The moon slipped below the horizon and the sun rose in its place.

And Erick had not slept. He had mostly accreted, read some, and also got in some minor exercise. Well. ‘Minor’ compared to what some people back home in Spur did, like fighting monsters or racing each other across the desert while dodging monsters. Erick’s current exercise was still a lot compared to what he was used to back on Earth.

Sweat dripped from his brow and all the rest of him as he released the pullup bar and lightly landed on the stone floor, where he immediately dropped down to do fifty push ups. This was the tenth iteration of whatever sort of manic, physical activity he could think to do, and he had thought of a lot.

And none of it was stressing his limits, at all.

There was just something about gaining Strength and Vitality that made him want to move. It was mainly just pushups and squats and pullups and other calisthenics, for now. He kinda missed sparring, but he wasn’t about to do that with any of the people here. The accretion manuals didn’t mention the need for physical activity to ‘acclimate the body to its power’ or anything like that, but they did suggest that with a rise in Vitality, that one would be inclined to use that Vitality. As such, it was better to give in to that urge than to suppress it. Ophiel had supplied the pullup bar with a quick [Conjure Item], too, so there was no need to bother Maid Maria over gaining a pullup bar, either. Conjuring weights and stuff like that was beyond the [Conjure Item] spell, but things like jump ropes and balance beams and such were easy.

His necklaces barely bounced on his chest as Erick launched to his feet, for he had secured them in place with a conjured bandage that wrapped them and held them against his chest. It wasn’t too uncomfortable, and he had even managed to make the conjuring hydrophobic, so it didn’t get sweaty at all.

Fairy Moon’s little pink/green crystal looked quite dinky compared to the cyan-crystal encrusted Focus amulet, but they both did what they had to do, and Erick needed them on his body to benefit from their protection and their power. One protected him from the Sights of others, and the other enabled him to make a lot of gains in the last 24 hours.

Erick made a tight fist with his right hand and watched as his muscles corded underneath his skin. Sweat dripped down his chest and ran down his abs. His shoulders were nice, too. Everything was quite nice. Erick wasn’t sure if accretion or Stats or his Perfected Body pulled the most weight with regard to his physical changes, but there was something about accretion that was just… Nice.

His core was filling out nicely, but he had a while to go to get to Second Foundation, and not a lot of days before he had to make a decision about whether to tell Redflame about [Renew], or to let him find out on his own. Over his little bit of exercise time, though, he had regained over a hundred mana, so he grabbed the counting crystal cube and prepared to witness his gains. With a practiced (enough) touch, Erick threaded a hundred mana into the cube, and it started to flash.

His results appeared as flashing numbers; not an actual Status. They were easy enough to interpret into something understandable, though, even before Erick wrote those numbers down on a sheet of paper in order to track his progress. He glanced to his previous entry, first.

- -

Strength: 17

Vitality: 20

Dexterity: 18

Constitution: 17

Perception: 17

Willpower: 39

Focus: 52

Intelligence: 17

- -

Mana: 390

Mana Regen (Vit+Foc): 720

- -

That was one day ago. Erick calculated the Stats from his amulet (2 Vitality, 12 Willpower, and 25 Focus) and pulled that out of today’s numbers, separating it like the Script did. He smiled at his gains.

- -

Strength: 27

Vitality: 27+2=29

Dexterity: 28

Constitution: 27

Perception: 27

Willpower: 37+12=49

Focus: 38+25=63

Intelligence: 28

- -

Mana: 490

Mana Regen (Vit+Foc): 920

- -

He had gained about 10 stats in every category, which was completely in line with his advanced projections, thanks to his amulet. It was fantastic, allowing him to skip at least four days of accretion. But! It was not good enough. Plus 25 Focus? A smattering of smaller boosts to Willpower and a tiny boost to Vitality? Erick’s rings had granted him +31 to every Stat. It was a good amulet, though, and Erick was thankful for the enchanting books, and the materials, and the amulet itself. But it was time to make something better.

… Erick decided to go take a bath first, though, both because he would not be comfortable enchanting like this, and he needed half an hour to regenerate his mana. He happily plunged into his bathing pool and smiled as Ophiel joined him, playing around in the water like he was a very feathery fish. Yggdrasil’s [Scry] eye even bounced up and down in the minor waves, but his eye was immaterial, so he made no splashes like Ophiel did. He didn’t seem to mind.

Erick got out of the bath after only ten minutes, dried himself off with a quick toweling, and put on some comfortable clothes. Then he went to the enchanting table. He had an idea for something truly special, but that could wait for later, for now, he just wanted to speed up his timetable till Second Foundation, which, according to what he was seeing in his core, and according to his Stats…

He might achieve Second Foundation at 65 in every Stat?

Second Foundation only happened when body saturation and spirit saturation were complete, and currently, his spirit saturation, as measured by the sphericality core, was pretty far off. Instead of a sphere, it still resembled a rather fat diamond.

Erick had absolutely no way to judge his body saturation, though. Apparently that topped off faster than spherical-core formation, though, so perhaps he was almost done with his body? Who knew.

He could certainly focus accretion for his core if he wanted, and make this thing go a bit faster, but there was no need to have a lopsided accretion at this juncture, and Erick felt that a good body would do him wonders in the coming… Forever?

Fuck.

He was planning on Forever, wasn’t he? Sheesh.

Eternity.

Damn that was a big word. Hopefully he got to actually experience some of that.

But anyway! Erick solidified his current stance of a balanced approach to accretion. He would get there when he got there, and when he did, his Second Foundation would be solid. And to that end, while Erick wasn’t willing to imbalance his accretion for short term gains, he was willing to ‘cheat’ with enchantments.

Ophiel helped Erick snip off some platinum from the block of the stuff and then shape it into something round and flat. Erick put the proto-amulet in the cradle he had made before, and then he got to work marking it up with chalk. That took another ten minutes. And then he was ready.

Ophiel turned the machine with practiced precision while Erick focused on carving out the inscription; this time in all capital letters, and with some extra words at the end that circled back around to the start. The goal was to have an endless flow. He had also changed the wording around so that it was more balanced when twisted into a ring-shape.

‘FOCUS ON THE FLOW SO IT FILLS YOU FULL SO YOU’

It was a mantra, repeated and circular, and it took 200 mana to inscribe on one side.

Erick then put the amulet in a second cradle that he had already made with Ophiel hours ago; a thing that would hold the amulet on its side, allowing him to inscribe the edge. Ophiel turned that machine this time, too, while Erick deftly carved the same inscription on that edge.

When he was done, Erick inspected his work. It was… decent. The words on the edge lined up with the words on the front surface, and the design had been mutated from a design in Inferno Maw’s books that was an example of a moderately advanced Stat enchantment. Erick expected to achieve about 75% of what the enchantment could actually do, though he would be fine with a 50% success. But! He was currently low on mana again.

So Erick went to the enchanting books for a little while, to read as he waited to regenerate to full.

According to the books, Erick’s newest design should work better than his previous attempt.

… Erick almost added a [Renew] rune to the center of the design, though, which would introduce all sorts of oddities to the amulet’s functions. Potentially fantastic oddities! But still oddities. And really… Now wasn’t the time for such wild experimentation. Erick was on a deadline, of sorts. Redflame was going to try for [Renew] in about five or six days. Erick couldn’t be wasting too much mana on possible wastes of time; not yet, anyway. He didn’t even want to practice with all the esoteric enchanting materials, either, for those too might end up being a waste of time.

… He was just worrying, is all. Erick went back to his amulet and made sure it was properly fitted to the cradle, and that it was flat, and that it was ready for enchanting. It was.

Erick stood before his creation, and centered himself. His mana was nearly full, which meant he had about 480 mana, which was more than enough for an enchant like this. So he stood, and lifted up his left hand to hover above the amulet, while with his right, he grabbed the inscription scalpel—

He stopped himself. The previous amulet still rested on his chest. He had almost forgotten. You weren’t supposed to wear any enchanted objects when you enchanted anything, for they could taint your creation. So Erick took off the crystal-encrusted amulet and Fairy Moon’s amulet (which he didn’t do that first time! Oddly enough. He probably fucked up there, too, somehow) and set them both aside, far away on his bed. As the power of his amulets broke away from his aura Erick felt momentarily weak and exposed, which was likely a combination of both the loss of Stats, and the loss of the obfuscation effect from Fairy Moon’s necklace.

Which was fine, for now. He was in his room, inside Fairy Moon’s manor. No one was spying on him except for known forces.

Erick went back to his workstation. He repositioned himself with one hand over the amulet and the other holding the knife with the blade against the thick part of his other palm.

Light-filled aura expanded from Erick’s skin like a cloying fog, but with swirls of power here and there drifting away like steam flowing in an unseen breeze. With a concentrated thought Erick brought his aura under complete control, forming a solid layer of light around his skin—

Flick went the knife. Ophiel whined, but Erick beamed nothing but calm and certainty, and Ophiel picked up what he was putting down. Ophiel calmed. Yggdrasil’s [Scry] eye just stared at the ceremony of it all, trying to understand exactly what was happening, as for the second time in as many days blood pooled on the thick part of Erick’s palm, and yet did not drip.

White light concentrated into that blood, turning it iridescent white, turning it from something real, into something Real, making it a part of Erick’s enchanting ceremony.

Erick put down the knife. With that now-free hand, he enveloped the amulet in his aura. The amulet began to glitter as Erick primed it even further. And then blood began to drop.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Drops of white magic fell onto the aura-enveloped amulet, vanishing completely, that power transferring into the letters, filling them up with gentle cyan glows. Erick was still focused on Focus, after all, and cyan was the color of regenerating mana.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Cyan crystals grew from the inscriptions, filling out the first circle of words with tiny prominences of power, and then flowing into the second circle. A ring of cyan crystals began to rise up from the edges of the crystal.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Erick was down 300 mana by now; almost a hundred mana more than what he had put into the prototype. This newest version was still sucking in mana and growing crystals, and did not seem to be stopping anytime soon.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

400 mana gone, soaked into the new amulet. Sweat trickled into Erick’s eyes, lightly stinging him, but he focused onto the amulet. The crystal growths had formed something odd. Erick ignored the oddness for now, and poured drop after drop of magic into the—

A drop of magic failed to enter the amulet. It sat on the surface. The whole thing flashed over in a bright, cyan instant. Erick closed off his flow of mana and blood and felt lightheaded, but a quick tap of healing from Ophiel made him feel better. Not fully better, but good enough. He wasn’t actually low on blood, though; he was sitting on an empty mana tank.

With a sigh, Erick sat down, closed his eyes, and Rested for a moment. A minute later he opened his eyes and looked at what he had created.

The overall shape of the amulet was a disk, about 6 centimeters in diameter and a centimeter thick. It was, in actuality, a rather large big hunk of platinum. And now it was about doubled in size, due to sharp cyan crystals extending directly out from those edge inscriptions like a blue radiance, with four prominent points equally spaced around the rim. The inscriptions in the center added to that design, radiating outward in a similarly 4-pointed splash.

It was the F in each word that started the splash, Erick saw. He also saw that some of the crystals did not match up exactly with those Fs. In that moment, Erick realized he had likely messed up a bit by not workshopping his design a bit more. If he had had a perfectly balanced inscription, then perhaps he could have kept adding mana to the thing, making it better…

But he was already out of mana, anyway. This was as good as it was going to get, for now.

… And now that Erick looked at his work a bit more, the whole thing reminded him a bit of his Crystal Star, actually, but larger, and very blue. The extra points from all the smaller prominences made him think of a blue sun, though; not a moon at all. That was the oddity that had distracted him earlier. The whole thing looked like a pale reminder of the Crystal Star.

Whatever.

Erick strung a necklace through the back of his new amulet and put it on his chest, directly over his co—

Hot.

And yet cold.

That was what Erick felt as the amulet fully joined with his aura. He let it happen, breathing out the temporary discomfort for the imaginary heat and cold were already abating. Soon, he felt normal.

Ten minutes later he had enough mana to test himself with the counting crystal.

Erick’s eyes went wide as the numbers started blinking. He wrote down his new numbers while saying to Ophiel and Yggdrasil, “That worked out a lot better than expected.”

- -

Strength: 27

Vitality: 27+15=42

Dexterity: 28+4=32

Constitution: 27

Perception: 27

Willpower: 37+19=56

Focus: 38+59=97

Intelligence: 28

- -

Mana: 560

Mana Regen (Vit+Foc): 1390

- -

Ophiel twittered. Yggdrasil moved his eye to inspect the amulet on Erick’s chest. Erick lifted up the amulet a bit so the big guy could get a look, while he said, “I got about 80 points yesterday. Today, I should get 130-ish… Minus the two hours it took to do this and also test myself.”

Yggdrasil looked up at him, almost questioningly; about what, Erick could not say. He missed being able to talk to the big guy, and for some reason, direct telepathy didn’t reach all the way in here.

Erick said, “I’ll see you again in person, soon, Yggdrasil. I’ll be able to answer all your questions then, but until then, stay safe out there, okay?”

Yggdrasil’s eye bounced a little in recognition, and in answer, like he was saying ‘okay’ back.

Erick grabbed Fairy Moon’s necklace and put that one on, too. And when nothing happened between either his new monstrosity of an amulet and Fairy Moon’s tiny pink/green crystal, he smiled; No resonance issues.

It was time for another break.

It was time for breakfast.

His new amulet bounced against his chest as he took the stairs two at a time, and Erick was thankful that his provided shirts were of good quality, for the amulet was very pointy. It was pretty damned fancy, though. Probably too fancy. He’d only be wearing it around the house, he decided, so this much bling was probably fine.

Erick walked into the dining room right as Fairy Moon and Maid Maria walked in from a corridor on the other side. Both of them looked at the new shininess on his chest. Both of them had also seen the old amulet, too, but this new one was much bigger.

Erick began, “Good morning. Time for breakfast?”

Fairy Moon narrowed her eyes at Erick’s amulet, then she looked at him. “Yes. Maid Maria was just on her way up to alert you, but I see that is not necessary. I ask, though… Does this day feel auspicious to anyone else?”

Erick instantly smiled and brightly said, “Nope!” shutting down all other options.

Fairy Moon and Maid Maria looked at him, questioningly.

And then Fairy Moon said, “Very well then.” She said to Maid Maria, “I will be having the sausage, pancakes, eggs, and steak.”

Maid Maria curtsied. She asked, “And for you, Archmage Flatt?”

“White rice and fried chicken and assorted vegetables. I’d call it a stir-fry, but I don’t think you know that phrase.” It wasn’t the ‘breakfast’ option, but Erick had been awake for a while, and he felt like having dinner right now.

Maria curtsied again, then turned around and went to fetch the food.

Erick sat down at his usual spot.

Fairy Moon took her spot, and she began, “Are you sure you don’t want the day to be detailed?”

“I’m not sure your meaning, exactly, but I am at another breakthrough with my accretion, and I do not desire a distraction.”

Fairy Moon narrowed her eyes, then decided she knew better. She plucked a pure white staff-sized bit of wood from the air, and set it on the table between them. Yggdrasil hopped from Erick’s shoulder and alighted on the branch like he knew it, personally. Which he did.

It was a twig from Yggdrasil.

Erick frowned. “Explain?”

“I asked Yggdrasil for a branch and he broke one off and now here it is for your enchanting education.” Fairy Moon said, “Do with it what you will, though I suggest you start experimenting with the manawood I provided for your purposes before you break open this white wood.”

Yggdrasil’s eye spun in recognition. He seemed… Happy? Clearly, yes. He was happy.

So Erick ignored what he was going to say to Fairy Moon, and instead told Yggdrasil, “I will be sure to use it well, Yggdrasil. I appreciate this.”

Yggdrasil bounced up and down again in acknowledgment, and then he nuzzled into Erick's shoulder. He was still immaterial though, so Erick felt nothing except good, distant thoughts of joy.

Maid Maria returned with the food a moment later.

And then she joined them for breakfast, sitting across from Erick, while Fairy Moon sat at the head of the table. Though the conversation that morning was stiff with Maria barely saying anything, Erick couldn’t help but smile a little that she had finally decided to join them for a meal. Like, sure, these people were his kidnappers, but Erick was getting over it. As long as they didn’t do anything else to him, or to his people, this was fine.

Despite how he had arrived in Ar’Cosmos, now that he was here, he was learning a lot, and unlike how the Script could be stripped from him the moment he crossed that final line, making magic himself meant that it could never be taken from him, again.

After breakfast Erick went back to accretion.

12 hours later, Erick had gained around 8 more Points in every Stat, and according to the books, he was either at the very end of his First Foundation, or in the middle. The cutoff point for everyone was different, but the normal cutoff was somewhere between 20 in every Stat, or 50, or 75, according to how much power the body and spirit were accustomed to before one began accretion.

Erick was used to 87 in everything except for Willpower and Focus, which had been at 227. With a core that was still rather like a flat-ish, faceted computer mouse than a true spherical core, Erick suspected that it might be a long while before he achieved spirit saturation.

Another 12 hours after that, the morning sun had risen once again, Erick had gained around 9 points in every Stat, and he once again ate breakfast with Fairy Moon and Maid Maria. Both of them eyed him the whole time, Maid Maria with concern, and Fairy Moon with judgment, because Erick almost nodded off right on top of his omelet. No one actually said anything about his obvious sleep deprivation, though.

And Erick gave no comments, either.

24 hours later Erick had gained around 24 points to every Stat. He was finally starting to feel like his old self again, and not just his old self back before he was kidnapped to Ar’Cosmos; he was starting to feel like his old self back on Earth, where everything was so much easier and all his worries were over silly, small things like filing paperwork.

Accretion had some sort of calming, centering effect. It was more subtle than when he [Renew]ed himself, and it was more encompassing than his old way of cycling; of just stirring the mana inside his core to work out the kinks inside.

He felt…

Better.

- -

Strength: 68

Vitality: 69+15=84

Dexterity: 69+4=73

Constitution: 68

Perception: 68

Willpower: 79+19=98

Focus: 79+59=138

Intelligence: 69

- -

Mana: 980

Mana Regen (Vit+Foc): 2220

- -

He did not share his exact gains over breakfast, but he did not need to.

When Erick tried to put a spoonful of sugar into his tea and ended up putting sugar onto his omelet instead, Fairy Moon had seen all she needed to see. Maid Maria had too, but she just winced, and kept silent.

Fairy Moon frowned at him. saying, “Erick Flatt. You can barely bother to keep your eyes open! I insist you sleep and soon. The world can wait a while—”

And suddenly Erick was wide awake. “You are NOT forcing me to sleep again, Fairy Moon. You hear me! I will sleep when the time is right and right now I have to be ready to either tell Redflame that I already made [Renew] and deal with the shitstorm that follows, or I have to let him find out for himself, and still deal with that shitstorm.” Erick forced himself to calm down, then said, “And so I need to be ready for that. I will sleep later.” He stabbed a fork into his sugar-covered omelet. “Sugar omelet is fine.”

Fairy Moon sat back in her chair, her eyes a little wide and full of surprise. “Fair is fair. Your choices are your choices.”

Maid Maria, though, instantly looked from Fairy Moon to Erick, and then back, worried over something that she was not putting into words. Erick looked to her— And that seemed to be enough to break whatever dam she had built. She said, “You have to tell him. If you don’t tell him then he’s going to waste a fortune in mana—”

“Maria.” Fairy Moon looked to her, then softly said, “This is Erick’s Path.”

Maria went completely silent and proper at the small recrimination.

But Erick wanted to know. “What do you mean, waste it?”

Fairy Moon resumed eating her meal, giving Maria a definite ‘you’re on your own now’ sort of look.

It took Maria a minute to start talking, saying, “Redflame’s mana means… Our… Redflame doesn’t actually need to—” She gathered her wits, and calmly explained, “He could use that mana to assist with the removal of the Curse from a hundred people. Or to expand Ar’Cosmos to house a hundred more people, or to create a new layer of the city, or— The true tale is that Redflame is a good man, who does not deserve to have a fortune in power wasted on something already created. He deserves to know the truth.”

Erick thought for a long moment about his response…

He almost nodded off after taking too long to think.

So he said, “I have heard your complaint. I will think about this and… Likely ask for something in return from you for telling him so he doesn’t waste his mana. Or something. I don’t know.”

Maria sat a bit straighter, and then purposefully calmer. She gave a slow nod.

Fairy Moon looked on from the sidelines, silent.

Erick looked to Fairy Moon, and added, “Or maybe I’ll ask for something from Fairy Moon, instead.”

And now Fairy Moon was invested. She smirked, asking, “What do you desire?”

“… I will get back to you on that later, as well.”

Fairy Moon grinned, and then went back to eating breakfast. Maid Maria and Erick resumed eating, too, and there was no more conversation.

Afterward, Erick accreted once, took off his necklace and took a quick bath, and then hopped into bed. He slept for the first time in days, but he slept perhaps more poorly than he had slept ever since coming to Veird, and experiencing the casual power of Stats. He woke up twice and accreted both times, but only hours had passed between wakings. His third attempt at sleep lasted ten hours, and when he awoke the moon hung outside his room, and his head throbbed with a dull ache.

A midnight journey to the kitchen was just what he needed to set himself right, though.

Erick had three days left till Redflame would use up his ‘fortune in mana’, which, if anything like a war was going to happen between Ar’Cosmos and the rest of the world, perhaps Erick needed to let Redflame waste that mana. But then again…

That would just cause a lot of deaths, wouldn’t it?

Yeah. If people thought Ar’Cosmos was weak, they would attack.

Erick got back to accreting while he thought.

In the morning, he joined Fairy Moon and Maid Maria for breakfast, and laid out his demands, “In exchange for preventing Redflame from spending a fortune in mana to accomplish nothing, I want all untoward influences you have cast upon me, Fairy Moon, to be removed. And I want higher-level enchanting manuals and accretion manuals.”

Fairy Moon spoke seriously, “The first is impossible, for it would require removing the past and we are not doing this, ever. But! Take pleasure in knowing that nothing untoward is on you, save for the restriction against returning to your Other Self. Of that, know this: I required you to rise to the peak of your power before you birth the solution to Sundering, and I, nor you, will imperil those plans. If you demand I decide to forgo this future then you are not as benevolent as you would believe, and mayhaps we may need to rethink this entire revolution.” And then she turned dismissive, saying, “But the books are an acceptable request for the paltry pleasantry of saving Redflame some minor misfortune.”

Erick frowned, but all of that had been expected. So he asked the question that he truly wanted answered, “If Redflame knew of my nature, would he try to bend me to his own goals?”

“I would put up a resistance to such requests and Redflame might honor my asking. It might not matter, though.” Fairy Moon said, “If House Carnage captures you then run to Redflame. Don’t let Bright Smile snag you.”

Maria shuddered at the name ‘Bright Smile’. Bright Smile was the current head of House Carnage, and she was the only one Erick had not met yet. There seemed to be something between Maria and Bright Smile, specifically, but Erick barely knew anything about any of the people around him. He did not know nearly enough about Maria to know what her problem was.

And so, because Erick had to know, he asked, “What is wrong with Bright Smile?”

Fairy Moon said nothing. She just went right back to eating breakfast. After a moment of continued silence, it became clear that Fairy Moon wouldn’t speak about other people when those people were not around.

So Maid Maria answered, “Some dragons take to Carnage really well. Bright Smile is one of those. If you fell to her hands, she would enact a world war with your power. She’s tried to do similar things with other Wizards but none of them had had… They all died before her desired spells could be cast.”

Ahh.

So.

Bright Smile was the real threat of Ar’Cosmos, then? Seemed plausible. On the surface, anyway. Erick didn’t know nearly enough about this place, at all.

Erick glanced to Fairy Moon.

Fairy Moon set down her fork, and just stared at her food. The food was unimportant. It was just the thing that happened to be in her line of sight as she gazed off into nothing. Erick felt some sort of recognition in her empty gaze, and then it clicked. She didn’t want to participate in the Fate that was forming all around them. She already had a history with Bright Smile, because of course she did; Bright Smile was the head of house Carnage, and she had been for the last century and a half. It would have been impossible for Fairy Moon to not have a history with a person like that.

So while Fairy Moon wasn’t willing to speak now…

Erick recognized what was going on. Talk of war. The threat of a Wizard of great power falling into the hands of House Carnage. It was obvious.

He would need to kill this person he had never met before. He would need to kill Bright Smile. Or else she would capture him and use his power to wage war on the world.

Fuck.

- - - -

After accreting a few times and while in the middle of planning his next enchantment, Erick decided to backtrack on his previous thoughts.

There might not be any reason to kill Bright Smile.

Erick had never heard of her before now, so her exploits were likely not that interesting. Erick did not doubt that Bright Smile was a terror inside Ar’Cosmos, though, for House Carnage worked security inside Ar’Cosmos, therefore the head of House Carnage likely had to be a certain kind of way. She needed to be truly feared enough to make all the dragons of the world scared of her, after all. Even Fairy Moon had warned Erick off of Bright Smile.

But fuck that noise! Like, obviously he would take their advice under advisement, but Erick had Blessed Shades before. How bad could a single dragon be? Erick was trying to make a better world, and there was no ‘better world’ without redemption included. This was just another test of the Worldly Path, and he was going to pass it with flying colors—

Knock knock.

It was midday. Erick set aside his book, went to the door, saw who it was on the other side, and opened it, saying, “Hello, Maid Maria.”

Maria curtsied with one hand, while her other held a box of books by its handle. “Your advanced enchanting books have arrived.” She set the box down in front of Erick. “Unfortunately, your accretion manuals are a more restricted item. Illustrious Moon will arrive tomorrow morning with those, but, if you will pardon the rudeness of this question, Illustrious wishes to know how far you are, and what topics you wish to know, specifically.”

No harm in telling her? Yeah. No harm in telling her.

Erick said, “Stats are around 75 according to the counting crystal. According to my estimates I am 85% of the way to Second Foundation.”

Maria’s eyes briefly widened, and then she controlled herself, curtsied again, and said, “Then I will inform Illustrious of this development, and she will likely wish to speak to you over breakfast. If this is amenable… Do you have any requests for breakfast? Or for dinner tonight?”

She seemed to truly be warming up to him.

Erick smiled softly at that thought, then said, “I like pancakes, bacon, and lots of cactus syrup— Oh. And coffee. Do you guys have coffee here, yet?”

Maria said, “I am sure I will be able to find some by tomorrow morning. As for dinner?”

“Whatever you feel like making will be great, Maria, I am sure. So I’ll take that.” He added, “But potatoes, if you got ‘em.”

Maria seemed to blush a bit as Erick used her name, without her title. She curtsied again, muttered how ‘It will be done’, and then she rushed away, down the stairs and out of sight. Erick ignored whatever that was and had Ophiel grab the box of books and move it into the room.

As Erick pulled out the first book, he felt a minor joy.

Every single book was absolutely packed with dense writing and denser ideas, and even some pesky math, but Erick read through them like he was reading one of Teressa’s adventuring novels. Quick, painless, and a bit of a joy, if Teressa’s facial features were enough to go by. Erick had never actually read any of those books himself, but maybe he should, now that he thought about it. Might learn something fun. Erick smiled as he read. Finally getting his Intelligence back was more of a comfort to him than he realized it would be.

Math still wasn’t fun, though.

… But Erick did sort of like the architectural and engineering aspects of magic item creation, and other things like that. Math was fun for those things, he supposed.

Dinner that night was great.

Fairy Moon seemed to love the small potatoes that Maria had included with the meal, so Maria spoke of how the next dinner would include more potatoes, and more potato-based options. Erick spoke of those options, and then of the history of the potato plant, which was part of the nightshade family, which was actually highly poisonous.

Fairy Moon seemed to get a particular kick out of the idea of generations of farmers cultivating potatoes to make them what they were today.

- - - -

Erick messed up the next tier of his amulet, causing the amulet to grow so fast and deep that it split the platinum in half, breaking the thing wide open and wasting an hour of accretion time. The problem was that he had tried to include the rune for [Renew], and something overloaded. His goal was the creation of an amulet that automatically accreted the wearer’s mana, based on their excess production, but the runic system he had devised was way too complicated, and probably wrong.

He was on the right track, though, but he could not afford to waste more mana or time trying again.

Normal accretion would have to suffice, for now. It should be enough. He felt he was getting close to a breaking point… He almost wasted more mana to use the counting crystal, to check himself, but he did not. He accreted that mana instead.

- - - -

The green-sliver moon gently passed beyond the horizon and the sky began to shift from dark and full of stars, to something less dark, and gently purple. The people in the city beyond Fairy Moon Manor’s walls began to come out of their homes, to go to work, or to go to school in the cases of the young ones. Erick hadn’t really studied all of those happenings, far below his tower, but he had noticed that they were probably real people. Their goings and comings were too varied to mark them as anything but real.

He couldn’t really tell from this distance, of course, and he might not even be able to tell if they were truly real even if he was up close and personal with any of them, for such was the power of Fae Magic. But he had noticed a few of the farmers at the fields down below were occasionally [Grow]ing different foods, and one lady who always wore a great big hat seemed to have a variety of hats that she changed out every day. Today, she was wearing some sort of spiky headdress that was larger than all of the hats her friends wore. Erick suspected she was a hatter with a store nearby, because her and her friends always ate at the same table every morning, gaggling with each other all the while, and always really early, too.

Their laughs did not always reach all the way up to Erick’s tower, but it was a close thing.

Erick came out of his most recent accretion to the sounds of that distant laughter. He blinked a bit, heard the laughter again, and then put all that out of his mind, and went back to accretion—

He stopped as a spike of something… not unpleasant, rippled through his entire body. It was a change. Something had changed.

… Erick suspected he knew what was going on, but he had to be sure. So he let his aura envelop his body with mana, once again pushing out all the ambient mana that happened to get in, and then he let that power fall through his body, into his core. And yup. Something had changed. Erick kept at it, cataloging the change.

As his aura had dripped droplets of white mana through his skin, that power had been soaking into his flesh, his bones, and every part of him, before eventually finding its way to his mana veins, to flow as though it was blood, to his core. But now, that power passed through his flesh and bones, immediately hitting his mana veins. All that power flowed directly to his core.

The thousand-faceted gem that was his core soaked in his mana, the facets moving and multiplying like someone turning up the number of polygons on a computer-generated sphere. The shadowy space around his core where all his veins connected was rapidly though gently filling with the growing gem that contained his soul.

A smile came unbidden to Erick’s face, for he knew what this was.

He had just reached body saturation; half of Second Foundation. The current crop of accretion manuals didn’t talk much about what happened past Second Foundation, but they all spoke of what accomplishing body saturation and spirit saturation felt like. This, then, was body saturation.

Now all of his gains would automatically and directly support the Stats that composed his ‘spirit’; Willpower and Focus, but also a bit of Perception and Intelligence, unless he was mistaken.

30 seconds later Erick bottomed out on mana.

Opening his eyes, Erick gazed at the sky beyond his window. Golds and blues crowded out the night sky, and the sun began to rise. A quick check with the clock told him he had at least two hours before breakfast with Illustrious. That meant around 5000 mana, or 20 more Points of growth in his spirit Stats. That might be enough to reach spirit saturation…

He wasn’t sure, but was going to try away.

A little over an hour later, Erick watched his core with his mana sense wide open as his core plumped up and then flexed for the last time. The polygons of the surface vanished as the cut crystal rapidly shifted into a perfect sphere, and a ripple of power flowed across the surface like the chiming of a gong. Erick shuddered as his very soul seemed to pulse and his tenuous grip on his aura suddenly failed. The sphere of white light around him broke apart, scattering his mana and his power into the room like a gust of vanishing fog.

Erick opened his eyes. He saw his core with his mana sense, and it was good.

Time was wasting, though. Illustrious would be here soon. So Erick went to the bathroom to run through his morning routine as fast as he could, though it was more like his ‘evening routine’ or some other timeframe; for his circadian rhythms were completely fucked.

He donned some decent clothes and by that time, he had regained enough mana to use the counting crystal. What he saw surprised even him.

- -

Strength: 86

Vitality: 87+15=102

Dexterity: 87+4=91

Constitution: 86

Perception: 93

Willpower: 104+19=123

Focus: 104+59=163

Intelligence: 94

- -

Mana: 1230

Mana Regen (Vit+Foc): 2650

- -

Second Foundation, for Erick, was quite a bit higher than Illustrious’s estimates of 75 in every Stat. Of course, the counting crystal was for estimation purposes only and it might have been off as much as 15%, but according to Erick’s own experiences, it seemed to be completely correct. Maybe off by a point or two. Whatever.

Erick flexed his shoulders, made a pair of fists, and then did a quick two squats to get the blood flowing. He punched the air, and likely threw the punch completely wrong, but that didn’t really matter, either. He took off his amulet for this next part, because he didn’t want those spikes smacking him in the face, and then he leaned down like he was a trained contortionist and put his palms flat on the ground, keeping his legs straight the whole time. With a gentle lift, Erick raised his legs overhead, and walked around on his palms for five steps, before doing a little hand jump, twisting in the air. He almost splattered on the ground, but he caught himself, recovering to stand once again on his feet. It had been awkward and fun, because it was fun to have a nice body. He had missed this, too.

And this time, this power couldn’t be taken from him…

Though he supposed Fairy Moon’s Fairy Edicts, or whatever they were called, were still a threat… And he was rather low on mana compared to his usual numbers… And he had no Health. And his current numbers were with his amulet, which he would not be wearing much in the future—

Okay. So. Don’t get a big head, Erick, just because you cheated your way through to Second Foundation in less than a week.

Erick collected himself and his thoughts, then he spared a glance at the cyan-crystal amulet sitting on his desk along with all the other enchanting doodads and trinkets. That thing could stay here for now. With a final check, Erick mana sensed his core. It hadn’t changed. It sat beside his heart like a baseball-sized pearl, nestled inside the center of a web of shadowy mana channels that had no correlation to any physical structure inside his body. His right lung had been remade to provide space for the core, too, so its growth hadn’t actually moved anything around, at all.

And it just…

Felt good.

He kinda wondered why he felt better with a whole core, though, instead of the smaller thing he had had before. Erick hadn’t expected that particular emotional surprise, but it was welcome nonetheless. It was like he had finally arrived at some important milestone.

And now, it was time to reach for the next milestones, and hopefully get home sooner, rather than later.

Erick exited his room. When he was almost all the way down to the ground floor he ran into Maid Maria coming up the other way. She startled.

Erick just smiled, and asked, “Time for breakfast?”

“You are correct, Archmage Flatt.” Maid Maria said, “Illustrious Moon is here, along with the asked-for accretion manuals.”

“Let us not keep them waiting.”

Maria curtsied then turned around, leading the way.

- - - -

Illustrious Moon sat in Maid Maria’s usual spot, while Fairy Moon sat at the head of the table. Both of them had been talking about the spell-based economy of Ar’Cosmos, where trained fae-aligned casters kept the city at a good size through cooperative casting, but they went silent as Erick stepped into the room. Both of them looked to him.

Erick’s seat was open for him, so he moved toward it, speaking into the sudden silence, “Good morning, Fairy Moon. Illustrious Moon.”

Illustrious did a minor double-take, her violet eyes blinking brightly in the morning light. “You seem… different today. Good things?”

Fairy Moon raised an eyebrow, also wondering what was going on with him, but she remained silent. Maybe he did feel a bit too good? Maybe he was showing off his newfound comfort, too much? Well, whatever.

Erick took his seat, saying, “There are many things to be happy about, Illustrious. I just hit Second Foundation, and I think I smell coffee in the air.” Erick smiled at Maid Maria, who was setting out breakfast onto plates. “Do I smell that right?”

Illustrious’s eyes went wide to hear ‘Second Foundation’.

Fairy Moon smirked at him, saying, “A welcome revelation, indeed.”

Maid Maria silently grabbed the jug of coffee and poured Erick a cup, before returning to the breakfast foods, to prepare the plates for everyone.

Erick inhaled deep the warm scent of coffee. And then he added some milk and sugar to it, smiling gently, as he said, “Second Foundation is accompanied by a spherical core, while body saturation ends when it is no longer capable of easily absorbing mana, which happened first, several hours ago. The spherical core happened only an hour ago. Everything sort of tingled when it happened, too, like a plateau had been reached, or the chiming of a gong.”

Illustrious reorganized some thoughts and stances in her mind, for she had envisioned that this meeting would be about theory of what happened after reaching Second Foundation. Now, she was readying herself to actually teach... But she still had some theory she wished to expound upon. “A spiritual echo is commonplace when the core matures at the end of spirit saturation, so it would make sense for you to feel this sensation. This echo is theorized to happen because of the rapid transition from having a set amount of facets on the core, to what is effectively infinity.”

The coffee tasted great. Erick savored the flavor as he listened to Illustrious. “I like that theory. Makes sense.” He set down his cup and let Maid Maria set his plate down in front of him. “Appreciated, Maria.” Maria acted as though she wasn’t there, which Erick supposed was normal for servants. He turned back to Illustrious. “Not to change the subject too much, but as you know, I’ve already made [Renew]. I want to tell Redflame that his current goal has already been achieved, and I want to explore the possibilities of solving, slowly, the Dragon Curse, through [Renew]. But if I am not able to do this without raising a threat against myself that I cannot contend with, then I will not do so at this time. I will let him waste his million mana fortune, and simultaneously out myself as a Wizard in what will likely be the worst possible circumstances, for I have no doubt that Redflame will instantly realize what has happened. But by that time it will already be too late. The loss of his mana fortune will cause a weakening of Ar’Cosmos, and open you all up to war with the outside. My letters stopped the war that was brewing, but it might happen anyway if I don’t come out of here with glowing recommendations against actual war.”

Maid Maria almost dropped the plate she was serving Illustrious, but Fairy Moon put her hand under the tray, preventing that minor disaster without really trying, for Fairy Moon’s eyes were locked on Illustrious, awaiting her response.

Illustrious heard and understood everything Erick had laid down at her feet. She sat straight, her amethyst horns seeming to rise in the air as she stared at Erick. She asked, “How do you envision us dragons emerging from Ar’Cosmos once we gain this [Renew]-based Wizardry you speak of?”

“I am glad that you see the full breadth of my prepared stance, Illustrious. It bodes well for working with you in the future.” Erick wanted to tell them that he was immortal, too, but he had no idea how the conversation would go if he let loose that particular bit of information. So, in that case, it was better to let them find out later who they were dealing with. “I plan to return to Spur, and to assist with Candlepoint’s growth, but my next largest goal is to terraform the Crystal Forest back into an actual forest. Livable land. Rains and grasses and trees. Rivers and lakes; how it used to be before the crystal mimics came along.

“I want help doing this.

“In time, in my perfect future, I envision all of Veird being habitable once again. Maybe not every corner. Maybe only 50%. But the Crystal Forest will absolutely be a green forest full of cities and waterways and people.” Erick summed it up, “Your people need places to live once they are relieved of their curse. I need powerful people to prevent belligerents from bringing war against me and mine. If you desire, you can decide to become a part of ‘mine’. It will be mutually-assured protection, as long as both sides decide that the other side is worth continued protection.”

Illustrious gained a sharp edge to her eyes as she gazed upon Erick, weighing her possible future paths. “Would you assist us against the wrought, and Kirginatharp?”

“The wrought are going to take back Ar’Kendrithyst. That is going to happen, and I am going to help them do that, too. You can learn to live beside them.” Erick said, “It is my hope that there will be less need for violence and more opportunity to talk openly, now that the main problems of the Shades is gone. But, I imagine you have many Forgotten magics tucked away in this land, so that will likely be an issue to deal with, but it will be an issue dealt with through words, and not through violence.” Erick said, “In regards to Kirginatharp, unless I am mistaken, then the Dragon Curse doesn’t work on those who are transformed, so the Headmaster will have no innate reason to pursue you outside of revenge and other vendettas. Please inform me now, if I am wrong about this.”

“… You are not wrong about Kirginatharp’s motivations, but you underestimate the severity of his vendettas. So putting that aside, as it could… We, theoretically, could talk out our differences, in some theoretical framework of… Something.” Illustrious breathed deep, then said, “I don’t believe that such a reconciliation is possible for that man has directly murdered thousands of our people, and directly fourteen members of my immediate family. But putting that aside, since it is, as you say, a conflict born of hate, instead of from magical compulsion… The wrought are a much more severe threat. The wrought are very thorough with regards to ripping out Forgotten Magic from this world, and if you know any of those magics, then they will use their Mind Mages to rip that knowledge out of your head, and you will never know it was done. If that doesn’t work, they kill you.” Illustrious wrestled with some inner turmoil for a moment, then said, “I did not want to bring this up with you, Erick, but with this line of questioning, I must.

“There is absolutely no way that you have not been negatively affected by the Mind Mages working for the wrought. A subtle twisting. A minor forgetting. Their power is insidious and omnipresent. The originals adhere to their code as they should, and so we might be able to deal with them. But I would never walk into a Mind Mage meeting of wrought or otherwise without an active bulwark of mental and spiritual defenses.”

Erick said, “I am glad that you are willing to entertain the idea of solving the vendettas between Ar’Cosmos and Kirginatharp— In some theoretical world where the underlying problem of the Dragon Curse has been solved, of course.” Erick went on to say, “In regard to your concerns about the wrought and the Mind Mages, though: I have learned quite recently, and first hand, that I need to have better mental protections, so your worries are not unfounded. But with House Fae’s over willingness to bewitch people with Fae Magic, could it be that you are seeing your own faults laid bare, and not an actual fault of the Mind Mages?”

Illustrious, thankfully, did not get mad at the aspersions Erick cast upon her character, probably because Erick had thrown his own experiences with House Fae’s nature in her face at the same time. She just went silent, her emotions twisting from fury to hope to terror and deep, deep embarrassment that Erick had somehow discovered what they did to people to enact justice in this land. And yet, there was a vast shade of acceptance that what she did was right and necessary for the good of… Ar’Cosmos or else specific people, Erick supposed.

He had guessed about all of that, but apparently he had been on the mark.

He moved past it, since he, himself, had Blessed people as a form of ‘justice’. Who was he to judge, except a victim of what he had done to other people? Now that was a ball of problems to work through some other day; not right now.

Erick continued, “I do not know of the exact nature of all the Forgotten Campaigns that the wrought have committed since Veird’s conception, but I do feel that you are overly conflating the Mind Mages with the wrought. I have recently learned that Kromolok and his second in command have merely adopted the powers of the Mind Mages, and are not beholden to their rules. Uchena claimed that they are the ones that keep the Mind Mages in check, and that they are not part of that culture at all. And in addition to this: I am almost 100% positive that the Mind Mages have a very strict culture that is exactly what it appears to be. You likely already know all this, though.”

Illustrious instantly found her footing. “That is what they want you to believe, and so you believe what they tell you.”

Erick asked, “Could your actual problems with the Mind Mages be that they live and function under the auspices of Kirginatharp, and the wrought?”

According to Illustrious’s face, Erick had hit the mark again.

“… There are some deep diplomatic concerns due to their current allegiances, and the fact that they will and have gone out on Forgotten Campaigns with the wrought, and Kirginatharp, and with all the churches of all the gods.” Illustrious felt as though she was talking to a child with the power to change the world, and she wasn’t quite sure how to handle Erick. She tried, “I feel you are grasping at pieces of the problem and failing to understand the whole. There can be no real peace in this ongoing war, between any of our sides.”

Erick countered, “An odd thing to say, considering that Inferno Maw has already expressed his wishes to end the Dragon Curse and also the war with Kirginatharp. Rozeta just wants the world to be stable and for there to be a lot of mana production, and the wrought follow her example. If Ar’Cosmos fell into line and—” Erick stopped himself and reconsidered his goals this morning. He wasn’t ready for this large of a conversation right now, but he had felt the need to see where Illustrious was at, and he had done that. Erick went on, saying, “Anyway. This breakfast smells divine, and peace talks are a large topic. I just bring up the subject because I want you to know that I want peace and prosperity, and to get away from all these wars I am finding myself drawn into, and yet I don’t want to solve any of these problems with more violence than strictly necessary. That’s my stance.” He added, “Also, all of that goes out the window if I am ever mind controlled by anyone here ever again. And so, with that warning now out there, and with all my own goals currently listed, we come to this question: How will Ar’Cosmos react to my proposals of entering into official alliances to defend ourselves against the wrought and Kirginatharp, when the time comes? What does such an alliance look like?”

Yes, Erick had just gone around in circles, going from talking of peace to talking of ‘what does war look like if we are on the same side’.

Illustrious didn’t seem to appreciate the circling of the conversation, though. She accused, “You’re trying to play all sides against each other.”

“… That is an unkind way to label my attempt at trying to create a lasting peace, for a lasting peace is also achieved through mutual defense, though, I admit, that too much defense might lead to a world war, which is another thing I do not want.”

Illustrious just stared at him, considering.

Erick continued, “Perhaps you fear that the sides are so uneven that nothing can be done to protect Ar’Cosmos from everyone else, so here’s a smaller scenario that leads to the larger: I create a [Renew] amulet that gradually transforms the half-dragon wearing it into a Paradoxed dragon of Carnage, or Fae, or Death, or maybe even Elemental Benevolence if I manage such a thing. There are likely not many such amulets, and your three houses control the only stock. Let’s say 15 amulets, total, evenly split. Each one can transform one person over the course of a month. I am pulling these numbers out of thick air, of course, but they are based on Redflame’s predictions on how such a [Renew] amulet would function, based on his ideas of how such a thing would work. What happens in ten years, in twenty?”

Illustrious stuck her fork into her omelet, distracting herself from the sudden need that welled up within her very soul. She lightly said, “I will have to think on this.”

Erick nodded, then he refilled his coffee, saying, “It’s a big thought.”

Fairy Moon hadn’t spoken a single word. All she did was eat breakfast and watch the show.

It was a lovely breakfast.

Erick stayed to lighter topics, like food and popular culture, and soon enough, Illustrious’s mood lightened considerably. Both of them knew what he was doing, but Illustrious played along because it was necessary for her own sanity, and for the good of Ar’Cosmos.

Afterward, Erick and Illustrious moved to the accretion room, down the hallway.

Now that Erick was at Second Foundation, they could actually discuss things such as spell-in-soul creation. That specific topic was accompanied by the temporary loan of four accretion manuals. Over the course of two hours, Illustrious’s falsely-good mood turned true. She relaxed, for she spoke of things she could easily handle, instead of about worldly politics which she wasn’t comfortable touching right now, and not with Erick as he was.

Accretion and spellwork were safe topics, too, just like food and culture.

Spell creation got a whole half hour dedicated to it.

The whole idea of manual spell-in-soul creation (what the Script did automatically) was basically about shaping a spell in one’s aura, ‘freezing’ that spell into a pseudo-solid ‘soul crystal’, and then absorbing that Soul Magic into one’s core without causing any cascading complications. It was, quite honestly, one of the most dangerous Soul Magics out there, for it wasn’t a simple Blessing that affected the whole, or a Curse that did the same. It was the creation of an individual, separate soul-bit, that could cast a magic all on its own, producing desired outcomes with proper inputs.

It was messy. It was detailed and convoluted to the point of math, and in that math, Erick saw some of what they taught at Oceanside, but only in the broadest of strokes. Soul-spell creation was Soul Magic of the highest order, and perhaps one of the riskiest Soul Magics that one could ever attempt. It was on the level of self-summoning Necromancy, also known as lichdom.

And the Script did all the time, automatically, for everyone Matriculated into the system.

At the end of it all, Erick decided, “I certainly won’t be messing with that right now.”

Illustrious laughed lightly. “This is why most people with cores manually make their magic using their auras. Much simpler.”

“I can see that.” Erick closed the book on soul-spell creation, and said, “Let’s move on to ritual casting. How does one cast spells larger than a 500 mana per second limit?”

“A much easier topic, to be sure.” Illustrious picked up a different manual, saying, “Everything about that is in here, but with us broaching that topic I must first tell you of mana maximums and cores, and the risks with holding too much mana inside oneself.”

“Ah. Yeah. That was a concern, too.” Erick said, “I was told by Rozeta that I would have no maximum, eventually. I do still seem to have a maximum, though, which is based on my Stats.”

Illustrious nodded. “Now that you’re at Second Foundation, all the mana you purposefully accrete into your core will be able to do one of three things; either heal your core from damage, increase your Stats, or over-charge you with mana. For the purposes of ritual casting, we’re mostly concerned with the last option; overcharging your core with mana, and thus building up a larger mana pool than you would otherwise have. Generally, ten times your current max, as listed on your Status, is a safe amount to overcharge without risking loss of the Script. If you want even more mana than that, you should increase your Willpower and raise your new cap. Raising your Willpower will be a lot tougher now that you’re at your natural spirit saturation, though… There’s some math involved but we can skip over that.

“You mentioned Redflame’s million mana fortune back at breakfast, and this is how he got that mana. He’s been forcefully packing himself with mana and then holding onto that mana for a long time. He’s been off the Script for a long while due to that fortune.”

“Okay. That’s… Likely a lot more complicated than you say it is, but it’s easy enough to understand.”

Illustrious smiled. “Most things are easier to explain than to do; yes.”

Erick asked, “So ritual casting, for a ten-thousand mana cost spell? How would you do this?”

“Every ritual spell is different, but they all follow one of two guidelines; there are rules for soul spells, and rules for manual casting.

“Manual casting is perhaps the easiest to understand so we can start there. For that, all you must do is manually fill your aura with your magic and hold it all there, primed to go, until the spell matrix is filled and ready to go. That is the entirety of understanding manual ritual casting. But! There are a lot of caveats to that.

“Manual spellcasting on Veird is limited to tier 1, normally, or tier 2 for bloodline-aspect spellwork, but even those tier 2 bloodline spells rarely get above 500 mana cost. Therefore there is no real worry about the 500 MPS limitation, except to limit yourself to 500 mana cast per second.

“This tier limitation is heavily enforced by the Script itself, but this fact is less true here in Ar’Cosmos. Tier 2 is possible in this land, or tier 3 for bloodline spellwork.

“But here’s the thing: You can ritually cast ten 500 mana [Fireball]s if you wish, making a [Grand Fireball] equivalent spell, even using the limitations of the Script and personal mana limitations. With ritual magic, you can cast practically anything you wish to cast as long as you know what you’re doing.” Illustrious smiled a little, then began, “Now... Ritually casting a soulbound spell, already inside your core and put there by the Script, with mana costs in the thousands, is a much more complicated thing. Using the spells the Script puts inside of you allows you to effectively ‘bypass’ the tier limitations, but you still have all the other limitations of 500 mana per second through your core.

“Ritual magic is an entire branch of magic and it gets complicated, but a lot of it is in the books I gave you. And so! To start, you...”

- - - -

Erick sat on his accretion pillow, breathing in and out as he accreted.

He had seen Illustrious off hours ago, thanking her for her help without actually ‘thanking’ her. Erick was acutely aware of how words like ‘thank you’ were dangerous around here, and no one said those words, but ‘thank you’ was still on the tip of his tongue every time someone did something nice for him. ‘I appreciate that/what you did’ was an unexpectedly large mental switch, but he coped.

Anyway. Illustrious had helped him a lot, and he was thankful. He hoped that her intentions were true; that she wanted actual cooperation between him and Ar’Cosmos. Everything she had done after that initial meeting had been good for future relations. She was even friendly, and it didn’t seem like an act. He hoped that they could become actual friends in the future...

He hoped the same for Redflame and maybe even Inferno Maw—

Ah. Less distractions, Erick.

Focus on the accretion.

Accreting for maximum mana was different from accreting for Stat gains. It was more of a… ‘thickening’ of the core, than the enlarging/faceting that he had become accustomed to. One book called it a ‘densening’, which was a strange word for it, but that book had some really good hints at Remaking the various times-3 Skills, so Erick accepted the odd wordings as par for the course of making soul magic. Language was just an approximation for ideas and concepts, anywa—

Focus, Erick.

Erick layered dense mana into his core like the thickening of a soup that could always be thicker.

His mana did not ‘bottom out’ at all, for when one accreted for maximum mana, they stuffed themselves full from their Regeneration, not from their Mana, and they had to do it manually, which meant focusing all the time on containing the mana within, stuffing oneself way past what was natural.

And so, Erick had been focusing for the last few hours on getting this ri—

His concentration unraveled, his white aura flexing and vanishing as a rupture in his mana containment ripped across the surface of his core. Mana vented outward from his body like the spurting of a high-pressure water valve. He winced and regained his concentration, focusing on the break, forcing his aura to stitch together to stop the blowout.

It was too late, though.

His core was fine, but his extra mana was gone, vanished into the air like whitewater from a hose.

And he was done. Erick gave up the ghost and collapsed backward on his accretion pillow. That was his fifth failure and it wasn’t getting any easier. Ophiel twittered overhead, while Yggdrasil’s eye stared down at him, questioningly.

“I’m fine. Just another mana blowout.” A glance inward showed that his core was perfectly intact. “Mana without intent passes through everything without truly touching. It might have looked bad, but it wasn’t.” He looked to Ophiel. “I’ll make more of you when I can, Ophiel, but I’ll need to Remake some times-3 Skills first… Probably should do that anyway… Stuffing myself with mana wasn’t exactly helpful, but it was a bit, I guess.”

He sat back up, and collected himself. Straight back, calm breathing.

Eyes relaxed.

Hands forward. Palms up.

The idea here was to increase the capacity of one’s mana pool. Simple, in theory, but in practice it was a lot harder, as Erick had just found out. How does one make a set space of area hold more area? The trick then was compression. The books Tasar had given Erick on the subject of Remaking the minor blessing of Concentration, and the like, were filled with information on the subject. Erick probably could have Remade these triplicate-Skills using just that information. But it wasn’t till now, with Erick attempting to cram more mana into his core, to raise his maximum mana, that he finally understood the whole process. He understood what the actual goal was, with a blessing like Discipline, which increased one’s Mana pool 3 times over. Illustrious’s books laid out the process to create these blessings, fully, and using much better language than Tasar’s books had used.

For these blessings had been the same even way back in the Old Cosmology, back when every competent mage used these blessings to increase their capacity.

Reading the old magics and learning how they worked was like filling in half of a puzzle that had been missing from Tasar’s books.

This was not that surprising, though, since the Script ironed out small fluctuations and individuality when casting known magics. If Erick had even 40% of the puzzle of the Skill, Discipline, then the Script would provide the other 60%. Remaking these Skills would be like when Erick was learning Healing Magic back in Songli. All he had to do was mutate his initial healing spell in most of the correct direction and the Script filled in the rest, granting him the spell [Treat Wounds]. A bit more mutation aimed toward the goal of [Greater Treat Wounds], the Script granted Erick that spell, too, overwriting the original [Treat Wounds] with the Greater version.

Of course, such ‘mutation’ took a great deal of finesse and mana sense and knowledge, but the Script did most of the heavy lifting.

But…

With the Script not here in Ar’Cosmos, then… Well. Erick was pretty sure he was going to get this right, anyway. Healing Magic still worked here. Heck! Even [Cleanse] still worked here, though not that well, and [Cleanse] was a lot more dangerous than a bit of soul blessing.

Erick breathed in, then out. His thoughts were collected. His power rose, then concentrated, as he held within himself a bit of extra mana. Holding a little extra was easy, maybe only ten Mana worth, and would provide a good format for the resulting blessing to recognize and magnify.

With an airy, thick voice, Erick spoke, and the sound echoed in his soul,

“A bit of blessing to the core.

“A Discipline, made to grow.

“Holding onto something more

“a thicker, denser status quo.”

His soul rippled inside his core, as the little bit of extra mana he was holding onto suddenly sunk inward, like a balloon deflating, without actually deflating at all. Before the blessing, Erick had seen that his core was bright white and full of mana, but afterward, it was a bit less bright, but only because it wasn’t full anymore. He had only used up about 275-ish mana to Remake this Skill, out of his full capacity of about 1000 mana, but his capacity itself had been increased. Just about doubled, actually.

Eventually, that ‘doubling’ would become a tripling, as this Skill grew to full power.

Erick smiled. No blue boxes had appeared, but what he was seeing was exactly in line with what the books described as a success. One down, three left to go. With a quick hand, Erick wrote down his success to the side.

- -

Discipline

Multiply your base MP by 2

Requirements: 20 Willpower

- -

Erick asked his [Familiar]s, “You know why the Stat is called Willpower? Why the Skill is called Discipline?”

Ophiel shook his head as he cooed in questioning flutes. Yggdrasil just watched, like he always did.

Erick answered, “The Stat is called Willpower because it takes basic willpower to gather mana in the first place. The Skill is called Discipline because it takes a lot of discipline to forcefully hold onto extra mana.”

Ophiel cooed in triumphant violins, probably more happy that Erick was happy, than actually realizing what was happening. Still, though! That was an improvement. Yggdrasil tumbled his eye a bit, trying to comprehend.

Erick softly smiled at all the progress everywhere, and then he moved on to the next Skill, saying, “And now I know why Concentration, for 2, and then eventually 3 times Mana Regen, is called ‘Concentration’, as well as why Focus is called ‘Focus’. It’s because you have to Focus on the flow to forcefully increase the flow. I was already doing this a bit with my amulets, but now I have to turn that into the Skill, Concentration.”

Ophiel twittered in violins.

Yggdrasil went still, and then nodded—

Erick smiled wide at that. Yggdrasil had just completely understood him. Usually he only grasped the largest, most basic concepts when dealing with magic, but Erick got the distinct impression that he fully picked up what Erick had just put down.

Still smiling, and since he had 600-ish mana left in the now-larger tank, Erick went on to Remaking Concentration.

- -

Concentration

Multiply your base MP regen by 2

Requirements: 20 Focus

- -

The times-3 Health Regen Skill for Vitality came next; Enduring.

Erick had never been good at combining Health Cost skills with one another, or doing much with warrior-type stuff at all. But knowing what he now knew, and experiencing body-accretion himself, had helped to cement a lot of stray ideas about what ‘Health Cost’ actually meant; it meant ‘using up’ the ‘mana’ in the body in order to cause an effect.

In some of the advanced manuals from Illustrious they explained how in the Old Cosmology that the mana accreted into one’s body was useless for everything except making one physically stronger/tougher. But under the Script, in this New Cosmology, this sort of power was turned into a well of resources for the average person to use how they saw fit, which allowed the rise of true ‘archwarriors’.

There used to be archwarriors in the Old Cosmology, too, but they were weaklings compared to the archwarriors of the current day, mostly because the older version had to ‘use up’ their body-accretion in order to do anything worth mentioning. These days, one’s ‘body-accretion’ did not get used up, and a true warrior could go up against an archmage and actually win most of the time.

This was one of the purpose-built tenets of the Script, in order to ensure that powerful mages and Wizards never again threatened all of the universe with their unbridled power, and to give warriors a strength they never had before. Warriors were still needed, after all, because warriors were always the best forces to send against the monsters. Under the Script, and even long before that, the innate Strength of one’s arms did not get used up nearly as fast as the discrete amount of mana a mage could bring to bear.

Anyway.

‘Health’ was not a real thing like mana was real, except that Health was a Real thing, made Real through the Script.

Knowing all that, Remaking Enduring was easy enough, since the power to recover lost Health shared similarities with the power to recover lost Mana. In this case, it was less about focusing on a flow, and more about ensuring that the Health inside the body came back quicker.

Erick did a little rhyme, and suddenly, his body felt energized. No blue box this time, either, but Erick remembered what Enduring should have looked like.

- -

Enduring

Multiply your base HP regen by 2

Requirements: 20 Vitality

- -

‘Health’ didn’t really exist inside Ar’Cosmos, like it did on Veird, but the energy pumping through his veins felt just like Health usually did. Eventually, when Erick gained enough experience through the use of this Skill it would level up to 10, and become a real times-3 Skill in the process, just like the other two he had already Remade.

The Skill for times-3 Max Health was called Strong.

It was pretty easy to understand the meaning of that one, too.

Strong, for Maximum Health, like Discipline, for Maximum Mana, was all about putting more of that resource into a limited container.

One rhyme later, Erick felt his body seem to dim, as all of his body-accretion seemed to diminish. It hadn’t though. All of the mana in his body had just concentrated, leaving more room for more Health. Erick wrote down what that Skill should look like too.

- -

Strong

Multiply your base HP by 2

Requirements: 20 Strength

- -

Erick sat back in his beanbag chair and breathed deep.

Those were the four basic boosting Skills; done and secured. It was good to finally do that. The journey to get to this basic point had taken Erick a long time, and the path had been unforeseen, but he had finally learned the actual meaning behind Health, along with how Mana and Health related to the spirit and the body, and how the Script organized it all in the background. Anyone with the necessary Stats could pick up Strong or Enduring or Concentration or Discipline for a single Point, but the number of people who actually knew what those Skills did had to be in the single digit percentile.

And now Erick was one of those people.

Doing this had revealed something else to Erick, that he hadn’t expected to realize.

He turned to Ophiel and Yggdrasil, and said, “I don’t think that the New Stats will ever have a boosting Skill. They’re just too abstract. Like, Willpower is the amount of Mana a person can naturally contain, while Discipline is forcing oneself to contain more. But Intelligence? What could that possibly be doing, except for the work of Clarity, but turned into a Stat...” Erick paused. “You know what? I bet that’s exactly what Melemizargo did; he took Clarity and elevated it to a Stat.”

Ophiel twittered. Yggdrasil looked lost.

Erick suddenly found himself on a roll. “Charisma was some sort of Mind Magic Ability or spell turned into a Stat, for sure, because all the Mind Mages instantly decried that as Mind Magic. That’s another mystery solved. Now... Perception has to be… [Ultrasight]?— Ah. No. Perception is Mana sense. Yup. That’s what that correlates to... But. Perhaps multiple sensory abilities? Mana sense is not actually covered in the Script, though, and that is by design… A design which Melemizargo broke, obviously. I got my mana sense almost instantly after getting Perception.

“And then we have Dexterity, which is the ability for the body to have more resources than otherwise… Or rather. It is the body’s ability to do more with less. This correlates with Intelligence, which is the ability for the spirit to do more with the same resources than otherwise. And since Intelligence is Clarity, but in a Stat, that means Dexterity is Precision, but in a Stat.

“… Maybe. I need to Remake Clarity next, but I’m pretty sure that how Clarity works is just straight-up Wizardry. Precision is likely much the same.

“But going back to the New Stats, we have Constitution, which is a flat percentage reduction to damage taken— Ah! It’s that Class Ability that Jane once told me about. Sturdy. Reduces damage taken from all sources by 25%… Or maybe Constitution is more like [Defend]? Maybe both, actually— No. Not [Defend]. [Defend] requires a tenth of one’s Health Max to use, and that use only recovers through natural regeneration.

“… All that could be wrong, but I feel like it’s correct. It’s a lot easier to make something new, like the New Stats, out of something old, like Clarity, or whatever, than it is to make something completely new.” Erick said, “Inventing a new Element takes something special, but taking an Element and shifting it into a new use takes ingenuity.”

Erick paused in thought, and then he smiled a little. Maybe he was correct, or maybe he was wrong, but he felt about 75% correct.

But there was a problem.

Remaking Clarity, for 50% reduced Mana costs, and its sister Skill, Precision, for 50% reduced Health costs, had to be pure Wizardry. None of Illustrious’s books had detailed a requirement of Wizardry, but they had gone deeply into what it meant to Remake those two Skills.

And those guidelines called upon what looked like Wizardry, to Erick. Small Wizardries, for sure, but Wizardry all the same. Everyone was capable of Wizardry, after all, if they used their own mana. Only Wizards made personal mana in any sort of large quantity, but if all it took was 10,000 mana… It’d take an average person a thousand days to get that much mana, but they could still do it.

With enough stored personal mana, anyone could do small Wizardry.

… And thinking about personal mana, Erick hoped that the blessings he had given himself were the normal ones, propped up by the Script, and not some oddities that he had never intended. This was Ar’Cosmos, after all; the Script was pretty far away.

Erick decided he would broach the topic of Clarity and his new Skills with Fairy Moon, actually. Probably over dinner. That was still hours away, though, so Erick went over to the advanced accretion manuals to research more about what Clarity actually did.

Because, according to what Erick was seeing, Clarity didn’t ‘reduce mana costs by 50%’, at all.

- - - -

“So the blessings I made were completely normal,” Erick said, almost in disbelief.

“Aye.” Fairy Moon said, adding copious amounts of butter to her baked potato.

The potatoes last night were a hit, and so practical everything on the table tonight had potatoes included in it, somehow. It sort of reminded Erick of back when he made potatoes for the movers and shakers of Spur, to try and get them all interested in his newest vegetable. Fairy Moon seemed to like practically everything she had tasted so far, which was good, in Erick’s opinion.

Erick could tell that Maid Maria loved the fries, most of all. She dipped them in some ranch dressing she had made herself, too, probably using the recipe that Erick had gifted to the world when he gifted Veird potatoes.

Fairy Moon added, “You will no-doubt have a number of boxes waiting for you when you return to your reality.”

Erick stuck his spoon in his mashed potatoes. They were quite good, but he was concerned with how quickly Fairy Moon had dismissed his magic. He hadn’t been sure which of his two questions would be the more difficult one, so he had asked about his Skill Remaking first, just because, and Fairy Moon had dismissed his worries as unfounded. So the outcome of his Skills was… Good? Yeah.

Like… He could already tell that he had Remade Strong, Enduring, Concentration, and Discipline mostly correct. Thanks to them, his spirit and his body seemed much, much more resilient and regenerative than it had yesterday. If Erick’s calculations were correct, his Status would show something like 1750 Health, 2000 Mana, and around 4000 Regen per day for both Health and Mana. He still had to Remake Meditation to turn that ‘per day’ into ‘per hour’ at will, but the results of his next question would likely influence and inform how he went about that little spellwork, too.

Erick asked, “I appreciate the clear answer. I have another question: the Skill Clarity. Is that full Wizardry, just handed out to everyone? Or am I not understanding how to Remake that Skill?”

Fairy Moon smirked as she sprinkled more and more bacon bits on her baked potato. She glanced his way, asking, “Why do you think Clarity is ‘Full Wizardry’?”

“Because the books all say that to Remake that Skill one must turn one’s own mana into partial Illusion, which causes other nearby mana to change in a cascading effect, which then ‘fills in’ the rest of the spell you are trying to create. In effect, you are packing extra information into half as much mana in order to produce twice as much effect, but it’s way more complicated than that.” Erick said, “The books all call it Elemental Illusion based magic, but it is very clearly Wizardry. How else could a small amount of magic create a larger amount of magic? And how is that not Propagation Ban inhibited?”

Maid Maria scrunched her face, as though Erick had gotten something really, really wrong.

… Which was monumentally surprising. Had he gotten it that wrong?

Also, how good of a mage was Maid Maria? A really good mage? She would have to be, to be able to work in tandem with Fairy Moon, right? Erick was suddenly struck by so many questions about Maid Maria that he temporarily glanced away from Fairy Moon.

“Oh?” came Fairy Moon’s voice, to the side.

Erick’s eyes flicked back toward the old fae, and he got the sudden impression that asking Fairy Moon about Elemental Illusion was like a drug dealer asking a cop about where to score the best drugs. Her pink and green eyes were uncomfortably sharp, yet she continued to spoon sour cream onto her baked potato.

That potato was getting mightily overloaded.

In a light tone that was not light at all, Fairy Moon asked, “Are we commencing the conversation about [Gate]?”

Erick was suddenly fully invested. “I want to know of [Gate], yes, but I also want to know of Clarity.” He added, “And Precision, for 50% Health costs, too, while we’re at it.”

Fairy Moon began adding chopped green onions to her baked potato, smiling as she said, “The perception of possibilities in the myriad mana goes a long way toward gaining all wishes.”

“Yes.” Erick said, “Mana is full of possibilities, but it is up to the caster to mold those possibilities from personalized Reality into physical reality.”

Fairy Moon’s eyes went a bit wide. She had purposefully made her speech as confounding and as basic as she could, because she didn’t want to make this easy for him, and yet Erick had understood perfectly…

And realizing that he had understood that, Erick was a bit surprised at himself, too. Was he understanding her, now? When did that happen?

Fairy Moon began adding cheese to her potato. “You mark my meaning well, which so few fellows ever do. So do keep up with this telling of truth:” Fairy Moon set down the cheese, and then she set down her hands to the side of her plate. She calmed. She closed her eyes. And then she looked to Erick. “Elemental Fae is Illusion thought true. Elemental Illusion is lies laid about for all to tell the falseness from the factual. No one imagines Illusion to be true. Everyone knows Fae is real reality. This is the marking of the margins of those magics.

“But now we need look at the one outside of bounds, at the beastly magics that make this world what it is. We must discuss the Mystical.

“Clarity is not cause for celebration. Clarity is a confounding of mana into more. It is a mysticism that manhandles mana into molds. It is marshaling minds to destinations undeserved. Take one mana and make it manage a friend into something founded in falsity that still works because mana is possibility.

“Illusion is a lie, while Fae is a Truth, while Mystical is a mage telling lies that the mana believes to be true.” And then Fairy Moon dropped a bomb, saying, “Clarity and Precision are Elemental Mystical, and that Mystical makes Melemizargo continue to call this realm unreal.” She backtracked a bit, saying, “Though your Particular presence seems to have pulled him out of some of his senselessness.”

Erick’s mind whirred with thoughts. He left the implications for [Gate] for another time, as that all was much larger than Clarity and Precision. Immediately, Erick tried for some clarification. “So you’re saying that Clarity and Precision are not Wizardry, but just Elemental Mystical, and that what makes that Element different from Illusion and Fae is a matter of perspective. Elemental Fae is real and views the world through the lens of the mana as real, and the physical world I call ‘real’ is the illusion. While Elemental Illusion is an attempt to deceive people in the physical world with illusions. And Elemental Mystical has a component which automatically draws other mana in, like a conman drawing in a crowd and playing them for gains.”

Maid Maria’s eyes went a bit wide; surprised for a whole mess of reasons that she wasn’t quite sure of herself. But she had already understood everything Fairy Moon was saying, so perhaps she was just surprised that Erick had actually managed to pick out the truth from the old fae’s winding words.

Fairy Moon stared for a long moment, and Erick wondered what she could possibly be thinking, and then she laughed, lightly and happily. All the danger of the previous moments vanished under her illuminated joy. And then she sighed, and an endless age passed across her features like the realization of an apocalypse come and gone, and then come again. She stared down at her very, very loaded baked potato—

Fairy Moon suddenly regained her lost joy, though such joy was not nearly as bright as before. She happily stuck her fork into the pile of toppings, and said, “Potatoes are pretty perfect. Thanks for creating them, Erick Flatt.”

Maria’s entire body seemed to whip around as she suddenly stared at Fairy Moon.

Erick’s reaction to the ‘thanks’ was less severe, but it was still there. “Uh… You’re welcome. They’re quite the nice food. I wouldn’t have made them without my daughter harping on me to make them, but I’m glad she did. They’re a big hit.”

Fairy Moon kept smiling, though she said nothing. She did glance to Maria, though.

Because Maria looked torn between blurting out her favorite topic, or holding back due to the current severity of the conversation. At Fairy Moon’s glance, though, she burst, saying, “Potatoes are wonderful! They’re like whiteroot but so much easier to work with, and with countless varieties.” And then she pulled back, suddenly. She didn’t know if it was actually okay to continue speaking, though she desperately wanted to talk more about food.

In that moment, Erick realized a cascade of various facts about his current circumstances.

The first was that his loss of Stats, combined with the circumstances of his capture, and then the mind fuckery, had caused him to mentally tag Fairy Moon as ‘too alien to understand’. Like, yes, she was very alien in her mannerisms and she was beyond ancient. But she lived among people and she knew how people worked, and she had a physical body that might have had the usual sorts of physiological responses and brain chemicals that most people shared, thanks to the Grand Translation at Veird’s instantiation into this New Cosmology. So perhaps Erick had judged her as ‘too alien to understand’ simply because of his own trauma and paranoia at that moment. It was easier to label her as an enemy if she was ‘alien’, after all, because she certainly seemed like an enemy at that time. At the time, he had thought he would have needed to kill her, too.

It was only now that he knew that killing her was never an option, and not just because she was impossible to kill.

Erick still didn’t fully trust Fairy Moon at all, but seeing how she interacted with Maria, like a friend and not like a servant at all, except for when other people were watching, and how she had thousands upon thousands of meals from previous maids in her pantry, made Erick reconsider the old fae. Fairy Moon cared about people. Obviously she did. She was a fae of ‘justice’ or something like that, after all.

Erick also reconsidered Maria. Who was this ‘maid’ who sat at the same table as Fairy Moon? Why was she so familiar with the old fae? Why was she scared of absolutely everyone except for Fairy Moon, who was arguably the one to fear the most? And then there was how she spoke out about how she didn’t want Redflame to ‘waste his fortune in mana’ the other day. Maria was clearly a half-dragon of the Carnage variety, so maybe there was some sort of connection there that was more than Elemental Carnage deep.

Whatever the case, Maria was very much a foodie who wasn’t sure how to actually speak about such a thing to Erick, not after the conversation that had just happened, though she very much wanted to. They had already talked about food a bit the other day, but today was different.

So Erick started with, “Have you tried the corn? If you let it dry out to where the kernels are hard and then you fry those kernels in a shallow layer of oil, they’ll pop open, turning light and fluffy. They’re not that great on their own, but much like potatoes they make good vectors for toppings. Powdered cheese is my own preferred topping on popcorn. You can make powdered cheese rather easily with the [Dehydrate] spell.”

And just like that, Maria brightened again, and she began, “I haven’t found any good ways to use corn, but it was one of the first items to make it all the way here to Ar’Cosmos! People have been putting it into soups a lot, and…”

Maria and Erick spoke of different foods while Fairy Moon ate her very-loaded baked potato, before moving on to the fries, and then the chips. Maria had made a wonderfully spicy beef dip to go along with the chips, which Erick asked about, and Maria provided the recipe. There was no more talk of magic.

There was no more talk of how Clarity and Precision had directly contributed to Melemizargo thinking that Veird was a lie. But Erick didn’t forget that little revelation just because he had moved on to talking about food. There was time to digest that bit of horror later, for there was no fixing that particular problem. Practically everyone who was able to get Clarity bought Clarity. 50% reduced mana costs was a no-brainer of a Skill.

Thinking about it more, Erick realized that Clarity was likely one of the major contributors to all the illusions of monsters inside the manasphere back on Veird. There was no Clarity here in Ar’Cosmos, and there were no people casting magic all the time in the Core of Veird, after all, and that's why the Core and Ar’Cosmos had clear manaspheres. But on Veird? There were monsters and fractions of magic everywhere inside the manasphere.

Another mystery solved without intending to even look for an answer.

… And the reason the Skill was called ‘Clarity’ was probably because it caused mana to realize with perfect understanding the intent of the casting mage; it caused ‘Clarity’ in the mana. Similarly, the Skill Precision was named as such because it was a precise use of Health which demanded that the mana follow suit and enact whatever Health Cost Skill the warrior was using.

The rest of dinner passed uneventfully, with talk of food and not much else at all.

Erick eventually bid Maria and Fairy Moon good night, then headed back to his room, feeling full… And a little bit better about everything. Answers had been answered. Problems had been thought through. And even Fairy Moon and Maria seemed nicer—

And then Erick remembered that Redflame’s [Renew] attempt was the day after tomorrow. Erick would need to make a decision, and soon; whether he was going to let Redflame waste his million mana ‘minor fortune’ or let him waste it all, and thus weaken Ar’Cosmos’s defenses.

… Erick decided to sleep on it.

For the first time in a week, Erick only stayed up long enough to get some minor reading in, and then he went to bed at a normal time. As he gazed out the nearby window, watching the sliver of a green moon hang in the sky, Erick closed his eyes.

Sleep came easy.

- - - -

Erick opened his eyes.

The room was dark.

The moon outside was full, but it was not a simple green sliver. It was bright pink and green and white, all at once. Multicolored, pale white light filled the room like a dream. It was then that Erick noticed that the window was not a window, but an open set of double doors that led out onto a balcony.

Fairy Moon stood on that balcony, under the moonlight, her back turned to Erick as she stared out at the night sky.

Ophiel twittered on Erick’s headboard, blinking all of his eyes as he looked to Erick, and also to Fairy Moon just a short distance away. Yggdrasil hovered off of his own space on that headboard, to float in front of Erick.

And Erick got up, out of bed, to go see what was happening. He stepped outside, onto a balcony that had not been there when he went to bed.

The moonlight was a cold, comfortable thing, while Erick’s nightclothes were barely any protection at all against the chill in the air. It was not a harsh night by any means, but it was night. Fairy Moon’s own diaphanous dress was made of muted colors, and the whole thing fluttered in the gentle wind like smoke on water. Erick stepped to her side, to stand next to the balcony.

Fairy Moon finally acknowledged him with a casual glance, then she turned her eyes back toward the full moon, saying, “Do you know the meaning of my current name?”

“Nope.” Erick spoke in a casual way that was incongruous with the setting, and with the obvious seriousness of the moment, “It wasn’t in the folders that Stratagold sent with their letter, which now that you mention it is kind of surprising. Maybe they simply never wanted to acknowledge your name?” Or that information had been censored by Fairy Moon, or Illustrious. Erick gave her the benefit of the doubt, saying, “You seem to be able to use such acknowledgment to get to people.”

“I can, and have; this is true.” Fairy Moon nodded. She was silent for a moment, staring at the sky.

Erick waited.

“My name is an epitaph,” Fairy Moon said. “My people are all gathered into that soul in the sky. Usually they’re a sliver of their usual selves, so I don’t deign to notice the night too often. Though… When you asked for a proper passing of day into night… They were still a sliver. And now. Now. They are not. Fate reaches for reality, to feel something sane again, and we are here to witness that wallowing.”

Erick looked up at the moon.

Bright, is what it was. It was nothing like the moons of Veird, though; like Hell, or the Silver Star, or Celes. Those moons were all filled with souls; with afterlives. One couldn’t see those afterlives without Mediation, though—

Erick realized something.

And then Fairy Moon spoke his thoughts, like she was waiting for him to make the connection himself.

“You cannot capture it mentally without Meditation.” Fairy Moon said, “Without that other Skill shaved out of Mystical, which you did not mention at dinner, but which digs into your mind right now. So many things… So many things they made out of Mystical at the Start of the Script. Afterlives. Easy magic. The Script itself is more than Mystical, to be sure, but it is a plentiful part of the plenary.” She said, “Try to make that Skill, now that you know the secret. I want you to see, Erick. I need you to see.”

And he did.

It was like a clicking. Or a flipping. A switch turned on. A sight made sensible.

The mana itself seemed to mold to his making, and within his core, he felt a minor creation. A flow made febrile, and then stilled, and solidified. Without uttered words, Erick adjusted his senses through a secret laid bare. He asked the mana to show him itself, and the mana came alive with an answer.

He saw.

The sky was a million, trillion worlds, far past the Edge of Ar’Cosmos’s domain. Lands locked inside oceans. Waterways turned into worlds. Mountains of floating fire and whirling tornadoes of houses that were somehow just fine being up there in a whirlwind. But there were also thousands of normal worlds. Blue marbles crowded with white clouds. Green spheres. Brown spheres. White and black spheres. Purple stars. Red oceans. Orange lights and blue depths. But they weren’t real.

They were past the Edge of Ar’Cosmos, and yet, the Edge still existed. Erick knew that what he was looking at was only real in the sense that it had been real, once. It was no longer. This, then, was a hologram; a 3D space beyond a 2D Edge.

A sky made of gravestones.

Fairy Moon spoke, and it was like all the magic had gone out of her because all that magic was up in the heavens, on display, “They’re dead. They could be real again. But not under the Script. Not the way it was made. This is the past, but it could also be the future, though not with Fate and other fortunes locked into little blue boxes”

Erick thought he knew the answer, but he had to ask, “Why can’t they be real under the Script?”

“Because the Script crushed our civilization down to numbers and needless runes.” Fairy Moon raised her head, and regained some of her regal stature, but then she slumped again. “I’ve tried to work with Melemizargo multiple times before, to make magics that could create everything all over again. I failed because he failed me, multiple times over and over and over. I’ve tried working with Wizards, too. That’s why I initially helped the dragons to drag Wizards into my world. I wanted… I want so much to see my people repopulate reality. And now you are near to my needs. A Wizard, come once again to see the sights and guide the gates open! But I am afraid, Erick. You frighten me.” Fairy Moon said, “Wizards are frightening.”

Erick said nothing, even though she was waiting for him to respond. He had no idea what to say to her concerns, and he didn’t feel that his true thoughts would be valued at all. He just wanted to make things better for everyone, and right now, Fairy Moon would not want to hear such simple naivete.

After three moments of silence, Fairy Moon spoke again, “You frighten me, but you are the best hope I have had in an age. If you manage to open up whole new worlds then I will owe you everything. I will owe you Eternity.” She stood tall as she could as she turned to him, and though she was still a head shorter, in that moment she seemed as large as the worlds in the sky. “When you spoke to Illustrious of dragon devotion you should have spoken to me.

“On my Name, this I vow, if in this life and the next, and the next and the next and the next, for as long as you yearn for my magic and my might, you can count me friend, Erick Flatt, as long as you remain as beneficent as you have shown yourself to be, and as long as you save my people from undesired death.”

The wind blew.

A moment passed.

Erick whispered, “A covenant, then.”

“A covenant for all continuance, my immortal Erick Flatt.”

It shouldn’t have surprised him that she knew, but it did. Erick’s mind seemed to leave him in that moment, as too many thoughts crowded his soul, demanding answers and finding none. Fairy Moon meant every word she said.

Three moments later, Erick’s mind finally came back to the present with an answer.

“… I will not accept this covenant at this moment. Later, when I know who you are, I will reconsider.”

Fairy Moon let loose a breath she had been holding tight. She gave a slight smile. “Ahh… This is probably a better proposition. Later is lovely.” She breathed deep again, then seemed to regain a fraction of her previous height. “The offer is open so long as you remain yourself, but you will likely never learn the truth of my entire existence while we remain on Veird. My True Names have been silenced ever since the Script.”

“That’s just as well.” Erick said, “Actions speak louder than names, no matter how True they might be.”

Fairy Moon nodded, as though Erick had told her the sky was blue, but she already knew that.

Erick regarded her.

Then Fairy Moon turned to face the sky full of souls, once again, and Erick stood there with her, Meditating on the moment. For a long while the two of them just stood there, with Fairy Moon’s thoughts a million miles away, and the enormity of the Sundering staring Erick in the face, yet again. The night was peaceful, and a bit cold, and that was good.

In the stillness, Fairy Moon spoke, “You have the right temperament to touch upon a Truth of Benevolence. Do you want to try for it tonight?”

“No. It’s not the right timing.”

Fairy Moon simply nodded.

Erick said, “Maybe Redflame should make Elemental Benevolence. I don’t have the breadth of experience with how a ‘cosmology’ should work, or deep enough magical knowledge to understand and then forge something new like an entire Element that is…” The weight of the world seemed to fall upon Erick’s shoulders, as his own fears came out. “I’m just one person, Fairy Moon. The world is larger than me, and my decisions. I should not be the only one to have a say in how to prevent another Sundering. No one person should ever have that much power.”

Fairy Moon raised an eyebrow at him, and then she looked away again. “Power in the right hands is pure and right. You should not back away from accepting your own Benevolence, Erick.”

Erick didn’t know what to say about that. So he said nothing.

Fairy Moon stayed silent, too.

The night sky held above, full of planets and planes of existence that no longer existed except in memory. It was a beautiful sight. And yet, it had to end eventually, as it already had, long ago. Fairy Moon bowed out while looking at a white gem of a planet, her eyes clouding over with the shadows of tears. Erick stayed out on the balcony for a little bit longer than that.

But his bed called to him, and he answered.

- - - -

In the morning the balcony was still there, beyond a pair of doors that had been a window just yesterday. As the sun rose across the contained world of Ar’Cosmos, Erick fully woke to the gentle squawking of Ophiel, who was out there on that balcony and trilling in happy violins at the coming of a new day.

Erick got up, did his morning ritual, and then got to making some magic. Meditation had happened last night, so that was one down of many more to go, but mainly just the first of two other Elemental Mystical Skills that needed to be Remade as soon as possible. Now that Erick knew how they worked, their recreation was as easy as humming some Elemental Mystical through Ophiel and then spreading out that magic through a cascading measure of insight.

But since this was Ar’Cosmos, Erick had likely Remade Clarity, but it didn’t feel like it. He had to manually Mystical-ify his magic in order to get the spell costs down to size. He had to manually Mystical-ify for Meditation, too.

All of that was as easy as humming his soul in a specific way, and then following through with the magic. It was a chore, but Erick felt that it would get easier with time, as most things did. He still wrote down what the Skills would look like once he got back to Veird, though, just to keep his records straight. He wasn’t wearing his accretion amulet anymore for that thing was gaudy and not his best work, so he didn’t include those Stats in his new ‘Status’. Making a better All Stats amulet would come soon enough.

Such an amulet wasn’t truly necessary, though, not with his x3 Skills, as those pulled a lot of weight. They might not have been full powered yet, but they would soon enough, so Erick counted them as full powered.

… Even if ‘Health’ didn’t technically exist inside Ar’Cosmos.

He did wear Fairy Moon’s necklace, though. He wasn’t about to out himself as a Wizard to any casual observer just yet.

- -

Meditation X

Always Resting

Requirements: 10 Willpower

- -

Clarity X

Reduces spell costs by 50%

Requirements: 10 Focus

- -

Precision X

Reduces HP costs by 50%

Requirements: 10 Vitality

- -

- -

Strength: 89

Vitality: 89

Dexterity: 90

Constitution: 89

Perception: 94

Willpower: 109

Focus: 109

Intelligence: 95

- -

‘Health’ (x3 Strong) = 2670

Mana (x3 Discipline) = 3270

Mana Regen ((Vit x3 Enduring) + (Foc x3 Concentration)): 5940

- -

Erick had a few more thoughts about Elemental Mystical before he went down to have breakfast with Fairy Moon and Maria.

Thinking back, Erick recalled how he had used Elemental Mystical to create frozen carbon dioxide without creating any nasty particulate side effects, and to make Yggdrasil’s Eternal Stonetree full-sized in a split second. He was already using this magic long before last night’s revelations. Erick had even planned to use Elemental Mystical to make all of his Particle Magic in the future, so that he wouldn’t have to care about side effects, or constantly running [Cleanse].

Erick had even —sorta— planned on Elemental Mystical becoming a part of the Particle Magic revolution.

How strange.

How odd.

How funny was it that Melemizargo was both rather right, and very wrong, about all of Veird being an illusion.