This was one of the best days ever.

  Henrietta had announced that to celebrate their completion of the iron factory, they were getting a full and true day off, during which she would be handling all of their normal chores. That meant Clark didn't need to cook, Oliver didn't need to do his furnace-supplying, and Alyssa didn't even need to run out to the Ironworks to check on the defenses there!

  Then, to top it all off, their Commander had revealed a small barrel of wine she'd created out of the local fruits! Clark had been trying and failing to make anything even slightly fermented, so he had no idea how she'd managed it.

  Sure, it wasn't the best wine he'd ever tasted, or even very good in general, but it was very unique and vaguely tropical, and any drink enjoyed with good friends was a good drink. He'd let Tully try a tiny sip, but apparently petalfurs didn't much like alcohol. She was very adorable with the sneezing fit it had set her off on, though.

  "Which was, of course, right when the CO walked in," Alyssa continued. "So there she is, one foot stuck between the frame and the mattress, the other foot just dangling, and when I go to salute, she doesn't think to do anything except salute as well. So, she's already upside-down hanging off the bed, and then her arm just starts flailing..."

  Jacob and Alyssa were fully invested in the story, and even their Commander seemed to be hiding her amusement at Alyssa's exaggerated antics in retelling it, but Oliver was just vaguely staring off to the side and sipping at the tea Henrietta had made for him - he'd refused the wine.

  "How are you doing?" Clark asked, hopefully not too loudly. He could do that sometimes.

  "Hm? Oh," Oliver collected his thoughts. "I'm fine. This tea is surprisingly good, honestly."

  Clark decided he needed to ask Henrietta what she'd used. Even if he couldn't make wine, he definitely could make tea. At most, he just needed to get an attack skill to defend himself out in The Jungle. It was great having the ability to stay focused on his tasks in-camp, but it would also be nice to not be helpless again.

  "Was something in the wine unappealing to you? If you possess such a refined palate as to dislike something this crude, I understand. My Father would surely hate this, yet I do not find it too unappealing when drank in good company."

  "No, no. Nothing like that. I just don't drink."

  Clark quizzically pointed at the mug of tea he was actively sipping at, and Oliver almost choked over the small drink he'd taken. "No, not like that. I don't drink alcohol."

  "Oh," Clark nodded, then paused. "I was unaware that was an option."

  "Sure it is? You just... decline them when offered?"

  Clark wasn't certain that made the most sense. When presented with a meal, it was expected that all portions of it be at minimum sampled and appropriate compliments given, save for the condition that... "Ah, you are allergic to alcohol. I was unaware that alcohol allergies had yet to be cured. Has this been a lifelong condition or was it a more recent development?"

  "What? No, I just... don't like messing with my brain." Oliver paused, "Well. I don't want to mess up my brain. I put a lot of work into it, I'm not about to go making its job harder than I need to."

  "Cool!" Clark agreed, still not sure how that worked but happy that Oliver was happy. Alyssa seemed to have stopped telling her story, and Henrietta shifted which conversation she was a part of.

  "Your college experience must have been quite different from mine, Smith," the Commander said while hiding a bit of a smile, "I didn't learn a fermentation runic circle because I needed it for classes."

  "So the rumors about the alchemy department were true?" Alyssa asked. "And here I thought they were just stereotyping."

  "You went to college?" Clark asked, surprised.

  "Hey!" Alyssa protested. "What, did you think I couldn't?"

  "You do not tend to give off the air of a scholar," Clark readily explained.

  "I..." Alyssa glanced over at Oliver, who didn't react. She glared a bit harder, as though intensifying her gaze would make the Artificer notice her attention. It may have worked, as he looked up and instantly flinched, nearly destabilizing the stool he stat on and narrowly avoiding falling over altogether.

  Alyssa sighed, "I went for a bit. It didn't agree with me, though. I was the top student before then, though!" She said the last part with confidence and like it was a challenge, which Clark was most happy to cede to her.

  "That's cool! Colleges always seemed so cool, but I never was able to visit one."

  "You... didn't go to med school?" Oliver asked, some kind of worry in his tone.

  "Haleford is a fully accredited and accomplished healer, Smith," Henrietta put to words what Clark was barely beginning to think of, "However, as a Haleford, his education was handled via individual tutoring."

  "That explains some things," Alyssa muttered, earning herself a glare from Henrietta, "Sorry, Commander."

  Clark didn't mind, "My teachers were great! Though, not as great as Soldier Veeran in many ways."

  "Hmph," Alyssa tried to cross her arms, but abandoned the attempt when she couldn't figure out how to do so without spilling her drink. "You didn't know how to activate skills without System assistance when we landed. I bet I would be a better teacher than them."

  "How kind of you to offer, Ride," Henrietta said with a smile. "I would like you to provide some instruction for how Haleford might be able to develop more subskills for his [Unblemish]."

  "Is it fair to take advantage of me when I've been drinking?" Alyssa asked sweetly.

  "I believe that many individuals consider it polite," Jacob provided, and Alyssa flushed even more than she already was.

  Henrietta was holding back laughter, and Oliver just looked confused. "You haven't drank that much," he pointed out. "Particularly for someone with four Resistance, three of which are specialized. Actually, do Resistance (physical) substats apply against poison or alchemy? The name suggests that they would, but I would have expected [Ranger of Far Lands] to care more about kinetics... though it is an exploration-type, so that would make sense."

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Alyssa rubbed her forehead, "Yeah. Okay, sure. I can teach the healer, from the medical House, how to heal. This is definitely something I can actually do."

  "I believe in you!" Clark readily encouraged her. "You're great at all kinds of touchy magic."

  Her exasperated smile turned a bit more genuine, "Yeah... I suppose I am. I can work all kinds of magic with my body."

  Jacob let out a bark of laughter, and Alyssa glared at the soldier, "You... shut up! I'm... going to stop talking at this rate!"

  "That seems unlikely," Oliver muttered.

  "I heard that!"

  The Artificer shrugged, "That's why I said it?"

  "You're all traitors, is what you are," Alyssa grouched, then finished her wine. She shook the mug slightly, peering into it, "We do have more, right?"

  While Alyssa refilled her beverage, Oliver turned back to Henrietta, "I would assume it was."

  It took Clark a moment to recall what the Artificer was referring to, but as he continued Clark realized he was finally responding to Henrietta's comment about their college experiences being different. "Alchemy is a very long-running and prestigious discipline. Its persistence among nonmages during the Age of Oppression alone ensured that, the forerunner to chemistry and all that. System Engineering, though, is still a very young field."

  "You were one of its first Archmages," Henrietta nodded, "Forty-nine years after the full public release of the System."

  "I was among the first cohort of formally trained System Engineering Archmages, after completing a full education dedicated to its study, yes. It wasn't a truly inaugural class, as courses on the subject already existed, but it marked the official consolidation of the field of study for my peers and me."

  "Do you recall the System release?" Clark asked Henrietta, before realizing he probably shouldn't have done so.

  "I don't," Henrietta answered, unperturbed by the insensitive question. "I was alive for it, and I remember it being quite a big deal as I was growing up, but I don't remember any grand broadcasts or the like about its implementation."

  "I do recall it," Jacob spoke. "Though I already had substantial experience with the System at that time, close to a decade from what I recall. Of course, at that time it was not as fully-featured as it is now."

  "Oh yeah," Alyssa noted, "It must have been weird, not having any class changes then."

  "We did still possess the capability to alter our abilities, it was simply more involved at that time," Jacob clarified. "Though I spent much of my time as a [Bladedancer] even then, certain battles necessitated a more directed set of abilities, particularly prior to skill acquisition being fully understood."

  "So did you mostly do Metal and Force classes?" Oliver asked, "Depending on how advanced your System nodes would have been at the time, the elements you would have had as options had to have been pretty limited. Though no, Song would be more the limiter there, wouldn't it? Force would have been more the one to swap out... What do I know that's Metal and Song and that you'd like? I doubt you'd have been using [Chantsmith], so...."

  "It was predominantly knightly classes which I utilized," Jacob confirmed. "Their simplicity was immensely appealing and far more reliable than many of the alternatives that presented themselves to me."

  "Did you ever use [Technoknight]?" Oliver asked, "I always kinda wanted to try it out, but it just... never really happened."

  "I did not, but I do recall that there were a trio of soldiers from the 16th who favored that class. I am uncertain whether they survived, though I always thought it unwise to utilize advanced machinery in contests against those who stood opposed to civilization."

  "Technology isn't that fragile," Oliver grumbled.

  Alyssa coughed.

  "Hey! It isn't! Just because we dropped into the middle of nowhere," Oliver began.

  "What is it like, being the first Archmage of the System?" Clark asked him, before he and Alyssa could have the opportunity to derail the conversation excessively.

  "System Engineering Archmage, I wasn't the first, and it's... never mind," Oliver shook his head, "I like it. It's a neat branch of magic, not quite ephem but not carved either. I went with it because it seemed the most promising for my future and was full of mysteries to discover."

  Clark wasn't always the best at assessing when someone was being genuine, according to his father, at least, but even he could tell that Oliver's response was a prepared deflection rather than a true answer. But it would be impolite for him to press terribly hard for the true answer in this situation, and therefore he allowed the statement to rest.

  "Then why'd you come on an Expedition?" Alyssa asked instead. "Well. Other than the obvious. Because who doesn't want to go on a Jump? But you can't say that in the interviews."

  People did always get frustrated when the questions they asked were being answered with the honest truth, for whatever reason. Well, sometimes they seemed alright with it, but usually it made them unhappy. Particularly the commons, apparently. Which was unfortunate, because Clark wasn't inclined to lying just to make other people feel better. He didn't want to say anything he didn't mean.

  "It is a good experience for growth, it's early enough in my life that I don't have many other entanglements holding me back, but mostly I was looking forward to getting experience with foreign magic and how it interacts with the System firsthand. And learning foreign traditions, too." Clark couldn't tell if Oliver was still withholding things, but he was more uncomfortable so it was probably more accurate.

  "What about you?" Clark asked Jacob, who looked like he had something he wanted to say, "Do you have any fun stories about why you wanted to go on an Expedition?"

  "Hmmm," the Warrior set his wine to the side, "The simple answer, much akin to how young Smith answered, is that it is one of the few great adventures remaining for me, the appeal of personally putting some Tyrants to the sword once I had become strong enough to truly contend with them, and the hopes that the process would heal the scars the last Tyrant I faced left."

  Jacob was just the coolest. Really, everyone who fought in the Binding Wars deserved far more respect than what they already got. The sheer courage to look at a being thought of as divine, a god, and decide that it was in the wrong and must be the one to yield was... incredible. The Blasphemous Emperor of Mankind himself deserved most of the credit, of course. It had been he who had begun the process by slaying The Forgotten One and exposing the true vices of the Tyrants to the light of day, ushering in the end of the Age of Oppression and creating the First Empire of Humanity.

  "Though none of that is untrue, it is naturally incomplete," the veteran finished. "For the reasons we act are myriad, and to assign blame to mere pieces of our lives is to deny the totality of who we are and have been."

  "That's a cop-out and you know it," Alyssa pointed accusingly.

  Veeran retrieved his wine and took a sip, "Perhaps it is. Yet if I were to say that I sought to join an Expedition on account of firsthand learning the means by which the stories are inaccurate, would you be inclined to believe me?"

  Alyssa frowned, her eyes going slightly crosseyed, "I... well you... Hm."

  Clark thought it was an excellent tactic, to say something which might have been true on a deeper level than the initial truth, yet to say it in a way that made it sound wrong. He might not use it himself, but it was an excellent tactic.

  He also tried thinking about what he would say, if he were asked. A lot of why he'd gone on the Jump was because Uncle had said that he was an excellent match for it, and that he could 'do some real good' by being the Healer in service to the Empire. When Father had agreed, Clark had known that it was certain to be a good use of time, and the appeal of destroying armies of demons or undead with his magic was definitely there. He would be able to reach max level, see awesome new things and meet cool new people. And hey! He definitely had met cool new people, was seeing lots of awesome new things, and was serving the Empire. What more could he really want?

  Both a bit fortunately and unfortunately, the conversation moved on before Clark could really put his readied explanation to use. The Commander dipped in and out as she attended to their tasks, and the wine was slowly consumed.

  It was, Clark decided, a very good day.

  Patreon, and you'd probably make him very happy if he knew you joined the .

  Elements: Bread, Crystal, Void

  Role: Intuition/Interaction (survivor)

  Major Stats: Mind, Resistance, Cohesion

  Minor Stats: Power, Strength, Aura

  Base Stats: 4 Mind, 2 Mind (resilience), 4 Resistance, 2 Resistance (mental) 4 Aura, 2 Skill, 1 Recovery, 1 Generation