The Way Ahead

Edwin had left his notifications on free display in case he got an Alchemy level or something, but he had not been expecting a Refining level-up. It had been this strange, elusive target among his Skills and every time he thought he might have a grasp on what would make it tick... it hadn’t triggered, but all of a sudden it just leveled? What the heck did he do? Was it the attempt to concentrate his own mana? Including it in the potion?

He pulled up his Almanac entry on the Skill, to see if there were any hints there as to what he’d done differently.

Almanac Entry: The Refining Skill

Description:

Better. Faster. Stronger.

Isolate and improve desirable qualities

Strength of refinement improves with level.

RefiningSources

[Produced by the combination of the Practical Alchemist Path (PracticalAlchemistPath) and the Purify skill.]

RefiningLeveling

[Absolutely no clue. Attempting to refine a minority component of a substance didn’t level

it, attempting to make a leaf more green didn’t level it, and trying to make stone harder didn’t either.]

RefiningEvolutions

[]

Refining is an interesting Skill in that I have no clue what it does. It seems to be alchemy-related, but so far it has yet to level despite numerous attempts to figure out what it affects. See Experiment Series A

RefiningNotes

[This Skill is my bane. I hate it so much.

Oh hey, that’s how you edit an entry. I’ll leave this up for now.]

RefiningCombinations

[]

RefiningTestIndex

[A-Series:

Testing the parameters by which the Refining skill will level, and accordingly, what it does

RefiningTestA1

RefiningTestA2

….]

Hmm. No… nothing new or interesting there. Did he finally figure out what ‘desirable qualities’ were, then? Did it help him connect his potions to the System, maybe? Did trying to boost his Attributes via potioneering mean that he’d finally hit upon what the Skill did?

He’d need to have a word with whoever called it ‘Refining’ instead of… instead of… Attribution or whatever, if that were the case. Not Attribution, that was a terrible name. But he wasn’t some strange quasi-omniscient System, he didn’t have to come up with a better alternative to recognize that Refining was a terrible name if it did what he thought it did.

…he was probably wrong about what it did, didn’t it? He needed to figure out a series of tests to figure out what the Skill’s limits were, but how would he do that?

Ah well, problem for future-Edwin. Now, he just needed to focus on this potion so he didn’t screw it up and hope his distraction hadn't already done so.

Edwin fed a trickle of mana to the tip of his finger, pulling once more on the long-neglected Basic Mana Manipulation instead of the more streamlined Mana Infusion. After all, he wasn’t trying to Infuse anything after all, just… bring his mana to bear. With a final tug, he succeeded, and he looked on in satisfaction at the end of his index finger. There, the flavorless bead of magic hung, shining to his mana sense like a drop of water ready to fall off. But, he knew, it wouldn’t fall. It wasn’t going anywhere until he let it. And before then, he had a job to do.

Calling on Refining didn’t do anything. No surprise there, though he’d been hopeful that now his Refining had actually leveled he might be able to contort it into being an active Skill, like what he’d done with Firestarting and Packing. Alas, it wouldn’t be that easy. Refining still required he use the tools he had on hand, and that meant taking his drop of mana and compressing it as much as possible into a single bead of magic.

Basic Mana Manipulation was up to the task, if barely. It felt like trying to make a snowball with a teaspoon, but he had time. He could focus. He kept concentrating on the tiny pinpoint of mana, pushing it bit by bit smaller and smaller, trying to concentrate it into… something. He was acting on instinct and hoping it was the System giving him a nudge, basically.

As he continued, it kept fighting him, and Edwin had to give it every last bit of strength he could muster behind his Skills. Perception was tuned to its max in Basic Mana Sense, and he just kept pushing, and pushing…

Edwin felt like a mad scientist and he loved it. Working in a small, cramped lab with a thunderstorm raging outside, surrounded by bubbling brews? This was the best. He was concentrating raw power at his literal fingertips, and all he needed now was a good maniacal laugh timed with a lightning strike and he’d be set.

Trying to accomplish that wasn’t worth the distraction, though, so he pushed on. As he continued to push on the bead of energy, he began to feel imperfections of a sort. Or not really imperfections. Just… well, refinements he could make, by excluding aspects of his mana.

As he did so, the drop of mana brightened as it shrank, until eventually every last refinement he could make was complete, and a tiny star of mana shone at the tip of his finger.

Edwin grinned tiredly as he looked at his accomplishment. A tiny star of magic was at his fingertips, and it had clearly taken a lot out of him. He was actually hungry, for goodness’ sake. He’d eaten barely a week ago, he shouldn’t be feeling hungry yet. When was the last time he’d drank? That he was less sure about, but it should have still been at least a few days before his mouth was as dry as it currently felt.

Still, if regular food and drink was what it took to make this, it was worthwhile.

The tip of his finger descended into a beaker of sinbalyne extract, and the mote vanished into the solution, providing the lavender liquid an almost glittery quality. He grinned at the sight, but also the sensation that accompanied it.

He could still feel the pure mana connected to him, and he could feel the aspects present in the sinbalyne. He could still Refine the potion, use his Refined mana to direct how his creations turned out, even after releasing them. This was great.

Someone was saying something to him, but Edwin waved them off. He was really close to figuring this out, he could tell. And he didn’t want to break his concentration and risk having the connection he felt to his potion be broken. No, that wouldn’t do at all. He needed to keep working.

He pushed his Perception into the potion, feeling Alchemy come alongside him and point out the flaws in the mixture, the ways in which the unrefined plant made for a suboptimal elixir. He could fix it, though. He knew he could.

His mana swirled around like a swarm of distant stars, dancing at his command. He felt where there was a bit of pollutant in the sap, from a slight excess in the soil. Perhaps the pH was off or something. Whatever was the cause, it didn’t matter. Edwin could fix it.

The stars swam back and forth, surrounding and attacking the imbalance. It broke into pieces, and then into mana. Edwin grinned. It seemed that not only did Refining reduce the number of impurities in a potion, but it turned those impurities into strength. No wonder it was an evolution of Purify.

Ah, there was the chemical responsible for sinbalyne’s painkilling aspect. Edwin couldn’t identify the molecule, but its purpose was clear thanks to Alchemy. In another potion, he would want to enhance that aspect of the potion, but not here. Right now, he wanted to distill everything into the plant’s ability to interact with Stamina and other Attributes. Nothing else mattered. Heck, ideally he could even get rid of the fact the plant interfered with Stamina, maybe even spin it into an ability to boost the Attribute, but he was getting ahead of himself. For now, just try and isolate the part of the solution that interfaced with Stamina.

It was tricky to find, really. Not because it was hidden so much as because Edwin didn’t realize what he was looking for until he’d found almost everything else. How long did it take? He had no clue. Probably hours, but he wasn’t keeping track of the time. All external stimuli had been relegated to ‘deal with later’ status. For all he knew, the thunderstorm might have ended by now. He wasn’t looking and risking that it might break his concentration.

The fact the substance interfaced with Stamina wasn’t so much an aspect of the potion, he’d found. Rather, it was what he was interacting with. The mana in the potion was capable of destroying and converting parts of the solution just fine, but what made it all so responsive was that the solution itself was helping him. He was controlling the entire solution with his mana, not just the energy itself. It was that interaction that allowed sinbalyne to interfere with Stamina. If he were to bet, it probably also interacted with Health as well. It was simply compatible with Attributes.

Did that mean he might be able to use Basic Mana Manipulation to control his Health?

No, bad Edwin. Think about that later.

Once he’d figured out that revelation, it was relatively simple, if a bit tedious, to drag the solution off to one side, pulling along all of the potion which Health directly interacted with, and leave all the excess behind. At this point, he’d converted a lot of the sinbalyne into mana and so had a lot of substance to work with. Had he tried this before eliminating contaminants, he wouldn’t be able to do nearly as clean of a separation, both because there would be a lot of additional things to try and pull free but because he’d have a lot less mana to work with. Sort of like trying to dig out the foundations for a house with a hand shovel.

He’d run through the process several times, separating the sinbalyne aspects that he wanted and discarding the rest. Now, he had a small thimbleful of pure mana-attracted solution, and several stages of waste. Okay, that stage was done. Now, he just needed to…

“Edwin!” the voice cut through his focus not because of its volume but because of the associated smack.

“Ow! What was that for?” He nearly dropped the precious Refined liquid in surprise, but after the heart-stopping moment, managed to save it without losing so much as a drop, “Actually, don’t answer yet. Give me a minute.”

He carefully set the container down on the counter and encapsulated the entire thing in a solid apparatite container. He wasn’t going to risk anything with that. It was tricky, as the entire time he had to ignore whatever it was that Inion was trying to say. He’d get to her, this was more important. He gently set the solid block of apparatite down, and turned around to see his friend.

“Yes, Inion?” he asked, “What is it?”

“Drink!”

“Oh come on,” he complained, “You know I don’t need to drink water every day. I could avoid drinking water for a month and a half without dying.”

“Doesn’t mean you should! You know you need to drink water every week.”

“And?”

“It’s been two!”

“Two… what, weeks? Please, I drank like… four days ago?”

“When you came in here, maybe. But after you were staring at your finger for a week and then poking at your potion for the last two days, it has been two weeks exactly since you had anything to drink.” She shoved his water bottle in his hands, “Now drink.”

Edwin leveled a glare at the fey, “Come on, I know it hasn’t been that long.” He did drink from the canteen, though. He was no more hydrated now than he had been after he finished initially Refining his mana, and his mouth was quite dry, “You don’t need to pull my leg”

“I’m not,” she said, gesturing outside. “Take a look for yourself if you want.”

Edwin played along, humoring the girl, poking his head out to see…

Oh huh. They were still in the midst of endless grasslands when he started. Now, though, there were some sparse trees scattered about. Not a forest by any reckoning, but endlessly more than what he had been accustomed to seeing. Nevermind that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and that it was apparently morning, which meant Edwin had spent at least a full day in his lab.

“The dead awaken!” Lefi called out, “Well, not dead, but you certainly did not respond to anything we attempted to expose you to.”

Edwin stretched as he dropped off the carriage. His muscles were unusually bunched up, which if it had been a week, would make sense.

He yawned, more out of a sense of obligation than actual tiredness, “Was it really a week?”

“Give or take a day, yes. You seemed… focused.” The man withdrew a cloth-wrapped package from one of his belt pouches, tossing it to Edwin. Hm. He’d grown inured to the sight of seeing something be retrieved that was bigger than the container it came from, but this was perhaps the first time he saw something that was bigger than the opening of the container as well.

“Guess I was,” Edwin admitted. He easily snagged the bundle from the air and unwrapped it, revealing a pastry that Almanac and Alchemical Analysis told him was filled with some kind of meat.

He took a bite and nodded in appreciation. It was actually good, which meant that none of his traveling companions could have made it. He, of course, was banned from cooking for Lefi, Yathal, and Kyni until they figured out if Arcadian Elixir was hazardous. Generally, he disliked what they made for much the same reasons, though he’d usually still make a bit of food for himself whenever Lefi or Kyni hunted something.

But that this meat pastry actually tasted good to him meant…

“We passed through a town?”

Lefi nodded, “A few days hence, there was a delicious town with a tiny little bakery.”

He frowned, “A tiny little town with a delicious bakery, and we all enjoyed what we got, and thus determined you might like some as well once you had finished!”

Edwin nodded appreciatively. Whatever Skill nonsense was going on meant that the pastry was still warm, and it was just what he needed to help take his hunger away at the moment. Whatever levels the baker had clearly were more than enough to surpass Arcadian Elixir’s effects, and Edwin was grateful to have something that tasted so good that he didn’t have to make himself.

“So,” he asked around a mouthful of food, “What else did I miss?”

Lefi thought for a moment, “Nothing you might find relevant to your adventure. The thunderstorm persisted for some time, however since that time we have experienced more overcast and sunny days. Yathal has been getting a bit bored without your training to watch, but that is all.”

“Yeah! More hitting!” the bloodthirsty little scamp cheered from his position riding Kyni, and Edwin just barely managed to restrain himself from sticking his tongue out at the boy. It wouldn’t be proper, he told himself.

…and his mouth was still full of meat pastry.

He finished scarfing down the food in a couple more minutes- the wonderful flavor leaving him far, far too soon- and took another deep drink from his canteen. He handed the cloth back to Lefi, who flashed a Skill and cleaned the rag in the blink of an eye before he tucked it back into his belt pouch.

“What magnificent creation have you come upon now, my friend? Surely after a week of work you must have something truly special, no?”

Edwin shrugged, “I’m not entirely sure, honestly. I was just following my gut, and was trying to concentrate and include mana in a potion. I’d finally gotten Refine to level, see. So I wanted to follow that instinct as much as I could just to see what would happen.”

“And? Surely, the great and mighty Edwin Maxlin, Alchemist-Errant extraordinaire, alchemical revolutionary must have some sort of magnificent result?”

“That’s… not how science works,” Edwin sheepishly admitted, “If I did make anything, it would probably be really minor. All that it was was a proof of concept. Though admittedly Skill leveling makes it sort of a directed leveling… huh. What does make Skills level for knowledge-based abilities? If I do something right, does that level it? Does the universe automatically tell me when I’m doing something right? That… doesn’t seem like it’s true given what was going on in Panastalis… anyway! I’m getting distracted. Basically, don’t expect anything too special. But you might know better than I what it is, given your Common Knowledge skill.”

“Did you not obtain it?”

Edwin shrugged, “You were there when I tried. But no, my Identify upgrade just lets me see what things are made of. Useful in some situations… I really should use it more, but I just have so much stuff to do it can be pushed off to the back of my mind a lot. Anyway! I’m getting distracted again. Let me grab the result.”

He ducked into his lab to Inion’s vocal complaint, “Don’t you go back in there before you sleep!”

“I’ll be just a minute! I promise!”

“I will be making you fall asleep in a minute, young man!”

“You’re not my mother!”

“Stop making me act like it, then!”

“I’m just going to show Lefi this and get him to Identify it. That’s all, I promise!” Edwin protested.

He was really good at avoiding Inion’s ‘attacks’ at this point, which meant even with her interposed between him and his lab bench, he was able to sneak around and snag the crystal block containing his precious potion like she wasn’t even there.

He pulled the potion back to Lefi, who took one look at the fluid- eyes flashing with Identify tinged with a sort of bluish-red, the color of Common Knowledge- and let out a low whistle.

“High-grade Stamina catalyst, according to this.”

“What?”

“Not an alchemist, so I don’t know much. But I’m pretty sure this is what you’d need to interact with Attributes such as Stamina. It is, of course, nothing less than I would expect from the brilliant Edwin!”

“Why do people keep saying I’m smart?” Edwin minorly complained, “But that doesn’t explain why it would be ‘high-grade,’ not as a prototype. Unless maybe my Skills compensated for it, now that this interacts with the System in some way?” he wondered aloud, “Man, what does my Refining skill look like now, I wonder?”

He started to turn his attention to his Status, but before he could even fully formulate the thought, his sleep-deprived brain not so much sluggish as unruly, a presence slammed into him.

“Minute’s up!” Inion descended upon him like an avenging angel, a Skill forming in her throat. In a moment of panic, he recognized it as Restful Song, which would absolutely knock him out in no time flat. Unless maybe his Adaptive Defense was against sleeping? Would the Skill still affect him?

“Wait, wait! No!” he protested, “Just let me look at my notifications fir-”

Darkness.