Book 2. Chapter 30

Book 2. Chapter 30

Brin rolled over in his sleep, half waking. He would’ve gone immediately back to sleep if not for Hogg’s voice.

“You’re awake! Finally! Well? What are you waiting for? Get up and tell me how it went. Well, I know how it went. Glassbound!”

“Hrm? Hogg?” Brin blinked, looking around. It was still dark. It was probably still hours before dawn.

“Who else? Come on. Get up already!”

Brin groaned. "What time is it?"

"I don't know. Let's go. I've already put on the kettle."

Well, there was no getting back to sleep at this rate. Brin sat up, eliciting an annoyed squeak from Marksi, who burrowed in and immediately started into squeaky, trembling snores again.

Brin stumbled into the main room and sat down at the table. Through the window he could see that it really was still dark outside.

Hogg hadn't lied about the tea, and he'd also made a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and fried mato. Clearly waking him up had been no accident, but for bacon all was forgiven.

He munched on his breakfast, still groggy, while Hogg paced back and forth across the room restlessly. He had a huge grin on his face and babbled excitedly. "Where to even start! I can teach you so much now. Don't think that just because I evolved out of that Class I'm useless, oh no. First we should... oh, wait, actually... and that Strength! Boom! Three Strength out of nowhere. You'll have to remember to put a few points in Will. Hey, I bet you're glad I told you to wait until you had [Summon Glass]. Oh, what Skills were you offered for level 20?"

It was a little hard to follow Hogg's train of thought. He’d honestly never seen Hogg act like this before, but the enthusiasm was infectious. He found himself smiling along. "Oh, I never actually chose, did I?" He selected [Memories in Glass]. "Now check."

Hogg stopped in his tracks, reading something only he could see. "No way. I hate you. How did you swing that? You bastard." There was no heat in it; Hogg shook his head in amused awe.

"They said it's from all the [Meditation] on memories I've been doing."

"From all the... I guess that makes sense. You've got a better understanding of your own mind than a kid your body's age should have. This Skill. Do you realize what it can do?"

"If I find a way to play back memories, I can show you some movies from my world," said Brin.

"I guess. No. Listen. You can record everything! Keep it on all the time and have a complete living record of your life. Just for training this is going to be a game-changer. I could give you a couple paragraphs of the Language, and you could play that back any time you want to reproduce some of the better [Illusionist] abilities. My Lightmind can barely do that! It can only record things my illusions see, not what I was thinking or feeling at the time. You're going to be years ahead of where I was at your age. You lucky git. Well, what are you waiting for! Try it out! Do you have any glass on you?"

He still had a bunch of glass in his pockets from the fight with Zilly, and the bigger pieces of the broken sword were still in his bedroom. He could sense them now, and all the other glass. Hogg had several glass objects on his person, there were a few mirrors around, and he could even sense the glass inside Hogg's secret dimensional storage chest that was disguised as a yellow couch.

He pulled out one of the caltrops, and idly pushed some mana into it with [Shape Glass]. Usually any changes he made to glass had to be either very gradual or heavily directed by the Language, but this time the piece of glass immediately collapsed into a restless, shifting puddle in his palm. Every tremor of his thoughts seemed to be reflected in the physical shape of the glass.

He used [Directed Meditation] and the glass immediately stilled until it was barely vibrating. He pictured what he wanted it to do and it followed. The glass formed a line and slithered up his hand like a snake and then wrapped around his finger. There was too much, so he trimmed it down until it was the size and shape of a simple wedding band. Since it wasn't a wedding band, he decided to color it black. The color didn't come as easily as the rest. It darkened into a grayish purple. Good enough. He let the excess fall to the floor.

The excess glass hit the ground with a loud clink that shook him out of [Directed Meditation]. For how smoothly the glass was flowing in his hands, he'd expected it to land with a splash.

"Wow!" said Hogg. "'Drastically improved efficiency' was an understatement. You did that like someone who's been a [Glasser] for years."

Brin felt a bit drained. His mana pool wasn't near empty by any means, but it had taken a bit of a bite out of it. "I'm not sure about that. It seems to be draining mana at the same rate. The efficiency isn't actually better. Only the speed has increased."

"You've got it backwards. You were pushing the same amount of mana in as you're used to, so of course that's the amount of mana that got drained. The greater efficiency now means the Skill can do more than it used to. As you gain practice with [Shape Glass] and the Language, you'll be able to stop all those unnecessary movements and wasting your mana."

"Ok, I'm going to try recording," said Brin. He found that he could activate the Skill with a thought. A small, almost imperceptible stream of mana left him and entered the ring. It was less than his natural regeneration. He really would be able to keep this on all the time if he wanted.

"It's working. Now I'm going to try retrieving the memory."

It came like a second world. All the perceptions of his memory, as well as his thoughts and feelings, all of them came rushing back, playing side-by-side with his present reality. It was jarring, with Hogg positioned just a little bit to the left but still in the same approximate area, still with the happy, interested look on his face.

"Ok, I'm going to try recording," said--

"Ow. Ow ow OW!" A spike of pain hit his brain, like a ringing in the ears paired with the burning of staring into the sun. He canceled his Skill, and for good measure tore off the ring and threw it on the ground.

The pain faded quickly.

"What's wrong?" asked Hogg.

"A feedback loop, I'd wager. No recording and replaying at the same time."

Hogg snorted. "You alright, though?"N0v3lTr0ve served as the original host for this chapter's release on N0v3l--B1n.

"Yeah," said Brin. He hesitantly poked the ring on the ground, and when it didn't burn his mind again, picked it up. He could sort of feel that it had a bit of his mana inside, and also that it was mostly empty. It could store a lot more than those few seconds. He also found that he could pull his mana back out, effectively erasing the memories. He did so, and then slipped the ring back on.

"I want to try a couple other things," said Brin.

"Be my guest. But don't take too long. We haven't even gotten to try your new Class yet!"

Brin used [Directed Meditation], and this time focused on one of his [Memories of Glass]. A relatively benign one, where he was casually skimming an article detailing the type of glass tiles they used on the space shuttle. He recorded it, and then carefully turned off the recording. The memory came back in vivid detail, but he also got a strong impression of him sitting here and now. Could he separate that, and only record the memory? It took a couple tries, but he figured out how to split the memory off and record it alone. This time when he replayed it, it was almost overwhelmingly vibrant, and nothing of his present came with it.

He erased it. Eventually, he'd catalog every single [Memory of Glass] like this, but that needed to be an organized, methodical pursuit. Right now he just wanted to know what the Skill could be used for.

He tried one of his other memories. Christmas when he was twelve. His parents had bought him a microscope and that really cool build-a-robot kit. Again, it took a minute to separate the memory from the remembering, but when he had it, the memory came back strong. Details were there that he'd thought he'd forgotten. The exact color of the carpet. The cat playing with the wrapping paper. The color of his mom's eyes...

Too real. Now wasn't a good time for this. He shut it down. He decided he'd do all his important memories like this. Soon, before they degraded any further, but now wasn't the time. He thought about removing the memory, but decided not to. He slipped the ring into a pocket and created another one, a dark red ring. He'd let this one keep recording the entire day, or until it ran out of space.

“I went with a Dexterity main stat, but with illusions I barely ever needed it. Illusions give you one free hit before your enemy knows what you’re up to. If you kill them, you’ve won, and if you don’t, they throw down an Eveladis. I think things might have been easier if that one free hit was powerful enough to hit a lot harder. Then again, Dexterity has gotten me out of more than a couple sticky situations. You know that; you were there for some of them. Regardless, Strength is covered. For you, I’d go with Magic, and then split the rest to shore up Dexterity and Will.”

“Should I do it now?” asked Brin.

“Up to you,” said Hogg. “It’s easier to get more points when your attributes are still low. But you have more power to practice with when your attributes are high.”

Looking at them now, Brin's Dexterity and Will were both within spitting distance of the next threshold. He'd kept the all of his threshold achievements from his stint as [Scarred One], but many of his stats had already caught up or even surpassed where [Scarred One] had brought them.

Training stats became more difficult the higher your stats got, but the bonus attribute growth would offset that a little. He put 10 points into Dexterity, and 4 into Will, letting [Workhorse] percentage increase bring them the rest of the way.

You have upgraded an acheivement! Dextrous III -> IV +30% -> +40% speed with Dexterity-intensive activities. +30% -> +40% Dexterity attribute growth.

You have upgraded an achievement! Disciplined II -> III +20% -> +30% spell power. +20% -> +30% skill power. +20% -> +30% Will attribute growth.

He decided to keep magic where it was for now, since it was still growing so rapidly.

“I think I'll leave it like this for now,” said Brin.

“Good, then back to light!” said Hogg. “Let’s talk about mirrors! Say >”

Brin did, and the surface of his caltrop was instantly mirrored. It looked cool, sort of futuristic. He didn’t get a point for it. Apparently leveling [Call Light through Glass] was already slowing down.

“And um... what’s next! Oh, you’re probably wondering how I made those little spots of heat way back then,” said Hogg.

“If you concentrate light enough it’ll make heat,” said Brin. “I assume that’s how.”

“Right,” said Hogg. “But just pumping tons of light together is wasteful. Light costs so little mana that you’ll find it hard to reach your limit, but once you start trying to use it to burn things you’ll lose it all in a flash. The workaround is to use the light around us. You can redirect sunlight to do all the work for you if you ever find yourself running low during the day. And that brings us to lenses.”

This time, he handed Brin a slip of paper. It was written in the Language, about three sentences long.

It took Brin about ten minutes to get the pronunciation and feeling of each word correct, but once he did, the magic connected and he made a perfect parabolic lens in the air.

Alert! [Call Light through Glass] leveled up! 5 -> 6

The low light from the lamp didn’t give Brin much to work with, but he found he could freely twist the lens around in the air. He’d be able to summon it first, and then focus it.

“A little more work and you’ll be able to make it invisible, but that hardly matters. No one ever looks up. Just place this in the air up high and you’ll be able to start fires. I’ve never been able to quite get lenses to work well enough to be very useful in a fight, but I know some [Illusionists] who have and it can get pretty scary.”

“I can imagine,” said Brin. He couldn’t wait to start tinkering with lasers.

“Next–”

“Hold on! You just keep throwing one thing after another at me! I’m still thinking about lenses!”

“Well, then I guess I’ll hold off on giving you your present,” said Hogg.

“Present?

Hogg pulled a black wristband out of his pocket. “I worked together with Chamylla to make this, back before System Day when I was an [Illusionist]. It can only be used by a fellow [Illusionist] which is why I held onto it until you got the Class.”

Brin held it in his hands, turning it around. It was plain and black. Ordinary-looking, probably by design, but the material was soft and firm like silk. There was an odd, thrumming feeling, like he felt a connection to it. He put it on. It fit perfectly.

“Just push your mana in it to activate it,” said Hogg.

Brin did. It ate up all the mana he could give it hungrily, draining him quicker than was really comfortable. At first, he couldn’t tell what it was even doing.

Marksi gave him his first clue. He stopped chasing his marble around and squeaked in alarm, looking around. He started darting around, looking behind the shelves and under a table before careening towards Brin and slamming into his stomach where he was sitting. Looking down, Brin could see Marksi... but not himself. The artifact stopped accepting his mana, and he blinked back into visibility.

“Hogg! This is...”

Hogg nodded. “Invisibility is a difficult Skill. Near impossible without a Lightmind, which I can’t give you. But there are other ways to get powerful effects without being able to do it on the fly. One is to have a high-level [Illusionist] imbue the Skill for you into an artifact with the help of an [Enchantress].

“This is amazing!” After only a moment of hesitation, Brin stood up and wrapped Hogg in a hug. “Thank you.”

“Eh. Least I could do,” said Hogg. “This will only give you five seconds of invisibility, but it’ll do in a pinch.”

“It’s perfect,” said Brin. Then, to ward off some of the awkwardness said, “Look at you! Giving out presents like some kind of Hogg... father...”

“I guess. There’s one other way to reproduce high-level effects without actually having the ability.” said Hogg. “You’re going to love this gift a little less, I think.”

He handed Brin a sheet of paper. The entire thing was covered in tiny writing and it was front and back, all in the Language.

“This should only take you three or four hours. When you can read this, you’ll be able to summon a mirror image.”

Brin stared at it, just knowing the enormous headache that was in store. “Can I do this... later?”

Surprisingly, Hogg immediately agreed. “Yeah. Now let’s talk about sound!”