Lindle froze. Maybe it was he still was riding on the adrenaline Madam Holly’s joke had caused, but for the first time, Lindle seriously drew on his Charisma stat, allowing for the increased self-awareness and control to work towards keeping his face blank, activating [Flow] to give himself more time to thin-.

  Madam Holly snapped her fingers, startling him and breaking his concentration right before he began using his Aura points. She rolled her eyes. “By the spirits you’re jumpy, your hearts about to jump out of your chest. I can’t say you don’t have good instincts when it comes to deception though,” she gave him a wry smile, “most people need a few tries before they figure out how to use their Charisma to do anything but avoid stumbling over their own words in front of their childhood sweetheart, good, that’s good. You’ll need a lot more points before you can start fooling me of course. I wonder if I should warn my granddaughter that you’ve got a talent for lying though.”

  Lindle hesitated before releasing his hold over his stats and Aura. There wouldn’t be any point in attempting direct deception on someone as perceptive as Madam Holly. The fact that she could apparently hear his heartbeat was a bit terrifying, but even now, she didn’t feel overtly threatening.

  “I… um… me and Thalia aren’t like that..”

  She rolled her eyes again. “Yes Lindle, I know. Fine, I’ll be straightforward. I’m here about the magic items you gave Thalia.”

  ”Ah… did she show you them then?”

  “No, but like I said, you’d need to be much higher level to hide something from me, especially if you lived under my roof. At first, I was happy not to comment about the wand, I figured it may have been an enchanted item you got from that dungeon or those adventurers you stick around, an expensive present but harmless, but when she tried hiding that amulet last night, I got curious. Imagine my surprise when a status screen appeared when I picked it up.”

  Lindle raised an eyebrow. “You went through Thalia’s things? What, when she was sleeping?”

  ”Yes,” Madam Holly replied shamelessly, breezing past the topic. “I’m no mage, but I’ve never seen an enchanted item like those things before. I also got to thinking about the timing, appearing right after you got your class. If it was something you found or bought, it wouldn’t make sense to wait until after you received your class, it also didn’t help that I seemed to recognize scales belonging to a certain zmey, that tells me you probably made them. They certainly aren’t anything an alchemist could craft, but that would mean you didn’t pick alchemist as your class as you lead me to believe.”

  She sighed and straightened up. “At that point, I realized whatever I was looking at, if I was going to fully understand instead of making assumptions, I’d need to ask you directly.” She gave him a look. “I’m not going to force you to tell me anything you wish to keep private Lindle, but if it’s going to involve my granddaughter, I’d like to know.”

  Lindle hesitated. He didn’t have a lot of experience when it came to keeping secrets, but he knew it became harder to keep the more people knew it, but out of everyone he knew, Madam Holly was probably the last person on his list of people that he trusted that still didn’t know. He wasn’t really doing a good job of keeping it from anyone who knew him anyway, so if anything else, he might as well get her help in keeping it from those who didn’t. Most importantly, she was the most powerful person he knew, and if anyone could help him if his class did land him in trouble, she could. Mind made up, Lindle nodded.

  ”Yeah, you’re right. It’s not an enchanted item, it’s called an artifact. I made it using my class.”

  Madam Holly’s expression shifted. “Really? No offensive Lindle, that ‘Lotus Thorn’ seemed interesting, Thalia certainly seems to love it, but it didn’t seem like an ancient weapon of legend.”

  ”You’ve heard of artifacts?”

  ”A long time ago, yes. I’m no scholar mind you, but they crop up from time to time in dungeons and word travels far when they do.”

  ”Well, yeah, that makes sense. Apparently mine are a lot weaker because I’m an apprentice-tier artificer. But it won’t always stay that way. You said yourself they attract a lot of attention, and if people heard that someone had a class that allowed them to make them…”

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  ”Certain folk would do a lot of things to get their hands on you while you’re weak…” Madam Holly finished her sentence with a scowl. “I can certainly think of some people that wouldn’t mind attacking Glacerhine to get their own personal artifact generator.”

  Lindle winced. “Yeah, so that’s why I’ve tried to keep it quiet. Rosato told me with all the Soarian adventurers coming in for the raid, if word got back to certain nobles I’d be in trouble.”

  Madam Holly laughed harshly. “Soarian nobles would want you, true enough, but they would probably be least of your troubles. They’d at least want to keep it discreet. Some groups would simply try a full-on assault of the village.”

  ”What? Really?”

  “Well, if the stories I’ve heard are true, a good artifact can be enough to decide the course of a faction war. A Veteran with an artifact suited to them could defeat a high-level Hero in most circumstances. That’s a very high gap to not just close, but utterly surpass. There are a lot of monsters out there who would do a lot for that kind of power.”

  Lindle shifted uncomfortably. He hadn’t considered the idea that his class could potentially put the entire village in danger. “Oh. Well, I was planning on leaving Glacerhine after the dungeon raid, so you don’t have to worry for too much longer.”

  ”Huh? Lindle, I’m not going to stop you if going on the Path is what you want, but I’m not going to push you out, or let anyone else do so.” She shook her head. “Despite everything else, you’re one of us, and we have ways of protecting our own.”

  “I… appreciate that.” Lindle looked away before changing the subject. “Anyways, I unlocked the prerequisites for artificer when I was in that dungeon, and there’s probably a lot more down there to learn about my class, so the plan’s been to get strong enough down there that I’m not a liability.”

  “Yes, you ran into a Veteran tier monster quite early on if I recall. You’ll be hard-pressed to survive just staying out of the way with that amount of power being thrown around.” It said something about the way she thought that she didn’t bother suggesting he not go, even without the additional context of Ethos and the doors only he could access, she assumed he was going into the dungeon. “I assume that’s why you’ve registered at the adventurer's outpost?”

  “Yeah, I actually got two levels back to back, reached level 5 yesterday. Thalia and Humphrey got a level each too.”

  “Quests are one of the fastest ways to build up XP in a hurry, but levels aren’t everything, you don’t want to level too fast and have a weak foundation influence your options when you pass over to the next tier.” She mused.

  Lindle nodded. “I’ve been getting better when it comes to crafting fast, and I can get money and XP from quests, but for everything else, I wanted to ask if we could resume my training. Feats, Techniques, mentoring, I think you know when it comes to everything there you’re my best option.”

  Madam Holly smiled. “It’s not often anyone I’ve trained asks to come back after I’ve let them go. I figured you’d slow things down once you’d locked in your choice as a crafter, not speed things up. It helps now that I know a bit more about what your actual build is going to be, even if I don’t know how a class that allows you to make artifacts even works.”

  “It’s kind of complicated to explain, the long and short of it is that I can extract some kind of energy from any kind of magical material and shape it into items.” Lindle slid off the Hotpond Band from his arm and handed it to Madam Holly.

  While she looked over it curiously, he continued. “It’s called Ethos, you’ve heard of artifacts, have you heard of Ethos before?” He looked at her face for any hint of recognition, but she shook her head.

  “I’ve traveled to a lot of places, but I’ve never heard of any kind of energy called Ethos before, but like I said, I’m no scholar.” She slid the band onto her wrist and gestured to her half-full tea, watching as it rapidly heated up, filling with bubbles. “Oh, how fun!” She picked up the cup and drank the boiling liquid with a satisfying sigh.

  “...But yeah,” Lindle spoke after a moment, “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of limits to what I can make, it just depends on what materials I can get my hands on.”

  She hummed. “That seems broad enough that I can’t think of many things I can teach you that directly synergize with your class, but on the other hand,” her laidback smile took on a hint of a vicious edge, “that just means I don’t have to work around any demanding class requirements or Skills. If I think about these things as mini Skills, It’s almost the other way around. If I teach you a Technique or lead you to a Feat, you can make an item custom-made to work with it, can’t you?”

  Lindle didn’t like the way she was rubbing her hands together, but he nodded anyway. “Yeah, I hadn’t thought about it that way, but I guess you're right. I’m still working my way up to weapons though,” He added quickly, “It gets more straining to craft with size, I need a few more levels before I can get any real practice making weapons.”

  She shrugged. “You’re quite attached to those potions of your anyways, you do well enough with hand-to-hand that keeping your hands free in order for them isn’t an issue. In fact,” she snapped her fingers, “Oh yes, you’d be quite well suited for a style an old friend of mine showed me a long time ago, quite the grueling one though, but I’m sure you can handle it.” She went back to rubbing her hands together, cackling as she fixed him with a far too eager gaze. “You, young man, have a lot of work to do, but don’t worry, this old lady will be right there with you.”

  Lindle sighed.