Ember of Invention

Lindle, Humphrey, and Thalia sat back against the tree, watching the white mammoth corpse burn, flames licking into the sky. The miasma had been consumed quickly enough, but the mammoth had a lot of bark left to feed the flames. Thalia could have dismissed the spell, but no one voiced a suggestion to do so. Between evidently being in white mammoth territory and the undead no predators would approach the area for a while, and since wildfires were practically impossible to start in the Glacial Reach, they all simply sat and enjoyed the moderate increase in warmth.

Several minutes passed before Lindle broke the silence. “I’m sorry, this is all my fault.”

Thalia’s gaze shifted from the corpse, eyeing Lindle. “What? No it’s not.”

“It was my idea to wait until the mammoth was dead. It was my idea for you to cast that spell. It was my idea to even come out here in the first place.” Lindle shrugged. “You got hurt. I don’t see how it’s not my fault.”

“Well maybe consider that those are all ideas we agreed to? The barkhide spell worked, and so did your artifact.” She thumbed her amulet. “You weren’t being stupid, unless you think I’m dumb enough to do whatever you say regardless if it made sense or not.”

Lindle looked away, and Thalia hmphed. “That’s what I thought.”

“Then why was it so close? This is supposed to be easy, people go hunting out in the Reach all the time, we picked an apprentice-tier quest and prepared for it for hours, but that still happened.” Lindle asked, pointing to the mammoth.

Humphrey sighed. “You guys realize it’s always been this dangerous out here right?” When Lindle and Thalia looked at him, he continued. “Neither of you have left the grove before without someone from a higher tier watching out for you. You guys know the land and the monsters, but you don’t know the danger, not really. That’s fine, it’s actually the point, it’s why the hunters always travel in large groups, we know how to survive out here, that’s always been our first priority.” Humphrey gestured to the three of them. “The real difference now is we’re acting like adventurers now, not hunters. We’re a small group of three, not a full party of at least ten. That’s why the crazy bastards do it, the fewer people, the more risk they take, the faster they level up.”

Lindle pursed his lips. The Reach had always been something he knew was dangerous, but he was realizing now that it hadn’t ever been something he had ever been truly afraid of. Even when his life had been in danger all the way back down in the dungeon, there had been the security in knowing that there were stronger people around to rely on. It hadn’t been until he had seen Thalia get seriously hurt that he really grasped that taking the adventurer approach meant facing danger head-on, maximum risk for maximum reward, and not just for him, but for his friends too.

Lindle opened his mouth, but Humphrey cut him off before he could say anything. “I didn’t say that so you could throw yourself a pity party. Even in hunting groups or during the migration people still die, you just can’t prepare for everything.“ Humphrey rolled his eyes. “I can’t speak for Thalia, but even if you didn’t realize all that, what I’m saying is I still did when I agreed to all this.”

Thalia spoke up, looking contemplative. “I probably don’t understand to the same degree as Humphrey, but my grandma’s said similar things to me before. I knew this was going to be dangerous, I just trust both of you enough to take that risk.”

“I… thanks, guys,” Lindle responded lamely after several seconds, not fully sure what to say but grateful nonetheless.

Thalia patted his shoulder. “If it makes you feel better, there’s no way you could’ve known that the mammoth would reanimate that fast.” Her face scrunched up in confusion. “It shouldn’t be possible for something that large and high level to absorb enough uncontrolled necromantic energy that quickly after death.”

“Oh?” Lindle questioned, happy to change the subject. “I mean, I know wild undead flood an area with miasma to raise corpses, there were a lot of skeletons around that were destroyed before we arrived, maybe they were still putting enough into the area to raise the corpse faster? Or maybe the mammoth absorbed a bunch of it before it died so it didn’t need a lot of time? It had been fighting for a really long time.”

Thalia shook her head. “I’m not an expert on necromancy by any means, but that’s not really how it works. You can’t absorb miasma while you’re alive from wild undead like that, that kind of thing needs a necromancy class or magic, and when an undead is destroyed, most of its miasma dissipates pretty fast.” She hummed and tapped her chin. “Maybe if the necromantic energy animating the original members of the horde was a lot stronger than expected?”

“Wouldn’t that mean those skeletons would have been higher level though? They didn’t have any flesh, so they had to be part of the original horde.” Lindle asked.

“Hm, not really. The level an undead is raised at is usually gated by the quality of the body, especially for wild undead. Everything becomes easier, leveling up, speed of reanimation, stat growth, if you have powerful quality miasma on hand, but you can’t just make a level 20 from a level 5 corpse right away. If that’s what happened here, then whatever created the miasma must have been pretty high level, and it’s been mostly unused animating a ton of low-level corpses.”

“Not an expert, huh?” Humphrey said, raising an eyebrow.

Thalia crossed her arms defensively. “What? I don’t even know any true necromancy spells. It’s just kind of interesting, so I paid attention during lessons. Undead have their own kind of weird ecosystem.”

Humphrey shrugged with a smile. “Not going to complain. Sounds handy to know.”

“If the origin point is going to have more powerful miasma than expected, does that change anything about our plan?” Lindle asked.

“Well… I guess we shouldn’t let anything living nearby die if we can, because it’ll reanimate really quickly, or at the very least destroy the body right away, though it being more powerful might actually have worked in our favor, I imagine it would have been easier for everything near the origin point to sense it and then run before the skeletons found them.” That did explain to Lindle why there weren’t any other zombies this far away, only skeletons. Thalia thought about it a little more before continuing. “I guess the main thing is that it’s going to be a bit tougher for me to purify the origin point, I’ll need to make the spell stronger than expected.”

“I know something that would probably help with that,” Humphrey said. They looked at him, seeing his eyes were looking down at the empty space ahead of him. “I mean, leveling up is most of the point of taking quests like this after all.”

Lindle started as he suddenly noticed the tingle at the back of his mind. He groaned and put a hand to his face. They just killed a bunch of monsters and a partial zombie of a peak apprentice tier, and he was only level 3, of course he had leveled up.

Lindle raced to pull up his status.

-You have leveled up! Gained 2 levels in the [Artificer] Class. (lvl 5)

-Stat gains : +2 Str; +2 Con; +3 Dex; +4 Int; +2 Res; +1 Cha.

His eyes widened, feeling the raising of his upper limits as he took in the double level. Killing the skeletons must have taken him to the edge of level 4 and the mammoth must have pushed him all the way over to 5. Even more important however, was the new skill he had gotten.

New Skill: Ethos Ignition

-Ethos Ignition (Skill)

Ignite your Ethos to do more than mold harvested Ethos. Flames created from your Ethos will be able to force separate Ethos to combine.

Lindle immediately pulled the new lever in his mind as soon as the knowledge he could do so entered his mind. In a similar manner to when he used [Artifice Crafting], Lindle’s Ethos flowed from his core to his hands, but instead of forming a layer around his skin, it moved out of his hand into the space above his palms, where it suddenly ignited. A pair of large blue flames flared to life in his hands, making the flames he could summon when casting [Produce Ember] look like small candles. Lindle smiled as he felt the flames, an innate understanding telling him that they were made as much of him as any other part of his body. He made the flames dance around his fingers.

Thalia raised both hands as she let out a whoop. “Two levels! How many did- whoa.” She paused as looked at the flames in Lindle’s hands. “What is that?”

“I got a new skill!” Lindle said cheerfully, and then he blinked. “Wait, you can see these? They’re made of Ethos.” Thalia hadn’t been able to see when he was using [Artifice Crafting]. He looked at Humphrey, who nodded to confirm that he could see it too.

“Yeah… wow… It looks kind of strange, but it’s kind of pretty.” She waved a hand from around it and tilted her head curiously. “It’s not hot though.”

“Really?” Lindle buried his hands down in the snow and watched as the flames passed through the snow without getting snuffed out or any of the snow melting. “Weird… I’ve got to test this out when we get back.”

Another thought compared to Lindle. “Wait, did you both get two levels too?” Both Humphrey and Thalia nodded. “But you’re both like 7 levels above me.”

“If you just hit level 5, then 8.” Humphrey corrected.

“If you both got enough XP for that, I should have gotten more than 2 levels.”

Humphrey snickered. “You don’t have a combat class, what did you expect?”

Lindle sat there, having completely forgotten somehow that being able to gain XP from crafting meant that he got less from killing monsters.

He tried to put his head in his hands again, only to startle himself as he had forgotten his hands were on fire. Humphrey’s snickers devolved into full-blown laughter.