Clark had always thought that the powers the System gave people, and the way his smarter cousins became mages with them, were super cool. But since the Jump, he had learned how to use skills without any help from the System, and Clark had begun to love it that much more. Watching the swirling colors, twitching them this way and that as he wiggled his magic, seeing how the magic twisted around the stick he was focusing on... it was just the best!
He was pretty sure he was getting close to earning a new subskill for [Unblemish], because he'd been working at it for weeks, and he'd gotten really good at only kinda using the skill. Right now, he was practicing by fixing a stick while it was on fire, pushing back the burned parts and letting them burn again and again. It had been super hard to get his skill to not just extinguish the flame entirely, but he'd finally gotten the balance just right. It was like balancing a feather on his finger while he lifted weights, but he could do it!
He was also learning just how awesome all of his friends were. The Commander and Warrior Veeran could just like... do things and get a new skill, and Alyssa could create entirely new skills just by flexing her magic in the right way. He didn't think Oliver could do it, but maybe he could and just preferred using technological support because of his class?
No matter what, Clark was in awe of all of them. But, what else should he expect from people who were part of a Forerunner Expedition?
With Commander Inq having instructed him to earn new subskills for [Unblemish], Clark had of course started by asking the team what their advice was, and largely heard 'practice' from their very intelligent and impressive-sounding explanations.
Fortunately, Clark was quite good at practicing things! He'd even put some levels towards Cohesion even though it was a Minor stat to help him with his control, as the stat was kind of... how tightly mana could be held. It didn't automatically help with mana control any more than Dexterity automatically made handwriting better - which had been something Clark had been very sad about when he was younger - but it was still a tremendous boon!
And it had taken him a long, long time to get here, but he could now make his stick burn forever... well. Until he got tired. Or needed to do something else. Or slipped up his control.
It was such a pretty flame, too! It burned steadily, a little orange and yellow torch, as the wood tried and kept failing to char the wood as Clark's magic restored it.
But since he wasn't just trying to burn a branch forever, Clark loosened his magic just a bit at the top, letting the blue and gold swirls surround the orange and black of the fire and charcoal, [Unblemish] active but not really doing anything. Then, he held it as the stick burned closer and closer to his hand. It was only a bit of fire, easy enough to heal, but Clark tried to push his skill through the top of the stick instead of the bottom, even though he was holding onto the bottom. He didn't know how to describe it, except that it was maybe like trying to wiggle his ears while patting his head and writing a letter. A physical one. With a pen. And paper.
It wasn't his first time doing this, of course. He had been trying to [Unblemish] his sticks for weeks now, but each time he was just a bit better at it!
So he was a bit surprised when this time, he actually got it! The charcoal side of the torch moved down the branch, then Clark shifted his magic, and the wood began to creep back up.
This was so cool!
Clark spent a few minutes playing around with his newest bit of magic, changing the torch so that certain parts of it were charcoal and certain parts wood, like making it burn from the middle, from both ends, on only half of the top, all kinds of things.
Oh! Actually, this was probably him finally getting a new skill!
"I did it Tully!" he bent down and ruffled the cute thing's fur, and it leaned into his touch. "I think I got a skill! This is great!"
He tossed his torch to the side, making sure to extinguish the fire first, and scooped the little petalfur into his arms. She leaned into his touch, making a pleased little chirping sound as he rubbed her snout.
"You might not know what I speak of, but that is alright!" He shifted his grip on the little critter so that he could get better eye contact with her, but she looked unhappy dropped between his hands, so he pulled her back into his arms. "You can just know that I spite the Tyrants of old by claiming magic they did not want us to have, not even my family! So we get to defy the big strong meanies who tried to hide themselves and magic for ages, and I get to spin cool swirly lights around my hand. Not that you can see the lights. Seeing the lights is a special human thing. Oh! I wonder if Oliver could give you mana sight. Would you like that? I think you would like that. Mana is so pretty, and you are pretty too, so I think you and mana would get along quite well."
He hummed to himself, smiling every time Tully gave another chirp of happiness, as he wandered through First Tower. He had been doing something, but he couldn't quite remember what it had been.
"Haleford," the Commander had appeared behind him without a sound, startling him. Tully responded to his small jump with a trill of alarm, and Henrietta suddenly looked torn between amusement and sheepishness.
"Sorry about that. I didn't mean to sneak up on you."
Clark's face brightened. He remembered what he was doing! "Can you check my skills? I believe I may have gotten something!"
"I suppose you would be due a congratulations," Henrietta said as she pulled out a rolled piece of paper. She held it up like she was comparing his face to a picture - Clark made sure to smile his best portrait smile - and a mix of dark red, deep violet, and creamy white mana seeped out of her fingers. It billowed out, creating a brief puff of magical smoke that touched Clark's nose, then un-puffed and twisted into letters that seeped through the paper from the back.
She spun the paper around, so he could read what was there.
Clark of House Haleford
Class: [Prince of Shining Streams] (Hero, Light, Water)
Level: 34
Major Stats: Recovery 10, Generation 9, Aura 10: (Appearance 1)
Regular Stats: Dexterity 4, Mind 2, Capacity 5, Skill 4, Power 10
Minor Stats: Strength 0, Resistance 0, Cohesion 3
Skills (3/4): [Unblemish] 29 ?Restore? ?Refine?
He was slightly sad for a moment that he hadn't leveled again, it had been a bit since his last one, but his brief disappointment there was more than offset by his Skills line. He'd gotten two new abilities! This was so fantastic!
"What do they do?" he asked.
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"I'm working on that one, just a moment..." she was fiddling with some more paper, and Clark was about to ask if she needed any help with it when she chose a smaller piece and started to use her skill again, before she paused. "Actually, could you start to use [Unblemish]? I don't need the subskills, but this will be easier with it actively being used."
"Of course!" That was an excellent idea! He wished he could have had it himself, but he understood why the Commander got it before him. Fortunately, using the skill was not terribly difficult, even without anything to use it upon, because Warrior Veeran had been such an excellent teacher.
"And here you go again," Henrietta presented the card with his skill description on it, and Clark eagerly read it all up.
[Unblemish]: With a touch, remake something as it ought to be. Wipe away wear and tear on an appropriate object, returning it to its ideal state, or improve slightly flawed items by smoothing over any imperfections. This skill focuses predominantly on visual appearance, focusing on anything which might mar the perceived quality of the object, but it is increasingly capable of applying more permanent fixes as its level grows.
?Refine?: Bring forth the hidden potential of that which is being made presentable, improving its quality.
?Restore?: Return capabilities which the spell's target had lost or used, returning it to its finest state in ways that are less obvious.
"It's an interesting pair," Henrietta noted as Clark finished reading the description. "Very push and pull, very Water. They'll also work together quite well, I imagine. But if you could focus on ?Refine?, I think it might be more useful for us."
"Of course!" Clark agreed. "Why?"
"Everything we're doing is handmade. If you can improve the quality of it, that's going to be a major help. But if you can also use it on our resources, that would be even better. If Oliver could ?Inlay? the skill and transmute, say, iron ore into pure iron? That would be incredible. If that works, I've got the seed of an idea for something that would be incredibly helpful."
"Ooh, does it work like that?" Clark started rereading the card, trying to see where she was getting her information.
"Probably," she explained. "I've had similar skills before. Transmutation is an incredibly useful ability, even with fairly small changes. With yours nominally focusing on bringing out 'hidden potential,' it might have some interesting uses."
"Do you think it could work on people?" Clark realized, "Improving us?"
"I suppose it is possible," Henrietta acknowledged, "It's certainly something which you can attempt, but I'm wary of trusting any magic, let alone a Hero-based subskill to only apply what we would unambiguously consider an 'improvement.' So I want you to practice on things other than us first, until you're certain that any changes you make, you could also unmake."
"Alright!" Clark couldn't wait to experiment with his new powers a bit. They might not be quite as awesome as [Water Cannon], but it sounded like they were way more helpful than that skill would have been, which made them even better in their own way. He also was really glad Henrietta had warned him that the skill might not be super safe for people, because that just wasn't something he'd considered. Did he trust his skills too much? But that was just why it was so great that Henrietta was his Commander, so she could help him figure these things out.
"Before you go, while I've got you here, I think these should be ready..." she shuffled through a pile of black next to her that Clark was just now realizing was ink, and pulled out a shirt and pants made out of ink. "Let me know if there are any adjustments I need to make to these. There's no real need for us to still be wearing these, unless you want to."
Clark hadn't minded the papyrus clothing Henrietta had made for them very much. They'd been a distinct improvement over the leather kilts they'd needed for a little while, but ink-clothes were so much better! "This is great! Thank you, Commander."
"Should have done it weeks ago. Go test out your skill on some iron, wood, all that. I look forward to seeing what you can do."
Clark happily rubbed Tully's chin and went off to find some things to practice on.
There was a lot of waiting, as he trained the sniffers how to take care of Charcoal Furnaces, and Clark had previously filled that time with skill practice, so he kept at the skill practice now that he had a new skill to practice. Practice, practice, practice. That was the way to improve, to just keep at it. This practice was particularly enjoyable, because he had a mug of tea in one hand, a foxy little friend in his lap, and such wonderful ambiance as he sat in the depths of a brilliant jungle, creatures of all shapes and sizes moving around him and bringing to bear such a glorious chorus of wilderness.
Sure, a lot of the creatures around him were dragons being hunted by inklings, but being able to enjoy the beautiful hunting dance between the two sides was its own form of ambiance.
Also around him was a number of things he'd tried to use his skills on, and after some talking with Jacob and Oliver, he had a pretty good idea how they each worked!
?Restore? seemed pretty simple. It could keep hot things hot, cold things cold, and let him turn ash into charcoal dust. Oliver said it was restoring the lost energy of what he targeted, so that was probably what was happening, but it made cooking so much easier! He just needed to be sure he wasn't holding onto anything that had been hot when using it, unless he wanted to heal some burns on his hands again. It also helped him recharge their fridge, something that otherwise only Jacob could really do, and it worked just fine! Better than fine if anything.
But while ?Refine? didn't help with the cooler, it was still the cooler skill, because it was the one that actually transformed things. Glass became clearer, wood got harder and its grain got tighter, paper became whiter and thinner, and iron ore became richer. Of course, it was also incredibly draining, and took a ton of mana, but Clark could deal with that! Oliver had also used a bunch of fancy words to describe why his skill seemed to hit an upper limit, but Clark had since found that he could ?Refine? something again if he'd waited long enough.
...Was that what Oliver had meant by 'stabilize before the skill works again?' That was probably what he meant! Oh, things made so much more sense now.
It seemed like Clark could, with enough time and effort, bring things to an exceptionally high quality, very pure state. It took a lot of time and mana, but Clark had lots of both, so he didn't really mind. He couldn't change the shape of things with it, though. A lumpy piece of ore would become a lumpy piece of iron, a thick stick would become a thick stick of charcoal, and other similarly fun things. Probably, Clark should try to get a skill to help make cuts and sanding better, Oliver sounded like he might like that.
But right now, he had other things to work on! Like this copper that Alyssa had brought back. It had taken her several days to find their new 'Coppermine,' and once she'd gotten back she had left again almost immediately with Henrietta to determine the best way to cart that metal a long, long way back to First Tower, but she had left several nuggets of weathered but mostly pure copper for them to work with!
Most of them were for Oliver, of course, but Clark had gotten one as well! He'd gotten it all shiny and turned into pure copper, but now he was trying to improve it... past pure copper. Oliver had told him some Magespeech words that were an incredible tongue-twister to say, though less of a tongue-twister than the names of some of the Houses whose names he'd had to memorize as a kid, but supposedly it meant 'bronze,' and while it wasn't a spell like what Oliver or Alyssa could do, might help him turn the bit of copper into bronze! Which was way better than copper in most of the ways they cared about right now. It wasn't as good with lightning, he remembered that bit of trivia from his lessons, because pure copper was needed for pure lightning, but they weren't trying to work with lightning right now. So he was trying to make it so that bronze would be the '?Refine?d' state of copper.
He'd even gotten a little thing to help him! It was a little clay bowl Clark was supposed to hold the copper nugget in while doing his chant, and the bowl would always light up, but then it would just interrupt his [Unblemish] and make nothing happen at all, but he kept practicing with it. So far, all that he had managed to do was make the copper shinier and shinier, but he was a human, and humans always won in the end. Whether they fought angels, demons, tyrants, dragons, storms, or death itself, humans would win.
So Clark liked his chances against a palm-sized bit of metal.
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Discord to ?Refine? the conversation potential beyond what the comments can manage.
Role: Intuition (Astronomer)
Major Stats: Mind, Recovery, Resistance
Minor Stats: Cohesion, Dexterity, Aura
Base Stats: 4 Mind, 3 Mind (imagination), 3 Mind (sight), 3 Resistance, 3 Recovery, 2 Skill (nighttime), 2 Capacity
does have rather... lofty thoughts.