal. Vlad sung with excitement, and I placed the crystal into his mouth.
I swam back towards land, making room before turning back to witness the end of his evolution. I watched as Vlad grew, and grew, and grew some more. As the light faded, I started comparing the giant to his former self.
The small orca-like beast was now relatively gargantuan. The purple had spread to cover the beast and deepened to a dark twilight, almost iridescent in that the near-black sheen took on purple, blue, or green depending on the angle and the light. He would be nearly impossible to see in the water at night, looking like that. The horn grew thicker and longer with a twisted pattern, while his dorsal fin had all but disappeared. His neck and tail grew larger and extended his body further beyond his four short legs.
He still had the squat legs and hippopotamus-like feet, which were large enough to carry his weight on land, but he wouldn’t be quick and it probably wasn’t very comfortable. It would be better for a beast that size to have proper fins or flippers to navigate the water, or stronger, longer legs to navigate the land. It made me wonder about the natural, biological evolution of beasts, as opposed to this magical evolution.
“Well. It’s going to be hard to fly under the radar now,” I said, shaking my head.
The newly evolved abyssal whaloid sung happily, a deep thrum which was no doubt heard all the way back in town.
* * *
I convinced Vlad to swim out to sea and keep a low profile while I tried to figure out how to deal with the situation. Obviously, he couldn’t hang out near town now that he was a genuine sea monster. I worried about how he would take it if we went separate ways, but I intended on leaving town eventually and had planned on heading inland, where he couldn’t follow, so that was inevitable.
Thinking about travel made me realize I hadn’t seen Nodel since she ran off. She had really taken the idea of me leaving town poorly. I hoped she was doing well.
With all sorts of such problems of my own making, summer ended and fall started creeping in. My birthday came and I turned nine, and my parents and I celebrated with a late-season picnic on the beach thanks to an unseasonably warm day.
We enjoyed some fresh bread with some thick slices of specially prepared meat that my father hunted and my mother cooked, a meal that would normally be limited to events like this if not for my extra-curricular activities. It was lovely, although for some reason, it made me seriously crave some nice cheeses to go with. I vowed again to find a beast that produced large quantities of milk so I could bring cheesy goodness to this poor, cheeseless world.
After eating our fill and enjoying the warmth of the day, we laid around chatting about my goals for the next year and what I was considering for my apprenticeship when I turned ten. I carefully navigated the conversation in an attempt to dodge the topic. I didn’t really have a good answer, as my true goal was to focus on leveling up and gaining additional strength and power. The best way for me to do that was to get out of town. I was working through several possible plans to make that a reality, but hadn’t fully sorted anything just yet.
I heard my mother gasp in horror, and looked up to see her pointing out at sea. I saw my father stand, alert, his face hardened, and followed his gaze to see what was out on the water.
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I sighed, and put my face in my hand.
My parents stayed on alert long after the massive beast disappeared.
* * *
“Well, if it isn’t my wayward student,” Belat said as I walked through the door of her magic shop.
“Hello, Belat. Actually, I’m here as a customer today,” I told my potion-making teacher.
I had arranged to learn brewing and enchanting from Belat under the guise of being interested in an apprenticeship, but once I gained enough knowledge to meet my needs, I had stopped coming around for subsequent lessons.
The old woman raised an eyebrow at me. “What are you in the market for?”
“I need some powdered ink and a quill.” There weren’t a lot of places to source parchment and ink in Mirut. Literacy, and subsequently the tools of the written word, were generally limited to the schools of magic. Nobles seemed to all be literate as well, presumably for record-keeping, but the only place I knew of to easily get ink was at this shop. The first time I came to Belat’s shop and discovered her MP potions on display, my mother had been buying powdered ink for her scribe work.
“Hmm. Do you even know how to make usable ink?”
“Uh… just add water?”
Belat shook her head. “Looks like you need another lesson, boy. Come on,” she said with a sigh, and led me to the back.
She laid out several items, including the black pigment that I would have considered powdered ink on its own.
“This is the pigment, derived from the burnt resin of a tree that grows around the capital of Horuth,” she explained, naming the species and describing the tree so I could identify it later. “It’s the highest quality pigment for magical uses, so accept no substitutes when it comes to that. If you’re just writing records, any black pigment will do.”
She pulled out a potted plant that I recognized from her garden, and quizzed me on the name. I got it wrong, so she smacked me on the back of the head and reminded me. I snapped off a leaf while she wasn’t looking and dropped it into my inventory so I could get the name from my appraisal skill later.
“We make a concentrated extract from this, and combine the powders just so…” she continued, explaining the balance between pigment and binder. “Finally, once combined, you measure out this much powder and this much water to get the right consistency.”
She finished the ink and showed me the final product.
“So, you sell the pigment separately?” I asked.
“Yes, and the binder, but I also sell bags of combined powder with the right measurements.”
“Which is the powdered ink that I was going to buy from you?”
“Correct.”
“Which, once purchased, is everything I need to make ink except for the water?”
“Indeed.”
“...so why exactly did I need this lesson?”
Belat smacked me in the back of the head again. “You should know how it’s made in its entirety, you useless student.”
She sighed at me as I simultaneously sighed at her. We looked at each other and chuckled.
“There are substitutes and alternatives. I’ll fetch my recipe book and you can read through them in case you need it for the future. The real trick,” she said, leaning in as if sharing a deep secret. “Is in the infusion of magic. If you’re going to be using the ink to make magic circles for spellcasting, infused ink works best for channeling the spell.” She straightened, and motioned to the large cauldron she used for infusing MP potions. “Same basic principle as making potions. If I actually take you as an apprentice, you’ll learn then. Not that I need a slacker like you as an apprentice,” she scoffed.
From what I knew, most mages learning magic would do so with magic circles drawn on parchment with magic-infused ink. In the same way that a powerful spell could crack one of my stone disc magic circles, magic circles drawn on parchment were of limited use and would eventually get used up, the magical focal point eventually becoming overwhelmed causing the ink and parchment to crumble away. Despite the disposability of the method, it was still much cheaper to do this than to commission a permanent magic circle made of gold, so it was the popular method for learning how to use magic until the student could afford one. My method of making my own magic circles out of magically-shaped stone was unheard of, as far as I could tell.
Belat turned to find her recipe book and while she was looking around, I studied the ink she had made. I put my hand over it and pushed a few points of MP into the solution, and felt the pressure of a notification in my head.
Skill acquired: Inkmaking
With no good plan for how to spend the glut of skill points I earned after killing the draconewt, I had ended up just sitting on them and hoping for some insight. Further advancing any of my already-advanced skills required 100 SP, which meant that even if I focused on a single skill, it would take me until almost level 20 to further advance a single skill. It might have been worth it to pour all the points into a particular type of magic, but it would limit me in too many other ways for the foreseeable future. In a couple of years when I was a higher level, it would only take a few dedicated levels of intentional spending to break through the 100 SP advancement plateau.
Unfortunately, banking SP while continuing to grow wasn’t possible. While I usually spent my SP as soon as I leveled up to abnormally enhance my skills, the points I didn’t spend naturally assigned themselves to skills that were growing through everyday use. One by one, my SP went to the skills I used the most, which ultimately I decided to just let happen. It let me grow evenly in the ways I needed to in order to thrive.
The biggest benefit of having skill points available, instead of spending them all at once, was for the acquisition of new skills like this. I was planning on doing a lot of writing over the winter with my parchment, and that required ink, so acquiring my inkmaking skill seemed like a wise idea. Adding a point or two to an already-acquired skill had minimal returns when not advancing the skill, but the difference between not having a skill and having it unlocked was enormous in this world.
I glanced at my remaining skill points and saw I was down to a third of my initial glut. Sharpening my swords after my draconewt battle had earned me the Smithing skill, which was a bit of a surprise, but was probably how Horg had gained it as well. I also earned the Foraging skill he had, finally, while collecting plants in the jungle, which helped me better identify what was worth collecting and let me dispose of some junk I had been saving that turned out to be valueless. I would have to consider what other skills I wanted to unlock with my remaining SP before hunkering down to work on my magical theory. I was still wary of pushing deeper into the jungle after my draconewt encounter, and my strongest tool–magic–needed to be stronger still. In lieu of advancing with skill points, that called for study, experimentation, and practice.
After extricating myself from Belat’s classroom and purchasing a quill and some powdered ink, I made my way home to get started.