NOVEL NEXT Chapter 55: Building Character
“Even as water carves monuments of stone, so do our thoughts shape our character.”
Hugh B Brown
We had done another two jumps over the last fortnight and this meant that I was now sitting on 88 points of Clarity. I suppose I could have insisted on them helping me every day but they also had jobs to do, food to catch, salt to sell, tapestry to weave and whatever it was Grandfather did all day. I was not in too much of a rush but at the same time, I was on a deadline. I only had 1 month left now. In the end, it was not so much that I couldn’t have insisted, it was simply that the weather had been pretty poor for most of the last fortnight with stormy weather hitting the outer cliffs of the island most days.
It made me appreciate how sheltered we were within the caldera. I had never particularly noticed it before seeing the clouds whizz across the sky I had simply thought the weather in our town was merely magical, a new part of a new world. Now that I understood, I realised it was not simply magical but a demonstration of how sheltered we were within the caldera and it made me wonder more about the world and its winds. They seemed incredibly strong to seed the clouds skidding across the sky, although I guess being in the middle of the sea there wasn’t a lot to slow the winds down. Either way they weren't something I wanted to fight with when falling off a cliff.
I had spent nearly all of my time indoors unable to go outside for two reasons now. One due to both the weather and two I was still pretending I no longer existed. It had given me more time to practice levelling some of the skills I had been neglecting. The ones that required me to sit still for longer and longer amounts of time. I levelled time sense and meditation and noticed that as my meditation level rose to level 36 my Sense Mana and Expel Mana both also rose alongside it to Level 36 as well. It appeared that some of my higher tier skills were built on top of the lower-tier skills levels. Not all of them obviously but there was clearly some sort of skill tree system at work here.
T1 Meditation Level 36
T2 Sense Mana Level 36
T3 Expel Mana Level 36
It would appear that my meditation level was holding back my progress on the higher tier skills using magic so I used some of my indoor time to continue to practice it in the hopes of raising it higher.
Another skill tree of sorts I thought I had found was
T1 Listening Level 29
T2 Eavesdrop Level 27
T3 Echolocation Level 26
If I wanted to develop some time of sonar-like skill much as dolphins have to see under the water I would have to continue to level these skills. I didn’t want to be meeting any goblin sharks anytime soon. Also, I was still wondering how it had noticed my arrival in the water so quickly. Did it sense food through heat, blood, electromagnetic signals or the mana that I had been producing? Whatever it was I needed to work more on my stealth skills as well. So hide and seek with Des and Sinis was back on the table although I had not managed to level up yet.
The skill tree idea didn’t seem to work perfectly though as Tier 2 Linguistics was Level 16 whereas the rest of my languages were lower English (Lv 15) Spanish (Lv 15) Japanese (Lv 15), German (Lv 10) French (Lv 7), Bussola (Lv 7) but perhaps it could be higher because my T1 languages combined had a total of 59 levels. I would need to write out some sort of skill trees to see how it worked but it was clear that I could not neglect my lower-tier skills if I wanted to continue to advance my higher tier skills. It also appeared that the more Tier 1 roots to the skill tree the higher the Tier 2 skill could go. I was very tempted to ask my family but as far as they were aware I hadn’t unlocked my system yet so felt that I was doing relatively fine with my own experimentation. I would work it out in the end.
Level: 11 Name: Kai
Experience: 282,150/ 409,600
Age: 14 months, 3 weeks, 1 days, 9 hours
Health: 1160/1160 Stamina: 559/559 Mana: 1190/1190 Psi: 1190/1190
Trait: Long Lived, Fast Learner, Super Senses, Source of Mana,
Vitality: 116
Endurance: 26
Strength: 26
Dexterity: 32
Senses: 119
Mind: 119
Clarity: 88
Magic: 119
Charisma: 18
Luck: 2
Free Points: 30
Skills:
Tier 1: Time sense (LV 27) Listening (LV 29) Meditation (LV 36) Swimming (LV 27) Humming (Lv 23) Sneak (Lv 22) Whistling (Lv 24) Singing (Lv 24) Drumming (Lv 23) Running (Lv 17) Acting (20) English (Lv 15) Spanish (Lv 15) Japanese (Lv 15) German (Lv 10) French (Lv 7) Dodge (Lv 11) Breath Control (Lv 7) Sight (Lv 15) Scent (Lv 15) Detect (Lv 15) Taste (Lv 15) Bussola (Lv 7) Draw (Lv 4) Climb (Lv 7) Calligraphy (Lv 5) Mathematics (Lv 10) Decoding (Lv 6) Lie (Lv 10) Knife Skills (Lv 5) Trading (Lv 11) Sailing (Lv 4)
Tier 2: Sense Mana (LV 36) Eavesdrop (LV 27) Memorisation (LV 22) Composition (Lv 22) Recall (Lv22) Pain tolerance (Lv 13) Piano (Lv 20) Violin (Lv 20), Trombone (Lv 20) Saxophone (Lv 20) Linguistics (Lv 16) Translation (Lv 16) Stealth (Lv 12) Quick reflexes (Lv 24) Haggling (Lv 5) Misdirection (Lv 5)
Tier 3: Echolocation (LV 26) Expel Mana (Lv 36) Absorb Mana (Lv 31) Mana Manipulation (Lv 25) Ignite (Lv 15) Freeze (Lv 10) Boil (Lv 11) Bargain (Lv 10) Gale (Lv 14) Deception (Lv 1)
Tier 4: Material Manipulation (Lv 11) Mana Drain (Lv 20) Parallel Processing (Lv 15)
Tier 5: Mind fortress (Lv 17)
Skill experience: 4800
Origin experience: 0
Combat experience: 0
Crafting experience: 2000
Trading experience: 1000
Popular experience: 2000
The practice of meditating and listening, even eavesdropping when I could, supported the slow growth in mind, senses and magic my three highest stats but it seemed repeated performances of my sky diving feat were giving me less popular experience and slower growth of my charisma stat. I had taken to singing at supper in the hopes that it would help somehow but my family had heard me sing before and while happy to hear me again they were not impressed enough to help. In fact, some family members were entirely unhappy to hear me drumming or whistling again all the time. Namely my sister.
“Will you cut that out!” she said holding my hands down to the table after I had been sitting there drumming with my utensils.
I stopped not so much by choice as my hands were still being held down but I wouldn’t be starting up again once she let go either. I might be levelling up quickly and had a variety of magic under my belt but boiling, freezing or setting your sister on fire seemed like a bit of an escalation for holding my hands down. I wondered if I could do something with material manipulation under the table while she wasn’t looking but I didn’t have the control to tie anyone’s laces yet and certainly couldn’t do it subtly without creating suspicion and causing it to fail.
The interesting thing was though that while my skill practice and levels continued to go up with practice helping to build my character sheet so to say, the making and selling of salt was at the moment a far easier and less time-consuming way to gain experience. It seemed that the bigger the effect I had on the world the larger experience I could gain through the different types of experience.
“Shall we have a go at making the salt flats after dinner?" Aleera asked.
While we continued to make salt from our blue cave. The amount we were producing was beginning to be noted on my the townspeople and it had been decided that making some salt flats even if they did not supply the majority of what we were making and selling would be a reasonable explanation for where the salt was coming from.
"Sure." I replied.
Going out after dark was one of the few times I could leave the house without being carried around in a bag. Although I still tended to get carried anyway. The plan was to start on the far side of the island from the town. We would start them by the water's edge then work our way in towards the center.
"I wasn't talking to you. Mum?" she shut me down before asking Mum again.
"That would be fine." she answered.
The plan was for mother to shave the area flat with her stone shaping skill. Des and Sinis would be sweeping up all the stone that was removed to fill any potholes. Then I would attempt to melt them together. It would be a higher burst of ignite and boil but I was hopeful that I would be able to reform the broken shards of basalt into smooth blue stone. I thought it was going to look very nice if it worked. Any vegetation that we came across would be carefully removed and any soil would be carted up to our own mini caldera during the day.
"Brilliant. Kai are you sure you can do this?" Aleera quizzed me.
"I'm sure I can it was my idea." I staked my claim.
We had been discussing the salt flats for a while and Aleera felt it was just as much her ideas as mine as she had first introduced me to the salt pools figuratively and literally on this island. Never mind that I knew how to get salt out of seawater before I was even born. The problem was that I still was not saying that so we were having a little bit of a spat over whose idea it was. It didn't really matter in the end it was just the principle of the matter. Still, I supposed technically I would own all of them anyway so did it really matter, nope.
Once we had finished our dinner we headed off into the night to the western shoreline. While the others stumbled a little in the dark it was clear as day to me. When we arrived at the edge we had the mountain between us and the town so we were not too worried about setting up some lanterns to see clearly.
"Ready when you are." mother started.
Aleera Des and Sinis had already marked out an area to work on removed any soil, plants from it. All that was left was for mother and me to smooth it out so to speak.
She started with a quiet low hum walking along in front of Des and Sinis who followed behind with a broom each to sweep up any debris created and deposit it in any of the natural crevices. We were lucky the island was relatively flat and low here by the water so mother was only taking a very shallow layer of stone off the top leaving what looked like polished bluestone behind her. Apart from any of the crevices that were now filled with the thin layer she had cut off deposited by Des and Sinis sweeping.
Then it was my turn. I had yet to be able to get sound to somehow carry my magic like my mother had suggested but if there was one thing I was good at using my mana for it was giving or taking energy out of systems. All of my initial magical skills consisted of precisely that. Expel Mana, Absorb Mana, Ignite, Freeze, Boil, were all skills that I was either adding or removing mana from and with such a large Mana pool I felt confident to succeed.
I sat in front of the filled crevices. The area for producing salt was effectively already functional this would only tidy things up so there was no pressure to succeed. If it worked great. If it didn't that was okay too. But I knew it was going to work.
I quickly pushed my mana forth into the stone chips and cut off in front of me. They began to glow. I didn't need to set them on fire merely get them to melt. The rocks quickly shot past the point when water would begin to boil. Then pas the point that wood would begin to burn, ignite. The difference though was that at this point with ignite the work would be done and it would continue to burn on its own. With the stone we were going to have to go a little higher.
I backed up a little bit from the pile of steaming stone. It started slowly ever so slowly with one of the small shards but it gradually began to melt. Filling in the cracks below it, filling the crevice. I kept going. They didn't have to all melt merely enough to seal the gap, complete the smooth surface of the salt flats my family had created and it seemed to be working. as the last shards melted down forming a smooth stone liquid that filled the crevice perfectly. A little even floated out across the stone my mother had already smoothed looking a little like a glowing spillage of lava oozing from the earth. It was really quite cool. Well obviously extremely hot but I was allowed my oxymoronic thoughts as long as they stayed in my head. It also made me exceptionally glad that so far there didn't seem to be any volcanic activity at all on the island.
"Well done everyone." Father congratulated us all he had accompanied us but been left holding up the lanterns along with Aleera as everyone else had a job to do.
We left to return home.
It would take us a while to build our salterns along the coast then work our way inwards but we would do them one at a time. For me the biggest success other than being able to melt the stone was my first earth skill another Tier 3 magical skill Melt Lv 1.