A New Kind Of Grind

"You know how to make what?!" Rachel yelled.

Rachel was an Alchemist, and had once made a meager living brewing potions. Unfortunately, rising material costs and falling market prices for potions left her unable to make ends meet, and she turned to crime to put food on the table. Being able to go back to being an Alchemist, in some capacity, was pretty exciting for her, now that she had some guarantee that she wouldn't starve in the streets.

"Synthetic rubber from minerals, which, where I'm from, was called silicone," I said. "There were, of course, other varieties, but silicone is the one I've re-developed so far, so..." I shrugged. "Mostly I've only really used it for making better shoe soles, as well as some kitchen utensils."

"That kind of thing would be a godsend, and you only did that with it?!"

"Look, I'm an Alchemist, not a Blacksmith," I said, folding my arms. "Anything I wanted to make out of silicone, I would have to make a mold first, and before that, I'd have to have an idea for something to make, and what parts of that thing should be made of silicone. In comparison, Purpleheart Sweet is just leaving wet grain in a barrel and then tossing in a Stamina potion."

Rachel grunted, conceding the point.

"Anyhow," I continued, "if you have so many grand ideas for how to use silicone to make a killing, you are more than welcome to execute them. Talk to a Blacksmith about getting some molds and equipment made." It was very fortunate that, while instinctive access to tool blueprints was a cross-class synergy thing, there was nothing at all stopping a single-classed Blacksmith from just getting the blueprints from somewhere else and following those. As such, none of our Blacksmiths had to be Alchemists too in order to know how to make alembics and the like. "Set up a production line, and start making shit. As long as the iron production stays steady, we can do whatever we want."

"Got a few," Rachel said.

"Well, good luck," I said. "I'm gonna go check on Cecilia, and make sure she isn't regretting spending her day on this too hard."

---

After a bit of searching, I found that Cecilia had claimed one of the empty apartments, and was laid back in a hovering recliner that I guess she just owned for some reason, reading something on her phone- which was, itself, hovering above her face, in prime reading position.

"Am I interrupting anything?" I asked.

"Nah, come in," Cecilia said, but she did not take her eyes off her phone. "Reading some of those legends before I send 'em to you. I'm not a historian, precisely, but I'm enough of a scholar that I still know how to evaluate a source for veracity, so I'm gonna make sure you have all the relevant disclaimers."

"Fair enough," I said, letting the tent flap (we didn't have real doors yet, but we'd get there at some point, probably around the same time we replaced the bamboo and fabric with timber and stone) fall closed behind me. "Thanks for helping with the other big project, too."

"Thank you for involving me," Cecilia said. "Might already know this, but level-capped delvers get really bored. Delving... just doesn't matter anymore, y'know? You're never leveling up ever again, not even if you're a thousand-year elf. So... for me to have something worthwhile to do, despite that?" She smiled softly. "It's nice."

"Mm," I hummed. "...I can... understand that, in the abstract, but... I can't really relate to it, y'know? The stuff I want to do mostly doesn't involve goals or end points- I like making stuff, and you're only really done making stuff when, for some reason, you can't keep doing that. I don't aspire to go up, except for the instrumental purpose of making my life easier so I can do other stuff, so... I kinda can't imagine I'll give two shits when I eventually hit the ceiling."

"You weren't raised by delvers," Cecilia said. "But... well, I gotta say, that does sound nice, to know what you want to do without leveling up as your North Star. System research is nice, as something to just... really focus in on, but..." She sighed. "Maybe I'm just old, but I miss being young and getting enough XP from delves to level up. System research just isn't the same, you know?"

"Fair enough," I said. "Research is pretty intensely cerebral, and often inconclusive. A delve, though, is good exercise and can be finished in a day. I've done enough research and experimentation to know how frustrating it can be." Developing silicone had been a deeply frustrating experience, sped along only by the simple fact that I knew it was possible, and also involved sand. Well, that and having obscene amounts of magic for my level, which enabled a lot more dicking around in the lab.

"Mmn." Cecilia nodded wordlessly, and just kept reading for a good few seconds. "...So, do you plan on getting carried up to level cap? Or are you going to take the scenic route?"

"Depends on what's convenient," I said. "My main concern, with joining the Delver's Guild, was in being able to live comfortably without being a dockworker. But, well... now, I'm in charge of a micro-village of forty people, which is, right now, gearing up to produce enough food to feed itself without caring about external market conditions. So, like..." I shrugged. "Kinda feel like raiding dungeons is only really necessary if I decide I need to be higher-level."

Cecilia nodded again.

"But, well, I'm not foreclosing on the possibility that what I want will change at some point in my life," I continued. "I'm twenty five. I've got time."

"That you do, that you do," Cecilia said. "Well... Ah, I just realized- there are books in the Guild library that you should read before you do any delving. I'll send you a list."

"Oh?"

"Among other things, you're gonna want a grounding in the theory of wizardry," Cecilia said. "Learn exactly how it is spells do what they do, and how you might go about building your own spells. There's this one framework that's still being worked on, for translating potion effects into spells you can cast- you might be interested in that, what with the alchemy and all."

"That... is pretty interesting, actually," I said, nodding. "If only because it means, hypothetically, I might be able to develop a spell that has the effect of a magic refill potion, and therefore try and find some arrangement of variables that lets me get more magic from the spell than I spent casting it."

"A lot of people are trying to get that one to work," Cecilia said. "Unfortunately, the math just doesn't work out. Well, not yet, anyway."

"Fair enough. In that case, I just wanna get up to Level 5 and get Mystic Artificer so I can finally make my own enchanted stuff," I said. "Maybe get another Class Slot so I can take Blacksmith? Iunno, how hard is it to get more Class Slots?"

"There's two ways of doing it," Cecilia said. "The workaround is to hope you get a Slotless Class Unlock drop in a dungeon, but those are really rare, and chances are, you won't even get the Class you want. I mean, it won't be useless, you can definitely trade it to someone who does want it, but a Slotless Blacksmith Unlock is going to be something people want a lot more than a Slotless Reaver Unlock, and it's going to have a price tag to match."

"Okay, fair," I said. "What's the other, main method?"

"Class Slot Unlocks are also a possible dungeon drop," Cecilia said. "But. One, they're very rare, and two, the setup with the best chance of dropping them? Is a party of Level Threes delving a Level Six Dungeon Gate. Which, as you might be able to guess, is not the easiest thing in the world for them."

"...So they are incredibly expensive, even by the standards of delvers, who are obscenely rich," I said.

"Very much so, yes. Lemme put it to you this way: one delve's income would be enough for me to pay for twenty Purpleheart Collectives for a year, but I'd have to delve every day for two years if I wanted a chance at winning one of those things at auction. The worst thing about it is that, as far as we can tell, Class Slot Unlocks can be crafted... but only if you're a Level 15 Mystic Artificer, which nobody in the goddamn world is even capable of reaching." She paused. "Well, aside from the wood elves, apparently, but they're not selling."

"Wait, what?" I asked. "What's this about wood elves?"

"Yeah, on Azel, right next to Vega, there's the Red Forest," Cecilia said. "Full of wood elves. Vega is pretty much always at war with them, but it's mostly just low-level raiding. The wood elves don't raid in Vega very often, but when they do, it's a big raid, and it escalates into a real war pretty quick. And between elves generally living for a thousand years, and the wood elves in particular having a lot of combat classes per warrior, the wood elves can do a lot of damage without a lot of people."

"Huh," I said. "Do... do the wood elves have other neighbors who they aren't constantly fighting?"

"If they do, I don't remember them," Cecilia said. "Honestly, I don't know much about the wood elves, because nobody knows much about the wood elves. The high elves and the dark elves are a lot better-known, but honestly, I haven't really looked into them all that much. I've mentioned I'm not a geographer, right?"

"Right, you're a system researcher," I said, nodding. "And I'd guess you only really give a shit about the wood elves because you know they have some special mojo that you kinda wanna study."

"Glad you understand me."

"You're not that complicated."

Cecilia barked a short laugh at that.

"Anyway," I said, "I think I'm gonna go to the library and get those books you recommended. Thanks for the help."

"You're welcome."

"And if you ever wanna try that 'making out' thing again..."

"After I finish this book."